The Dream 1940

Henri Matisse made this painting, The Dream, with oil on canvas. It has these big, flat areas of colour, and they're outlined in such a bold way. It’s like looking at the world through a stained-glass window, or maybe through a child’s eyes. Check out the patterns on the fabric. He’s using these simplified shapes, like zigzags and squiggles, to suggest detail without getting too fussy. It’s all about the feeling of the thing, not necessarily the thing itself. The colours are so bright and cheerful and also kind of clashing. I like how the black lines seem to hold everything in place, like a border around a thought. Matisse was always playing with this tension between representation and abstraction. You can see it in his cut-outs too. He was so good at making something that felt both real and totally made up at the same time. You see echoes of it in the work of someone like David Hockney, or even Elizabeth Murray, that same joyful confidence with colour and form. It’s like they’re saying, ‘Hey, let’s not take ourselves too seriously, okay?’