The Dance

Five figures hold hands and spin in a circle against a sky of deep blue and a hill of green. That's the whole picture. Henri Matisse stripped everything down to three colors and a handful of bodies, and somehow it still bursts with energy. Painted in 1910, "The Dance" was commissioned by a Russian businessman named Sergei Shchukin, who hung it on the staircase of his Moscow mansion. The simplicity was shocking at the time. Critics weren't sure what to make of a painter who seemed to be ignoring all the rules about detail and realism.

Look closely and you'll notice the dancers don't all quite connect. On the left side, two hands reach but don't fully grip, a small gap that pulls your eye and keeps the whole ring feeling alive and slightly off balance. Matisse was part of a group called the Fauves, a French word meaning "wild beasts," named for their bold and unnatural use of color. He once said he wanted his art to be like a comfortable armchair, something that brings calm and rest. There's a real sense of freedom here, of bodies moving without worry, that still feels modern more than a century later.