It is easy to excuse ‘Masters‘ and be in awe of their genius but shoddy painting is shoddy painting no matter who does it.

This is perhaps one of Matisse’s most famous iconic images. Seeing it in the flesh, I was surprised at how badly painted it is. This is definitely a painting that looks better in reproductions – in the flesh it is shit!

Dance, is a large decorative panel, painted with a companion piece, Music, specifically for the Russian businessman and art collector Sergei Shchukin, with whom Matisse had a long association. Until the October Revolution of 1917, this painting hung together with Music on the staircase of Shchukin’s Moscow mansion.

The painting shows five dancing figures, painted in a strong red, set against a very simplified green landscape and deep blue sky. It reflects Matisse’s incipient fascination with primitive art, and uses a classic Fauvist colour palette: the intense warm colors against the cool blue-green background and the rhythmical succession of dancing nudes convey the feelings of emotional liberation and hedonism. The painting is often associated with the “Dance of the Young Girls” from Igor Stravinsky’s famous musical work The Rite of Spring.

Dance is commonly recognised as “a key point of (Matisse’s) career and in the development of modern painting”. It generally resides in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

Dance (Matisse). (2011, January 13). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 09:04, March 7, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org