The Fauves. Nathalia Brodskaya

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СКАЧАТЬ who gave the Fauves an interest in applied and graphic art. These spheres had a need for real artists and Matisse’s generation possessed a large stock of energy. The primacy of colour in Fauvist painting prompted the idea of decorative art from the outset. Almost all the Fauves went through a phase of being interested in applied art, but neither Fauvism in general nor the artists themselves lost their individuality.

      None of the Fauves overlooked either the graphic arts, beginning with the newspaper and magazine caricatures with which many of them earned money in their youth, through the drawings, watercolours, and gouaches, which naturally accompanied their work throughout their lives, to prints and book illustrations. If one regards Fauvism only as a period of shared enthusiasm for the element of colour, graphic art would seem to have only a fairly tenuous connection with it. As a major phenomenon in the fine arts in general, as a continuation of the tendencies and lines of Romanticism in the twentieth century, Fauvism gave a powerful impulse to all forms of art. Even Derain’s quick pen-and-ink drawings carry in them a sense of vital force and thoroughness characteristic of the “school of Château.” Every one of Marquet’s landscape sketches possesses the constancy, modesty, and restraint which were the hallmark of his painting. Raoul Duty’s prints are sincere and naive. Vlaminck’s wood engravings are spontaneous, unrestrained, and energetic. As far as Matisse’s astonishing line is concerned, immediate and free, yet at the same time precise and thoroughly considered, it was perhaps the very thing which drew the critics’ attention to the particular role drawing played for the Fauves. The book called Jazz (Paris, 1937), which Matisse created at the end of his life, demonstrates in its integrity of conception and unity in the assembling of pictorial means all the qualities of Fauvism with no less force than the painting of his youth.

      Henri Matisse, The Dance, 1909–1910.

      Oil on canvas, 260 × 391 cm.

      State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

      Henri Matisse, Conversation, 1908–1912.

      Oil on canvas, 177 × 217 cm.

      State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

      Henri Matisse, Entrance to the Casbah, 1912–1913.

      Right Panel of the Moroccan Triptych.

      Oil on canvas, 116 × 80 cm.

      Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

      Henri Matisse, Arab Coffeehouse, 1913.

      Tempera on canvas, 176 × 210 cm.

      State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

      Henri Matisse, Portrait of Lydia Delectorskaya, 1947.

      Oil on canvas, 64.5 × 49.5 cm.

      State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

      Henri Matisse, Young Woman in a Blue Blouse (Portrait of Lydia Delectorskaya), 1939.

      Oil on canvas, 35.4 × 27.3 cm.

      State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

      Fauvism started life together with the twentieth century – a sober, technical century full of complex machinery and immense speeds, the most savage of wars, violence against nature and man. In the twentieth century, in art, too, more or less significant new systems began to appear one after another, beginning with Cubism, Futurism, and Surrealism, systems less enduring but not in the slightest less strict and tyrannical than Classicism. The very fact of their presence, the formation of definite groupings around them naturally evoked reaction. In each generation there are young artists who tend towards intuitive, spontaneous, and sincere self-expression. It is a characteristic of many of them that they strive to link themselves with the Fauvist tradition – there are even echoes in the names they give themselves, be it the “Neue Wilden” in Germany or some groups that appeared in Paris, St Petersburg, or Moscow.

      For us, the Impressionists, Van Gogh, and Cézanne are almost as distant as Rembrandt and Rubens. They have entirely withdrawn to the museums, but Matisse, Vlaminck, Dufy, Van Dongen, Rouault, and Manguin belong to the twentieth century. Vlaminck said:

      I bequeath to young painters all the flowers of the fields, the banks of the streams, the clouds black and white which float above plains, rivers, forests, and great trees… These blessings, these inestimable blessings which with every season are reborn, blossom, tremble… should we not on occasion recall that they are our inestimable heritage, the inspiration for masterpieces? Have you admired it enough? Have you tasted fully the emotion of the breaking dawn or the day that will never be seen again, so as to capture on your canvas a feeling profound and eternal?[28]

      This sounds like the testament of the Fauves and of all those whose legacy they absorbed.

      Henri Matisse 1869–1954

      Henri Matisse, Still Life with a Seashell on Black Marble, 1940.

      Oil on canvas, 54 × 81 cm.

      Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

      Henri Matisse. Photograph.

      “Fauvism is when there is a red,”[29] said Henri Matisse concisely putting into words the most straightforward notion held of Fauvism. Matisse has in fact become Fauvism’s leader over the years as a result of his contemporaries and researchers persistently perpetuating such an idea. Consequently, Matisse’s work has been scoured through in a search for the ultimate Fauvist painting. Matisse never pretended or aspired to such a role, and on the question of what Fauvism represents in theory and in practice, he never came to a final conclusion. With the other Fauvists it can be argued that their art was dominated by either reason or emotion. Matisse’s intellect, however, continuously searched for a direction where both reason and emotion became reconciled so balance and order might be found.

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