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Matisse and Derain: The Audacious ‘Wild Beasts’ of Fauvism in a Radiant Show Matisse and Derain: The Audacious ‘Wild Beasts’ of Fauvism in a Radiant Show
(about 8 hours later)
If you ever took an art history survey in college, you may recall the blur of Fauvism. In the parade of projected images, it was the shocking flash of pure color that sped past as the course made its way to the more demanding rigors and longer shelf lives of Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” and Cubism.If you ever took an art history survey in college, you may recall the blur of Fauvism. In the parade of projected images, it was the shocking flash of pure color that sped past as the course made its way to the more demanding rigors and longer shelf lives of Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” and Cubism.
Fauvism, which lasted from about 1904 to 1908, is the first and probably the shortest of Modernism’s art movements. It is also one of the messiest, populated by a shifting cast of painters and locales. It lacks a manifesto or statement of goals, or even much stylistic coherence, and its tortuous buildup may have been longer than the trend itself.Fauvism, which lasted from about 1904 to 1908, is the first and probably the shortest of Modernism’s art movements. It is also one of the messiest, populated by a shifting cast of painters and locales. It lacks a manifesto or statement of goals, or even much stylistic coherence, and its tortuous buildup may have been longer than the trend itself.
But in at least two ways the achievement of “les Fauves,” or “the wild beasts,” a term coined by the French critic Louis Vauxcelles — is foundational to modernist painting. It liberated color from merely describing reality — for example, green no longer equaled grass — opening the way to vivid colors that had a life of their own on canvas. The Fauves also freed artists from repetitious systems of paint handling — the dots, dashes and regular brush strokes of their Post-Impressionist predecessors including Seurat, Cézanne and even van Gogh.But in at least two ways the achievement of “les Fauves,” or “the wild beasts,” a term coined by the French critic Louis Vauxcelles — is foundational to modernist painting. It liberated color from merely describing reality — for example, green no longer equaled grass — opening the way to vivid colors that had a life of their own on canvas. The Fauves also freed artists from repetitious systems of paint handling — the dots, dashes and regular brush strokes of their Post-Impressionist predecessors including Seurat, Cézanne and even van Gogh.
With the exhibition “Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain and the Origin of Fauvism,” the Metropolitan Museum of Art cuts to the chase, narrowing the field to Fauvism’s two leaders, Henri Matisse and André Derain, and abstaining from the sprawling roster in previous Fauve exhibitions in New York. (The Met’s last treatment of the subject, “The Fauve Landscape” of 1990-91, included 125 works by 11 artists.) “Vertigo of Color” singles out what is perhaps the most important moment of Fauvism’s origins: when its radical nature — vivid color and seemingly crude surfaces, moving toward abstraction — came into public view and received its name at the Salon d’Automne of 1905, causing one of the most memorable art scandals of the 20th century.
This little arc of art history began only a few months before, in late June of 1905, when Matisse, one of France’s leading talents, invited his junior colleague, Derain, to join him in Collioure in the South of France. Matisse was summering with his wife and two sons and felt certain that the sun blazing on this small fishing village, the surrounding landscape and Mediterranean Sea would expose them to sensations and perceptions necessary to solve problems that had been plaguing them and other artists for several years. The chief problem was light: light in nature was superseded by the light inherent in the heightened artificial colors of paint, which the artists came to understand in the seemingly shadowless brightness of Collioure.