What Lies Behind Matisse’s Window?
How to decipher a work of modern art in less than five minutes
For this new brève d’art, I’ve decided to tell you about Henri Matisse, and a rather surprising work when you consider that Matisse’s work is all about light and colour. If you’re in the habit of reading me regularly, you’ll no doubt have realised that I have an inordinate passion for colour in painting, and by extension for the work of Henri Matisse. So the choice of painting I’m going to talk to you about today is all the more surprising in that it’s the opposite of what I like and what we’re used to seeing when we talk about the painter’s work. And that’s exactly what intrigued me. Today, let’s talk about Porte-fenêtre à Collioure (or The French Window in Collioure), painted by Henri Matisse in 1914.
That was two years ago. Summer was just around the corner and I was preparing for my very first tour of the Centre Pompidou’s modern collections in Paris. Delighted to finally be able to show some of the works I love, I knew this visit would be full of colour. And it was as I entered the bright and colourful Matisse room that my eye fell on Porte-fenêtre à Collioure. Wow, was it really Matisse who painted this picture so dark, so black? I was intrigued. And as my passion is to show and tell through visits what is less obvious, less known, less famous, I…
