FauveGermExp.pptTHE BEGINNING OF THE 20TH CENTURY:
- Upheaval worldwide
- Imperialism, Nationalism, Colonialism on the rise
- Rise of Communism, Fascism
- Russian Revolution (1917)
- Two global wars (1914-1918/1938-1945)
- Expansion of major industrial powers
- Artists challenge basic artistic assumptions
*
CONONIAL EMPIRES AROUND 1900
*
EUROPEAN COLONONIALSM
- England, Belgium, France, Portugal, Germany and other European countries colonize portions of Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania
- Europeans excused colonialism as a “civilizing mission” and looked down on people of color as they tried to control them
- Colonial authorities treated indigenous people with horrifying cruelty and exploited the colonies by plundering resources and labor
- Nationalism and competition between European nations result in two World Wars
- “Primitive art”, the art of Africa and other indigenous people imported from the colonies, has a major influence on modern artists
FAUVISM
SHOCKING, BRIGHT COLORS
EXPRESSIVE BRUSHSTROKES
RELEASE OF INWARD FEELINGS
ONTO CANVAS
HENRI MATISSE, Woman with the Hat, 1905. Oil on canvas, 2’ 7 ¾” X 1’ 11 ½”. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art., San Francisco
Henri Matisse is one of the best known of the artists we call Fauve. The Fauves believed that color was primary and should, according to Matisse’s own explanation, “avoid imitative colors”. When the Fauves first exhibited in the Salon of 1905 in Paris, a critic by the name of Louis Vauxcelles was so shocked by the work that he called the exhibiting painters, Fauves, which in French means wild beasts and the name stuck. The Fauves were inspired by the work of Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin and although the group didn’t exist for long it was an important influence. Matisse wanted to shake up his viewers. He believed that the reaction of the viewer was more important than being true to nature or trying to paint something representative. This continues the exploration of late 19th century and 20th century art as a form unto itself that rejects the idea of illusion and instead embraces the idea of expression, feeling and the inner mind. Color for the Fauves was the element that held the work together and made it cohesive to the viewer. This portrait by Matisse is of his wife Amélie and was once owned by Gertrude Stein, an American writer and expat who we will discuss at length.
*
HENRI MATISSE, Red Room (Harmony in Red), 1908–1909. Oil on canvas, 5’ 11” x 8’ 1”. State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg
The Red Room by Matisse clearly demonstrates the influence of Gauguin with its flat, decorative walls which are barely separated either by perspective or color from the table in the foreground. This depicts a comfortable dining room with a maid setting fruit on the table. Outside the window is a flatly painted exterior in predominantly green hues. Matisse originally painted this green, then blue and finally settled on red as the dominant color. Objects are flattened rather than realistic. In his treatise on color Matisse explains that for him, color is about expression. He also arranged his compositions almost in a decorative way thinking in terms of the harmony of flat shapes against one another and their relationship to each other. Matisse writes that he is not using color in a scientific way as Paul Seurat, the pointillist artist did. Instead he compares his work to that of a musical composition with harmony leading the eye.
*
ABOVE:
HENRI MATISSE, Red Room (Harmony in Red), 1908–1909
RIGHT:
PAUL GAUGUIN, Vision after the Sermon or Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, 1888
COMPARE AND CONTRAST THE WORK OF MATISSE AND GAUGUIN
ANDRÉ DERAIN, The Dance, 1906. Oil on canvas, 6’ 7/8” x 6’ 10 1/4”. Fridart Foundation, London
Andre Derain is another of the leading Fauve artists. He used color in the same way as Matisse, as a means of creating compositional coherence and to surprise the viewer with an emotional reaction. The Dance is one of his best known works, and dance was a popular theme with Matisse as well. Derain used differences in color hue to designate contours, light and shadow. Color is meant to express the content rather than to be accurately representative. Derain was strongly influenced by Gauguin as you can see by the flattened perspective.
*
ANDRÉ DERAIN, Mountains at Collioure, 1905. Oil on canvas, 2’ 8" X 3’ 3 1/2”. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (John Hay Whitney Collection).
A more traditionally colored landscape by Derain also shows wild brushstrokes and imaginative use of line and color to delineate perspective. Many of the Fauves, particularly Matisse, went to the south of France to paint because the light there allowed them to explore heightened color by exaggerating what appears in nature. Derain’s inspiration can clearly be seen in the work of Gauguin and Van Gogh. However, Derain exaggerates color as seen in the broad brushstrokes in coppery hues that delineate the hills. Another example of veering away from tradition are the unpainted bits of the canvas, a way of showing the medium, the process, and pointing out that this is paint, not nature on the canvas.
*
ABOVE: VINCENT VAN GOGH, Starry Night, 1889
RIGHT: ANDRÉ DERAIN, Mountains at Collioure, 1905
COMPARE AND CONTRAST THE WORK OF VAN GOGH AND DERAIN
GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM
Distortions of form
Agitated brushstrokes
Protest against systems of power and materialism
Groups include:
Die Brücke (The Bridge)
Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider)
DIE BRÜCKE
ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER, Street, Dresden, 1908 (dated 1907). Oil on canvas, 4’ 11 1/4” x 6’ 6 7/8”. Museum of Modern Art, New York
At the turn of the century in Germany there was a group of artists who organized under the name Die Brucke (the Bridge). Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was one of them. He was inspired by German medieval art and admired medieval focus on emotion rather than realism. Like the Pre-Raphaelites in England, Die Brucke artists wanted to pattern themselves after medieval guilds and be aligned to the Arts and Crafts movement. Die Brucke artists saw themselves as young artists who were destined to inspire the future and reject tradition. They despised materialism and power. They turned away from industrialization which they believed made humanity robot like and desensitized. This depiction of the German city of Dresden before World War I shows the urban crush of the city streets, but rather than view it from as distance as the Impressionists had done, Kirschner is on the street forcing the viewer to interact with the crowd. The extreme use of color adds a jarring note which emphasizes his interest in expression above reality. His work was inspired by the work of Edvard Munch who painted the Scream. The differences between the Fauves and the Expressionists is the distortion of form, particularly human form. While we can see that there are two women in the foreground, their bodies are stylized shapes, and their faces are mask like.
*
DER BLAUE REITER
*
VASSILY KANDINSKY, Improvisation 28 (second version), 1912. Oil on canvas, 3’ 7 7/8” x 5’ 3 7/8”. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) was another group associated with German Expressionism that formed in Munich, Germany just ahead of the outbreak of WWI. Their two founding members, Vassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc named the group because of their mutual interest in the color blue and horses. Kandinsky was born in Russia and moved to Munich in 1896. He was and one of the first painters to make his subject matter increasingly abstract. He believed in alternatively religious practices like Buddhism, mysticism and the occult, and reduced his compositions to symbolic elements that expressed his sense of spirituality. Kandinsky believed that if the viewer is unable to relate the painting to anything recognizable, the viewer will seek inner meaning, charging his work with spirituality. He challenged the idea that progress was being made in the world and used his art as a means to reject the traditional. He responded positively to the new scientific theories of Albert Einstein and Ernest Rutherford and used his painting as a means to express a new understanding of what comprised physical nature, an exploration that would eventually inspire a new generation of abstract artists.
*
FRANZ MARC, Fate of the Animals, 1913. Oil on canvas, 6’ 4 3/4” x 8’ 9 1/2”. Kunstmuseum, Basel
Franz Marc, the co-founder of Der Blaue Reiter was very uneasy about the political and social unrest leading up to the world war. He distrusted humanity and instead focused on animals as his subject matter. He explored color theory in order to properly harmonize his bright contrasting colors and he believed that certain colors symbolized certain basic concepts. For example he believed that blue stood for the male principle, while yellow was the female principle. His use of red indicates matter and brutality. This work, the Fate of the Animals foretells destruction and chaos. The forest trees appear to be falling and the animals are trapped. The sense of anxiety and danger is conveyed through the splintered fragments. Marc wrote on the back of this canvas, “All being is flaming suffering”. The following year Marc was on the front lines of the war and wrote to his wife that this painting was like a premonition. He died on the front lines in 1916.
*
INDEPENDENT EXPRESSIONISTS
*
PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER
Self Portrait, 1906
Paula Moderson-Becker had no direct affiliation with any of the German Expressionist groups but she is identified as a German Expressionist painter. In this self portrait she explores the Expressionist’s interest in inner feeling rather than illusionistic beauty, especially new in terms of a female self-portrait. The colors are odd, the background is flat and stylized and the planes on the face are almost cubist in nature. She was one of the first female painters to paint female nudes and a nude self-portrait. Sadly, she died at the age of 31 about a year after painting this portrait. But her work points to the fact that many women (although too few make it into art history books) were on the forefront of the avant-garde in the 20th century.
*
KÄTHE KOLLWITZ, Woman with a Dead Child, 1903, Etching with drypoint, touched with graphite, charcoal, and wash (proof impression, state iv/x). National Gallery of Art, Washington
Kathe Kollwitz was primarily a printmaker who worked in a variety of print mediums. She explored Expressionist themes but her work is sometimes more overtly emotional as in this work. Considered to be inspired by the Christian Pieta, this shows a mother grieving over her dead child. The artist uses a kind of short hand in terms of conveying the bodies of the mother and child but the viewer easily understand the primal emotional content of the work. The head of the mother pressed against the chest of the child speaks volumes. Inspired by Gothic emotionalism, this work is less sentimental and more raw in its emotional power. Kollwitz used her son Peter as the model for this work and in a kind of eerie prefiguring he died at the age of 21 fighting in the war.
*
EGON SCHIELE, Nude Self-Portrait, Grimacing, 1910. Gouache, watercolor, and pencil on paper, 1’10” x 1’2-3/8”. Albertina, Vienna
Egon Schiele, one of the most well known of the Expressionist painters explores a nude self-portrait in this gouache and watercolor work on paper. He was an Austrian who was an independent Expressionist allied more by style than by association with other German Expressionists. He produced an enormous number of paintings and drawings and concentrated on studies of men and women. Schiele associated sex with death after watching his father die in an agonizing way of syphilis when Schiele was 15 years old, an event that scarred him emotionally. He enrolled in art school shortly thereafter. His paintings and drawings are infused with a raw and palpable sense of anxiety and unease. A protégé of Gustave Klimt, his work was exhibited along with work by van Gogh and Munch whose paintings had a great deal of influence upon him. Schiele’s grimacing portraits of emaciated beings twisted and contorted into uncomfortable poses are distinctive. Some of his explicit sexual imagery was so controversial that he actually served 24 days in jail for what was then deemed pornographic art. He died in 1918, at age 28, a victim of the Spanish flu, an epidemic that swept Europe and the United States following WWI killing millions around the world. He is known for breaking the Western European art tradition of portraying the male nude as strong and heroic.
*
Modersohn-Becker, Self Portrait 1906
Schiele, Nude Self-Portrait, Grimacing, 1910
