Fauvism

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Matisse 'Open Window at Collioure' (1905)

Description

  • Window open shutter, vines, flowers on sill, boats outside on harbour
  • Sunlight colours- bright pinks, oranges, greens, blues- broken down to just brushstrokes
  • Lack of drawing, spatial recession only through scaling, flattened forms
  • Gaps in painting work to show brushstrokes and artificality, unblended colours
  • Non-naturalistic: 'when I put a green it is not grass, when I put a blue it is not the sky'

Context

  • Mattise spent summer 1903 at fishing port of Collioure
  • Window view into imagination, freedom and esapism, Reniassance idea of window as illusion
  • Perspective destoryed- Modernist statement of artistic autonomy from depiction
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Matisse 'Joie de Vivre' (1906-7)

Description

  • Nude people in foresr landscape, nudes lounging (Venus), some in back do fisherman's dance
  • Dynamic use of colour, not realities, mythical paradise- makes lack of realism acceptable
  • Rejection of scaling, juxapositon of objects conceived independantly and arranged together
  • Influence of Art Nouveau in sinuous lines and cloissionism

Context

  • Impressionist theme of lesuire as pagan ideal, classical arcadia - Bellini's 'Feast of the Gods'
  • Based on earlier 'Luxe, Calme et Volupte' from Baudelaire poem 'in everything there is order and beauty/ luxuriance, calm et voluptousness'
  • African art- travelled to Africa 1906, stylised exaggeration of the nude, vivid colours
  • Gide promoting spontaenous approach to life, links to naturism
  • Discussion of decorative, Greensberg defended for drawing attention to modernist aspects
  • Lesiure- middle class, less rebellious
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Derain 'Palace of Westminster' (1906-7)

Description

  • Large scale, impasto, unrestrainted colour, rapid, seperated brushworks
  • 3 barges on Thames, sky patches of light/dark, being pulled by tugboats
  • Boats just brushstrokes, contrasts yellow, blue, peach of river, calmer pinks and greens beyond, Westimister purple haze with turrets silhouetted against green, blue, white sky
  • Lack of narrative- just about aesthetics

Context

  • London 1906, encouraged by dealer Vollard, to follow succes of Monet
  • 'Adored Monet' but shows competitiveness in same sites, removes misty light, romantic colour and intricate brushwork
  • Rosenthal: 'not since Monet has... London so fresh yet...so quintessentially English'
  • Huge population growth to 6 million 1900, increased mechanical growth etc.
  • 'I hate the English spirit, sad, hypocritical and mocking. Everything here is dead' but later said London 'demonstrated a dazzling spectacle to the viewer'
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