Woman with a Hat Works by Matisse, Vlaminck, and Manguin - Essay Example

Henri Matisse’s Woman with a hat shows the woman’s eyes reflecting both steeliness and tenderness; steeliness for the hard times she and her husband was going through and tenderness for the support she silently gives to the man and his art. The woman in this painting is Amelie, Henri Matisse’s model, studio helper, financial assistant, and his encouraging wife. Wandering away from the woman’s eyes in the painting, one can immediately notice the color of her face. Instead of the usual skin tone used by Matisse’s contemporaries, hues of greens, blues, and yellows dominate the woman’s skin color. His unusual use of colors caused Matisse’s painting to earn insults from critics. This unusual use of colors to express the artist’s emotions later became one of the revolutionary movements in the history of art, Fauvism. Fauvism came from the French word “fauve” which literally means “wild beasts” (Leymarie 13). The term was coined by French art critic Louis Vauxcelles when he exclaimed “Donatello au milieu des fauves!” which means “Donatello among the wild beasts” (The Personal Life) as he saw the sculpture in the exhibit that is in distinct contrast to the vibrant colors of the paintings of the Fauve artists. On the contrary, other art critics were unenthusiastically receptive of the multihued paintings of the Fauvists. The commotion that the artworks had created sent critics in opposite poles of reactions. Nonetheless either reaction had a bolstering effect on the rise of the new movement that was to live a momentary existence in the art arena. It was in 1905 at the Salon d’Automne (Crespelle 11) that the critics had their first dose of the shocking colors of the Fauves. Among the Fauve artists exhibiting their works were Henri-Charles Manguin with his La Sieste, Sur le balcon, Sous les arbres, Les Chênes-lièges, Le Pré; Jean Puy exhibited Matinée nonchalante, Flânerie sous les pins, Le Chemin modeste, Souvenirs de Concarneau; Albert Marquet showed his Anthéor, Menton, Agay, Les Roches rouges du Trayas; Louis Valtat with Paysage d Anthéor, two seascapes, Portrait de femme, Intérieur; André Derain with a Self-portrait, Le Séchage des voiles, and three landscapes of Collioure; Maurice de Vlaminck exhibited La Mallée de la Seine à Marly, La Maison de mon père, Crépuscule and LEtang de Saint-Curufa (Crespelle 13); and Henri Matisse with his La Robe japonaise, La Fenêtre ouverte, La Femme au Chapeau, and La Promenade (Crespelle 12). These Fauve artists largely defied the customary colors used by the previous masters and those of the Fauves’ contemporaries belonging to other art movements. In Manguin’s Sur le balcon (Fine Art and Studio), the contrasting colors of red and green dominate the seascape which startles the eyes of the viewer. This seascape diverges from the usual tones of seascapes which were usually relaxing to the eyes of the viewer. Manguin’s seascape with its fiery reds and contrasting greens were obviously not meant to relax the viewer’s eyes, they were expressions of the artist’s sentiments. Another Fauvist work was that of Vlaminck, his La maison de mon père (Vlaminck) shows a seemingly bloody-red pathway strewn with dark colored trees and patches of bright green grass. The pathway leads to the light-colored house with bright orange roofing that seemingly gives a comforting sight in contrast to the raging red of the pathway. Vlaminck’s artwork with a title that means “the house of my father” clearly shows how the artist sees his father; a comfort against the turmoil outside their home. Matisse’s Woman with a hat showing his wife Amelie with a multicolored face depicts how the artist sees the beauty and the great admiration of his wife’s many talents. Matisse’s wife had became his model, assistant and during their tight times, she had also supported their family with her hat shop (The Personal Life). Matisse was careful to depict the woman’s eyes to exude tenderness and strength to perfectly capture his wife’s features and to show his high regard for these qualities. These works by Matisse, Vlaminck, and Manguin embodies the style of Fauvism which is the free use of color to liberally express their sentiments and thoughts. The Fauvist movement lasted until 1907 (Crespelle 297) with the style contained only within the use of colors to express emotions had come to be too restrictive to completely express an artist’s feelings. The freedom in using colors that the Fauve painters had achieved proved to be not totally liberating for the artists. This had caused the Fauvists to gradually turn their artistic inclinations to other styles thus causing the bright revolutionary colors of Fauvism to pale and eventually dissolve the existence of the movement. Although the existence of the Fauvist movement was short-termed, influences and likeness with other art movements as well as with other disciplines such as music and literature are evident. The distinctive attribute of being unconventional and shocking to the point of being scandalous were inherent and noticeable in works that were created by composers and writers who are considered to be Fauvists or influenced by the Fauvists. The Fauvists’ freedom in expressing emotions can also be applied in music. Fauvism in music was characterized closely related to Fauvism in painting. The pensive mood and the dreamy tones of the previous musical composers were silenced by the loud shrieking sharp tones and the missing refinement of half tones emanates the sheer brutality of emotions (Jankélévitch 45). These shocking melodies are comparable to the stunning colors of the Fauvist painters giving the critics a jolt through their eyes and their ears. Both in music and in painting, critics were unprepared to receive the changes in color and in the tones they perceive. Some of the composers who can be considered as Fauvists are Bela Bartok, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev and Darius Milhaud. Sergei Prokofiev’s Sarcasms (Jankélévitch 41) had distinct erratic melodies. Particularly in Sarcasms Op.17, the listener can hear tones that are somewhat off key; a feature of Prokofiev’s music that represents Fauvism in his music. Another example of a Fauvist musical piece would be Darius Milhaud’s Rag-Caprice (Jankélévitch 41) wherein the piece emanates brusque and seemingly rigid tones that are divergent from the usual soft, languid, and fluid pieces of other composers of his time. The revolutionary display of emotions in these composers’ musical pieces had garnered negative responses from the critics. These negative receptions are reminiscent of the same reaction the art critics of Henri Matisse and his group in the Salon d’Automne as they caused uproar among the viewers of the exhibit with their loud and striking colors. Influence of Fauvism in literature came in the form of Mauvism in the 1960’s (Borden 188). Spearheaded by Valentin Kataev, Mauvist literature was generally characterized as disturbing. With subjects dealing with political issues which were craftily concealed in their novels, the Mauvists were similar to the Fauvists on expressing their sentiments on political issues out loud but in a manner that they would not endanger themselves with the government. Other writers of this genre were Aksenov, Gladilin, Sokolov, Limonov, and Bitov. Over the succeeding years, the fleeting movement of the Fauvists had influenced not only literary works but various art movements as well. Fauvism paved the way for Cubism and Dadaism to name two. Cubism followed suit by the treatment of colors and figures as that of Fauvism. In Cubism though, figures were more distorted than that of the Fauvism artworks wherein modifications on color was given more emphasis than the distortion of figures. Famous Cubists were Pablo Picasso and George Braque. Examples of Pablo Picasso’s works are his famous Guernica and Les Demoiselles d’Avignon which in comparison with artworks from the Fauvist period have figures of the subjects distorted in a degree that they can still be recognized and the treatment of colors were similar to those of the Fauvist paintings. On the other hand, Dadaism in comparison with Fauvism is similar in the view of deviating from the traditional styles of painting. Dadaism also uses colors freely as that of the Fauvists but they vary in great degrees when it comes to their treatment of their figures. In Dada art, the figures were distorted beyond immediate identification of the subject’s figure. A perfect example of this would be Marcel Ducamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase. Duchamp’s artwork requires viewers’ focus to identify the figure of the subject descending the staircase. The greatest influence of Fauvism was on the rebirth of the movement as Neo-Fauvism. At present, some of the Neo-Fauve artists are Georg Baselitz, Bernd Koberling, and K.H. Hodicke (Wolf 24). Examples of the artworks of these artists are Baselitz’ The Church, Koberling’s Hochplateau Am Suddesjaure, and Hodicke’s Turn-Tower each bear the mark of Fauvism, the freedom to use color to convey the artist’s sentiments through his art. CITED WORKS Borden, Richard. The Art of Writing Badly: Valentin Kataevs Mauvism and the Rebirth of Russian Modernism. Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press, 1999 Crespelle, Jean-Paul. The Fauves. Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society. 1962. Jankélévitch, Vladimir, Carolyn Abbate. Music and the Ineffable. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. Leymarie, Jean. Fauvism: Biographical and Critical Study. New York: Skira, 1959 “The Personal Life of Henri Matisse.” Biography. Succession H. Matisse. 9 December 2008 . Wolf, Norbert, Uta Grosenick. Expressionism. Germany: Taschen, 2004. Read More