Description of the picture:
Conversation – Henri Matisse. 1908-1912. Canvas, oil. One hundred seventy seven x two hundred seventeen cm
Like many works in the work of Matisse, this picture is deprived of perspective, мейд by extremely meager artistic methods, sketchy and at first glance simple to artlessness. This is a simple everyday scene – a husband and wife are talking in the morning at home by the window overlooking the kindergarten.
With a good imagination, you can imagine an artist talking peacefully with his other half. But with the same success, any other pair can be in their place, because the appearance of the characters is depicted extremely schematically, as well as the entire surroundings surrounding them. This is the feature of this canvas. It shows not specific people and a special situation, but archetypes, collective images of millions of married couples, hundreds of thousands of identical peaceful morning conversations, a huge number of standard rooms and kindergartens similar to each other.
The methods that the artist uses are interesting. The figure of a man seems to consist solely of straight lines and alternating stripes – dark, light, dark, light. Perhaps in this way the master wanted to convey the dual nature of man, the combination of good and evil in him, the straightforwardness of thoughts and actions. The female figure is all composed of soft fluid lines, it is immersed in blackness – this is a mystery, mysticism, a deep mystery. The colors are open, bright and clean, volumes are not transmitted – the picture is flat, and expressiveness is achieved through the use of local color.
A growing tree and lush flowering in the kindergarten has always been perceived as a symbol of life, continuous development. The saturated blue color of the wall on which the characters are depicted is very loved by the artist and is often repeated in his canvases. It can be interpreted as a symbol of space, eternity. Then the meaning of the picture becomes clear – eternal life, connected by the marriage ties of a couple, love and hate, future and endless development as the basis for the existence of mankind."
