Colour and the Avant-Garde
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Colour and the Avant-garde ... Neo-Impressionism In the late nineteenth century, the Impressionists paved the way for modernity in colour, being less concerned with the subject as with rendering variations in light and atmosphere. This is apparent in Maxime Mauffra’s (1861-1918) 1902 work Evening at Morgat*, in the spirit of Sisley (1839-1899) or Pissarro (1830-1903), yet a late starter when compared with Claude Monet’s (1840-1926) impetus from 1872. The spontaneity found in the inspiration of the Impressionists gave way to the desire of the Neo-Impressionists to give structure to the application of colour. Georges Seurat (1859- Modern 1891) devised a form of painting using small dots of pure colour (fig.1) inspired Artists by the chemist Eugène Chevreul’s laws of “simultaneous contrast” (1826). Many ... artists adopted Seurat’s technique adding their own personal touch – among them The modernity Achille Laugé (1861-1944) whose career from 1850 to 1914 was mainly based in his native region, a few kilometres from Carcassonne. His Road at “Hort” (1896-98) testifies to his precocious advocacy of divisionism, fig.1- Seurat which he would never relinquish. Henri The Bridge of Courbevoie London, Courtauld Institute Galleries ... Martin (1860-1944) of Toulouse studied All rights reserved painting in Paris with Laugé in the class of Jean-Paul Laurens (1838-1921). He quickly made a name for himself and received many official commissions. Retaining only the fragmentary brushwork from Seurat’s divisionism without applying Chevreul’s principles, he used similar tones, as in the Old House* in 1904. Also a pupil of Laurens, Georges Ribemont-Dessaigne (1884-1974) quickly turned away from Impressionism, and from divisionism and the influence of the Nabis. He achieved a highly 42 personal synthesis of these different influences, as is apparent in his Lakeside Landscape*. One of the founders of the Dada movement after World War I, he abandoned a career in painting to become a writer of repute. Fauvism The issue of a new approach to colour gave rise to another important movement in the early twentieth century – Fauvism. Several of its exponents are to be found in this room, including Othon Friesz (1879-1949) and Raoul Dufy (1877-1953). The Portrait of Fernande Olivier* by Kees Van Dongen (1877-1968) embodies this new aesthetic, with its colours applied through vivid and sensual free brushwork, in which pink becomes red and blue turns black. He presented two paintings at the famous Autumn Salon of 1905, during which the critic Louis Vauxcelles coined the term “Fauves” (literally “wild beasts”) to describe a group of artists who explored the power of saturated colours to the height of contrast. The following year, Van Dongen rented a studio at the Bateau Lavoir (in Montmartre, Paris) and met Picasso, with English translation by Susan Schneider translation English whom he would become friends. Picasso’s girlfriend Fernande Olivier often modelled for him : the Spanish Woman (1906) and the following year the portrait in this room, similar to the Portrait of Madame Matisse (The Green Line) (1905, Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst, fig.2). While his Fauvist friends soon looked to pastures new following in the footsteps of Cézanne, Van Dongen was to persist in his experimentations with the triumph of colour until the eve of World War I. * An asterisk indicates that the work mentionned is displayed in the room Van Dongen was also interested in the place of the line in composition. Around 1905-10, his figures would therefore appear surrounded by rings, ultramarine or reddish in colour, as one of the characteristics of his portraits. At his first exhibition in Düsseldorf in 1908, the painters of the “Die Brücke” association – Max Pechstein in particular – made contact with him, thereby forging a link between German Expressionism and French Fauvism. A friend of Matisse and Derain with whom he shared exhibitions with the Fauvists, Auguste fig.2- Henri Matisse Chabaud (1882-1955) was born in Nîmes and Portrait of Madame Matisse (The Green Line) made his debut at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst After World War I, he retired to the family estate All rights reserved at Graveson near to Avignon where he spent the rest of his life on his own between painting, sculpture and poetry. His Moulin de la Galette*, a night scene, was one of the many guingettes (open air cafés) where one could go to dance on Sundays and eat galettes (pancakes). The atmosphere of freedom and pleasure attracted bohemians and artists who would meet models, provided entertainment for the local populace and a chance for the bourgeoisie to mix with the riffraff. Sonia and Robert Delaunay All of the Sonia Delaunay’s artistic phases (Fauvism and abstract art, easel painting or decorative arts) testify to her loyalty to pure colour, heightened by the laws of “simultaneous contrasts”. Born in the Ukraine, Sonia Terk (1885-1979) married Robert Delaunay in 1910. The dazzling colours and brutal workmanship of Philomene* (1907) reveal her early experimentations between Fauvism and Primitivism, before turning to lyrical and colourful ‘Orphic’ Cubism. This important Fauvist portrait with its violent, cloisonné colours betrays the lessons of Gauguin and Van Gogh yet without erasing the stamp of Primitivism characteristic of contemporary Russian painting. The large hands and strong contrast between the model’s austerity and the floral profusion of the ground remind us that the model is a seamstress. Sonia’s career remained inextricably bound to that of Robert Delaunay (1885-1941), even if each asserted their own personality and differences. Under the twofold influence of Monet and Gauguin, Robert Delaunay based his experimentations on colour and the laws of Chevreul. Moving from a form’s geometrical deconstruction to its reconstruction using colour alone in what the poet Guillaume Apollinaire termed “Orphic” Cubism, in 1912 the Delaunays achieved a pure and abstract style of painting in which colour was both form and subject. During World War I, the two artists left for Spain and Portugal. Robert Delaunay’s painting then underwent a phase of “return to order”, as in Portuguese Still Life*. Colour shaped perspective and objects. In the Independent Salon of 1911, Delaunay had already exhibited alongside André Lhote (1885-1962), Albert Gleize (1881-1953) and Roger de La Fresnaye (1885–1925) whom he was to meet again in 1917 at the exhibition of the Section d’Or (Golden Section) at the Galerie Boétie. Under the impetus of Jacques Villon, this group of artists sought harmony and the ideal form based on the principle of the golden number defined during the Renaissance..