Odalisque Au Tambourin Harmonie En Bleu 1926

Henri Matisse made this painting, Odalisque Au Tambourin Harmonie En Bleu with oil on canvas. It’s a joyful, dance-like thing, isn’t it? You can see the process right there on the canvas; it’s very raw, very direct. Matisse uses such a limited palette, mostly blues and reds. This really concentrates the eye. He builds the painting out of almost repeated marks and shapes. Look at the way he paints the background. It's like he’s making a pattern, but also a space. The paint is quite thin, allowing the canvas to breathe, you can see a sort of energy, like he's trying to find something there in the moment. The whole image gives me a feeling of lightness, a joyfulness of mark and colour. It reminds me of the work of Joan Miró, in that there’s something almost childlike, playful, in the way he approaches the medium of paint. It's all about embracing ambiguity and multiple perspectives, rather than nailing things down.