Читать книгу The Fauves - Nathalia Brodskaya - Страница 2

Henri Matisse, Goldfish, 1911.

Oil on canvas, 147 × 98 cm.

Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

Decade follows decade in art, like waves breaking on a beach, each bringing its own “deposits” which, in turn, cover those that came before, dimming what had once seemed strikingly brilliant. But time does not work on everything with equal force. The art of the Fauves has not faded. Born within French painting at the turn of the century, Fauvism immediately demanded attention.

The stormy reaction it provoked on its emergence in Paris in 1905 was, in itself, an acknowledgement of the strength of this new phenomenon in the fine arts. Fauvism was a real danger to academically congealed art calculated to appeal to the narrow-minded customer, to all painting which sought after prosperity by carefully absorbing innovation, turning it into the fashionable that would shock no-one through unwarranted boldness.

Two or three years proved sufficient for the Fauvist painters to acquire – if not a permanent public, then at least their own dealers and admirers. The hostile voices which continued to make themselves heard were not enough to hinder the Fauves from competing freely with other trends. Each of them lived a life in keeping with his character and the unique features of his work, yet none of them experienced long years of hopeless poverty or a sense of impotence in the struggle with the might of official art. None of the Fauves left a studio full of works piled up and never sold – in this sense fate was kinder to them than to Gauguin, Van Gogh, or Toulouse-Lautrec. Even during their lifetimes, the Fauves’ paintings had found a place in the greatest private collections and then in museums, while they themselves were written about in the press and respected by contemporaries. The Fauves were acknowledged masters before they reached the age when grey locks and a noble bearing often stood substitute for true measures of talent. It might seem that when the general public would become more familiar with them, the intensity of the first reaction would diminish, but this was not the case. They are all long since gone, yet one still experiences a sense of shock on encountering their paintings.

Fauvism received its name in 1905. In October of that year, a number of young painters – about ten altogether – presented their works at the Salon d’Automne in Paris. Their unusually bright works vibrant with colour were assembled in a single hall. In his account of the exhibition for the 27 October edition of the magazine Gil Blas, critic Louis Vauxcelles wrote: “In the centre of Room VII stands a child’s torso by Albert Marquet. The candour of this bust is striking in the midst of an orgy of pure colour: Donatello among the wild beasts.”[1] This unexpected description from the pen of an art expert – “wild beasts,” fauves – proved so apt that within just a few days it was taken up by the press, its originator forgotten, and began a life of its own. In his account of the same exhibition in November 1905 another critic, Jean Aubry, already used the term as if it were self-explanatory: “At last, those that someone, I’ve forgotten who, called the wild beasts.”[2] A simple explanation, then, in which chance played a significant role, and from that moment on, the names of Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck, Van Dongen, Camoin, Puy, Marquet, Manguin, Rouault, Dufy, Friesz, Valtat and a few others were generally associated with the word Fauvism.

The very way in which the term originated is positive proof that the phenomenon it described already possessed definite recognizable characteristics. Nobody at that time, including Vauxcelles himself, was able to indicate its boundaries or predict the full significance of what had emerged. Most likely, the fact that interest in Fauvism has remained keen for more than three-quarters of a century causes us to reflect again on what essentially occurred at the Salon d’Automne and who it was that Vauxcelles christened “wild beasts.”

Henri Matisse, Blue Pot and Lemon, 1897.

Oil on canvas, 39 × 46.5 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

In the second half of the twentieth century, reminiscences about the Fauves and the assessments of contemporaries inevitably gave way to the research of art-historians, yet this process revealed a surprising quality of Fauvism: even with the test of time, it remains as hard as ever to define precisely its chronology and characteristics which defy consistent classification. It is no coincidence that, despite the existence of an extensive literature, scholarly publications devoted to Fauvism appear with titles like The History of Fauvism Reviewed and Corrected or Fauvism Re-examined.[3] It is no coincidence that, from the middle of the century on, one exhibition has followed another as testimony that interest in Fauvism now extends beyond Paris, beyond even Europe. Fauvism is linked to other artistic phenomena of the same period, while, time and again, scholars return to the assembly of canvases with which it all began in 1905. The reasons for this attention lie, most probably above all, in two obvious facts: with the passage of time, new aspects of the revolution which took place in painting at the beginning of the century are being discovered and, no less important, the “young wild beasts” of the opening years of the century all, without exception, became major figures in French twentieth-century painting. Cause enough to carry out one more examination of Fauvism as a conglomeration of unquestionable individual artistic talents and as an artistic association which brought about not the levelling of talents but, on the contrary, the development of each of the artists’ own creative strengths.

For the outside observer, the background in Paris was still undoubtedly formed by the exhibitions of the official Salons, both by virtue of the great quantity of works presented at them, the large number of participants, and because of the predominant interest of the critics in them and their influence on the art market. This situation endured right up until the end of the nineteenth century and it seemed that nothing, even in the future, would be powerful enough to shake this stronghold of the Academy. It is enough to recall how many of the Impressionists, who were opposed on principle to academic art, nevertheless, dreamt of getting into the Salon since that meant hope, if not of being bought, then at least of becoming known to a certain extent within the circle of potential patrons.

The situation changed somewhat in the final years of the century. An even greater number of artists were working outside the circle of the Salon. By the beginning of the twentieth century, earning a living was no longer directly linked to success at the Salons for the younger generation of artists. New art found its own dealers who acted as middle-men between buyers and artists. It is not possible, then, to say that at the time of the Fauves’ appearance, the Salons were still what they had been, although the changes that had taken place did not markedly affect their art. In 1905, as before, the Goupil publishing house produced magnificent surveys of the Salons with high-quality reproductions, while printed critical reviews of the Salon appeared in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, L’Art et les artistes, and other respected periodicals. By this time, though, the grandeur verging on megalomania of the Salons, coupled with the conservative academic style, was often regarded with unconcealed irony.

Even the Impressionists – men of the recent past, although by now they were one by one going to their graves – and the peaceful artists of the Nabis group who had not involved themselves in the struggle (Edouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, and the others) found themselves in a position of resistance, yet could not discover another place to exhibit besides the often derided Salon des Indépendants.

Henri Matisse, Fruits and Teapot, c. 1898.

Oil on canvas, 38.5 × 46.5 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

André Derain, Still Life with Earthen Jug and White Napkin, c. 1912.

Oil on canvas, 61 × 50 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

André Derain, Table and Chairs, 1912–1913.

Oil on canvas, 88 × 86.5 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

Henri Matisse, Painter’s Family, 1911.

Oil on canvas, 143 × 194 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

André Derain, Drying the Sails, 1905.

Oil on canvas, 82 × 101 cm.

Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

Matisse Henri, View of Collioure, c. 1905.

Oil on canvas, 59.5 × 73 cm

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

By 1905, the Salon des Indépendants already had a history of its own. It had been founded in 1884 by artists rejected by the official Salon and was an exhibition which opened its doors to all the aggrieved without exception, promoting the principle of equality by not having a jury or awards. The established critics devoted much effort to creating a reputation for the Salon des Indépendants as they did acquiring a fantastic assemblage of works by certain cranks which might be visited so as to amuse oneself at the naive paintings of Douanier Rousseau and others like him. Yet the impenetrable conservatism of the official exhibitions was of unexpected service to the Salon des Indépendants: by the early twentieth century the latter’s emphatic objectivity, equally hospitable to all, had given way to a quite definite tendency. The path taken by this association of artists led to their Salon des Indépendants becoming a bastion of new trends; even the Impressionists found themselves no more welcome there than at the official exhibitions. However, at the moment, the fate of the Impressionists is not our concern. They could no longer be numbered among the ranks of the rejected while the younger generation badly needed an opportunity to demonstrate their art and to have some sort of association to stand up in defence of it, even if that association was still without a definite aim or programme.

Henri Matisse, Woman on a Terrace, 1906.

Oil on canvas, 65 × 80.5 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

In the early years of the twentieth century it was no longer possible to overlook the Salon des Indépendants. Even the lumbering state machinery was obliged, if not to reckon with it in the full sense of the word, then at least to make a gesture in its direction. Even earlier, the Direction des Beaux-Arts had sent its commissioners to the Salon des Indépendants to select pieces for purchase by the state, but they had never once found anything suitable. In 1902 the commissioner was Léonce Bénédit, curator of the Musée du Luxembourg, but he, too, found it possible to acquire only some “très delicates”[4] sketches by Édouard Vuillard. Yet the choice at the 1902 Salon des Indépendants was a fairly wide one. Among the many others, there were almost forty works by five of the future Fauves led by Henri Matisse, and an attentive eye would have discovered them the year before as well. However, they were probably not yet perceived as a distinct phenomenon or even as an association, more so since they themselves did not make an aim of exhibiting together. In 1902 they failed not only to disturb anyone, but even to attract any great attention at all. The Salon des Indépendants was then simply one of the possible places for showing their work – a few of the future Fauves managed to get a work or two into the official Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (Van Dongen, Manguin) or even into the International Exhibition held in Venice (Dufy, Friesz, Rouault). The nascent Fauves had not been noticed due to the fact that they were still outsiders, even for the Salon des Indépendants where in the course of time they would establish their own authority and preferences. For the future Fauves, however, these first public appearances, for all their failure to create an impression, did play a major role: a process of formation was underway, formation not simply of their grouping, but of their artistic outlook. Their complex, yet definite conception of their own painting, three years later would attain not only perceptible form, but also recognition.

On 31 October, in the Petit Palais, a new exhibition opened which had not previously existed – the Salon d’Automne. Also founded by painters who had been rejected by the official salons, this exhibition was, at the moment of its creation, a strange combination of the most progressive forces in art and others which were quite conservative by the standards of the time. In contrast to the Salon des Indépendants, here there was a jury, selected five days before the exhibition. The deputy chief curator of the Petit Palais, Yvanhoé Rambosson, managed to secure premises for the new salon in the basements of his museum. From the very onset, the exhibition committee included a number of Moreau’s former pupils – Georges Desvallières, Henri Matisse, Albert Marquet and Georges Rouault. In 1903 only four of the future Fauves exhibited here – Matisse, Marquet, Rouault and Manguin; however, these artists not only took advantage of a new opportunity to exhibit, but at once began to look on the Salon d’Automne as the main venue for presenting their work. In contrast to the already customary Salon des Indépendants, the Salon d’Automne attracted both visitors and critics through its intriguing novelty. So it became their principal exhibition place and this was the start of a new era in their lives.

In 1904 and subsequent years, the Grand Palais accepted the Salon d’Automne. Additionally, 1904 saw an extensive and brilliant display of art by the future Fauves in some of the private galleries of Paris, Berthe Weill playing the leading roll in presenting these works, became effective propaganda centres for their art: some definite new trend was in the process of emerging from the latest art.

Henri Matisse, Bouquet (Vase with Two Handles), 1907.

Oil on canvas, 74 × 61 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

Henri Matisse, Bouquet of Flowers on a Veranda, c. 1912.

Oil on canvas, 146 × 97 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

Henri Matisse, Calla Lilies, Irises and Mimosas, 1913.

Oil on canvas, 145.5 × 97 cm.

Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

Henri Matisse, Path in the Bois de Boulogne, 1902.

Oil on canvas, 65 × 81.5 cm.

Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

The Salon des Indépendants, which opened on 24 March 1905, can be reckoned the first real display of Fauvist painting as a fully-formed phenomenon and was truly triumphal: one hundred works by fourteen artists, each of whom became a prominent figure in Fauvist painting!

The group had grown in size by comparison with the previous year and the two new members who joined not only intensified the radiance of what already existed, but also injected some brilliant and original talent into it. After a century has gone by, it is hard to imagine whether without them the group of Fauves could have produced the bombshell in European art that was their emergence in 1905. The two figures in question are André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck, two friends from the Paris suburb of Chatou who had become acquainted with Matisse as early as 1901 but had never before exhibited with him.

Despite all that has been said, the Fauves were not recognized as a group in the spring of 1905. Naturally, the critic Roger-Marx cited the names of many of them together with highly sympathetic appraisals of their painting, showing respect for free manifestations of individuality, but his tastes were for art of a more customary kind, with clear links to Classical tradition. Due to this, Fauvism was not yet seen as a whole.

The outlines of the new trend in general, and Fauvism in particular, emerge far more tangibly in the critical comments of those hostile to the Salon des Indépendants. First and foremost they were anarchists striving after the free expression of their individuality, taking a stand against tradition and generally accepted standards of beauty. Colour prevails over the rules of craftsmanship in their paintings, more than that, colour intoxicates them and the paints boil on their canvases. Even the immediate sources of their art become clear against the background of this Salon’s retrospectives. Even the idea of “wildness” had already been raised when it was applied to Van Gogh, but a single step remained before it was applied to the younger generation.

Why was Fauvism not distinguished as a phenomenon and given its name here, at the Salon des Indépendants? Suffice it to say that in 1905, 4,269 works were on display, representing 669 artists, twice as many exhibits and exhibitors as the year before. How would the standard-sized canvases of young artists be noticed as the chief quality of which – colour – required light above all things for its effect!

As a result, the display by an already completely formed group of a large number of works of what was fully-fledged Fauvist art at the 1905 Salon des Indépendants turned out to be no more than a dress rehearsal for the spectacle which took place a few months later at the Salon d’Automne. Little, it would seem, could have changed in that brief interval, nevertheless in the autumn the art of the “wild men” first made a real impact. Above all, the Salon d’Automne was truly their exhibition. As a result of the change of membership which took place in 1905, the committee now included, among many others, Matisse, Rouault, Roger-Marx, Vauxcelles and, as proved highly important, a loyal friend and pupil of Gustave Moreau – Georges Desvallières, who became vice-president of the Salon. Evidence of the growing authority of the Salon d’Automne can be found in the scale of the exhibition in 1905: it was enormous – 1,625 works (although still three times less than the Salon des Indépendants). Matisse’s group was represented by a smaller number of artists than at the Salon des Indépendants.

First the dress rehearsal had given each of them the opportunity to understand that there were those close by who shared their ideas and that, taken together, their art acquired an impressive power – something the critics may have missed, but not the artists. United by common tastes and strivings, they, without being aware of it themselves, influenced each other, especially if we bear in mind that some of them had worked together previously.

André Derain, Martigues (Harbour in Provence), 1913.

Oil on canvas, 141 × 90 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

André Derain, Landscape with a Boat by the Bank, c. 1915.

Oil on canvas, 100 × 65 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

André Derain, Path in the Forest of Fontainebleau, 1911.

Oil on canvas, 92 × 65 cm.

Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

André Derain, The Old Bridge, c. 1910.

Oil on canvas, 73 × 92 cm.

Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

Even more significant was the place they occupied at the exhibition of the Salon d’Automne. In memory of Moreau, Desvallières decided to bring his pupils together – the post of vice-president gave him great opportunities. And that is how the hall appeared, in which side by side were displayed canvases by Matisse, Marquet, Valtat, Manguin, Camoin, and probably also Matisse’s friend, Jean Puy.

Two writers with attitudes toward the Fauves, which were poles apart, recognized them as a distinct group. Camille Mauclair acknowledged nothing which came after Impressionism, contemptuously called them all artists of the class of Ambroise Vollard, thinking of the “vulgar” tastes of the dealer who had presented Gauguin’s work to the Parisian public.[5] While Maurice Denis, the Nabis artist, referred to them as Matisse’s group which seemed to him “the most lively, most new and most controversial.”[6] The layout of the exhibition not only united the Fauves’ painting – at one and the same time, it set it in opposition to everything else which appeared at the Salon d’Automne.

Without doubt, the contrast with the surroundings was intensified to the highest degree by the fact that they took the stage in closed ranks. Matisse, Derain, and Vlaminck were supported by Valtat charmed by the scorching Mediterranean sun, conveying the dazzling brilliance of the Bay of Anthéor, sharp shadows on yellow sand alongside an improbably blue sea, Manguin with landscapes of his beloved south, and even the restrained Marquet. Their painting brought out the very thing inherent in the medium: the capacity of oil paints to set in pastose clots or to spread in a thin layer making it possible for one colour to penetrate into another without losing its purity and resonance in the process. They were united by a genuine, feverish delight in the possibilities offered by a bare canvas and tubes of oil paint – one needs no more than to see Kees van Dongen’s Red Dancer and Maurice Vlaminck’s Barges on the Seine alongside each other. “In the orchestra I was conducting,” Vlaminck wrote in his old age, I decided in order to be heard to use only the trumpets, the cymbals, the bass drum, which, in this sphere of work, meant tubes of paint. Just as I would have instructed the musicians to blow the saxophone, cornet, and slide trombone with all their might, I made the tubes of paint burst upon my canvas and used nothing but vermilions, chromes, greens, and Prussian blue to snarl out what I wanted to say.[7]

Mockery and insults came from the most varied quarters and expressed themselves in different words, but the meaning boiled down to the same: the Fauves’ art was daubing, which had nothing in common with painting; it was denied a place among the creations of normal people and was thus worthy only to be the butt of malicious laughter. One of the critics, J. B. Hall, reviewing the source of the scandal defined the Fauvist hall at the exhibition as the focus “of pictorial perversion, of colour-madness, of the unspeakably bizarre fantasies of people who, if they are not mystificators, deserve the remedial regime of the École.”[8]

In contrast to the Impressionists or Manet, the Fauves belonged to the new twentieth-century generation – mockery and insults did not hurt them, quite the opposite, they received them with satisfaction as a sign of the start of the battle they intended to wage. In Vlaminck’s words, their intentions included “composing triumphal revolutionary marches, to advance on the École des Beaux-Arts and to set fire to the ‘firemen’s house.”[9]

It must be admitted that in the heat of the battle which had commenced, they set fire to more than they intended. Only a very small amount was necessary for the artists of the official Salons to perish in the flames of the new art – their demise had been prepared by preceding generations. But the strength of the reaction to Matisse’s group set both the Nabis and the future innovators in the shade. This can be sensed clearly in the comments by critics of all shades of opinion, and, as usual, more vividly in the negative ones than in the positive.

André Derain, The Castle or The New Castle in La Roche Guyon, c. 1910.

Oil on canvas, 66 × 87 cm.

Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

Albert Marquet, Paris in Winter, The Quai Bourbon, 1907.

Oil on canvas, 65 × 81 cm.

Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

Albert Marquet, The Pont Saint-Michel in Winter, 1908.

Oil on canvas, 61 × 81 cm.

Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

Besides this, Fauvism was perceived by enemies and friends alike as a new young force, the only movement which had really come to maturity and one which set itself in opposition to absolutely everything that had existed until that time, both in the “right-wing” camp and on the left. And despite the contradiction within the movement itself which the critics remarked on, it was a single whole. Even, so it would seem, the incompatible co-existence of spontaneity and rationality became its distinguishing feature, one which no one previously had ever displayed to such a degree. Even their demonstrative taking of the public stage without a leader or a programme, united only on the basis of “a spirit of intimate kinship,”[10] was, in itself, the program to which most of the Fauvist artists were to adhere all their working lives, far beyond the brief time that is customarily called the Fauvist period.

For the next three years the Fauves used both the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne for joint displays of their work, each time effectively organizing their own exhibition within the general one. In 1906 they presented about 150 works at the Indépendants and slightly fewer at the Salon d’Automne; in 1907 and 1908, practically unchanged in terms of membership, the group exhibited again, maintaining the same ratio. No less than twice each year the galleries run by Berthe Weill and Druet exhibited Fauves either in groups or singly. Other Parisian dealers also turned their attentions to them: apart from his annual personal exhibition of René Seyssaud, in 1908 Bernheim Jeune presented about one hundred works by Kees van Dongen.

Albert Marquet, Flood in Paris, c. 1910.

Oil on canvas, 33 × 41 cm.

Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

Albert Marquet, The Pont Saint-Michel in Paris, The Quai des Augustins, 1908.

Oil on canvas, 65 × 81 cm.

Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

André Derain, Houses on the Waterfront, 1910.

Oil on canvas, 61 × 102.3 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

From 1906, the Fauves began little by little to become known outside of France. In small groups, most frequently made up of pupils of Moreau, they displayed works at La Libre Esthétique exhibition in Brussels and in a private gallery in Vienna, while in 1910 the Manes Gallery arranged a display of Fauvist painting in Prague. At the 1909 Salon des Indépendants in Paris, the Fauves were again present in full number. At the Salon d’Automne, although their ranks had thinned some-what, they occupied the central position as before and were now perceived as a single whole.

The peaceful position and conception about the freedom of art which now prevailed no longer prompted them into the fray. The Fauves began a gradual withdrawal – not from the course they had selected, nor from the principles of which they were convinced – from the struggle for a slice of the cake, which, until then, had been divided up by the overwhelming mass of official artists of every hue. One after another they acquired their own regular dealers who provided them with the material wherewithal to live and work; one after another they ceased presenting their creations at collective exhibitions. From 1910 onwards, the number participating in the Fauvist displays at both the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne steadily declined. The peak of group appearances had passed. Even the name they had won themselves in 1905 did not have the former audacious ring to it: “…the painters who for some time were called les fauves” is how they are described in a very serious review written in the summer of 1910 by a critic close to them – Michel Puy, brother of the painter Jean Puy, who had constantly and closely observed the Fauves development over seven years of joint exhibitions. Nevertheless, he was not yet ready to draw a final conclusion as to the nature of Fauvism. But Puy considered its most important qualities to be already indisputable.

André Derain, Cliffs, 1912.

Oil on canvas, 60.5 × 81 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

Louis Valtat, Girls Playing with a Lion Cub, c. 1905.

Oil on canvas, 81.5 × 100.5 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

Louis Valtat, Sunlight under the Trees, c. 1908–1909.

Oil on canvas, 66 × 82 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

Louis Valtat, The Farm, c. 1907.

Oil on canvas, 82 × 100 cm.

Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

Louis Valtat, In the South of France, c. 1908.

Oil on canvas, 60 × 73.5 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

Undoubtedly, the concept of Fauvism includes both, the brief period when the group as well as the qualities of colour common to the painting of the majority. But the mighty impulse, known as Fauvism, which became one of the strongest foundations of twentieth-century painting is in fact far more complex and encompasses a sum total of many qualities. It was precisely the variety of these which attracted artists of very different kinds to Fauvism.

It embraced Matisse, who was engrossed in the science of his painting – in Salmon’s words, “a bearded painter in gold glasses, who brought a tone of severity, of professional gravity to the discussion,”[11] and the spontaneous Vlaminck who provoked the envy of friends from Montmartre for just the opposite reason: “How does that bugger Vlaminck manage to be so modern without the help of the least intellect. On the contrary!”[12] The ironical Van Dongen, susceptible to any kind of fame, be it scandalous or worldly, “…the painter of wenches, risen through the ranks to become portraitist to the great tarts, to achieve at last the glory of immortalizing dressmakers and duchesses who compete as patrons of the arts.”[13] And finally, the humblest of the humble, Marquet, who confided to Vlaminck: “I want to become a cab driver! I would earn enough to keep me and while I was waiting for a fare I could draw…”[14]

Henri Matisse, Nude, Black and Gold, 1908.

Oil on canvas, 100 × 65 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

Henri Matisse, Seated Woman, 1908.

Oil on canvas, 80.5 × 52 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

Henri Matisse, Nude, Study, 1908.

Oil on canvas, 60.5 × 50 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

Henri Matisse, Girl with Tulips, 1910.

Oil on canvas, 92 × 73.5 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

Henri Matisse, Woman in Green, 1909.

Oil on canvas, 65 × 54 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

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.

Oil on canvas, 92 × 73 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

Henri Matisse, Seville Still Life, c. 1910–1911.

Oil on canvas, 90 × 117 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

Henri Matisse, Still Life with Blue Tablecloth, 1909.

Oil on canvas, 88.5 × 116 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

They really did not have a leader, and not in the least because there was no-one among them capable of taking the lead – it simply contradicted the very essence of Fauvism. Perhaps this association of young men was the realization, albeit short-lived, of the Utopian dream of a disinterested collaboration between equals which had more than once been voiced aloud by the most direct and sincere of artists – Van Gogh, Douanier Rousseau, the Georgian naïve painter Niko Pirosmani. Each was left to his own devices, for them there could be no other program; they met any suggestion that something else existed with protest. “We had no doctrine, any of us,” Van Dongen stated. “For the Impressionists you can use the word ‘school’, because they had certain principles. We did not have any; it only seemed to us that their colours were a bit too insipid, that’s all.”[17] In denying the existence of a doctrine. Van Dongen here in fact confirmed a principle important for Fauvism. On the one hand, their painting proceeded directly from that of the Impressionists for whom they felt sincere respect. On the other hand, the Fauves occupied an anti-Impressionist position, just as they were anti-Nabis, as had already been noted by the critics at the time.

The route from the Old Masters to Fauvism, running from the Venetians and Francisco Goya, inevitably passes through Eugène Delacroix. It was no mere chance that contemporary researchers compare Fauvism with Delacroix’s painting,[18] all the more so since the Fauves turned to him in a completely conscious manner. “Delacroix is especially worthy of our efforts and our understanding; he opened the doors of our era,” the young Derain wrote to Vlaminck.[19] Fritz Vanderpyl, a poet from Montmartre, called Fauvism “wild Impressionism.”[20] It is true the Impressionists’ revelation of the possibilities of pure colour, the unconstrained and expressive aspect of texture, were a stage which led to the emergence of the Fauves’ chromatic approach.

Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Cézanne brought painting to a position where accumulated ideas about the possibilities of creating with paints had to be resolved in a flood of new works. And the means of the Fauves protests against being considered Impressionists, the hub in which all their charges against their predecessors were concentrated, became colour, which attained such an intensity and expressive force that all other means faded into the background alongside it. Colour became the banner of the Fauves, the symbol of the liberation of their painting from all fetters. It was a part of that very programme, the existence of which they denied.

The Fauves’ colour carried optimism within it in contrast to that of their German Expressionist contemporaries. To them, one thing that remained unshakeable in painting was that it was born out of life and reflected life which was its true source. “The goal we set ourselves is happiness, a happiness which consequently we should create,” Derain said.[21] In order to create it, one must have a love of life itself, be endowed with that “Flemish sense of joy” which Apollinaire found in Vlaminck’s painting.[22] “I love life more than anything,” Jean Puy bashfully confessed.[23] He was boldly seconded by Van Dongen: “Oh! Life. It is perhaps even more beautiful than painting.”[24]

It was just this irrepressible striving after joy which attracted them to the work of Auguste Renoir. It is evident that Renoir’s influence was not only on individual Fauves, but also on the movement as a whole. This fact has not been fully appreciated. Nevertheless, it was in him, not yet as distant in time as the works in museums, that they found the qualities which in their totality comprised the core of the visual expression of Fauvism: joie de vivre and the triumph of the element of colour.

At the start of the century the Fauves were the first to proclaim preference for the intuitive course in painting; the power of the painterly element over the artistic, as one of the inseparable qualities of the freedom after which they were striving. Even the most rational of them – Matisse, who was most inclined to make experiments in painting on a par with scientific research – asserted: “It is through colour that I feel.”[25]

Henri Matisse, Statuette and Vases on Oriental Carpet or Still Life in Red of Venice, 1908.

Oil on canvas, 89 × 104 cm.

Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

Henri Matisse, Spanish Still Life, c. 1910–1911.

Oil on canvas, 89.5 × 116.3 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

Henri Matisse, Still Life with ‘The Dance’, 1909.

Oil on canvas, 89.5 × 117.5 cm.

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

Despite its many-layered complexity, Fauvism had an entirely definite orientation. Cubism, which appeared alongside after an interval of two years, not only overshadowed Fauvism, but also placed both phenomena in a definite position in the general historical succession. Cubism appeared as a variety of Classicism, superseding the Romanticism of the Fauves. Both these currents continued to flow in parallel, gathering strength in turns, overtaking one another, changing in form but retaining their essence. Not one of the Fauves called himself a Romantic. Nevertheless, the paintings produced by the majority of them make it possible to relate their work to the Romantic tendency, to the line of Delacroix, whom they all valued highly, in contrast to the Cubists, who preferred Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. As regards the terminology being a hangover from the nineteenth century: for the Fauves the concept of “Classicism” had not lost the meaning which it had for the Romantics of the previous age. “I wanted to bring about a revolution in morals, in contemporary life, to show nature at liberty, to free it from the ancient theories of Classicism whose authority I hated as much as that of a general or a colonel,” Vlaminck said.[26] And while in the nineteenth century literature and music formed a single powerful Romantic union, in the new upsurge of Romanticism at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was painting which dominated.

No small part of the significance of Fauvism lies in the fact that, created by young artists at the turn of the century, it became, in turn, a medium that nourished and educated them. Fauvism signified a path of natural development without any kind of force or compulsion. It taught the ability to listen to oneself, to take a pride in what was one’s own, the individual, and to hold firmly to it. Leaving aside the eloquent examples of Matisse and Van Dongen, we must pay tribute to the courage of Dufy, Marquet, Puy, Manguin or Chabaud – their work became the embodiment of precisely that which Vlaminck said in verse: “The nightingale doesn’t sing into the phonograph.”[27]

The range of the Fauves’ creativity is fairly broad, encompassing everything which came into an artist’s field of vision at the beginning of the twentieth century. Although they began as “anti-Nabis,” it was the Nabis 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.