The colour is Fauvism
Jan 7th, 2010 by apartmentblogger
Henri Matisse was known for being the enemy of Pablo Picasso, and the father of Fauvism. Talking about Matisse’s is to talk about the white doves and the intense and violent red he used in his paintings. The colour was not a way of representing the reality but something to translate the visual sensations of the artists as did André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck and Georges Braque. To use a green did not mean grass and and a blue did not remit to the sky: the colours were used to shock and excite, not to describe. This boldness and novelty in colours characterizes this French avant-garde art movement. They did not paint as the Impressionists did, but the canvas is loaded with violent and pure draws: the Fauvism is pure instinct.
Fauve means wild beast, a word that defines the bestial nature of these painters. For them, the art does not imitate the nature as Platon said in the fifth century; the idea is also developed by the development of the photography.
The invention of the photography around 1840 changed their minds: the painting is no longer satisfied with the accurate representation of what they saw, because the camera did it better. This way, the artists explored the power of colours, which can not do the photography which its maximum power is the light. “Luxury, calm and pleasure” (1904) by Henri Matisse, try to show us the clear nudity of some women on the beach (their bodies are made of coloured spots). This point’s technique is called Pointillism or Neo-Impressionism, a previous current to the Fauvism.
The forms are not separated from each other; everything is mixed under fine lines. When they wanted to make the contours, they surround the form with a thick black line that may suggest the simplicity of a child’s drawing. A good exaple is thee work by Jean Prevost, an artist with a passion for tango. His characters are thick and have streamlined bodies with that marked black line. He exhibited during the first and scandalous exhibition of Fauvism in 1905 in the Salon d’Automne in Paris.
The most emblematic painting of this artistic movement is the portrait of Matisse’s wife. She has half face painted green, and the red contrasts are very strong. There is no depth, and the immediacy and the liberation of the colour is aggressive and primitive. In 1910, the movement finished and the German Expressionism and the Russian Constructivism come: they both who studied a lot of colour possibilities.
The Classical art is over; the beasts have opened the doors to artistic modernity. If that art inspires you and you hate the grey horizon of the winter, go Paris and visit the Georges Pompidou Museum, where they are permanently exposed masterpieces of Fauvism. Rent Apartments in Paris, they are cheap, comfortable and all you need to have an unforgettable stay. Become a beast of culture!
New blog post: The colour is Fauvism http://www.blogonlyapartments.com/the-colour-is-fauvism/