Curator, Ann Temkin: The flowers in Nasturtiums with “The Dance” are the same flowers in the vase at the foreground of The Red Studio. Here, the nasturtiums are in front of MoMA's painting, Dance I, which he kept on the back wall of his studio for 30 years.
Writer, Claire Messud: When I think of Matisse, I think of his dancers, I think of that exuberance, that embodied freedom and joy.
If you look at the table on which the nasturtiums stand, the back leg of this little table seems to land in the painting. What's in the world and what he has painted, these two worlds are one and the same and are inseparable.
Ann Temkin: He's linking the flowers and the dancers in a way very typical for Matisse, where real plants, painted plants, real life, art, are all connected, and almost ambiguously interconnected. That kind of constant back and forth between art and life, or living and working—completely fundamental to his art.
The artist Faith Ringgold included Matisse's circle of dancers in a painted quilt titled Matisse's Model. It's part of a series that tells the fictional story of a young Black woman visiting Paris from the United States in the 1920s and she becomes part of the history of modern art.
Artist, Faith Ringgold: Matisse's paintings always make me think of dancing, beauty, and love. They make me want to strip off my clothes and join hands with a circle of friends to dance till both my body and my soul are so tired, I fall asleep on a beautiful chaise-longue and say, “Ahh, Matisse's La Danse did that.”