1913 | "The Blue Window" by Henri Matisse

I'm in MOMA's storage
with Henri Mattisse's Blue Window.

Matisse had first made a name for himself

as a painter of these
brilliantly colored canvases

with very discrete
structuring brushstrokes.

In this work of 1913,
you see him at a different moment.

The mood, the overall color palette,
is more subdued

and there is a clear sense of Matisse

engaging with the Cubist geometries
of his contemporaries of the moment.

Matisse's overarching goals at this moment
remain constant, to arrive somehow

at the Essential Character of Things.

This is a very reduced version
of the view of his studio

that he saw out of his bedroom window.

When you first look at it,
the overall impression

is of this expanse of blue,
of this virtually monochromatic canvas.

Several scholars believe that
in creating this picture,

Matisse used what was known
as a Cloude, or a Black Mirror.

In fact, this little square
in the lower right of the composition

may be a stylized representation
of this artist's tool.

They were a device which
eliminates all sensations of color,

probably a very useful tool for him

in stylizing, reducing,
simplifying what he saw before him.

When you look at this work,
with X-Rays, for example,

you can see up in the tree areas
he gradually eliminated details.

The more you look at it

and begin to look at the relations
of one part to another,

you realize that a major reason
for its beauty

is that Matisse has so carefully aligned

virtually every element
in this picture.

Everything in some way lines up,

the top of the statue
with this black line of the window

or the top of the lamp.

Or this band that may have been a curtain,
maybe a wall,

but that Matisse extends down into
what really becomes this

wonderful abstract blue stripe.