Le Chateau de Clisson 1905

Jean Metzinger put these tiny dabs of paint onto the canvas to make Le Chateau de Clisson. Up close, it almost dissolves into abstraction, right? But stepping back, the image emerges, shimmering with light. I bet Metzinger was really focused, almost meditative, as he built up this image, dot by dot. It reminds me of Seurat, but there’s something wilder here, a kind of raw energy. Look at the way he’s used complementary colors – blues and oranges, yellows and purples – to make the whole scene vibrate. See the castle reflected in the water? It’s like a double vision, reality and its echo, all broken down and rebuilt with these little marks. For Metzinger, and for a lot of us painters, I think it’s about finding a new way to see, to question, to push the boundaries of what painting can do. We're all in conversation with each other, trying to figure things out.