The Fauves. Nathalia Brodskaya

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      We can extend the picture – and this unique combination of brilliant personalities already in itself becomes one of the characteristics of Fauvism. With this range of characters, artistic and purely human, for all the highly subjective approach each of them had to evaluating life and art, we nevertheless find in their comments a unity and a certainty with regard to the value of certain characteristics which they jointly acquired. It not only forces us to listen to the creators of Fauvism, but in all probability in doing so we will also find the answer to the question of what the movement as a whole was about.

      The Fauves became the only association of artists in the history of art to join together in order to protest their right to work without any sort of common program, declaring their program to be complete freedom for each individual personality, complete creative independence both from any theoretical direction and from their like-minded friends.

      The turn of a century seems a mere symbolic boundary, yet much did indeed change at the dawn of the twentieth century. The international art world of Paris became so motley and varied, so independent with regard to official artistic life and traditional society that the idea of the artist becoming an outcast completely disappeared, faded into the past together with the nineteenth century. Now the right to individuality in art became something that went without saying and there was no longer any need to unite in defence of it. Nevertheless they did unite, despite Vlaminck’s vehement declaration of his dislike of associations, but not in the least so as to “cross a dangerous spot.” They needed to proclaim the creed of individual freedom loudly and that was best done in chorus. Because, if we try to be precise, it must be admitted that they formed neither a school, nor even a group as such. True, they were called Matisse’s group, but that designation appeared in the press only in order to have some way of setting them apart and defining them. There was no group; they never assembled especially to decide common questions. They did not arrange to dine as a group like the Nabis artists. They did not have a regular meeting place in some particular Parisian cafe. They met in each other’s studios, but there was no regularity with regard to who came. In their arguments about art, which were as much chance occurrences as they were natural ones, totally contradictory views were expressed.

      Although they were called Matisse’s group, the reason was not the role he played in the organization of the association. He did not dictate a program to anyone and did not oblige anyone to follow in his footsteps. The probable impetus for this was the system of painting which was specifically Matisse’s, the achievement of harmony in painting through the juxtaposition of patches of pure colour. And if a leader needed to be found, the most reliable thing was to let one’s choice settle on the artist whose works betrayed a theoretical basis. That, however, was no more than the view from outside. When we are thinking of the coming together of the Fauves, would it not make more sense to postulate the leadership of “le plus authentique des Fauves”[15] [the most authentic Beasts] – Maurice de Vlaminck who himself declared: “Ce qu’est le fauvisme? C’est moi!”[16] [What is Fauvism? It’s me!] And it was Vlaminck, of all people, who wanted to force others to follow his course, however paradoxical that may sound, since, after all his course was defined as the absolute non-subordination of the painterly element to any rules whatsoever. But Vlaminck was never the head of the group either – on account of his individualism, the very thing which he repeatedly proclaimed and in which, in point of fact, laid the cause of his joining his Fauvist friends.

      Henri Matisse, Spanish Girl with Tambourine, 1909.

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