Modernist Visions

Animations:

Visit
Closed today
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6th and Constitution Ave NW
Washington, DC 20565

Only have an hour to spend?

We've got you covered.
Exhibitions & Events
Featured exhibition:

Little Beasts: Art, Wonder, and the Natural World
Now on view
Art & Artists
Artle

A refreshed experience for our puzzle game
Today's puzzle

Closed today

Visit
Closed today
Admission is always free

6th and Constitution Ave NW
Washington, DC 20565

Only have an hour to spend?

We've got you covered.
Exhibitions & Events
Featured exhibition:

Little Beasts: Art, Wonder, and the Natural World
Now on view
Art & Artists
Artle

A refreshed experience for our puzzle game
Today's puzzle

A French window with its sill lined with flowerpots opens into a view of boats floating in a body of water in this loosely painted, vibrantly colored, stylized, vertical painting. The doors open inward, and they are painted with coral orange and cranberry red. The wall behind the door to the left is peacock blue and the wall to our right is fuchsia pink, and those colors are reflected in the opposite windows of the doors. Three flowerpots in crimson red, marmalade orange, or royal blue sit on the windowsill in front of us. Foliage in the pots is painted with short strokes of cardinal red and turquoise blue. Over the window, a two-paned transom window pierces a forest-green wall. The view through the panes has a band of salmon pink across the top and dabs of celery green and banana yellow below. The dabs and dashes of pine and lime green continue down the sides of the window and across the sill, suggesting vines growing up around the opening. A band of ultramarine blue beyond the flowerpots could be a balcony. Several rust-orange masts of ships with hulls painted with swipes of indigo blue, flamingo pink, forest green, and marigold orange float in the water beyond. The water is painted with parallel strokes in pale pink and butter yellow. The sky above is painted with thick, wavy lines of steel blue, periwinkle purple, and seafoam green. The artist signed the work in red paint in the lower right, “Henri Matisse.” — Henri Matisse, Open Window, Collioure, 1905, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, 1998.74.7

Join us for a four-part lecture series about the bold transformation of modern art at the turn of the 20th century. Upending the traditional idea of art as a “mirror of reality,” artists grappled with profound questions: What is the purpose of painting? What can it truly express?

We’ll explore how Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, and Georges Seurat redefined the possibilities of painting. Their radical approaches paved the way for the next generation, including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Arshile Gorky, to continue innovating and shaping the course of modern art.

Abstracted objects, including a guitar, vase, papers, and playing cards, are gathered on a tabletop in this horizontal still life painting. The objects are made up of areas of mostly flat color and many are outlined in black, creating the impression that the some shapes are two-dimensional and assembled almost like a collage. The brown table has an oval top and a curving pedestal foot. At the center of the jumble on the tabletop, a guitar lies on its side with the neck facing us and reaching to our right. Beneath the black fretboard and neck, the curving form of the guitar is painted tomato red. The upper half is represented by a squared-off brown form. The guitar seems to rest atop or in front of an array of stacked shapes, like splayed pieces of paper, in white, lavender purple, and pale blue. A curving form painted in turquoise to our left seems to be a vase holding a spray of three flowers. The vase is shown against a white square painted with horizontal black lines, like sheet music. A dark gray form at the middle of the table, beneath the guitar, could be the silhouette of a bird facing our left. Just to the right of the bird, a pair of playing cards lie on a blue area. Painted in turquoise against gray, one card has six dots and the other one club. A chair with a curved, arching top and a gray upholstered seat is pulled up to the table to our right. The front left leg is light gray with turned knobs near the foot and halfway up the leg; the right leg is painted black, as if in shadow. Panels of pale tan suggest wainscotting behind the table beneath a pale gray wall across the background. The overall impression of the painting is fragmented as even single objects seem to be broken up into planes and areas of color. The artist signed and underlined his name with red paint in the lower left corner: “Picasso.” — Sunday, October 26

A young boy with pink and tan-colored skin stands next to a seated woman with an ashen white face, and both look out at us in this vertical portrait painting. The scene is created with broad areas of mottled color in rust and coral red, pale pink, lilac purple, ivory white, and shades of tawny brown. The eyes of both people are heavily outlined with large, dark pupils. To our right, the woman’s pale, oval face is surrounded by a muted, mint-green cloth that covers her hair and wraps across her neck. Her eyes are outlined with charcoal gray, and her heavy lids shaded under arched brows with smoky, plum purple. She has a straight nose, and her burgundy-red lips are closed in a straight line. Her long, rose-pink dress is lavender purple below the knee, and is scrubbed with darker pink strokes across her lap. Her sleeves are tan on the upper arms and cream white on the forearm, over two blush-pink forms that represent her hands resting on her thighs. Along the top of her shoulders, her dress is terracotta red. A rectangular, fog-gray form behind her could be a chair or a half-wall, the top edge of which is higher to our right of her head. To our left, the boy has dark brown, short hair over putty pink, protruding ears. The area between his eyelid and arched brow is filled in with chocolate brown, giving his staring eyes a hooded look. His jawline, chin, and lips are outlined with dark brown. His khaki-brown, knee-length coat has pale, rose-pink sleeves and a black collar. An area of pale, ice blue could be a kerchief or high-collared shirt, and he wears fawn-brown pants. One of his slippers is coffee brown and the other, closer to the woman, is slate gray. He holds a loosely painted, pale, turquoise-blue object in one hand at his waist. The pair are situated against a background painted in areas of coral, ruby, crimson, and wine red. Two vertical, concrete-gray strips behind the boy and woman could be columns. The floor along the bottom edge of the painting is pale pink. — Sunday, November 9

Sunday, October 26

The Goldfish and the Minotaur: The Modernist Rivalry Between Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso

Sunday, November 9

The Dreams of Arshile Gorky

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