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We arrive in DC, it was windy as ever, and immediately start our day off with purpose. The first museum we went to was the Hirshhorn Museum. Before we could enter, security had to check our bags… and naturally i carry pepper spray on my lanyard, but security made me trow it out, so instead i hid it in a pant outside! So as you can tell my day started off with an unexpected twist. As i reentered and started off climbing the stairs and walking the building, i encountered great works of art and displays. I enjoyed exploring the museum with my friends, and studying everything around me. The museum was filled with art inside and outside of it.

After I was finished in the Hirshhorn I went to the plant and got my pepper spray, and then my friend and I walked around DC to find somewhere to eat lunch at, since it was getting close to that time. We walked around the food trucks and the National Gallery sculpture garden and we were stumped, we had no idea what we wanted to eat. So we made up our minds and just got food from a food truck. I got quesadillas which I thought was a good idea, but it was so windy the chips it came with blew everywhere, it was a disaster. So I just gave up and went to the food court in the National Gallery, where I got french fries. After the fries we went back to the sculpture garden to meet up with the class before heading into the National Gallery of Art.

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The National Gallery of Art was a very large and beautiful museum. Exploring every bit of it would most likely take a day or more. So on that note, our class stuck to the east wing. As we were walking through both museums we were all on the search for the piece that stuck out the most to us. This was a very hard task because both museums (obviously) had a lot to offer us! As we walked into the museum I felt a little overwhelmed, because the east wing was very large and I knew finding that one great piece was going to be difficult. My method to the madness was to start at the top of the museum and work my way down. I immediately started taking photographs of everything that interested me, before deciding on that one. Once I finished I sat down at a coffee cafe area and searched through my pictures to find one that made me want to go back again and look at it. That image was one by Henri Matisse, called “Open Window, Collioure” which was created in 1905. After wondering through all the great museums, my friends and I sat down and waited for the bus to arrive. After an eventful, and enlightening day in Washington DC, when the time came to  head back home, I was ready to go.

Objective Phenomena

Before studying the painting by Matisse it is necessary to take in what it depicts. Observing the painting is quite a simple task, but very intriguing, because the more you look at it the more you see. When looking at this painting by Matisse, you can see that he used bright colors, which is what originally grabbed my attention. The painting has green paint, white, various reds that make pinks across the painting, and it also has blues, and oranges. Colors were very important to Matisse. The surface of the piece is very chunky, it is painted with oils which helps bring the surface of the painting more dimensional. The image Matisse printed is depicted to be an open window, just like the title of the work. Looking through the window he has show sailboats on the water, and it seems to be around sunset because he used the many colors we usually see in sunsets. The beautiful windows he painted look similar to French style doors, with many pots and plants around the opening of the window.  Quite ironic I assume, because Henri Matisse was a french artist.

Associations

By viewing and describing the things seen in the image, as a viewer, it is also important to associate some things in the image to other items, paintings, and events. Automatically it is simple to relate his painting to everyday known things. For example, I can relate his painting to a tropical vacation. The open window reminds me of a window you would see at the islands. The painting makes me think that someone had just finished sailing before sunset. The plants and vines in front of the window reminds me of a garden, or even of a jungle. Viewing deeper into the image it seems as if someone is looking through the French doors into the window thats open and surrounded by plants, maybe reminiscing on their sailing adventures. 

Emotive Response

The main reason why I choose to write about this work of art was because of the emotional feelings and the response the painting gave me. Personally I am a happy person, I love tropical things, and engaging colors. This paining made me feel all of the above. It was a very pleasing to look at, enough for me to buy a print of the painting from the little museum shop! The painting projects joy and happiness, it reminds me of a place I want to be in. Walking around the museum this piece caught my attention. We were in a dark room and his painting projects light from the subjects and color palette. The subject of the piece is peaceful, and makes me feel relaxed and calm. Viewing the image I can image being the person looking through the open window feeling the ocean breeze against my skin while I’m enjoying the sunset away of any worries that may come. I feel no bit of sadness looking at the paining, it is the type of painting that immediately brightens up ones day, and thats why I choose Matisses’ painting.

Henri Matisse was a French artist he was born in 1869, and passed away in 1954. Henri Matisse was well known for his use of bring colors in his paintings, and other forms of art. Matisses’ Open Window, Collioure was created in 1905 influenced by the Fauvism movement. Matisse was leader of the Fauvism movement. The group consisted of French painters that valued expression in their art. They were well known for using an unmixed color pallet and broad brush strokes in their paintings. The main artists in this group were; Matisse, Rouault, Derain, Vlaminck, Braqueand, and Dufy. Paul Gauguin, who was also a member of the Fauvism movement once said, “”If the trees look yellow to the artist, then painted a bright yellow they must be.” The quote by Gauguin brings the attention to us, because he explains that they use the bright colors they see, which was prominent, because the movements motto was to use unmixed colors. 

The painting, Open Window, Collioure was painted and based off of Southern Frances’ location of Collioure, hence the title. Matisses’ painting opened a new window 😉 in modern art era, allowing paintings and painters to take an independence from the subject it depicts. The extravagant painting is basically – besides the great use of colors and broad brush strokes – a bunch of frames in each other, which is; the literal frame, the edges of the painting, the doors framing the room, and the window framing the scenery of outside the window. Matisse was a brilliant and obviously very artistic man, mainly known for his paintings and cut outs, but also was a printmaker, a draughtsman, and made sculptures. – what a well diverse man!

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“From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.”—Henri Matisse.

Originally, Matisse started out as a Post-Impressionist artist, then later leading the Fauvism movement, Matisse could not stand impressionist artwork, he loved bright colors. Matisse was great friends with Pablo Picasso, their work was often compared to each other, because they were so similar to each other in style. The main differences between the two was that Matisses’ inspiration came from nature and visual things, and Picasso was inspired by mainly imagination. Henri Matisse loved France, throughout his entire life he lived in France, even through the war. Many know about matisse because of his large scale cut out shapes, but besides that, Matisse has many little gems like his paintings, prints, and sculptures. His famous art movement with the group of Fauvism painters in 1905 was very inspiring to viewers. It was a new type of style, and some were skeptical, but eventually this style became very popular to the art world. Henri Matisse was a great artist and personally I enjoy viewing his pieces, and his style of painting is quite satisfying to my eye. Thankfully while I was in the Nationally Gallery of Art, I came across some of his great works of art!

This is my personal opinion about Henri Matisses’ Open Window, Collioure, and what I thought about the overall piece. Reflecting on if I thought was successfully done, and my personal preferences about his painting:

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Henri Matisse was a great artist, but sadly people don’t live forever, because if they did the world would be full of great art from great artists. Particularly Henri Matisses’ Open Window, Collioure is one of my favorites pieces done by Matisse. After walking through the museum and viewing the art in person and then eventually digging deeper into the artwork. Learning about the movement the piece was inspired by, and the overall composition, this could pretty much be one of my favorite pieces of artwork to this day. This painting is very pleasing to the eye, it evokes happiness and calmness, and the colors work well together. I believe this painting was done very successfully, and the image depicts exactly what it is supposed to; an open window with a beautiful view of boats on the water. I believe the broad brushstrokes, choices of color, and texture of this painting works great with the image that is depicted. I do think that if this technique and color pallet was used in a different image or scene, it probably wouldn’t work as well. The image and the style makes the viewer feel like they are in this tropical, beautiful, place that is in France. I believe that the fact that Matisse never left France and did go to Collioure in the summer, helped the image succeed. If Matisse never went to Collioure this image wouldn’t look as great and correct, and maybe this image wouldn’t event exist. I really do believe everything happens for a reason and if it wasn’t for Collioure, France,  the Fauvism movement, Matisse, Picasso, and many other factors, the art world would probably be a lot different than it is today. I appreciate older styler of art rather than more modern, but this particular painting really opened by eye up to a new style and movement like Fauvism, and I am grateful I am able to accept new styles and ideas that come about every single day.  

Matisses’ painting in 1905 of the window in France was a very successful image, the colors and techniques he performed on this piece made it succeed so well. Personally I think using a broad brushstroke for the sailboats and the leafs on the plants worked very well. I think his method to making the plants very simplistic was a great idea, mainly because it is not hard to tell they are plants with a simple line, because as a viewer we can understand and our mind tells us they are plants, because of the colors and shapes. I think the colors and lines he used to depict the water and sky show us that he was trying to mimic a sunset or perhaps a sunrise. Either way, the simple yet thickness of colors and design of the Open Window are shown very successfully. These many reasons is the main reason why I choose this particular piece of art when we traveled to the National Gallery of art in Washington DC.