The Bay of Nice 1918

Henri Matisse made this painting of The Bay of Nice with oil on canvas, and you can see how he's laying down each stroke, each color, as if it’s a step in a dance. Look at how the blue of the sea meets the white of the buildings; the way it's brushed on gives it this sort of shimmering, dreamlike quality. It's not about getting the details right but about catching a feeling. The paint is thin in places, almost like a watercolor, but then he lays it on thicker to give shape to those palm trees. There's a spot right where the palm tree meets the light, where the green, white, and blue kinda wrestle each other. That messy part, that’s the real juice of the painting, don't you think? It’s like he's saying, "Here’s what I saw, but more importantly, here’s how it felt." Matisse reminds me a little of Bonnard, in that they both play with color like it’s a wild animal, always on the verge of breaking free. It's this embrace of uncertainty that makes art so endlessly fascinating.