5 ideas
Expression is not located in a passionate face or violent gesture but in the entire arrangement of the picture: the placement of figures, the empty spaces around them, the proportions. Every element carries expressive weight, so meaning is a property of the composition as a whole rather than of any depicted emotion.
In a picture every detail either contributes to the whole or detracts from it; there is no neutral element. An unnecessary detail displaces an essential one in the viewer's mind, so composing is largely a discipline of elimination.
Each colour placed on the canvas alters the ones already there, so the painter must keep modifying earlier touches until all tones reach a living harmony, like chords in music. Colour is chosen by its relation to the others and to the feeling, not by fidelity to the object's local colour.
A picture made from a series of fleeting momentary sensations lacks lasting character, as in the Impressionist capture of an instant. The artist should instead condense the sensations into a more essential, durable representation of the subject's character, even at the cost of surface charm.
Matisse aims for an art of balance, purity and serenity, free of troubling subject matter, that soothes the tired mental worker the way a good armchair rests the body. Judging a work by its calming, restorative effect rather than its shock or narrative redefines what counts as ambitious art.