Femme et bouquets 1940

This drawing of a woman and some bouquets is by Henri Matisse, and it’s made with pencil. Looking at the still life elements, I can see that Matisse really saw art-making as a process of building up lines. I am really taken by the surface of the paper. I can almost feel the texture of the page and the soft graphite that the artist used to render the different objects. What’s really interesting is that you can see where Matisse labored over certain marks, with clear erasures, but in other passages, he was more carefree, and just let the line roam over the page. Take the flowers to the left of the pitcher: the petal forms are each drawn in a continuous line, and they have an amazing sense of volume even though they are just outlines. It feels like Matisse is having a conversation with himself and with the subject matter; he's working through a problem by thinking through the drawing. Matisse really understood drawing as a medium, and he had an incredible ability to turn simple lines into something expressive. I think of Giacometti and his own commitment to line when I see this work. Neither artist offers definitive meanings, but asks that we see their work as an open-ended form.