One of the climactic instances of Matisse's treatment of the view through an open window, the

present picture presents a daringly abstract landscape and frame which are contrasted with the
relatively realistic handling of the curtain at the left. The green areas of the architectural border
are so flatly treated that the landscape beyond is almost literally a picture within a picture and
might even be read as a boldly simplified painting hanging on a studio wall. The curtain is
actually red with a green floral pattern, and its reverse side, yellow, is seen only in two places
where it has fluttered back into the room as the result of a breeze. Its yellow is nearly identical to
the yellow-ocher ground of the landscape, a broad, flatly painted area which vibrates against
two areas of relatively pale blue, the sky at the top and the elliptical form at the bottom, an area
that might also be read as the pool of a small garden.
In abstract juxtapositions of flat colors such as these the artist foreshadows at an early date the
effects of the papiers-decoupes that will crown his oeuvre in the 1950s. Notable is the freedom
with which he treats the rectilinear contours of the window, producing, in effect, an unreal arch
at the top. Such minor adjustments and dislocations serve to comment upon the rigidity of the
picture frame, which is softened chiefly by the curving folds of the curtain, a feature that is itself
held in check by the bold black strip that adjoins the picture frame only at the composition's
base. While Matisse, like most of the Cubists, would never pass beyond the rendering of the
world of appearances, he here touches a degree of abstraction that will not recur in his art until
the monumental Snail. In creating these masterpieces of representational understatement the
artist does not seem to be posing a visual riddle, as is so often the case with Cubism and its
aftermath. Rather, his statement is an unambiguous praise of color in its multitude of possible
combinations. The viewer is drawn into a state of relaxation and euphoria through the means of
the hues themselves, although a tenuous contact is maintained with the world of everyday,
secular perception. In contrast with the intellectual challenge and mental tension provoked by
such pictures as Goldfish, with their Cubist conundrums, the present picture is a model of
decorative and compositional clarity.

Blaze (1964)
Artist: Bridget Riley
The zigzag black and white lines in Blaze create the perception of a circular
decent. As the brain interprets the image, the alternating pattern appears to
shift back and forth. The interlocking lines add depth to the form as it
rhythmically curves around the center of the page. The curator Joe Houston
has argued that works such as Blaze "trigger in the viewer an experience
equivalent to an atmospheric electric charge; not an illusion, but an "event."
Riley herself has said, "My work has developed on the basis of empirical
analyses and syntheses, and I have always believed that perception is the
medium through which states of being are directly experienced."