The Dream 1940

Henri Matisse painted "The Dream" with oil on canvas using pinks, yellows, and a gorgeous vibrant red. I can just imagine Matisse, totally absorbed, circling this canvas as it slowly comes into being, with the figure emerging from the ground, pushing up against all those wild zigzags. He's trying to catch a feeling, a mood, a vision of a body in repose. What I love here is the contrast between the flatness of the red ground and the way the black outlines create these nested spaces in the figure's clothing. There's a radical simplification happening here. The image becomes distilled into basic forms and colors, yet it still gives you so much. You can really see how all us painters are always in conversation with each other, borrowing and riffing on each other’s ideas. It makes you wonder, what will we dream up next?