Margot 1906

Henri Matisse made this painting, Margot, with oil on canvas. Look at how the greens and blues are laid down, kind of choppy, but with a real sensitivity to how the colors vibrate against each other. It's not about blending; it's about juxtaposition, a push-pull of hues. The real magic is in the materiality. See how the paint sits on the surface, almost like little islands of color? It's neither thick nor thin, but just right, like he's coaxing the paint into existence. Notice the dark blues of the dress, and how they’re not uniform. There's a life in those marks, a responsiveness to the moment. It’s this kind of open-ended, process-oriented approach that makes his work so enduring. It makes me think of someone like Pierre Bonnard, another artist who was deeply invested in the act of seeing, but Matisse really makes it his own, allowing the process of painting to become a kind of thinking in itself.