Seven Castles

Fauve

                                      

August 13, 2006

 

Flourishing in France from 1898 to 1908, Fauvism is essentially an expressionist style of painting, characterized by bold distortion of forms and exuberant color. The Fauves used pure, brilliant color, applied straight from the paint tubes in an aggressive, direct manner to create a sense of an explosion on the canvas. They painted directly from nature as the Impressionists had before them, but their works were invested with a strong expressive reaction to the subjects they painted. First formally exhibited in Paris in the fall of 1905, Fauvist paintings shocked visitors to the annual Salon d'Automne; one of these visitors was the critic Louis Vauxcelles, who, because of the violence of their works, dubbed the painters "Les Fauves" ("The Wild Beasts" in French).

 

The leader of the group was Henri Matisse, who had arrived at the Fauve style after careful, critical study of the masters of Postimpressionism Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat. Matisse's methodical studies led him to reject traditional renderings of three-dimensional space and to seek instead a new picture space defined by movement of color. Matisse exhibited his famous "Woman with the Hat" at the 1905 exhibition; brisk strokes of color - blues, greens, and reds - form an energetic, expressive view of the woman. As always in Matisse's Fauve style, his painting is ruled by his intuitive sense of formal order.

 

Other members of the group included André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck, who, together with Matisse, formed the nucleus of the Fauves. Derain's Fauve paintings translate every tone of a landscape into pure color, applied with short, forceful brushstrokes. The agitated swirls of intense color in Vlaminck's works are indebted to the expressive power of van Gogh. Three young painters from Le Havre were also attracted to Fauvism by the strong personality of Matisse. Othon Friesz found the emotional connotations of the bright Fauve colors a relief from the mediocre Impressionism he practiced; his companion Raoul Dufy developed a rather carefree ornamental version of the bold style that suited his own personal aesthetic nature; and Georges Braque created a definite sense of rhythm and structure out of small spots of color, foreshadowing his development of Cubism. Albert Marquet, Matisse's fellow student, also participated in Fauvism, as did the Dutchman Kees van Dongen, who applied the style to depictions of the fashionable society of Paris. Other painters associated with the Fauves were Georges Rouault, Henri Manguin, Charles Camoin, and Jean Puy.

 

Matisse and Derain were friendly rivals of a sort, each with his own followers. Matisse was deliberate and reserved, the opposite of wild; while Vlaminck did match the public perception of what Fauve painting represented: rebellion, roughness, disorder. A big, muscular man, Vlaminck raced bicycles, wrote racy novels, played the violin loudly, and embraced anarchy. He cultivated the Fauve myth. Vlaminck was a self-taught artist. Like Derain he lived in Chatou, a suburb of Paris, and the two often painted there together. Vlaminck's work exploded with bold new color and brushwork after he saw the paintings Matisse and Derain brought back in 1905.

 

Fauvism, a movement with no concrete theories, was for most of these artists a transitional, learning stage. By 1908 a revived interest in Paul Cézanne's vision of the order and structure of nature had led them to reject the turbulent emotionalism of Fauvism in favor of the logic of Cubism. Matisse alone pursued the course he had pioneered, achieving a sophisticated balance between his own emotions and the world he painted.

 

Although fauvism was a short-lived movement (with only three exhibitions), its influence was international and basic to the evolution of 20th-century art.

 

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