Fauvism & Cubism
“All artists bear the imprint of their time, but the great artists are those in which this stamp is most deeply impressed.” Henri Matisse (French 1869-1954) Notes of a Painter, 1908 Self Portrait (Fauve style), 1906 and photo portrait at time of marriage, 1898
Matisse, Standing Nude Model, 1892 at École des Beaux Arts as student of Adolphe-William Bouguereau (1825-1905)
Bouguereau, Nymphs and Satyr, 1873
(left) Matisse, Nude in Studio, 1899 ( Impressionist and Pointillist style) (center) Auguste Renoir, Nude in the Sunlight, 1876 (Impressionist) (right) Georges Seurat, Standing Model (study for Les Poseuses),1886-87 (Pointillist)
Detail of Standing Model showing Seurat’s Pointillist application of paint
Henri Matisse, Luxe, Calme et Volupté, 1904-5. Title is a line from Charles Baudelaire’s poem, Invitation to the Voyage (right) Paul Signac, Sainte Tropez, c.1904, Neo-Impressionist/Pointillist style
Titian (or Giorgione), Concert Champêtre, 1510 (top left); Manet, Déjeuner sur L’Herbe, 1863 (bottom left); Cézanne, Three Bathers, 1879-82, purchased by Matisse in 1899 Western tradition of nudes in a landscape: Eden pre-lapsarian
Henri Matisse, Woman with a Hat (Madame Matisse), 1904-5, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. “Color was not given to us in order that we should imitate Nature. It was given to us so that we can express our own emotions.” (Matisse)
“arbitrary” vs. “local” color
Henri Matisse, Joy of Life, 1905-6 “I was 35 then. Today I am 82. I have not changed because all this time I have looked for the same things….I have attained a form filtered to its essentials, and of the object which I used to present the complexity of space, I have preserved a sign which is sufficient, and which is necessary to make the object exist in its own form and in the totality for which I conceived it.“
Agostino Carracci (Italian 1557-1602), Reciprocal Love, 1600 : a source for Matisse, Joy of Life, 1905
Les Fauves (clockwise from upper left) Matisse, Portrait of Derain, 1905; André Derain, Portrait of Vlaminck, 1905; Maurice de Vlaminck, Portrait of Derain; André Derain, Portrait of Matisse, 1905
HENRI MATISSE, Red Room (Harmony in Red), 1908–1909. Oil on canvas, approx. 5’ 11” x 8’ 1”. State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.
Pablo Picasso (Spanish Cubist Painter and Sculptor, 1881-1973) Portrait of the Artist’s Mother, 1896 Picasso is 15 years old. What people regard as premature genius is the genius of childhood.… So far as I am concerned, I did not have that genius. My first drawings could never have been shown at an exhibition of children’s drawings. I lacked the clumsiness of a child, his naiveté. I made academic drawings at the age of seven, the minute precision of which frightened me.” Picasso
Self-Portrait, 1896
Picasso, Le Moulin de la Galette, 1900, oil, 35 x 46” (right top) Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge, 1892/1895, oil, 49 x 56”
Picasso, La Vie, 1903, 6’5” x 4’2” (“Blue Period” Symbolism) Gauguin, Where Do We Come From, What Are We? Where Are We Going? 1897-98
Picasso, Family of Saltimbanques, 1905, oil on canvas, 84 x 90” Masterpiece of the “Harlequin” period - Post-Impressionist
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jenglish/Courses/Spring02/104/steinpicasso.html Picasso, Portrait of Gertrude Stein, oil on canvas,1906, 39 x 32” Bequest of Gertrude Stein, 1946, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York After more than 80 sittings: “I can’t see you any longer when I look.”
Stein with portrait, 1922
Iberian stone relief showing facial structure of 1906 portraits
Detail, Gertrude Stein, 1906
Picasso, Self-Portrait, 1906
Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, June-July 1907, oil on canvas, 8' x 7' 8"
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Matisse’s, Joy of Life, 1905-06 compared with Picasso’s Demoiselles, 1907
Edenic versus post-Edenic
Picasso, Studies for Les Demoiselles D'Avignon, spring, 1907 (left) oil on canvas, 7 1/2 x 8“ (right) watercolor
Transformative influence of African tribal sculpture Picasso’s epiphany in June 1907 at the ethnographic museum in Paris Braque: “It is as if someone had drunk kerosene to spit fire."
“My first exorcism painting…. For me the masks were not just sculptures. They were magical objects...intercessors...against everything - against unknown threatening spirits....They were weapons . . . to keep people from being ruled by spirits. To help them free themselves. . . . If we give a form to these spirits we become free."
“Fathers” of Cubism: (right) Picasso in Paris studio with Caledonian figures, 1908 (left) Braque in Paris studio with African masks, 1911
Braque, Houses at L’Estaque, August 1908, oil on canvas, 28 x 23” painted after his Large Nude (right) Paul Cézanne, The Bay from L’Estaque, oil on canvas, 31 x 38”, 1886 Braque’s evolving Cézannism. Fauve palette has disappeared.
Matisse disapproves of Braque’s “little cubes,” and, as jurist for the Salon D’Automne, rejects Braque’s paintings. Cubism is named. Picasso and Braque begin to see each other daily. Studios are minutes apart.
(left) Picasso, Ma Jolie (Woman with a Guitar), winter 1911-12, 40 x 26” (right) Braque, The Portuguese (The Emigrant), autumn 1911- early 1912, 46 x 32” Braques introduces stencil-type letters
(left) Braque’s only documented paper sculpture, photographed in 1914 (right) Wall arrangement in Picasso’s studio, November-December 1912. Picasso’s cardboard guitar generated the concept of the papiers collés around it
Picasso, Maquette for Guitar, October 1912, cardboard, string and wire (right) Grebo mask owned by Picasso
“You’ll see. I’m going to hold on to the Guitar, but I shall sell its plan. Everyone will be able to make it himself.” Picasso to André Salmon
(left) Picasso, Guitar, Sheet Music and Glass, charcoal and papier collé, November 1912 (right) Braque, Fruit Dish and Glass, charcoal and papier collé, September 1912
“LA BATAILLE S’EST ENGAGÉ”: “I have to admit, that after having made the papier collé I felt a great shock, and it was an even greater shock for Picasso When I showed it to him” Braques
Picasso, Still life With Chair Caning, May 1912, 11 x 14” collage of oil, oil cloth, pasted paper on oval canvas surrounded by rope. First Cubist collage