Girl in Pink in An Interior 1942

Curator: Stepping up close, I’m struck by how Matisse’s "Girl in Pink in An Interior" from 1942 feels so deliberately, almost joyfully, unfinished. Editor: The girl in her pink dress seems enveloped in a reverie, yes? There is a certain flattening of depth, a compression, as if everything--girl, chair, shutters--exist on one symbolic plane. The window shutters interest me. Closed in a time of conflict or a safe cocoon. Curator: Or maybe it's the studio space where things were starting and ending all at once. He painted this while living in France under Nazi occupation, which must have played into the claustrophobia we feel. It's intensely private, almost hermetic. Look at the quick strokes of oil paint, so gestural and raw. Editor: Precisely! And pink – a fragile promise, a yearning. Yet this "Girl" seems to have lost much of her unique, feminine identifiers. Are we invited into her psyche, or simply witnessing the play of interior versus exterior forces represented through simple motifs. A vase of white and yellow flowerheads, no distinct features – light against darkness. Curator: Exactly. The "naïve art" quality almost tricks us into thinking it's effortless. The vibrant orange and red stripes of the chair and the cool green shutters fighting for dominance on the canvas. What do you make of those lines running vertically through everything, grounding all colors in grey or blue? It adds a kind of frantic energy doesn't let you settle. Editor: It unifies the scene even further! All flow melts toward common sources – everything connects. The verticality directs our eyes skyward while also anchoring the entire composition to gravity and permanence. He is using verticality in combination with horizontal design elements of blinds and the model to find an equilibrium. And think – could the stripes themselves mimic the shutter effect of closure, both in protection of self and obscuration of one's self from view? Curator: The girl's identity as secondary to pure color seems significant. Not really an act of painting "her", so much as painting what the world looks and feels like at the time and in place. Almost like a mood ring of the self. Editor: Mood ring – love it! We must never underestimate art’s ability to let us see the interior reflected, and reflect, in turn, what resides in the mind’s deepest, most private room.