Интерьер с баклажанами

In 1911 Matisse painted a run of big interiors that treat a whole room as pure pattern, and this is one of them, made that summer at Collioure. Three aubergines sit on a table, but they are almost a footnote. A single flower-like motif repeats across the floor, the walls, the folding screen and the cloth, until the room stops behaving like a space you could walk into. He worked in distemper, a chalky glue-based paint that dries flat and matte, so nothing gleams or recedes. Through the window at the left there is a slice of green hillside, and on the wall a mirror that gives almost nothing back. It is one of four large interiors he made that year, the most famous of them the all-red studio now in New York.