Dance (I) by Henri Matisee is an oil painting on canvas created in 1909. While analyzing this piece there were a few things I stood out to me.

While inspecting the piece in an objective tone there are many things to notice; the colors, the background, the figures and what is occurring in the picture. One of the first things that stood out was that while many other oil paintings consisted of an abundance of colors and mixing, this artist only used around 4-5 colors for this piece. Next I noticed how the piece was extremely simple, it did not contain many details. The background was just a green hill with a blue background. The people in the painting were all the same color and all had simple sketches of their features (eyes, nose, lips, breast, buttock). While observing the colors I noticed how the artist used dark colors in the background but lighter colors on the people. Lastly while trying to figure out what was occurring in the piece I concluded that they were all dancing in a circle (hence the title of the piece) and that the girl on the bottom right had fallen. I would personally point to the person the bottom left as the most prominent figure in this piece due to their hieratic scale (being the largest thing in this piece) and his contrapposto position with his feet. The contrapposto could be seen throughout many pieces of art throughout history, this position is usually linked with the image over power. As you continue to look at the figures counter-clockwise you can notice how they are slowly progressing from standing up and dancing well to falling and on the floor. If you look even closer to the the last figure, you can notice how their hand is outstretched but not connected to the next person, thus breaking the circle.

After this I started to truly analyze the piece by closely examining all the things I stated in my objective analysis. I noticed that by making the people a lighter color they stood out a lot more and made them a general focus of the painting, as he probably desired. I concluded that his lack of detail was because the artist didn’t want the painting to distract you from a message he was trying to send. This message could be seen in the figures dancing and how they are falling apart. After reading the note on the side, I saw that the artist once stated that the piece evoked “life and rhythm”. Life and rhythm can easily be seen in this painting. When viewing life it can easily be associated with the word rhythm, much like a rhythm life consist of many ups and downs. In this painting you can see the figures representing this as the figures go from quite literally standing up to being down. However, just like the figures in the painting, life and rhythm is a circle, they constantly go through sequences of being up and down. The faces of these figures does not matter because they are us. All of us are dancing to the rhythm of life, constantly experiencing all of its ups and downs. Going back to the background you can now see how the background is so simply because in life things are always changing, thus where we are doesn’t matter. What matters is that through all these changes we are always ourselves, and no matter where we are, we will always fall down but just to get up again.