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70: The Matisse Room

The Dance

1909 to 1910

Matisse, Henri

The pair of panels known as "The Dance and Music" (also inHermitage) are amongst Matisse's most important - and mo

works of the period 1908 to 1913. They were commissionedof the leading Russian collectors of French late 19th and earart, Sergey Shchukin. Until the Revolution of 1917, they hunstaircase of his Moscow mansion.

Both compositions belong to a group of works united by the tgolden age" of humanity, and therefore the figures are not reimagined image-symbols.

The sources of Matisse's "The Dance" lie in folk dances, whipreserve something of the ritual nature - albeit not always cotoday - of pagan times.

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Before this canvas, the theme of the dance passed throughin Matisse's work. Only in this composition of 1910, howeverits famous passion and expressive resonance. The frenzy ofbacchanalia is embodied in the powerful, stunning accord ofgreen, uniting Man, Heaven and Earth.

How rightly has Matisse captured the profound meaning of texpressing man's suBConscious sense of involvement in thnature and the cosmos! The five figures have firm outlines,deformation of those figures is an expression of their passioand the power of the all-consuming rhythm. The swift, jointthe bodies with untamed life force and the red becomes a syheat. The figures dance in the deep blue of the Cosmos andis charged with the energy of the dancers, sinking beneath tthen springing back.

For all its expressiveness, Matisse's "Dance" has no superfl

other than that required by the subject. The very organisatioensures that. Instinct and consciousness are united into a hwhole, as we can feel in the balance between centrifugal anforces, and in the outlines of the figure on the left, strong anproportion.

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