see on the next page: Henri Matisse "CUT-OUTS"

 

Henri Matisse
The Budgerigar and Siren
 

 

	The Pont-Aven filiation was a singular phenomenon affecting several generations of painters. The new understanding of colour out of which it arose was not in itself Symbolist, but under its influence artists rejected the realistic or naturalistic style favoured by those who naively believed in "science and progress". By contrast, the Rose+Croix Salon, founded in 1892 by the novelist and publicist Josephin Peladan (1859-1918), was intended to provide Symbolist art with an ideological underpinning. It lasted only six years, and its chief merit was to bring together works from all over Europe.  In Huysmans' novel La-Bas (Down There), one of his characters speaks of Peladan as the "magus of trash" and the "Wobbly Man from the South" (Peladan was born in Lyon). "These people are, for the most part, old, failed columnists, journalists or petty youths seeking to exploit the taste of a public worn out by Positivism!... In addition to the dupes and simpletons, these little sects harbour some frightful charlatans and windbags. - Peladan, among others..." Theo van Rysselberghe, writing in 1892 to Octave Maus, shared Huysmans' view: "Nothing is quite as sickening as the self-promotion of Peladan and his abominable long-haired accomplices... and it is sad to see worthwhile people believing in the sincerity and honest intentions of this crooked character." The son of a publisher of religious and literary periodicals, Peladan was an eccentric and exhibitionistic Catholic who claimed to have discovered Christ's tomb in Jerusalem (in the Mosque of Omar). He acquired a measure of celebrity through his 1884 novel Le Vice supreme (The Supreme Vice), for which Felicien Rops drew the frontispiece and Barbey d'Aurevilly contributed a highly laudatory preface.  Peladan revived for his own purposes the defunct secret society of the Rosicrucians ("Rose+Croix"), which had brought together various occult movements in the early 17th century. Its twin goals had been world faith and a universal religion; the English theosopher Robert Fludd (1574-1637) was a representative member. The mission of Peladan 's Rose+Croix Salon (Salon de la Rose+Croix) was to "honour and serve the ideal."  In 1891, Peladan, the poet Saint-Pol Roux and Count Antoine de la Rochefoucauld promulgated "The Commandments of the Aesthetic Rose+Croix". They proscribed history, patriotic and military painting, "all representation of contemporary life," portrait painting, rural scenes, seascapes, orientalism, "all animals either domestic or connected with sport... flowers, bodegones, fruit, accessories and other exercises that painters are habitually insolent enought to exhibit." On the positive side, "in order to favour mystic ecstasy and the Catholic ideal, the order welcomes any work based on legend, myth, allegory, or dream..."  The salon attracted artists from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany; participants included Ferdinand Hodler, Carlos Schwabe, Jan Toorop, Fernand Khnopff, Jean Delville, Georges Minne and Xavier Mellery.
	Matisse Henri  (see collection)   Henri Matisse The Joy of Life 1905
	van Dongen Kees (see collection)   Kees van Dongen The Corn Poppy 1919 Kees van Dongen Portrait of Lily Damita 1925
	Fauvism (Encyclopaedia Britannica)  Style of painting that flourished in France around the turn of the 20th century. Fauve artists used pure, brilliant colour aggressively applied straight from the paint tubesto create a sense of an explosion on the canvas. The Fauves painted directly from nature, as the Impressionists had before them, but Fauvist works were invested with a strong expressive reaction to the subjects portrayed. First formally exhibited in Paris in 1905, Fauvist paintings shocked visitors to the annual Salon d'Automne; one of these visitors was the critic Louis Vauxcelles, who, because of the violence of their works, dubbed the painters fauves (“wild beasts”). The leader of the group was Henri Matisse, who had arrived at the Fauve style after experimenting with the various Post-Impressionist approaches of Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat. Matisse's studies led him to rejecttraditional renderings of three-dimensional space and to seek instead a new picture space defined by movement of colour. He exhibited his famous Woman with the Hat (1905) at the 1905 exhibition. In this painting, brisk strokes of colour—blues, greens, and reds—form an energetic, expressive view of the woman. The crude paint application, which left areas of raw canvas exposed, was appalling to viewers at the time. The other major Fauvists were Andre Derain, who had attended school with Matisse in 1898–99, and Maurice de Vlaminck, who was Derain's friend. They shared Matisse's interest in the expressive function of colour in painting, and they first exhibited together in 1905. Derain's Fauvist paintings translate every tone of a landscape into pure colour, which he applied with short, forceful brushstrokes. The agitated swirls of intense colour in Vlaminck's works are indebted to the expressive power of van Gogh. Three young painters from Le Havre, France, were also influenced by Matisse's bold and vibrant work. Othon Friesz found the emotional connotations of the bright Fauve colours a relief from the mediocre Impressionism he had practiced; Raoul Dufy developed a carefree ornamental version of the bold style; and Georges Braque created a definite sense of rhythm and structure out of small spots of colour, foreshadowing his development of Cubism. Albert Marquet, Matisse's fellow student at the École des Beaux-Arts in the 1890s, also participated in Fauvism, as did the Dutchman Kees van Dongen, who applied the style todepictions of fashionable Parisian society. Other painters associated with the Fauves were Georges Rouault, Henri Manguin, Charles Camoin, and Jean Puy. For most of these artists, Fauvism was a transitional, learning stage. By 1908 a revived interest in Paul Cézanne's vision of the order and structure of nature had led many of them to reject the turbulent emotionalism of Fauvism in favour of the logic of Cubism. Matisse alone pursued the course he had pioneered, achieving a sophisticated balance between his own emotions and the world he painted.