Fauvism

Fauvism is the style of les Fauves (French for “the wild beasts”), a group of early twentieth-century modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. While Fauvism as a style began around 1904 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only a few years, 1905–1908, and had three exhibitions. The leaders of the movement were André Derain and Henri Matisse.

Fauvism is an art movement in French painting from c1898 to 1906 characterized by a violence of colours, often applied unmixed from commercially produced tubes of paint in broad flat areas, by a spontaneity and even roughness of execution and by a bold sense of surface designIt was the first of a succession of avant-garde movements in 20th-century art and was influential on near-contemporary and later trends such as Expressionism, Orphism and the development of abstract art.

Characterization
Three main groups, including the Dutch maverick Kees van Dongen, contribute to the formation of the term Fauvism at:

the students of Gustave Moreau and the Académie Carrière: Henri Matisse, Albert Marquet, Charles Camoin, Henri Manguin and Jean Puy.
the group from Chatou: André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck.
the converted trio from Le Havre of Impressionist origin: Othon Friesz, Raoul Dufy and Georges Braque.
The painters wanted to break with the past, especially impressionism and realism, and not become dependent on a role model. They worked against the glimpse Impressionist paintings to the plant more time (fr. Durée to lend).

In the subject landscape painting the basic goals were developed. In the sculptures, light and interior design are equivalent due to the color. The spatial phenomena are treated as a pure surface without modeling and illusion of the chiaroscuro. The place of illusion of space is replaced by a poetic space created by sentience and fantasy. This space expresses itself visually through an interplay of pure, evenly saturated colors. The Fauves rejected literary references from the painting.

The expression (French: expression ) of the work lies in the colored surface of the image, which the viewer as a whole captures. The highest increase in color is not enough to characterize Fauvism. “This is just the exterior,” says Matisse, “Fauvism is caused by the fact that we have rejected the imitative colors and made with pure far stronger effects, apart from the brilliance of the colors.” For the Fauvism is also typical in that the painters sought the correspondence between the expression and the inner content of the picture through the orderly composition. The simplicity of the painterly means used here was given a clear attention.

Artists and style
Besides Matisse and Derain, other artists included Albert Marquet, Charles Camoin, Louis Valtat, Jean Puy, Maurice de Vlaminck, Henri Manguin, Raoul Dufy, Othon Friesz, Georges Rouault, Jean Metzinger, Kees van Dongen and Georges Braque (subsequently Picasso’s partner in Cubism).

The paintings of the Fauves were characterized by seemingly wild brush work and strident colors, while their subject matter had a high degree of simplification and abstraction. Fauvism can be classified as an extreme development of Van Gogh’s Post-Impressionism fused with the pointillism of Seurat and other Neo-Impressionist painters, in particular Paul Signac. Other key influences were Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin, whose employment of areas of saturated color—notably in paintings from Tahiti—strongly influenced Derain’s work at Collioure in 1905. In 1888 Gauguin had said to Paul Sérusier: “How do you see these trees? They are yellow. So, put in yellow; this shadow, rather blue, paint it with pure ultramarine; these red leaves? Put in vermilion.” Fauvism has been compared to Expressionism, both in its use of pure color and unconstrained brushwork. Some of the Fauves were among the first avant-garde artists to collect and study African and Oceanic art, alongside other forms of non-Western and folk art, leading several Fauves toward the development Cubism.

Historical integration

Society
The painters, who were between twenty and thirty years old in 1905, were born shortly after the defeat of France in 1870 and the events of the Paris Commune and came from mostly modest family relationships. France was shaken and split in 1894 by the Dreyfus Affair, much protest was made. Confidence in state power, the judiciary, the army, the church and the economic system has shaken many critics. Thus anti-clerical, antimilitarist, anti-conformist, even anarchist tendencies came to the fore.

The anarchism but from 1900 to 1905 was not an active, violent movement more in France, it was rather a cafe anarchism. The Fauves had, in a certain sense, approached the anarchist – so the fight against recognized bourgeois art also led to the fight against the established order. But Derain already expressed in a letter to Vlaminck in 1905: “I came across an anarchist again. Everywhere I go, I have a bunch of anarchists around me who destroy the world every night and put them back together in the morning. This bothers me, especially the idea of having believed that I myself am one. ”

The 1900 World’s Fair in Paris highlighted the gap that existed between European industrial society and the newly discovered cultures of the Far East, Africa and Oceania. In this way, works of art from distant cultures reached the capital of France, which attracted the attention of the Fauves.

Philosophy and literature
The spirit of the Fauves is similar to the thoughts of André Gide. Gide praises the cult of life, that state of passionate enthusiasm in which the individual unfolds, which he expresses in 1897 in Les nourritures terrestres. The literary attitude Gides, who wants to renew the art of writing out of displeasure with the symbolism, corresponded to the reaction of the Fauves. Thus they turned against the unproductiveness of official art and the excesses of the symbolism in painting that loses its anecdote.

In January and February 1900, the magazine Mercure de France published articles by Jules de Gaultier, which emphasized the anti-rationalistic and individualistic foundations of Nietzsche’s philosophy as well as the lyrical enthusiasm abounding in Thus spoken Zarathustra. Another aspect of Nietzsche’s thinking was the defense of Dionysian versus Christianity. This attitude made Nietzsche the prophet of Méditerranéisme, a philosopher of the Mediterranean countries whom the Fauves favored. The glorification of life, the joyous individualism of Nietzsche at that time was perceived as a reaction against the pessimism and the excesses of fin de siècle. What Jules de Gaultier says about Thus Spoke Zarathustra might be part of a manifesto of Fauvism: “This is a pleasure, a new appetite, a new gift to see colors, to hear sounds, and to feel like before were neither seen nor heard or felt. ”

Painting
The young painters of the early twentieth century in Paris were influenced by many influences and countercurrents. The popular art of that time was a mixture of academic “poetic realism ” à la Bouguereau and fin de siècle apparitions such as the Art Nouveau. The official academy style presented the final stages of Neoclassicism and Realism. The contrast to this popular painting was an important part of the French painting culture, the avant-garde, which had already become a tradition. Her two main currents were Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism (see → Divisionism), Symbolism, Cloisonism, Synthetism, the artists’ group of the Nabis and the works of van Gogh, Gauguin and Cézanne. Their common concern was to consolidate the dissolute image impression created by Impressionism. The unity of the non- illusionistic image dominated the will of the avant-garde.

The works of the leading minds formed the points of reference and confrontation for the young painters. In their works, they recognized, for example in van Gogh and Gauguin, that the surface treatment of color came to the fore, which was opposed to the dissipation of Impressionist works. For the Divisionists it was Chevreul’s color logic and color theory, which was based on the additive color mixing in the eye of the beholder, with the aid of which one wanted to escape the flow of perfusion. Signac, the theoretician and continuator of the movement, published in the Revue Blanche from May to July 1898 all the chapters of his sensational doctrinal work:From Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism. The dominant influence, however, was the Cézanne, less in terms of pure color, but as an example of the image and the energy structure of its implementation.

Development
Moreau, the teacher
The teacher, whom some Fauves later talked about with reverence and gratitude, was Gustave Moreau. Moreau taught from 1891 to 1898 at the École des Beaux-Arts. He spent all morning talking to his students and led them to the Louvre again and again. André Suarès wrote: “He had the merit of understanding what was in opposition to him and that would have been the most violent to repel him. He was the surest leader, the wisest mentor. ” Roger Marx stated in the Revue encyclopédique of April 25, 1896:” All who want to develop their individuality, have gathered around Moreau. ” Became famous the saying Moreau: “I am the bridge will go on some of them.”

Speaking in Matisse’s notes, recorded by Tériade in 1951, he said of his teacher Moreau: “My teacher, Gustave Moreau, used to say that the mannerisms of a style turn against him after a certain time, and then the qualities of the image must be strong enough be, not to fail. That is why I am watchful of all seemingly extraordinary techniques. ”

Matisse 1898-1905
For the development of Fauvism, the career of Matisse was crucial. He began to visit Pissarro in about 1897, but certainly after the death of Moreau in 1898. Pissarro was the moral conscience and artistic leader of his time, still receiving the direct teaching of Corot, experiencing the development of Cézanne and Gauguin and supporting Seurat’s efforts. He was also open to the beginnings of Matisse and gave him unforgettable advice. Matisse began to create paintings in which the start of the outbreak of the color is expressed and increased until the 1,901th

In 1935, in his essay On Modernism and Tradition, Matisse said: “When I started painting, we did not contradict our predecessors, and we expressed our views cautiously and gradually. The Impressionists were the recognized leaders, and the post-Impressionists followed in their footsteps. I did not do that. ”

The Corsican stay in 1898 indicates the first Fauvist steps. Matisse studied the structure of the forms from 1900 to 1903. By this he meant, on the one hand, the drawing which expresses the essence of the object-what he calls le-dining- and, on the other hand, the drawing which expresses the stability of the object-what he calls dessin d’aplomb. According to a further discussion of the Neoimpressionism Matisse reached to the color of the guardian of the contour to save the space and illustrated of relationships contrasting color plans – simplified readable from color areas – to construct.

With the image Vue de Saint-Tropez (view of Saint-Tropez), exhibited in 1904 in the Salon d’Automne, he initiated the Fauvism. It corresponds to the two or three works Derain painted at the end of 1904 and the beginning of 1905. The early maturity of Derain, the youngest of the Fauves, was so striking that Picasso had, without hesitation, awarded him the paternity of Fauvism.

In his divisionist composition Luxe, calme et volupté (1904-1905), Matisse discovered the contradiction between the “linear, sculptural plasticity” of the drawing and the “plasticity of the colors”. The painterly statement is expressed less in pure colors than in a non- illusionistic, plastic definition of space.

The work shown by Matisse in the Herbstsalon in 1904 inspired Friesz, who had previously painted in impressionism, to join the movement.

When Matisse exhibited in the Salon des Independants Luxe, calme et volupté, in 1905, Dufy also changed direction. The two painters from Le Havre, Friesz and Dufy, renounced their early impressionism and followed Matisse. Dufy said: “Before this work, I understood the legitimacy of the new painting, and Impressionist realism lost its appeal for me in the face of this miracle, to treat drawing and color purely imaginative.”

School of Chatou since 1901
It has Chatou the Argenteuil – the former playground of the Impressionists – called Fauvism. In this small suburb, the connection of the three pioneers of the movement, Matisse, Derain and Vlaminck, the latter residing in Chatou, had taken place.

In 1901, during a visit to the memorial exhibition for van Gogh at the Galerie Alexandre Bernheim (later Bernheim-Jeune), Derain Matisse, whom he had previously met while copying classical works in the Louvre, had introduced his friend Vlaminck. This often-mentioned historical encounter by no means exactly marks the birth of Fauvism, but it is one of its most important germ cells. Occasionally one also speaks of a school of Chatou. So Matisse remembered: “Frankly, the painting of Derain and Vlaminck did not surprise me, for it was similar to my own attempts.”

In the attitude of Matisse and Vlaminck stood opposite the two poles of Fauvism, from which he drew his strength and unity, on the one hand, but kept his heterogeneous structure on the other hand. Matisse argued that it was important to counteract instinct. Vlaminck, on the other hand, endeavored to paint with all his senses without thinking of the style. Matisse inherited the classic heritage and never denied the influence of others. The artist’s personality was confirmed to him only by the struggle with the conflicting ideas and the honest victory over them. For Vlaminck, on the other hand, painting was not an aesthetic experience, but a fermentation of the juices, a “suppuration, an abscess.” He rejected all influences of the forerunners. For example, Vlaminck’s Restaurant de La Machine à Bougival shows his preferences for the basic colors yellow, red and blue.

With Derain, as the link between two such opposing natures, the fundamental trinity of Fauvism was formed. In the fall of 1904 Derain, who had been serving military service since 1901, returned from military life. This made the exchange between Matisse and the restored troupe from Chatou, using the color “dynamite cartridges”, very lively.

The works of Derain during this period (1904) were partly created under the influence of van Gogh and the Neo-Impressionists. However, Bords de rivière, Chatou (Riverside, Chatou) already shows the search for a synthesis of form, with the help of which not the reality is depicted, but a picture world equivalent to her should be created. In La Seine au Pecq (1904) is now pointing at a painting style that is clearly facing the Fauvist aspirations.

Birth of Fauvism in Collioure 1905
Matisse and Derain spent the summer of 1905 together in Collioure. If Céret, after the word of Salmons, was the ” Mecca of Cubism, ” then Fauvism was born in Collioure, and there was the transition from Post-Impressionism to the new kind that was to cause scandal in the autumn salon.

The first works in Collioure were still divisional considerations. In the nearby Corneilla-de-Conflent there was an encounter with the work of Gauguin. The two painters saw Daniel de Monfried, Gauguin’s most faithful friend, the still unknown works from Oceania. In them, they recognized a confirmation of their path to “subjective color” (→ solving the coloring of the “objective” representation of the local color ). In Gauguin’s work, flat color is the basic idea. It overcomes “the dispersion of the local color in the light” by subordinating the light to the “agreement of strongly colored surfaces”. In this point, Matisse stressed that Gauguin can not be counted among the Fauves, as in his work, the construction of the space is lacking by the color. Gauguin role as the precursor is the one seen on the other hand also the cleaning, which had reached its successor.

The Divisionist view was now wholly questioned, as it was in complete contradiction to the relationship between artist and nature developed by Matisse and Derain. Later, Matisse had rigorously assessed Divisionism, and, as Pissarro had seen, the limitations and the sterility of a “too-formal doctrine for building colors.” In his view, the Divisionist style of painting is based on simple “impressions of the retina” and aims only at the “purely physical order” of the colors. Paul Signactook Matisse’s rejection of Neo-Impressionism very personally. Derain also told Vlaminck in a letter of July 28, 1905, of a new conception of light: that he must “eradicate all that the subdivision of hues entails,” adding, “it harms the things that deliberately harm their harmony Draw disharmony. It’s basically a world that destroys itself as soon as you push it to the edge of the Absolute. ”

From now on, the last works of Collioure show the way to the exaggeration that will determine the nature of Fauvism. As a transition, a new mix of divisionism and flat color emerged. The brushwork is thin and fluid, almost watercolor-like in its lightness, such as in La sieste [Figure 4] of Matisse and Bateaux de pêche à Collioure by Derain. In her paintings, the illusion of space, mass and matter has now been completely removed. Another example is Matisse’s painting Open Window in Collioure.

In the works of Collioure, every trace of the old picturesque color perspective disappears, using warm tones for the foreground and cool for the bluish distance, and which the Impressionists also sought to overcome. Placed next to each other in radiant colors without any contours, the colors form the surface like a carpet and create that pure harmony that Matisse had called a “spiritual space”. Here the meaning of light is reduced as an element of reality that models the object. The space of light is replaced by a color space created by the artist’s feeling, and in place of the descriptive reproduction of the forms, the Fauve sets what Maurice Denis doesas “noumen of the pictures” and what one could call today signs.

Returning to Paris, Matisse went to the figure and painted in a few days La femme au chapeau (woman in a hat). There is now no hierarchy between figure and circumference, everything is significant and equivalent, is inserted into the overall rhythm by a series of color surfaces, following the model of Cézanne’s watercolors.

Today, the Chemin du Fauvisme in Collioure commemorates the emergence of Fauvism there: in 20 places, where the easels of Matisse and Derain stood, reproductions of the resulting paintings are appropriate.

Climax and end

Group of Fauves
The group of Fauves developed from friendly relations. During the Fauvist years they traveled in pairs and exchanged among themselves: Vlaminck and Derain in Chatou, Matisse and Marquet in Paris, Marquet and Dufy in Sainte-Adresse, Trouville and Le Havre, Friesz and Braque in Antwerp, Dufy and Friesz in Falaize and Le Havre, Matisse and Derain in Collioure, Dufy and Braque in L’Estaque.

What she was all about was the passionate commitment to color and the use of certain means to bring it to bear. Each of them said, “color,” and everyone meant something different. On the other hand, it is common to all that they seek help in their deep crises in Cézanne’s work. Fauvism does not have the same unified method as programmatic impressionism or neo-impressionism.

A comparison of the images Dufys with those of Matisse and Derain shows the opposites. At Dufy, form and line are increasingly independent of each other. His works are not only in contrast to the mass effect sought by Derain for visually anchoring his color fields, but also to Matisse, who stretches the form to the utmost by the line. For example, Dufy’s painting is Les affiches à Trouville oriented (posters in Trouville) from 1906 even closer to the work Marquet. When Cubism came to the fore, Dufy temporarily focused on his aspirations.

The “Fauvist on velvet paws” Marquet later said that his presence in the famous “cage” (Room VII) of 1905 rather a random was a lot to thank the picturesque grounds. The five landscapes he exhibited there were painted under the gray skies of Paris. More than Van Gogh and the Impressionists, it was Manet who had a decisive influence on him. Marquet’s views of Paris – such as Le Pont Saint-Michel [Figure 5] – add a special note to Fauvism.

High point 1906
The year 1906 crowned the triumph and spread of Fauvism by connecting Braque and its impact on foreign countries. The Herbstsalon of 1906 assembled the complete group of Fauves in their highest development, in which revealed their essential principles.

Derain’s pictures from London are some of the most successful works of Fauvism. His stay in the British capital was inspired by Vollard, who wanted to see the famous series Monets renewed in a different spirit under the impression of the work of the autumn salon of 1905. Works were created in two clearly distinguishable directions: in a broad brushstroke and in juxtaposition of colored masses. The bridge of Charing Cross [Figure 8] is an example of the first direction. The Westminster Bridge, which Derain had selected from all of London’s pictures for the Herbstsalon 1906, sums up the result of that time. In this picture a novel and masterly synthesis of Lautrec and Gauguin takes place.

End of 1907
From 1907, the unity of the movement dissolved under the thrust of initiated by Picasso and Braque cubism, in whose emergence Matisse and Derain were not uninvolved. The fact that the two opposing movements are in solidarity can be seen in Braque, who painted successively and without reservation, Fauvist and Cubist.

On the occasion of a third stay Braques in L’Estaque in the summer of 1908, which shared Dufy for some time, Braque renounced the Fauvist range. He built his landscapes – such as houses in L’Estaque – and still lifes on a subdued scale of gray, ocher, and green from faceted surfaces that led Louis Vauxcelles to speak of “cubes.”

After the disintegration of the movement, since Derain also turned to cubism from 1907, Matisse gained great international importance. His influence became effective mainly in Germany and in the Nordic countries. Thus, in 1909, a translation of his book Notes of a Painter, published in December 1908 in the Grand Revue, was published in the German magazine Kunst und Künstler. This essay later has a programmatic significance for the movement of the Fauves.

Reception

irst reactions
Vauxcelles designation Fauves was received by the audience derogatory. Vauxcelles himself was not opposed to the movement. Camille Mauclair, the critic of Figaro, contrasted with a quote from John Ruskin in 1905, clearly dismissive: “A paint bucket has been poured over the head of the audience!” In the Journal de RouenOne could read in an article by a certain Nicolle: “What we are shown there has – with the exception of the materials used – nothing to do with painting: blue, red, yellow, green, all bright blotches of color that were joined together at random – primitive and naive playfulness of a child who enjoys the color box it was given. ”

However, calling the audience generally “mixed” is too benevolent. Many visitors were upset. There were even attempts to destroy Matisse’s painting La femme au chapeau.

Art historical classification
The color was for centuries only the complement of the drawing. Raphael, Mantegna and Diirer, like almost all painters of the Renaissance, built the picture primarily through the drawing and then added the local color. From Delacroix to the Impressionists to van Gogh and Cézanne, who gave the decisive impetus and introduced the colored masses, one can see how the color has received more and more attention.

A first expressionistic wave mixed with symbolic and Art Nouveau elements appeared already between 1885 and 1900 as a reaction against the impressionism and the objective will of Cézanne and Seurat. Their representatives were van Gogh, Gauguin, Lautrec, Ensor, Munch and Hodler. The inner fear of the artists was not only freed by an increase in color, but also by expressive forms and the emphasis on tense lines. A second expressionistic wave, far more powerful than the first, was already evident in France through the contributions of Rouault, in Picasso’s early work, in the work of Fauvism in general, and in Germany with the foundation of the DresdenersBridge.

Fauvism had a short lifespan, but Fauvism’s contribution to European painting does not depend on its short duration. For the first time in the history of occidental painting, fauvism has placed color, above all unbroken color, at the center of its design. As a result, the possibilities, but also the limits of the color itself were shown. The strongest color effect is created not with the most colorful colors, but with the richest vision of color. The Fauvist works illustrate in this way that color has nothing to do with animated color.

The Fauvists did not expect art to change society, which they accepted with their injustices and also with their beautiful sides. Nor did they believe that painting was to be destroyed as the Dadaists demanded it. On the contrary, they found that painting had to be developed further.

Position on German Expressionism
A recent tendency of art criticism within a general orientation of European painting between 1900 and 1910 is to associate Fauvism and the movement of the Dresden Bridge with Expressionism. There are also opinions that deny any difference between Fauvism and the Bridge on the grounds that such a distinction is based on nationalist, racist considerations and competitiveness.

In the early days of the bridge, however, differences to fauvism already emerged, as in the respective conception of life and art. The painters, influenced by Nordic art, drew their inspiration from the old Nordic themes of compulsive obsessions, unconscious impulses, dreams and nightmares. They also had Kierkegaard as a source and his conception of fear, in which he saw not only a basic character of man, but for him also the whole nature coined. They were influenced in the field of painting by the works of Munch, which are quite contrary to the style of painting Cézanne.

For the Fauves, the colors affect the retina; as sons of Newton and Chevreul she was interested in the solar spectrum. For the Expressionists, on the other hand, colors are symbolic and mythical, they affect the soul. They are to be evaluated against the background of Goethe’s conceptions of the theory of colors and metaphysics. Thus, German Expressionism found particular attention in times of social crisis and mental helplessness. In Expressionism, the color scheme seems unrestrained and untamed, whereas Fauvism was under the rule of color.

Effects and influences
In France, Fauvism was replaced by cubism around 1907. In Germany it was the Expressionist painters, especially the members of the Blaue Reiter, who were inspired by the Fauves. Kandinsky and Jawlensky were well represented in the historic autumn salon of 1905, but not in the “cage of savages” but in the Russian section organized by Diaghilev. Under the influence of Matisse was the fauvistic phase of Kandinsky and Jawlensky. Thus, in Kandinsky’s works periods are observed in which, with some delay, developmental phases of Fauvism are repeated. After Matisse had visited Munich in 1908, Kandinsky founded the ” Neue Künstlervereinigung München ” (NKVM) in 1909. The visit was repeated in 1910.

Matisse had exhibited in the winter of 1908/09 in Berlin with Cassirer and was between 1908 and 1910 three times in Germany. Promoted by the example of Matisse and Fauvism, the style of the Dresden Bridge became stronger.

The work of Matisse represented the counterbalance to the unfolding Cubism, whose antipode he formed. In 1908 Matisse founded a private school, the Académie Matisse. There he taught from January 1908 to 1911 and finally had 100 students from home and abroad.

In 1909 van Dongen became a member of the Dresdner artist group Brücke. Max Pechstein had met van Dongen in Paris around the turn of the year 1907/1908 and encouraged him to present his fauvist works in an exhibition of the Brücke painters in 1908 in Dresden.

The art of the Fauves also affected the painters of the Russian avant-garde, such as Kasimir Malevich and Natalia Goncharova. They also influenced some Dutch artists, possibly also the Italian Futurist Umberto Boccioni. For painters such as Pierre Bonnard, Fernand Léger, Robert Delaunay, František Kupka and Roger de La Fresnaye, color became the most important means of artistic expression.

Under the influence of the French Cultural Institute in Innsbruck, which promoted cultural exchange with exhibitions of French artists and grants for stays in France, Fauvism came to the Tyrol after 1945, where he developed a great aftereffect in painting. Artists such as Fritz Berger, Gerhild Diesner, Walter Honeder, Emmerich Kerle or Hilde Nöbl took in their work clear borrowings from the Fauvists.

Fauvism is sometimes seen as a pioneer of abstract painting. The Fauves, however, did not complete the last step of completely renouncing the relation to the object, since in this way, as Matisse and Derain emphasized, abstraction was only imitated.

Source from Wikipedia