1.
Woman with a Hat
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Woman with a Hat is a painting by Henri Matisse. An oil on canvas, it depicts Matisses wife, Amelie and it was painted in 1905 and exhibited at the Salon dAutomne during the fall of the same year, along with works by André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck and several other artists known as Fauves. Critic Louis Vauxcelles, in comparing the paintings of Matisse and his associates with a Renaissance-type sculpture that shared the room with them and his comment was printed on 17 October 1905 in Gil Blas, a daily newspaper, and passed into popular usage. Woman with a Hat was at the center of the controversy led to the term Fauvism. It was also a painting that marked a shift in the work of Matisse from the Divisionist brushstrokes of his earlier work to a more expressive style. Its loose brushwork and unfinished quality shocking viewers as much as its vivid, although the Fauve works on display were condemned by many—A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public, declared the critic Camille Mauclair—they also gained some favorable attention. Sarah Stein, the wife of Gertrude and Leos elder brother Michael, claimed to have been the purchaser of this painting. One can see it in photographs of Sarah and Michaels home on Rue Madame and it was a centerpiece in Sarahs home in Palo Alto, California for many years. During the 1950s, in San Francisco, it was bought by the Haas family, in 1990 Elise S. Haas bequeathed thirty-seven paintings, sculptures and works on paper to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among them Femme au chapeau. Femme au Chapeau by Jean Metzinger Salon dAutomne Fauvism
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San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
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The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, the museum’s current collection includes over 33,000 works of painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, design, and media arts. They are displayed in 170,000 square feet of space, making the museum one of the largest in the United States overall. SFMOMA reopened on May 14,2016, following a major expansion project. SFMOMA was founded in 1935 under director Grace L. McCann Morley as the San Francisco Museum of Art, for its first sixty years, the museum occupied the fourth floor of the War Memorial Veterans Building on Van Ness Avenue in the Civic Center. A gift of 36 artworks from Albert M. Bender, including The Flower Carrier by Diego Rivera, Bender donated more than 1,100 objects to SFMOMA during his lifetime and endowed the museums first purchase fund. The museum began its second year with an exhibition of works by Henri Matisse, in this same year the museum established its photography collection, becoming one of the first museums to recognize photography as a fine art. SFMOMA held its first architecture exhibition, entitled Telesis, Space for Living, SFMOMA was obliged to move to a temporary facility on Post Street in March 1945 to make way for the United Nations Conference on International Organization. The museum returned to its original Van Ness location in July, later that year SFMOMA hosted Jackson Pollocks first solo museum exhibition. Founding director Grace Morley held film screenings at the beginning in 1937. In 1946 Morley brought in filmmaker Frank Stauffacher to found SFMOMA’s influential Art in Cinema film series, SFMOMA continued its expansion into new media with the 1951 launch of a biweekly television program entitled Art in Your Life. The series, later renamed Discovery, ran for three years, Morley ended her 23-year tenure as museum director in 1958 and was succeeded by George D. Culler and Gerald Nordland. The museum rose to prominence under director Henry T. Hopkins. Since 1967, SFMOMA has honored San Francisco Bay Area artists with its biennial SECA Art Award, the positions of director of education and director of photography were elevated to full curatorial roles. At this time SFMOMA took on a special exhibitions program. Including major presentations of the work of Jeff Koons, Sigmar Polke, in January 1995 the museum opened its current location at 151 Third Street, adjacent to Yerba Buena Gardens in the SOMA district. Mario Botta, a Swiss architect from Canton Ticino, designed the new US$60 million facility, Art patron Phyllis Wattis helped the museum acquire key works by Magritte, Mondrian, Andy Warhol, Eva Hesse and Wayne Thiebaud. SFMOMA made a number of important acquisitions under the direction of David A and those and acquisitions of works by Jasper Johns, Mark Rothko, Francis Bacon, Alexander Calder, Chuck Close and Frank Stella put the institution in the top ranks of American museums of modern art
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French language
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French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages, French has evolved from Gallo-Romance, the spoken Latin in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues doïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to Frances past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, a French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is a language in 29 countries, most of which are members of la francophonie. As of 2015, 40% of the population is in Europe, 35% in sub-Saharan Africa, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas. French is the fourth-most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union, 1/5 of Europeans who do not have French as a mother tongue speak French as a second language. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 17th and 18th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, most second-language speakers reside in Francophone Africa, in particular Gabon, Algeria, Mauritius, Senegal and Ivory Coast. In 2015, French was estimated to have 77 to 110 million native speakers, approximately 274 million people are able to speak the language. The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie estimates 700 million by 2050, in 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese. Under the Constitution of France, French has been the language of the Republic since 1992. France mandates the use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland called Romandie, of which Geneva is the largest city. French is the language of about 23% of the Swiss population. French is also a language of Luxembourg, Monaco, and Aosta Valley, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands. A plurality of the worlds French-speaking population lives in Africa and this number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as a foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050, French is the fastest growing language on the continent. French is mostly a language in Africa, but it has become a first language in some urban areas, such as the region of Abidjan, Ivory Coast and in Libreville. There is not a single African French, but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages, sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth
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Modern art
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Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of experimentation. Modern artists experimented with new ways of seeing and with ideas about the nature of materials. A tendency away from the narrative, which was characteristic for the traditional arts, more recent artistic production is often called contemporary art or postmodern art. Matisses two versions of The Dance signified a key point in his career and in the development of modern painting, analytic cubism was jointly developed by Picasso and Georges Braque, exemplified by Violin and Candlestick, Paris, from about 1908 through 1912. Synthetic cubism is characterized by the introduction of different textures, surfaces, collage elements, papier collé, the notion of modern art is closely related to modernism. Although modern sculpture and architecture are reckoned to have emerged at the end of the 19th century, the beginnings of modern painting can be located earlier. The date perhaps most commonly identified as marking the birth of art is 1863. Earlier dates have also proposed, among them 1855 and 1784. In the words of art historian H, harvard Arnason, Each of these dates has significance for the development of modern art, but none categorically marks a completely new beginning. A gradual metamorphosis took place in the course of a hundred years, the strands of thought that eventually led to modern art can be traced back to the Enlightenment, and even to the 17th century. The important modern art critic Clement Greenberg, for instance, called Immanuel Kant the first real Modernist but also drew a distinction, The Enlightenment criticized from the outside. The French Revolution of 1789 uprooted assumptions and institutions that had for centuries been accepted with little question and this gave rise to what art historian Ernst Gombrich called a self-consciousness that made people select the style of their building as one selects the pattern of a wallpaper. The pioneers of art were Romantics, Realists and Impressionists. By the late 19th century, additional movements which were to be influential in art had begun to emerge. The advocates of realism stood against the idealism of the academic art that enjoyed public. The most successful painters of the day worked either through commissions or through public exhibitions of their own work. There were official, government-sponsored painters unions, while governments regularly held exhibitions of new fine
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Painterliness
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It is the opposite of linear, plastic or formal linear design. An oil painting is painterly when there are visible brushstrokes, the result of applying paint in a less than completely controlled manner, works characterized as either painterly or linear can be produced with any painting media, oils, acrylics, watercolors, gouache, etc. Some artists whose work could be characterized as painterly are Pierre Bonnard, Francis Bacon, Vincent van Gogh, Rembrandt, Renoir, in watercolor it might be represented by the early watercolors of Andrew Wyeth. Contour and pattern are more in the province of the linear artists, the Impressionists, Fauvists and the Abstract Expressionists tended strongly to be painterly movements. Or based on styles like van Gogh or Monet, and so on, the resulting photographs are also called painterly. Expressionism Abstract expressionism Flatness Tachisme Action painting Lyrical Abstraction Neo-expressionism Western painting History of painting Painting Medium specificity
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Representation (arts)
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Representation is the use of signs that stand in for and take the place of something else. It is through representation that people organize the world and reality through the act of naming its elements, Signs are arranged in order to form semantic constructions and express relations. Representation has been associated with aesthetics and semiotics, mitchell says representation is an extremely elastic notion, which extends all the way from a stone representing a man to a novel representing the day in the life of several Dubliners. The term representation carries a range of meanings and interpretations, in literary theory, representation is commonly defined in three ways. A representation is a type of recording in which the information about a physical object is described in a medium. The degree to which an artistic representation resembles the object it represents is a function of resolution, since ancient times representation has played a central role in understanding literature, aesthetics and semiotics. Plato and Aristotle are key figures in literary theory who considered literature as simply one form of representation. Aristotle for instance, considered each mode of representation, verbal, visual or musical, therefore, what distinguishes humans from other animals is their ability to create and manipulate signs. Aristotle deemed mimesis as natural to man, therefore considered representations as necessary for learning and being in the world. Plato, in contrast, looked upon representation with more caution and he recognised that literature is a representation of life, yet also believed that representations create worlds of illusion leading one away from the real things. For Plato, representation, like contemporary media, intervenes between the viewer and the real, creating illusions that lead one away from real things, Aristotle went on to say it was a definitively human activity. From childhood man has an instinct for representation, and in this respect man differs from the animals that he is far more imitative. Aristotle discusses representation in three ways— The object, The symbol being represented, manner, The way the symbol is represented. Means, The material that is used to represent it, the means of literary representation is language. An important part of representation is the relationship between what the material and what it represents, the questions arising from this are, A stone may represent a man but how. And by what and by agreement, does this understanding of the representation occur. One apprehends reality only through representations of reality, through texts, discourses, images, consequently, throughout the history of human culture, people have become dissatisfied with languages ability to express reality and as a result have developed new modes of representation. It is necessary to construct new ways of seeing reality, as people only know reality through representation, from this arises the contrasting and alternate theories and representational modes of abstraction, realism and modernism, to name a few
7.
Realism (arts)
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Realism in the arts is the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, implausible, exotic and supernatural elements. Realism has been prevalent in the arts at many periods, and is in part a matter of technique and training. In the visual arts, illusionistic realism is the depiction of lifeforms, perspective. Realist works of art may emphasize the mundane, ugly or sordid, such as works of realism, regionalism. There have been various movements in the arts, such as the opera style of verismo, literary realism, theatrical realism. The realism art movement in painting began in France in the 1850s, the realist painters rejected Romanticism, which had come to dominate French literature and art, with roots in the late 18th century. Realism is the precise, detailed and accurate representation in art of the appearance of scenes. Realism in this sense is also called naturalism, mimesis or illusionism, realistic art was created in many periods, and it is in large part a matter of technique and training, and the avoidance of stylization. It becomes especially marked in European painting in the Early Netherlandish painting of Jan van Eyck, however such realism is often used to depict, for example, angels with wings, which were not things the artists had ever seen in real life. It is the choice and treatment of matter that defines Realism as a movement in painting. The development of increasingly accurate representation of the appearances of things has a long history in art. It includes elements such as the depiction of the anatomy of humans and animals, of perspective and effects of distance. Ancient Greek art is recognised as having made great progress in the representation of anatomy. Pliny the Elders famous story of birds pecking at grapes painted by Zeuxis in the 5th century BC may well be a legend, roman portraiture, when not under too much Greek influence, shows a greater commitment to a truthful depiction of its subjects. The art of Late Antiquity famously rejected illusionism for expressive force, scientific methods of representing perspective were developed in Italy and gradually spread across Europe, and accuracy in anatomy rediscovered under the influence of classical art. As in classical times, idealism remained the norm, intriguingly, having led the development of illusionic painting, still life was to be equally significant in its abandonment in Cubism. The depiction of ordinary, everyday subjects in art also has a history, though it was often squeezed into the edges of compositions. However these objects are at least largely there because they carry layers of complex significance, pieter Bruegel the Elder pioneered large panoramic scenes of peasant life
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Impressionism
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Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s. The Impressionists faced harsh opposition from the art community in France. The development of Impressionism in the arts was soon followed by analogous styles in other media that became known as impressionist music. Radicals in their time, early Impressionists violated the rules of academic painting and they constructed their pictures from freely brushed colours that took precedence over lines and contours, following the example of painters such as Eugène Delacroix and J. M. W. Turner. They also painted scenes of modern life, and often painted outdoors. Previously, still lifes and portraits as well as landscapes were painted in a studio. The Impressionists found that they could capture the momentary and transient effects of sunlight by painting en plein air, the Impressionists, however, developed new techniques specific to the style. The public, at first hostile, gradually came to believe that the Impressionists had captured a fresh and original vision, even if the art critics and art establishment disapproved of the new style. In the middle of the 19th century—a time of change, as Emperor Napoleon III rebuilt Paris, the Académie was the preserver of traditional French painting standards of content and style. Historical subjects, religious themes, and portraits were valued, landscape, the Académie preferred carefully finished images that looked realistic when examined closely. Paintings in this style were made up of brush strokes carefully blended to hide the artists hand in the work. Colour was restrained and often toned down further by the application of a golden varnish, the Académie had an annual, juried art show, the Salon de Paris, and artists whose work was displayed in the show won prizes, garnered commissions, and enhanced their prestige. The standards of the juries represented the values of the Académie, represented by the works of artists as Jean-Léon Gérôme. In the early 1860s, four young painters—Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and they discovered that they shared an interest in painting landscape and contemporary life rather than historical or mythological scenes. A favourite meeting place for the artists was the Café Guerbois on Avenue de Clichy in Paris, where the discussions were led by Édouard Manet. They were soon joined by Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, during the 1860s, the Salon jury routinely rejected about half of the works submitted by Monet and his friends in favour of works by artists faithful to the approved style. In 1863, the Salon jury rejected Manets The Luncheon on the Grass primarily because it depicted a woman with two clothed men at a picnic. While the Salon jury routinely accepted nudes in historical and allegorical paintings, the jurys severely worded rejection of Manets painting appalled his admirers, and the unusually large number of rejected works that year perturbed many French artists
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Art movement
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Art movements were especially important in modern art, when each consecutive movement was considered as a new avant-garde. According to theories associated with modernism and the concept of postmodernism, the period of time called modern art is posited to have changed approximately halfway through the 20th century and art made afterward is generally called contemporary art. Postmodernism in visual art begins and functions as a parallel to late modernism, the postmodern period began during late modernism, and according to some theorists postmodernism ended in the 21st century. During the period of time corresponding to modern art each movement was often considered a new avant-garde. Also during the period of time referred to as modern art movement was seen corresponding to a somewhat grandiose rethinking of all that came before it. Generally there was a commonality of visual style linking the works, postmodernist theorists posit that the idea of art movements are no longer as applicable, or no longer as discernible, as the notion of art movements had been before the postmodern era. There are many theorists however who doubt as to whether or not such an era was actually a fact, the term refers to tendencies in visual art, novel ideas and architecture, and sometimes literature. In music it is common to speak about genres and styles instead. See also cultural movement, a term with a broader connotation, as the names of many art movements use the -ism suffix, they are sometimes referred to as isms. 20th-century Western painting Art periods List of art movements Post-expressionism Western art history the-artists. org Art movements since 1900, 20th-Century Art Compiled by Dr. Witcombe, Sweet Briar College, Virginia. WebMuseum, Paris Themes index and detailed glossary of art periods
10.
Henri Matisse
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Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse was a French artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is primarily as a painter. Although he was labelled a Fauve, by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century. Matisse was born in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, in the Nord department in northern France and he grew up in Bohain-en-Vermandois, Picardie, France. In 1887 he went to Paris to study law, working as an administrator in Le Cateau-Cambrésis after gaining his qualification. He first started to paint in 1889, after his mother brought him art supplies during a period of following an attack of appendicitis. He discovered a kind of paradise as he described it. In 1891 he returned to Paris to study art at the Académie Julian and became a student of William-Adolphe Bouguereau, initially he painted still lifes and landscapes in a traditional style, at which he achieved reasonable proficiency. Chardin was one of the painters Matisse most admired, as an art student he made copies of four of Chardins paintings in the Louvre, in 1896 and 1897, Matisse visited the Australian painter John Peter Russell on the island Belle Île off the coast of Brittany. Russell introduced him to Impressionism and to the work of van Gogh and he later said Russell was my teacher, and Russell explained colour theory to me. In 1896 Matisse exhibited five paintings in the salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, with the model Caroline Joblau, he had a daughter, Marguerite, born in 1894. In 1898 he married Amélie Noellie Parayre, the two raised Marguerite together and had two sons, Jean and Pierre, Marguerite and Amélie often served as models for Matisse. In 1898, on the advice of Camille Pissarro, he went to London to study the paintings of J. M. W. Turner and then went on a trip to Corsica. Upon his return to Paris in February 1899, he worked beside Albert Marquet and met André Derain, Jean Puy, Matisse immersed himself in the work of others and went into debt from buying work from painters he admired. The work he hung and displayed in his home included a plaster bust by Rodin, a painting by Gauguin, a drawing by van Gogh, in Cézannes sense of pictorial structure and colour, Matisse found his main inspiration. Many of Matisses paintings from 1898 to 1901 make use of a Divisionist technique he adopted after reading Paul Signacs essay and his paintings of 1902–03, a period of material hardship for the artist, are comparatively somber and reveal a preoccupation with form. Having made his first attempt at sculpture, a copy after Antoine-Louis Barye, in 1899, he devoted much of his energy to working in clay, fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910
11.
Salon d'Automne
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The Salon dAutomne, or Société du Salon dautomne, is an annual art exhibition held in Paris, France since 1903. During the Salons early years, established such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir threw their support behind the new exhibition. Foreign artists are well represented. The Salon dAutomne also boasts the presence of a politician and patron of the arts and this was the idea behind Jourdains dream of opening a new Salon des Refusés in the late 1890s, and realized in the opening the Salon dAutomne in 1903. Providing a venue where artists could be recognized, while wrestling the public out of its complacency were, to Jourdain. The platform of the Salon dAutomne was based on an open admission, jurors were members of society itself, not members of the Academy, the state, or official art establishments. Refused exhibition space in the Grand Palais, the first Salon dAutomne was held in the poorly lit and it was backed financially by Jansen. While Rodin applauded the endeavor, and submitted drawings, he refused to join doubting it would succeed, notwithstanding, the first Salon dAutomne, which included works by Matisse, Bonnard and other progressive artists, was unexpectedly successful, and was met with wide critical acclaim. Even Paul Signac, president of the Salon des Indépendants, never forgave Jourdain for having founded a rival salon, what he had not predicted was a retaliation that threatened the future of the new salon. Carolus-Duran threatened to ban from his Société established artists who might consider exhibiting at the Salon dAutomne, retaliating in defense of Jourdain, Eugène Carrière issued a statement that if forced to choose, he would join the Salon dAutomne and resign from the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. The valuable publicity generated by the articles on the controversy worked in favor of the Salon dAutomne. Thus, Eugène Carrière saved the burgeoning salon, Henri Marcel, sympathetic to the Salon dAutomne, became director of the Beaux-Arts, and assured it would take place at the prestigious Grand Palais the following year. The success of the Salon dAutomne was not, however, due to such controversy, success was due to the tremendous impact of its exhibitions on both the art world and the general public, extending from 1903 to the outset of the First World War. He soon became known as a staunch critic of traditionalism and a fervent proponent of Modernism, yet even for him. The first Salon dAutumne exhibition opened 31 October 1903 at the Palais des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris in Paris, Albert Gleizes exhibited two paintings, Vieux moulin à Montons-Villiers and Le matin à Courbevoie. A room at the 1904 Salon dAutome was dedicated to Paul Cézanne, with works, including various portraits, self-portraits, still lifes, flowers, landscapes. Another room presented works of Puvis de Chavannes, with 44 works, and another was dedicated to Odilon Redon with 64 works, including paintings, drawings and lithographs. Auguste Renoir and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec too were represented in separate rooms with 35 and 28 works respectively, Vauxcelles described their work with the phrase Donatello chez les fauves, contrasting the orgy of pure tones with a Renaissance-style sculpture that shared the room with them
12.
Albert Marquet
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Albert Marquet was a French painter, associated with the Fauvist movement. He initially became one of the Fauve painters and a friend of Henri Matisse. Marquet subsequently painted in a naturalistic style, primarily landscapes. Marquet was born in 1875 at Bordeaux, in 1890 he moved to Paris to attend the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs, where he met Henri Matisse. They were roommates for a time, and they influenced each others work, Marquet began studies in 1892 at the École des Beaux-Arts under Gustave Moreau, a symbolist artist who was a follower of the Romantic tradition of Eugène Delacroix. In these years, Marquet exhibited paintings at the Salon des Indépendants, although he did not sell many paintings, the artistic community of Paris became aware of his work. He became a friend of Matisse. Dismayed by the coloration in these paintings, critics reacted by naming the artists the Fauves. Marquet subsequently painted in a naturalistic style, primarily landscapes. At the end of 1907 he stayed in Paris and dedicated himself, together with Matisse, the fundamental difference between the two is that while Matisse used strong colours, Marquet favored grayed yellows, greyed violets or blues. From 1907 to his death, Marquet alternated between working in his studio in Paris and many parts of the European coast and in North Africa and he was most involved with Algeria and Algiers and with Tunisia. In his voyages he painted the sea and ships, but also the lights and animated life of the city, especially cities on the waterfront, among European cities Marquet remained impressed particularly with Naples and Venice where he painted the sea and boats, accenting the light over water. His views of the lagoon in Venice do this very economically, the water stays at a right angle to the picture plane and the large ships float with ease, with their reflections exactly the correct tone to project the required space. His color is much like Matisse of the 1920s, here and his contrasts of vivid colors describe the waves of the sea with simple drawing which accompany the exactly observed color tones, giving a scene of placid movement. The human figures are simplified, calligraphically drawn in a way related to Japanese Shijo style work. Matisse said, When I look at Hokusai, I think of Marquet—and vice versa, I dont mean imitation of Hokusai, I mean similarity with him. During his voyages to Germany and Sweden he painted the subjects he preferred, river and sea views, ports and ships. Over the course of his career he returned to the same subjects, even years later
13.
Charles Camoin
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Charles Camoin was a French painter associated with the Fauves. Born in Marseille, France, Camoin met Henri Matisse in Gustave Moreaus class at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, Matisse and his friends, formed the original group of artists labeled the Fauves for their wild, expressionist-like use of color. Camoin always remained close to Matisse and he painted a portrait of Matisse, which is in the permanent collection of the Pompidou Museum in Paris. In 1955, he was awarded the Prix du President de la Republique at the Biennale of Menton and he died in Paris on 20 May 1965
14.
Louis Valtat
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Louis Valtat was a French painter and printmaker associated with the Fauves, who first exhibited together in 1905 at the Salon dAutomne. He is noted as a key figure in the transition in painting from Monet to Matisse. Louis Valtat was born on 8 August 1869 in Dieppe, in the Normandy region of France, Valtat spent many of his childhood years in Versailles, a suburb of Paris, where he attended secondary school at the Lycée Hoche. Encouraged by his father, a landscape painter himself, Valtat became interested in art. At age 17, deciding to pursue a career, he applied to the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris. Valtat subsequently studied at the Académie Julian under Jules Dupré, a painter of the Barbizon school. Among his fellow students were Albert André, who became a friend, as well as Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard. These last three, calling themselves Nabis, were influenced by Paul Gauguins Synthetist method of painting based on the use of forms, pure colors. While Valtat remained detached from that movement, he learned from them, in 1890, upon winning the Jauvin d’Attainville prize, Valtat established his own studio at rue La Glaciere in Paris. He made his debut in 1893 at the Salon of Independent Artists, one of those paintings, titled Sur Le Boulevard was noted by the art critic Félix Fénéon. During this early period in his career, Valtat used the light touches of Impressionism. Two examples representing Valtats work during this period include Péniches and the Pommiers, Valtat exhibited widely during his career. In 1894, he collaborated with both Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Albert André in creating the decor for the Paris theater LŒuvre at the request of Lugné Poë, Valtat suffered from tuberculosis, and he spent many autumn/winter seasons along the Mediterranean coast in Banyuls, Antheor and Saint-Tropez. Beginning in 1900, Valtat made several journeys by bicycle to visit Auguste Renoir at the Maison de la Poste in Cagnes, there, Valtat made several portrait drawings of Renoir on which he based a subsequent woodcut, and the two artists collaborated on a sculpture of Cézanne. Another friend of Valtat was Paul Signac, whom he visited often, during his time spent near the Mediterranean, Valtat intensified his use of color and began to express his Fauvist tendencies, particularly in painting seascapes. After 1914 he worked in Paris and in areas near Rouen, the subjects of his paintings included flowers, landscapes, and scenes of contemporary life, and he produced many prints. Valtat continued to paint until 1948, when the glaucoma from which he had suffered for several years resulted in the loss of his sight and he died on 2 January 1952 in Paris. The following are some paintings by Louis Valtat, Composition avec trois vases La Dentelliere, c
15.
Jean Puy
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Jean Puy was a French Fauvist artist. He studied architecture at the École nationale des beaux-arts de Lyon and he met Henri Matisse and other like-minded artists when he transferred to the lAcadémie Carrière in 1899. He exhibited his work in 1901, then in an Impressionist style, at the Salon des Indépendants, later, as a Fauvist, he exhibited at the 1905 Salon dAutomne. Puy, whose nude at the seashore reminds us of Cézannes wide schematism, is presenting outdoor scenes where the volumes of things and beings are strongly established, engaging, captivating, bewitching, coaxing, entrancing, ravishing colors. It seems well never stop feasting our eyes on them…
16.
Maurice de Vlaminck
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Maurice de Vlaminck was a French painter. Vlaminck was one of the Fauves at the controversial Salon dAutomne exhibition of 1905, Maurice de Vlaminck was born on Rue Pierre Lescot in Paris. His father Edmond Julien was Flemish and taught violin and his mother Joséphine Caroline Grillet came from Lorraine and his father taught him to play the violin. He began painting in his late teens, in 1893, he studied with a painter named Henri Rigalon on the Île de Chatou. In 1894 he married Suzanne Berly, the turning point in his life was a chance meeting on the train to Paris towards the end of his stint in the army. Vlaminck, then 23, met an aspiring artist, André Derain, when Vlaminck completed his army service in 1900, the two rented a studio together, the Maison Levanneur which now houses the Cneai, for a year before Derain left to do his own military service. In 1902 and 1903 he wrote several mildly pornographic novels illustrated by Derain and he painted during the day and earned his livelihood by giving violin lessons and performing with musical bands at night. Vlaminck participated in the controversial 1905 Salon dAutomne exhibition, in 1911, Vlaminck traveled to London and painted by the Thames. In 1913, he painted again with Derain in Marseille and Martigues, in World War I he was stationed in Paris, and began writing poetry. Eventually he settled in Rueil-la-Gadelière, a small village south-west of Paris and he married his second wife, Berthe Combes, with whom he had two daughters. From 1925 he traveled throughout France, but continued to paint primarily along the Seine, resentful that Fauvism had been overtaken by Cubism as an art movement Vlaminck blamed Picasso for dragging French painting into a wretched dead end and state of confusion. During the Second World War Vlaminck visited Germany and on his return published a tirade against Picasso, a gifted story teller, Vlaminck wrote many autobiographies, which were somewhat marred either by vagueness or lack of absolute truthfulness. Vlaminck died in Rueil-la-Gadelière on 11 October 1958, two of Vlamincks groundbreaking paintings, Sur le zinc and Lhomme a la pipe were painted in 1900. For the next few years Vlaminck lived in or near Chatou, painting and exhibiting alongside Derain, Matisse, at this time his exuberant paint application and vibrant use of colour displayed the influence of Vincent van Gogh. According to art critic Souren Melikian, it is the cartoon of a type. In his landscape paintings, his approach was similar and he ignored the details, with the landscape becoming a mere excuse to express mood through violent colour and brushwork. An example is Sous bois, painted in 1904, the following year, he began to experiment with deconstruction, turning the physical world into dabs and streaks of colour that convey a sense of motion. His paintings Le Pont de Chatou, Les Ramasseurs de pommes de terre, La Seine a Chatou, Vlamincks compositions show familiarity with the Impressionists, several of whom had painted in the same area in the 1870s and 1880s
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Henri Manguin
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Henri Charles Manguin was a French painter, associated with the Fauves. Manguin entered the École des Beaux-Arts to study under Gustave Moreau, as did Henri Matisse, like them, Manguin made copies of Renaissance art in the Louvre. Manguin was greatly influenced by Impressionism, as is seen in his use of pastel hues. He married in 1899 and made portraits of his wife, Jeanne. In 1902, Manguin had his first exhibition at the Salon des Indépendants, many of his paintings were of Mediterranean landscapes, and would soon represent the height of his career as a Fauve artist. This exhibition was reviewed by Vauxcelles in Gil Blas on 4,18 and 23 March 1905, Matisse was in charge of the hanging committee, assisted by Manguin, Metzinger, Bonnard, Camoin, Laprade Luce, Marquet, Puy and Vallotton. In 1920, Manguin exhibited at the Gallery Marcel Bernheim together with Ottmann, Tirman, Alexandre-Paul Canu and he traveled extensively with Albert Marquet throughout Southern Europe. In 1949, Manguin left Paris to settle in Saint-Tropez, where he died soon after, Henri Manguin, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid Henri Manguin, biography, Gallery Fleury Henri Manguin, Web Gallery of Impressionists Henri Manguin, Artcyclopedia
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Raoul Dufy
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Raoul Dufy was a French Fauvist painter, brother of Jean Dufy. He developed a colorful, decorative style that became fashionable for designs of ceramics and textiles and he is noted for scenes of open-air social events. He was also a draftsman, printmaker, book illustrator, scenic designer, a designer of furniture, Raoul Dufy was born into a large family at Le Havre, in Normandy. He left school at the age of fourteen to work in a coffee-importing company, in 1895, when he was 18, he started taking evening classes in art at Le Havres École des Beaux-Arts. The classes were taught by Charles Lhuillier, who had been, forty years earlier, there, Dufy met Raimond Lecourt and Othon Friesz with whom he later shared a studio in Montmartre and to whom he remained a lifelong friend. During this period, Dufy painted mostly Norman landscapes in watercolors, in 1900, after a year of military service, Dufy won a scholarship to the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where again he crossed paths with Othon Friesz. He concentrated on improving his drawing skills, the impressionist landscape painters, such as Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, influenced Dufy profoundly. His first exhibition took place in 1901, introduced to Berthe Weill in 1902, Dufy showed his work in her gallery. Then he exhibited again in 1903 at the Salon des Indépendants, a boost to his confidence, the painter, Maurice Denis, bought one of his paintings. Dufy continued to paint, often in the vicinity of Le Havre, in 1904, with his friend, Albert Marquet, he worked in Fecamp on the English Channel. Henri Matisses Luxe, Calme et Volupté, which Dufy saw at the Salon des Indépendants in 1905, was a revelation to the young artist, les Fauves emphasized bright color and bold contours in their work. Dufys painting reflected this aesthetic until about 1909, when contact with the work of Paul Cézanne led him to adopt a somewhat subtler technique. It was not until 1920, however, after he had flirted briefly with yet another style, cubism and it involved skeletal structures, arranged with foreshortened perspective, and the use of thin washes of color applied quickly, in a manner that came to be known as stenographic. Dufys cheerful oils and watercolors depict events of the period, including yachting scenes, sparkling views of the French Riviera, chic parties. Dufy completed one of the largest paintings ever contemplated, a huge and immensely popular ode to electricity, Dufy also acquired a reputation as an illustrator and as a commercial artist. He painted murals for buildings, he also produced a huge number of tapestries. His plates appear in books by Guillaume Apollinaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, in 1909, Raoul Dufy was commissioned by Paul Poiret to design stationery for the house, and after 1912 designed textile patterns for Bianchini-Ferier used in Poirets and Charvets garments. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Dufy exhibited at the annual Salon des Tuileries in Paris, by 1950, his hands were struck with rheumatoid arthritis and his ability to paint diminished, as he has to fasten the brush to his hand
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Othon Friesz
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Achille-Émile Othon Friesz, who later called himself Othon Friesz, a native of Le Havre, was a French artist of the Fauvist movement. Othon Friesz was born in Le Havre, the son of a line of shipbuilders. He went to school in his native city and it was while he was at the Lycée that he met his lifelong friend Raoul Dufy. He and Dufy studied at the Le Havre School of Fine Arts in 1895-96, in Paris, Friesz met Henri Matisse, Albert Marquet, and Georges Rouault. Like them, he rebelled against the teaching of Bonnat and became a member of the Fauves. The following year, Friesz returned to Normandy and to a more traditional style of painting. He opened his own studio in 1912 and taught until 1914 at which time he joined the army for the duration of the war. He resumed living in Paris in 1919 and remained there, except for trips to Toulon. During the last thirty years of his life, he painted in a style completely removed from that of his earlier colleagues and he painted in a manner that respected Cézannes ideas of logical composition, simple tonality, solidity of volume, and distinct separation of planes. A faint baroque flavor adds vigor to his landscapes, still lifes and he is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris. His pupils included the painter Marthe Rakine, jean Cocteau, Bertrand Guégan, Lalmanach de Cocagne pour lan 1920-1922, Dédié aux vrais Gourmands Et aux Francs Buveurs The Port of Anvers 1906
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Georges Rouault
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Georges Henri Rouault was a French painter, draughtsman, and printer, whose work is often associated with Fauvism and Expressionism. Rouault was born in Paris into a poor family and his mother encouraged his love for the arts, and in 1885 the fourteen-year-old Rouault embarked on an apprenticeship as a glass painter and restorer, which lasted until 1890. During his apprenticeship, he attended evening classes at the School of Fine Arts, and in 1891, he entered the École des Beaux-Arts. There he studied under Gustave Moreau and became his favorite student, Georges Rouault also met Henri Matisse, Albert Marquet, Henri Manguin, and Charles Camoin. These friendships brought him to the movement of Fauvism, the leader of which was considered to be Matisse, in 1891 Rouault painted The Way to Calvary. From 1895 on, he took part in public exhibitions, notably the Salon dAutomne. In 1905 he exhibited his paintings at the Salon dAutomne with the other Fauvists, while Matisse represented the reflective and rationalized aspects in the group, Rouault embodied a more spontaneous and instinctive style. His use of contrasts and emotionality is credited to the influence of Vincent van Gogh. His characterizations of overemphasized grotesque personalities inspired the expressionist painters, in 1907, Rouault commenced a series of paintings dedicated to courts, clowns and prostitutes. These paintings are interpreted as moral and social criticism and he became attracted to Spiritualism and the dramatic existentialism of the philosopher Jacques Maritain, who remained a close friend for the rest of his life. After that, he dedicated himself to religious subjects, human nature was always the focus of his interest. Rouault said, A tree against the sky possesses the same interest, the same character, in 1910, Rouault had his first works exhibited in the Druet Gallery. His works were studied by German artists from Dresden, who formed the nucleus of expressionism. From 1917, Rouault dedicated himself to painting, the face of Jesus and the cries of the women at the feet of the cross are symbols of the pain of the world, which for Rouault was relieved by belief in resurrection. In 1929 Rouault created the designs for Diaghilevs ballet The Prodigal Son, with music by Prokofiev, in 1930 he also began to exhibit in foreign countries, mainly in London, New York and Chicago. In 1937 Rouault painted The Old King, arguably his very finest expressionist work and he exhibited his cycle Miserere in 1948. At the end of his life he burned 300 of his pictures and his reason for doing this was not profound, as he simply felt he would not live to finish them. Rouault died in Paris in 1958, dyrness, William A. Rouault, A Vision of Suffering and Salvation
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Jean Metzinger
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Jean Dominique Antony Metzinger was a major 20th-century French painter, theorist, writer, critic and poet, who along with Albert Gleizes wrote a theoretical work on Cubism. His earliest works, from 1900 to 1904, were influenced by the Neo-impressionism of Georges Seurat, between 1904 and 1907 Metzinger worked in the Divisionist and Fauvist styles with a strong Cézannian component, leading to some of the first proto-Cubist works. From 1908 Metzinger experimented with the faceting of form, a style that would become known as Cubism. His early involvement in Cubism saw him both as an influential artist and an important theorist of the movement. The idea of moving around an object in order to see it from different view-points is treated, for the first time, in Metzingers Note sur la Peinture, before the emergence of Cubism, painters worked from the limiting factor of a single view-point. Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes wrote the first major treatise on Cubism in 1912, Metzinger was a founding member of the Section dOr group of artists. During the First World War Metzinger furthered his role as a leading Cubist with his co-founding of the phase of the movement. He recognized the importance of mathematics in art, through a radical geometrization of form as an underlying basis for his wartime compositions. As post-war reconstruction began, a series of exhibitions at Léonce Rosenbergs Galerie de LEffort Moderne were to highlight order, the collective phenomenon of Cubism—now in its advanced revisionist form—became part of a widely discussed development in French culture, with Metzinger at its helm. In terms of the separation of culture and life, this period emerges as the most important in the history of Modernism, for Metzinger, the classical vision had been an incomplete representation of real things, based on an incomplete set of laws, postulates and theorems. He believed the world was dynamic and changing in time, that it appeared different depending on the point of view of the observer, each of these viewpoints were equally valid according to underlying symmetries inherent in nature. Jean Metzinger came from a prominent military family and his great-grandfather, Nicolas Metzinger, Captain in the 1st Horse Artillery Regiment, and Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, had served under Napoleon Bonaparte. A street in the Sixième arrondissement of Nantes was named after Jeans grandfather, Jeans younger brother Maurice would become a musician, excelling as a cellist. By 1900 Jean was a student at Académie Cours Cambronne in Nantes, working under Hippolyte Touront, Metzinger, however, was interested in the current trends in painting. Metzinger sent three paintings to the Salon des Indépendants in 1903, and subsequently moved to Paris with the proceeds from their sale, from the age of 20, Metzinger supported himself as a professional painter. He would show four times at Weills gallery,17 January-1 February 1913, March 1913, June 1914. It is at Berthe Weills that he would meet Max Jacob for the first time, Berthe Weill was also the first Parisian art dealer to sell works of Picasso. Along with Picasso and Metzinger, she helped discover Matisse, Derain, Amedeo Modigliani, in 1904 Metzinger exhibited six paintings in the Divisionist style at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne
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Kees van Dongen
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Cornelis Theodorus Maria Kees van Dongen was a Dutch-French painter and one of the Fauves at the controversial 1905 Salon dAutomne exhibition. He gained a reputation for his sensuous, at times garish, Kees van Dongen was born in Delfshaven, then on the outskirts, and today a borough, of Rotterdam. He was the second of four children in a middle-class family, in 1892, at age 16, Kees van Dongen started his studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Rotterdam, working with J. Striening and J. G. During this period, van Dongen frequented the Red Quarter seaport area and he met Augusta Preitinger at the Academy, a fellow painter. In 1897, van Dongen lived in Paris for several months, in December 1899 he returned from Rotterdam to Paris, where Preitinger had moved before him and found work. He returned to join Augusta Preitinger, whom he had met at the Academy and they married on 11 July 1901. They had two children together, a son died a couple of days after birth in December 1901, their daughter Augusta, guus took Dolly to see their families in Rotterdam in the summer of 1914, where they were caught by the outbreak of World War I. They were not able to return to Paris until 1918, Preitinger and van Dongen divorced in 1921. In 1917, van Dongen had become involved with a married socialite, the bright colours of this group of artists led to them being called Fauves by art critic Louis Vauxcelles. Van Dongen was also briefly a member of the German Expressionist group Die Brücke, in 1906, Preitinger and van Dongen moved to the Bateau Lavoir at 13 rue Ravignan in Montmartre, where they were friends with the circle surrounding Pablo Picasso and his girlfriend Fernande Olivier. In addition to selling his paintings, van Dongen also gained an income by selling satirical sketches to the newspaper Revue Blanche and he also organised very successful costume balls in Montparnasse, to which people paid admission, to gain extra income. After the First World War, under the influence of his companion and this earned him a solid reputation with the French bourgeoisie and upper class, where he was in demand for his portraits. As a fashionable portraitist, he was commissioned for subjects including Arletty, Louis Barthou, Sacha Guitry, Leopold III of Belgium, Anna de Noailles and Maurice Chevalier. With a playful cynicism he remarked of his popularity as a portraitist with high society women, The essential thing is to elongate the women, after that it just remains to enlarge their jewels. This remark is reminiscent of another of his sayings, Painting is the most beautiful of lies, in 1926, he was made a Knight of the French Legion of Honour, and in 1927 the Order of the Crown of Belgium in recognition of his contributions to art. In 1929, the French government awarded him citizenship, two of his works were collected that year by the Musée du Luxembourg. The social and commercial appeal of his work did not match the artistic promise or the bohemian eroticism of his first three decades of work. From 1959, Kees van Dongen lived in Monaco and he died in his home in Monte Carlo in 1968
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Georges Braque
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Georges Braque was a major 20th-century French painter, collagist, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. His most important contributions to the history of art were in his alliance with Fauvism from 1906, braque’s work between 1908 and 1912 is closely associated with that of his colleague Pablo Picasso. Their respective Cubist works were indistinguishable for many years, yet the quiet nature of Braque was partially eclipsed by the fame, georges Braque was born on 13 May 1882 in Argenteuil, Val-dOise. He grew up in Le Havre and trained to be a house painter, however, he also studied artistic painting during evenings at the École des Beaux-Arts, in Le Havre, from about 1897 to 1899. In Paris, he apprenticed with a decorator and was awarded his certificate in 1902, the next year, he attended the Académie Humbert, also in Paris, and painted there until 1904. It was here that he met Marie Laurencin and Francis Picabia, Braques earliest works were impressionistic, but after seeing the work exhibited by the artistic group known as the Fauves in 1905, he adopted a Fauvist style. The Fauves, a group that included Henri Matisse and André Derain among others, Braque worked most closely with the artists Raoul Dufy and Othon Friesz, who shared Braques hometown of Le Havre, to develop a somewhat more subdued Fauvist style. In 1906, Braque traveled with Friesz to LEstaque, to Antwerp, in May 1907, he successfully exhibited works of the Fauve style in the Salon des Indépendants. The 1907 Cézanne retrospective at the Salon dAutomne greatly affected the artists of Paris. Braques paintings of 1908–1912 reflected his new interest in geometry and simultaneous perspective and he showed this in the painting Houses at lEstaque. Beginning in 1909, Braque began to work closely with Pablo Picasso who had been developing a similar proto-Cubist style of painting. At the time, Pablo Picasso was influenced by Gauguin, Cézanne, African masks, Picasso celebrates animation, while Braque celebrates contemplation. Thus, the invention of Cubism was a joint effort between Picasso and Braque, then residents of Montmartre, Paris and these artists were the styles main innovators. After meeting in October or November 1907, Braque and Picasso, in particular, both artists produced paintings of monochromatic color and complex patterns of faceted form, now termed Analytic Cubism. In 1912, they began to experiment with collage and Braque invented the papier collé technique, French art critic Louis Vauxcelles used the terms bizarre cubiques in 1908 after seeing a picture by Braque. He described it as full of little cubes, the term Cubism, first pronounced in 1911 with reference to artists exhibiting at the Salon des Indépendants, quickly gained wide use but Picasso and Braque did not adopt it initially. Art historian Ernst Gombrich described Cubism as the most radical attempt to stamp out ambiguity and to one reading of the picture—that of a man-made construction. The Cubist style spread quickly throughout Paris and then Europe, the two artists productive collaboration continued and they worked closely together until the beginning of World War I in 1914, when Braque enlisted with the French Army
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Cubism
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Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century, the term is broadly used in association with a wide variety of art produced in Paris during the 1910s and extending through the 1920s. The movement was pioneered by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, joined by Andre Lhote, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, Fernand Léger and Juan Gris. A primary influence that led to Cubism was the representation of form in the late works of Paul Cézanne. The impact of Cubism was far-reaching and wide-ranging, Cubism spread rapidly across the globe and in doing so evolved to a greater or lesser extent. In essence, Cubism was the origin of a process that produced diversity. In France, offshoots of Cubism developed, including Orphism, Abstract art, in other countries Futurism, Suprematism, Dada, Constructivism, De Stijl and Art Deco developed in response to Cubism. Other common threads between these movements include the faceting or simplification of geometric forms, and the association of mechanization. Cubism began between 1907 and 1911, Pablo Picassos 1907 painting Les Demoiselles dAvignon has often been considered a proto-Cubist work. Georges Braques 1908 Houses at L’Estaque prompted the critic Louis Vauxcelles to refer to bizarreries cubiques, Gertrude Stein referred to landscapes made by Picasso in 1909, such as Reservoir at Horta de Ebro, as the first Cubist paintings. A second phase, Synthetic Cubism, remained vital until around 1919, english art historian Douglas Cooper proposed another scheme, describing three phases of Cubism in his book, The Cubist Epoch. Douglas Coopers restrictive use of terms to distinguish the work of Braque, Picasso, Gris. Alternative interpretations of Cubism have therefore developed, wider views of Cubism include artists who were later associated with the Salle 41 artists, e. g. John Berger identifies the essence of Cubism with the mechanical diagram. The metaphorical model of Cubism is the diagram, The diagram being a symbolic representation of invisible processes, forces, structures. A diagram need not eschew certain aspects of appearance but these too will be treated as not as imitations or recreations. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Europeans were discovering African, Polynesian, Micronesian, artists such as Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso were intrigued and inspired by the stark power and simplicity of styles of those foreign cultures. Around 1906, Picasso met Matisse through Gertrude Stein, at a time when artists had recently acquired an interest in primitivism, Iberian sculpture, African art and African tribal masks. Picassos paintings of 1907 have been characterized as Protocubism, as seen in Les Demoiselles dAvignon
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Abstract art
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Abstract art uses a visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective, the arts of cultures other than the European had become accessible and showed alternative ways of describing visual experience to the artist. By the end of the 19th century many artists felt a need to create a new kind of art which would encompass the fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy. The sources from which individual artists drew their theoretical arguments were diverse, Abstract art, non-figurative art, non-objective art, and nonrepresentational art are loosely related terms. They are similar, but perhaps not of identical meaning, Abstraction indicates a departure from reality in depiction of imagery in art. This departure from accurate representation can be slight, partial, or complete, even art that aims for verisimilitude of the highest degree can be said to be abstract, at least theoretically, since perfect representation is likely to be exceedingly elusive. Artwork which takes liberties, altering for instance color and form in ways that are conspicuous, total abstraction bears no trace of any reference to anything recognizable. In geometric abstraction, for instance, one is unlikely to find references to naturalistic entities, Figurative art and total abstraction are almost mutually exclusive. But figurative and representational art often contains partial abstraction, both geometric abstraction and lyrical abstraction are often totally abstract. It is at level of visual meaning that abstract art communicates. One can enjoy the beauty of Chinese calligraphy or Islamic calligraphy without being able to read it, in Chinese painting, abstraction can be traced to the Tang dynasty painter Wang Mo, who is credited to have invented the splashed-ink painting style. While none of his paintings remain, this style is seen in some Song Dynasty Paintings. A late Song painter named Yu Jian, adept to Tiantai buddhism and his paintings show heavily misty mountains in which the shapes of the objects are barely visible and extremely simplified. This type of painting was continued by Sesshu Toyo in his later years, another instance of abstraction in Chinese painting is seen in Zhu Deruns Cosmic Circle. The painting is a reflection of the Daoist metaphysics in which chaos, in Tokugawa Japan some zen monk-painters created Enso, a circle who represents the absolute enlightenment. Usually made in one spontaneous brush stroke, it became the paradigm of the minimalist aesthetic that guided part of the zen painting, three art movements which contributed to the development of abstract art were Romanticism, Impressionism and Expressionism. Artistic independence for artists was advanced during the 19th century, patronage from the church diminished and private patronage from the public became more capable of providing a livelihood for artists. Expressionist painters explored the use of paint surface, drawing distortions and exaggerations
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Vincent van Gogh
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Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings and his suicide at 37 followed years of mental illness and poverty. Born into a family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet. As a young man he worked as an art dealer, often travelling and he turned to religion, and spent time as a Protestant missionary in southern Belgium. He drifted in ill health and solitude before taking up painting in 1881 and his younger brother Theo supported him financially, and the two kept up a long correspondence by letter. His early works, mostly still lifes and depictions of peasant labourers, in 1886 he moved to Paris, where he met members of the avant-garde, including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, who were reacting against the Impressionist sensibility. As his work developed he created a new approach to still lifes and his paintings grew brighter in colour as he developed a style that became fully realised during his stay in Arles in the south of France in 1888. During this period he broadened his subject matter to include trees, cypresses, wheat fields. Van Gogh suffered from episodes and delusions and though he worried about his mental stability, he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly. His friendship with Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor and he spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period at Saint-Rémy. After he discharged himself and moved to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris and his depression continued and on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a revolver. He died from his injuries two days later, Van Gogh was unsuccessful during his lifetime, and was considered a madman and a failure. He became famous after his suicide, and exists in the imagination as the quintessential misunderstood genius. His reputation began to grow in the early 20th century as elements of his style came to be incorporated by the Fauves. The most comprehensive source on Van Gogh is the correspondence between him and his younger brother, Theo. Their lifelong friendship, and most of what is known of Vincents thoughts, Theo van Gogh was an art dealer and provided his brother with financial and emotional support, and access to influential people on the contemporary art scene. Theo kept all of Vincents letters to him, Vincent kept few of the letters he received, after both had died, Theos widow Johanna arranged for the publication of some of their letters. A few appeared in 1906 and 1913, the majority were published in 1914, Vincents letters are eloquent and expressive and have been described as having a diary-like intimacy, and read in parts like autobiography
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Post-Impressionism
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Post-Impressionism is a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction against Impressionists concern for the depiction of light. The movement was led by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, the term Post-Impressionism was first used by art critic Roger Fry in 1906. Three weeks later, Roger Fry used the term again when he organized the 1910 exhibition, Manet, the Post-Impressionists were dissatisfied with what they felt was the triviality of subject matter and the loss of structure in Impressionist paintings, though they did not agree on the way forward. Georges Seurat and his followers concerned themselves with Pointillism, the use of tiny dots of colour. Paul Cézanne set out to restore a sense of order and structure to painting, to make of Impressionism something solid and durable and he achieved this by reducing objects to their basic shapes while retaining the saturated colours of Impressionism. The Impressionist Camille Pissarro experimented with Neo-Impressionist ideas between the mid-1880s and the early 1890s, Vincent van Gogh used colour and vibrant swirling brush strokes to convey his feelings and his state of mind. Although they often exhibited together, Post-Impressionist artists were not in agreement concerning a cohesive movement, yet, the abstract concerns of harmony and structural arrangement, in the work of all these artists, took precedence over naturalism. Artists such as Seurat adopted a scientific approach to colour. Younger painters during the early 20th century worked in geographically disparate regions and in various categories, such as Fauvism and Cubism. Most of the artists in Frys exhibition were younger than the Impressionists, Fry later explained, For purposes of convenience, it was necessary to give these artists a name, and I chose, as being the vaguest and most non-committal, the name of Post-Impressionism. This merely stated their position in time relatively to the Impressionist movement, john Rewald limited the scope to the years between 1886 and 1892 in his pioneering publication on Post-Impressionism, From Van Gogh to Gauguin. This volume would extend the period covered to other artistic movements derived from Impressionism, though confined to the late 19th, Rewald focused on such outstanding early Post-Impressionists active in France as van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, and Redon. Pont-Aven School, implying more than that the artists involved had been working for a while in Pont-Aven or elsewhere in Brittany. Symbolism, a highly welcomed by vanguard critics in 1891. Rewald wrote that the term Post-Impressionism is not a precise one. Convenient, when the term is by definition limited to French visual arts derived from Impressionism since 1886, rewalds approach to historical data was narrative rather than analytic, and beyond this point he believed it would be sufficient to let the sources speak for themselves. Rival terms like Modernism or Symbolism were never as easy to handle, for they covered literature, architecture and other arts as well, Symbolism, however, is considered to be a concept which emerged a century later in France, and implied an individual approach
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Pointillism
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Pointillism /ˈpɔɪntᵻlɪzəm/ is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism, the term Pointillism was coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works of these artists, and is now used without its earlier mocking connotation. The movement Seurat began with this technique is known as Neo-Impressionism, the Divisionists, too, used a similar technique of patterns to form images, though with larger cube-like brushstrokes. The technique relies on the ability of the eye and mind of the viewer to blend the color spots into a range of tones. It is related to Divisionism, a technical variant of the method. Divisionism is concerned with theory, whereas pointillism is more focused on the specific style of brushwork used to apply the paint. It is a technique with few serious practitioners today, and is seen in the works of Seurat, Signac. However, see also Andy Warhols early works, and Pop Art, the practice of Pointillism is in sharp contrast to the traditional methods of blending pigments on a palette. Pointillism is analogous to the four-color CMYK printing process used by some printers and large presses that place dots of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow. Televisions and computer monitors use a technique to represent image colors using Red, Green. If red, blue, and green light are mixed, the result is something close to white light, painting is inherently subtractive, but Pointillist colors often seem brighter than typical mixed subtractive colors. This may be partly because subtractive mixing of the pigments is avoided, the painting technique used for Pointillist color mixing is at the expense of the traditional brushwork used to delineate texture. The majority of Pointillism is done in oil paint, anything may be used in its place, but oils are preferred for their thickness and tendency not to run or bleed. Pointillism also refers to a style of 20th-century music composition, different musical notes are made in seclusion, rather than in a linear sequence, giving a sound texture similar to the painting version of Pointillism. This type of music is known as punctualism or klangfarbenmelodie
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Georges Seurat
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Georges-Pierre Seurat was a French post-Impressionist painter and draftsman. He is noted for his use of drawing media and for devising the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism. His large-scale work, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, altered the direction of art by initiating Neo-impressionism. Seurat was born 2 December 1859 in Paris, at 60 rue de Bondy, the Seurat family moved to 136 boulevard de Magenta in 1862 or 1863. His father, Antoine Chrysostome Seurat, originally from Champagne, was a legal official who had become wealthy from speculating in property. Georges had a brother, Émile Augustin, and a sister, Marie-Berthe and his father lived in Le Raincy and visited his wife and children once a week at boulevard de Magenta. Georges Seurat first studied art at the École Municipale de Sculpture et Dessin, near his familys home in the boulevard Magenta, Seurats studies resulted in a well-considered and fertile theory of contrasts, a theory to which all his work was thereafter subjected. His formal artistic education came to an end in November 1879, after a year at the Brest Military Academy, he returned to Paris where he shared a studio with his friend Aman-Jean, while also renting a small apartment at 16 rue de Chabrol. For the next two years, he worked at mastering the art of monochrome drawing and his first exhibited work, shown at the Salon, of 1883, was a Conté crayon drawing of Aman-Jean. He also studied the works of Eugène Delacroix carefully, making notes on his use of color and he spent 1883 working on his first major painting—a large canvas titled Bathers at Asnières, a monumental work showing young men relaxing by the Seine in a working-class suburb of Paris. Seurat also departed from the Impressionist ideal by preparing for the work with a number of drawings, Bathers at Asnières was rejected by the Paris Salon, and instead he showed it at the Groupe des Artistes Indépendants in May 1884. Seurats new ideas on pointillism were to have a strong influence on Signac. In the summer of 1884, Seurat began work on A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, the painting shows members of each of the social classes participating in various park activities. The tiny juxtaposed dots of multi-colored paint allow the eye to blend colors optically. It took Seurat two years to complete this 10-foot-wide painting, much of which he spent in the park sketching in preparation for the work and it is now in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The painting was the inspiration for James Lapine and Stephen Sondheims musical, Seurat concealed his relationship with Madeleine Knobloch, an artists model whom he portrayed in his painting Jeune femme se poudrant. In 1889 she moved in with Seurat in his studio on the 7th floor of 128bis Boulevard de Clichy, when Madeleine became pregnant, the couple moved to a studio at 39 passage de lÉlysée-des-Beaux-Arts. There she gave birth to their son, who was named Pierre-Georges,16 February 1890, Seurat died in Paris in his parents home on 29 March 1891 at the age of 31
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Neo-impressionism
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Neo-Impressionism is a term coined by French art critic Félix Fénéon in 1886 to describe an art movement founded by Georges Seurat. Around this time, the peak of France’s modern era emerged, followers of Neo-Impressionism, in particular, were drawn to modern urban scenes as well as landscapes and seashores. Science-based interpretation of lines and colors influenced Neo-Impressionists characterization of their own contemporary art, the Pointillist and Divisionist techniques are often mentioned in this context, because it was the dominant technique in the beginning of the Neo-impressionist movement. Some argue that Neo-Impressionism became the first true movement in painting. The Neo-Impressionists were able to create a movement very quickly in the 19th century, partially due to its connection to anarchism. The movement and the style were an attempt to drive harmonious vision from modern science, anarchist theory, during the emergence of Neo-Impressionism, Seurat and his followers strove to refine the impulsive and intuitive artistic mannerisms of Impressionism. Neo-impressionists used disciplined networks of dots and blocks of color in their desire to instill a sense of organization, in further defining the movement, Seurat incorporated the recent explanation of optic and color perceptions. The development of theory by Michel Eugène Chevreul and others by the late 19th century played a pivotal role in shaping the Neo-Impressionist style. Ogden Rood’s book, Modern Chromatics, with Applications to Art and Industry, acknowledged the different behaviors exhibited by colored light, while the mixture of the former created a white or gray color, that of the latter produced a dark, murky color. As painters, Neo-Impressionists had to deal with colored pigments, so to avoid the dullness, mixing of colors was not necessary. There are a number of alternatives to the term Neo-Impressionism and each has its own nuance and it emphasized the studies of color and light which were central to his artistic style. This term is used today. Divisionism, which is commonly used, is used to describe a mode of Neo-Impressionist painting. It refers to the method of applying individual strokes of complementary, unlike other designations of this era, the term Neo-Impressionism was not given as a criticism. Instead, it embraces Seurats and his followers ideals in their approach to art, note, Pointillism merely describes a later technique based on divisionism in which dots of color instead of blocks of color are applied. Neo-Impressionism was first presented to the public in 1886 at the Salon des Indépendants, the Indépendants remained their main exhibition space for decades with Signac acting as president of the association. But with the success of Neo-Impressionism, its fame spread quickly, in 1886, Seurat and Signac were invited to exhibit in the 8th and final Impressionist exhibition, later with Les XX and La Libre Esthétique in Brussels. In 1892, a group of Neo-Impressionist painters united to show their works in Paris, in the Salons of the Hôtel Brébant,32, the following year they exhibited at 20, rue Laffitte
31.
Paul Signac
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Paul Victor Jules Signac was a French Neo-Impressionist painter who, working with Georges Seurat, helped develop the Pointillist style. Paul Signac was born in Paris on 11 November 1863 and he followed a course of training in architecture before deciding at the age of 18 to pursue a career as a painter after attending an exhibit of Monets work. He sailed around the coasts of Europe, painting the landscapes he encountered and he also painted a series of watercolors of French harbor cities in later years. In 1884 he met Claude Monet and Georges Seurat, many of Signacs paintings are of the French coast. He loved to paint the water and he left the capital each summer, to stay in the south of France in the village of Collioure or at St. Tropez, where he bought a house and invited his friends. Paul Signac, Albert Dubois-Pillet, Odilon Redon and Georges Seurat were among the founders of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, the association began in Paris 29 July 1884 with the organization of massive exhibitions, with the device No jury nor awards. The purpose of Société des Artistes Indépendants—based on the principle of abolishing admission jury—is to allow the artists to present their works to public judgement with complete freedom, for the following three decades their annual exhibitions set the trends in art of the early 20th century. At the 1905 Salon des Indépendants, Henri Matisse exhibited the proto-Fauve painting Luxe, Signac purchased the work after the 1905 Salon des Indépendants. In 1908 Signac was elected president of the 24th Salon des Indépendants, in 1886 Signac met Vincent van Gogh in Paris. In 1887 the two regularly went to Asnières-sur-Seine together, where they painted such subjects as river landscapes. Initially, Van Gogh chiefly admired Signac’s loose painting technique, in March 1889, Signac visited Van Gogh at Arles. The next year he made a trip to Italy, seeing Genoa, Florence. In 1888, Signac discovered anarchist ideas by reading Elisee Reclus, Kropotkin and Jean Grave, with his friends Angrand Cross, Maximilien Luce and Camille Pissarro he contributed to Jean Grave’s paper Les Temps Nouveaux. His financial support was considerable, he sent regular cheques and made a gift of his works for five lotteries between 1895 and 1912, from his various ports of call, Signac brought back vibrant, colorful watercolors, sketched rapidly from nature. From these sketches, he painted large canvases that are carefully worked out in small, mosaic-like squares of color, quite different from the tiny. Signac himself experimented with various media, as well as oil paintings and watercolors he made etchings, lithographs, and many pen-and-ink sketches composed of small, laborious dots. The Neo-Impressionists influenced the next generation, Signac inspired Henri Matisse and André Derain in particular, as president of the Société des Artistes Indépendants from 1908 until his death, Signac encouraged younger artists by exhibiting the controversial works of the Fauves and the Cubists. Signac served as a juror with Florence Meyer Blumenthal in awarding the Prix Blumenthal, in September 1913, Signac rented a house at Antibes, where he settled with Jeanne Selmersheim-Desgrange, who gave birth to their daughter Ginette on 2 October 1913
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Paul Gauguin
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Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a French post-Impressionist artist. Underappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his use of color. His work was influential to the French avant-garde and many artists, such as Pablo Picasso. Many of his paintings were in the possession of Russian collector Sergei Shchukin and he was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and writer. He was also a proponent of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms. Gauguin was born in Paris, France to Clovis Gauguin and Alina Maria Chazal on June 7,1848 and his birth coincided with revolutionary upheavals throughout Europe that year. His father, a 34-year-old liberal journalist, came from a family of petit-bourgeoisie entrepreneurs residing in Orléans and he was compelled to flee France when the newspaper for which he wrote was suppressed by French authorities. Gauguins mother, the 22-year-old Aline Marie Chazal, was the daughter of Andre Chazal, an engraver, and Flora Tristan and their union ended when Andre assaulted his wife Flora and was sentenced to prison for attempted murder. Paul Gauguins maternal grandmother, Flora Tristan, was the daughter of Thérèse Laisnay. Details of Thérèses family background are not known, her father, Don Mariano, was a Spanish nobleman, members of the wealthy Tristan Moscoso family held powerful positions in Peru. Nonetheless, Don Marianos unexpected death plunged his mistress and daughter Flora into poverty, when Floras marriage with Andre failed, she petitioned for and obtained a small monetary settlement from her fathers Peruvian relatives. She sailed to Peru in hopes of enlarging her share of the Tristan Moscoso family fortune and this never materialized, but she successfully published a popular travelogue of her experiences in Peru which launched her literary career in 1838. An active supporter of early socialist societies, Gauguins maternal grandmother helped to lay the foundations for the 1848 revolutionary movements, placed under surveillance by French police and suffering from overwork, she died in 1844. Her grandson Paul idolized his grandmother, and kept copies of her books with him to the end of his life. In 1850, Clovis Gauguin departed for Peru with his wife Alina and he died of a heart attack en route, and Alina arrived in Peru a widow with the 18-month-old Paul and his 2 ½ year-old sister, Marie. Gauguins mother was welcomed by her granduncle, whose son-in-law would shortly assume the presidency of Peru. To the age of six, Paul enjoyed an upbringing, attended by nursemaids. He retained a vivid memory of period of his childhood which instilled indelible impressions of Peru that haunted him the rest of his life
33.
Collioure
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Collioure is a commune in the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France. The town of Collioure is on the Côte Vermeille, in the canton of Côte Vermeille, Collioure is named Cotlliure in Catalan. Collioure used to be divided into two separated by the river Douy, the old town to the south named Port dAvall. Collioure was taken in 1642 by the French troops of Maréchal de la Meilleraye, a decade later, the town was officially surrendered to France by the 1659 Treaty of Pyrenees. Nevertheless, Collioure was besieged and occupied by the Spanish troops in 1793, the blockade was broken a year later by general Jacques François Dugommier. In 1823, the territory of Port-Vendres became a commune, taking parts from the communes of Collioure and Banyuls-sur-Mer. On 21 January 1870, a climatic phenomenon occurred in Collioure, as observed by Charles Naudin at the time. Many orchards as well as oak woodlands were damaged. Collioure is the name of an Appellation dOrigine Contrôlée situated around the town, producing red, rosé, the ancient terraced vines in the hills behind the town also provide grapes for the apéritif and dessert wines of the appellation, which shares its boundaries with the Collioure appellation. Collioure is also famous for its anchovies, which are referenced in Mark Kurlanskys book Salt as the best in the world. As the town has a strong Catalan culture, its own motto has been adopted by one of the local Catalan rugby teams, Sempre endavant, mai morirem. Under Michel Molys leadership, the town has an alternative motto, the annual Saint Vincent festival is held around August 15, attracting twice the towns population in visitors for several days of celebration with music and fireworks. In the early 20th century Collioure became a center of artistic activity, collioures cemetery contains the tomb of Spanish poet Antonio Machado, who fled here to escape advancing Francoist troops at the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939. The British historical novelist Patrick OBrian lived in the town from 1949 until his death in 2000 and he also wrote a biography of Picasso, who was an acquaintance. OBrian and his wife Mary are also buried in the town cemetery, part of the action in Stephen Clarkes fourth comic novel featuring Paul West, Dial M for Merde, takes place in Collioure. Ninety-eight reproductions of Matisse’s and Derain’s works are exposed exactly where these two masters of Fauvism painted the originals, in the early 20th century, Antonio Machado, Spanish poet died in Collioure. René Llense, football player born in Collioure, Patrick OBrian, English novelist and translator, lived and was buried in Collioure
34.
Ultramarine
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Ultramarine is a deep blue color and a pigment which was originally made by grinding lapis lazuli into a powder. The name comes from the Latin ultramarinus, literally beyond the sea, Ultramarine was the finest and most expensive blue used by Renaissance painters. It was often used for the robes of the Virgin Mary and it remained an extremely expensive pigment until a synthetic ultramarine was invented in 1826. The pigment consists primarily of a mineral containing small amounts of polysulfides. It occurs in nature as a component of lapis lazuli containing a blue cubic mineral called lazurite. The pigment color code is P, the major component of lazurite is a complex sulfur-containing sodium-silicate, which makes ultramarine the most complex of all mineral pigments. Some chloride is present in the crystal lattice as well. The blue color of the pigment is due to the S−3 radical anion, the preparation is typically made in steps. The first part of the takes place at 700 to 750 °C in a closed furnace, so that sulphur, carbon. This yields a yellow-green product sometimes used as a pigment, in the second step air or sulphur dioxide at 350 to 450 °C is used to oxidise sulphide sulphur in the intermediate product to S2 and Sn chromophore molecules, resulting in the blue pigment. The mixture is heated in a kiln, sometimes in brick-sized amounts, the resultant solids are then ground and washed as per any other insoluble pigment manufacturing process. The chemical reaction produces large amounts of sulfur dioxide, meaning that flue-gas desulfurization is an part of its manufacture to comply with pollution regulations. Large chimneys were used to disperse sulfur dioxide produced in the process, resulting in ultramarine tinting the surrounding ground surfaces, Ultramarine poor in silica is obtained by fusing a mixture of soft clay, sodium sulfate, charcoal, sodium carbonate and sulfur. The product is at first white, but soon turns green green ultramarine when it is mixed with sulfur, the sulfur burns, and a fine blue pigment is obtained. Ultramarine rich in silica is obtained by heating a mixture of pure clay, very fine white sand, sulfur. A blue product is obtained at once, but a red tinge often results, the different ultramarines—green, blue, red and violet—are finely ground and washed with water. Its color is unaffected by light nor by contact with oil or lime as used in painting, hydrochloric acid immediately bleaches it with liberation of hydrogen sulfide. Even a small addition of oxide to the reddish varieties especially causes a considerable diminution in the intensity of the color
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Vermilion
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Vermilion is a brilliant red or scarlet pigment originally made from the powdered mineral cinnabar, and is also the name of the resulting color. The word vermilion came from the Old French word vermeillon, which was derived from vermeil, from the Latin vermiculus and it has the same origin as the English word vermin. The name originated because it had a color to the natural red dye made from an insect, the Kermes vermilio. The words for the color in Portuguese, Galician and Catalan have the same origin, the first recorded use of vermilion as a color name in English was in 1289. The term cinnabar was used interchangeably with vermilion until the 17th century, by the late 18th century cinnabar applied to the unground natural mineral only. Vermilion is a dense, opaque pigment with a clear, brilliant hue, the pigment was originally made by grinding a powder of cinnabar, which contains mercury. The chemical formula of the pigment is HgS, like most mercury compounds, Vermilion is not one specific hue, Mercuric sulfides make a range of warm hues – from bright orange-red to a duller reddish-purple that resembles fresh duck liver. Differences in hue are caused by the size of the particles of pigment. Larger crystals produce duller and less-orange hue, Cinnabar pigment was a side-product of the mining of mercury, and mining cinnabar was difficult, expensive and dangerous, because of the toxicity of mercury. The Greek philosopher Theophrastus of Eresus described the process in De Lapidibus, efforts began early to find a better way to make the pigment. The Chinese were probably the first to make a synthetic vermilion as early as the 4th century BC, the Greek alchemist Zosimus of Panopolis wrote that such a method existed. In the early ninth century the process was described by the Arab or Persian alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan in his book of recipes of colors. The process described by Jabir ibn Hayyan was fairly simple, Mercury and sulfur were mixed together, forming a black compound of sulphide of mercury, called Aethiopes mineralis. This was then heated in a flask, the compound vaporized, and recondensed in the top of the flask. The flask was broken, the vermilion was taken out, when first created the pigment was almost black, but as it was ground the red color appeared. The longer the color was ground, the finer the color became, the Italian Renaissance artist Cennino Cennini wrote, if you were to grind it every day even for twenty years it would keep getting better and more perfect. During the 17th century a new method of making the pigment was introduced, Mercury and melted sulfur were mashed to make black mercury sulfide, then heated in retort, producing vapors condensing as a bright, red mercury sulfide. To remove the sulfur these crystals were treated with an alkali, washed
36.
Expressionism
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Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, Expressionist artists sought to express the meaning of emotional experience rather than physical reality. Expressionism was developed as an avant-garde style before the First World War and it remained popular during the Weimar Republic, particularly in Berlin. The style extended to a range of the arts, including expressionist architecture, painting, literature, theatre, dance, film. The term is sometimes suggestive of angst, in a general sense, painters such as Matthias Grünewald and El Greco are sometimes termed expressionist, though in practice the term is applied mainly to 20th-century works. The Expressionist emphasis on individual perspective has been characterized as a reaction to positivism, though an alternate view is that the term was coined by the Czech art historian Antonin Matějček in 1910, as the opposite of impressionism, An Expressionist wishes, above all, to express himself. Immediate perception and builds on more complex psychic structures, in 1905, a group of four German artists, led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, formed Die Brücke in the city of Dresden. This was arguably the founding organization for the German Expressionist movement, a few years later, in 1911, a like-minded group of young artists formed Der Blaue Reiter in Munich. The name came from Wassily Kandinskys Der Blaue Reiter painting of 1903, among their members were Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Paul Klee, and Auguste Macke. However, the term Expressionism did not firmly establish itself until 1913, though mainly a German artistic movement initially and most predominant in painting, poetry and the theatre between 1910–30, most precursors of the movement were not German. Expressionism is notoriously difficult to define, in part because it overlapped with other major isms of the modernist period, with Futurism, Vorticism, Cubism, Surrealism, more explicitly, that the expressionists rejected the ideology of realism. The term refers to a style in which the artist seeks to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions. It is arguable that all artists are expressive but there are examples of art production in Europe from the 15th century onward which emphasize extreme emotion. Expressionism has been likened to Baroque by critics such as art historian Michel Ragon, according to Alberto Arbasino, a difference between the two is that Expressionism doesnt shun the violently unpleasant effect, while Baroque does. Expressionism throws some terrific fuck yous, Baroque doesnt, brazil, Anita Malfatti, Cândido Portinari, Di Cavalcanti, Iberê Camargo and Lasar Segall. Estonia, Konrad Mägi, Eduard Wiiralt Finland, Tyko Sallinen, Alvar Cawén, Juho Mäkelä, there were a number of groups of expressionist painters, including Der Blaue Reiter and Die Brücke. Der Blaue Reiter was based in Munich and Die Brücke was based originally in Dresden, Die Brücke was active for a longer period than Der Blaue Reiter, which was only together for a year. The Expressionists had many influences, among them Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh and they were also aware of the work being done by the Fauves in Paris, who influenced Expressionisms tendency toward arbitrary colours and jarring compositions
37.
National Gallery of Art
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The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D. C. located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was established in 1937 for the American people by a joint resolution of the United States Congress. Andrew W. Mellon donated an art collection and funds for construction. The Gallery often presents temporary special exhibitions spanning the world and the history of art and it is one of the largest museums in North America. In 1930 Mellon formed the A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, when quizzed by Abbot, he explained that the project was in the hands of the Trust and that its decisions were partly dependent on the attitude of the Government towards the gift. Designed by architect John Russell Pope, the new structure was completed and accepted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on behalf of the American people on March 17,1941. Neither Mellon nor Pope lived to see the completed, both died in late August 1937, only two months after excavation had begun. At the time of its inception it was the largest marble structure in the world, as anticipated by Mellon, the creation of the National Gallery encouraged the donation of other substantial art collections by a number of private donors. The Gallerys East Building was constructed in the 1970s on much of the land left over from the original congressional joint resolution. It was funded by Mellons children Paul Mellon and Ailsa Mellon Bruce, designed by famed architect I. M. Pei, the contemporary structure was completed in 1978 and was opened on June 1 of that year by President Jimmy Carter. The new building was built to house the Museums collection of paintings, drawings, sculptures. The design received a National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects in 1981, the final addition to the complex is the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden. Completed and opened to the public on May 23,1999, the National Gallery of Art is supported through a private-public partnership. The United States federal government provides funds, through annual appropriations, to support the museums operations, all artwork, as well as special programs, are provided through private donations and funds. The museum is not part of the Smithsonian Institution, noted directors of the National Gallery have included David E. Finley, Jr. John Walker, and J. Carter Brown. Rusty Powell III is the current director, entry to both buildings of the National Gallery of Art is free of charge. From Monday through Saturday, the museum is open from 10 a. m. –5 p. m. it is open from 11 –6 p. m. on Sundays and it is closed on December 25 and January 1. The museum comprises two buildings, the West Building and the East Building linked by an underground passage
38.
Gustave Moreau
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Gustave Moreau was a major figure in French Symbolist painting whose main emphasis was the illustration of biblical and mythological figures. As a painter, Moreau appealed to the imaginations of some Symbolist writers and he is recognized for his works that are influenced by the Italian Renaissance and exoticism. His art work was preserved in Paris at the Musée Gustave Moreau and he was born in Paris, France, at 6 Rue des Saints-Peres. He came from a middle class family and his father, Louis Jean Marie Moreau, was an architect for the city of Paris and his mother, nee Adele Pauline Desmoutier, was an accomplished musician. Gustave Moreau lived a sheltered life growing up, having visited Italy at age 15 he began his love for art. At age 18 he was to art at Ecole des Beaux-Arts under the guidance of François-Édouard Picot. He then began to study art under his new mentor Théodore Chassériau, Moreau participated in the Salon for the first time in 1852. Moreau had a 25-year personal, possibly romantic relationship, with Adelaide-Alexandrine Dureux and his first painting was a Pietà which is now located in the cathedral at Angoulême. He showed A Scene from the Song of Songs and The Death of Darius in the Salon of 1853, in 1853, he contributed Athenians with the Minotaur and Moses Putting Off his Sandals within Sight of the Promised Land to the Great Exhibition. Oedipus and the Sphinx, one of his first symbolist paintings, was exhibited at the Salon of 1864, Moreau quickly gained a reputation for eccentricity. One commentator said Moreaus work was like a pastiche of Mantegna created by a German student who relaxes from his painting by reading Schopenhauer, the painting currently resides in the permanent collection at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. On March 28,1890, Alexandrine Dureux died and her death affected Moreau greatly, and his work after this point contained a more melancholic edge. She was buried at the cemetery that Moreau himself would be laid to rest. Moreau became a professor at Paris École des Beaux-Arts in October 1891, among his many students were fauvist painters Henri Matisse and Georges Rouault. Jules Flandrin, Theodor Pallady and Léon Printemps also studied with Moreau, Moreau died of stomach cancer and was buried at the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris in his parents tomb. During his lifetime, Moreau produced more than 8,000 paintings, watercolors and drawings, the museum is in his former workshop, and began operation in 1903. André Breton famously used to haunt the museum and regarded Moreau as a precursor of Surrealism and his work influenced the next generation of Symbolists, particularly Odilon Redon and Jean Delville, a leading figure in Belgian Symbolism in the early part of the twentieth century. The death of Chasseriau in 1856 caused Moreau to enter a state of gloominess and he stopped painting and withdrew himself from the public
39.
Symbolism (arts)
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Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style originates with the 1857 publication of Charles Baudelaires Les Fleurs du mal, the works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire admired greatly and translated into French, were a significant influence and the source of many stock tropes and images. The aesthetic was developed by Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine during the 1860s and 1870s, in the 1880s, the aesthetic was articulated by a series of manifestos and attracted a generation of writers. The name symbolist itself was first applied by the critic Jean Moréas, distinct from, but related to, the style of literature, symbolism in art is related to the gothic component of Romanticism and Impressionism. In ancient Greece, the symbolon was a shard of pottery which was inscribed, Symbolism was a reaction in favour of spirituality, the imagination, and dreams. Some writers, such as Joris-Karl Huysmans, began as naturalists before becoming symbolists, for Huysmans, the Symbolist poets have a more complex relationship with Parnassianism, a French literary style that immediately preceded it. The Symbolists continued to admire Théophile Gautiers motto of art for arts sake, many Symbolist poets, including Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine, published early works in Le Parnasse contemporain, the poetry anthologies that gave Parnassianism its name. One of Symbolisms most colourful promoters in Paris was art and literary critic Joséphin Péladan, a number of Symbolists were associated with the Salon. Symbolists believed that art should represent absolute truths that could only be described indirectly, thus, they wrote in a very metaphorical and suggestive manner, endowing particular images or objects with symbolic meaning. Jean Moréas published the Symbolist Manifesto in Le Figaro on 18 September 1886, the Symbolist Manifesto names Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Paul Verlaine as the three leading poets of the movement. In a nutshell, as Mallarmé writes in a letter to his friend Cazalis, to not the thing. Symbolist poems were attempts to evoke, rather than primarily to describe, – both poets seek to identify one sense experience with another. The earlier Romanticism of poetry used symbols, but these symbols were unique, the symbolists were more extreme, investing all things, even vowels and perfumes, with potential symbolic value. The physical universe, then, is a kind of language that invites a privileged spectator to decipher it, Symbolist symbols are not allegories, intended to represent, they are instead intended to evoke particular states of mind. The nominal subject of Mallarmés Le cygne is of a trapped in a frozen lake. Significantly, in French, cygne is a homophone of signe, un cygne d’autrefois se souvient que c’est lui Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre. They were also portrayed as at odds with society, having tragic lives and these traits were not hindrances but consequences of their literary gifts. Schopenhauers aesthetics represented shared concerns with the symbolist programme, they tended to consider Art as a contemplative refuge from the world of strife and will
40.
John Peter Russell
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John Peter Russell was an Australian impressionist painter. Born and raised in Sydney, Russell moved to Europe in his teenage years to attend art school. A mans man, popular with students, Russell befriended fellow pupil Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh maintained correspondence with Russell throughout his life, Russells work was also admired by the French Impressionists, with whom he often painted. Russell returned to Sydney in old age, where he died and his works are held in major galleries in his home country and in Europe. John Peter Russell was born at the Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst, the eldest of four children of John Russell, J. P. Russell was a nephew of Sir Peter Nicol Russell. After his fathers death J. P. Russell enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, on 5 January 1881, Russell then went to Paris to study painting under Fernand Cormon. His fellow students there included Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Émile Bernard, Russell was a man of means and, having married a beautiful Italian, Mariana Antoinetta Matiocco, he settled at Belle Île off the coast of Brittany, where he established an artists colony. He would have 11 children with Matiocco, of whom six survived, Russell had met Vincent van Gogh in Paris and formed a friendship with him. Van Gogh spoke highly of Russells work, and after his first summer in Arles in 1888 he sent twelve drawings of his paintings to Russell, to inform him about the progress of his work. Claude Monet often worked with Russell at Belle Île and influenced his style, due to his substantial private income Russell did not attempt to make his pictures well known. In 1897 and 1898 Henri Matisse visited Belle Île, Russell introduced him to impressionism and to the work of van Gogh. Matisses style changed radically, and he would later say Russell was my teacher, in 1907, Russells wife Matiocco died in Paris. Grief-stricken, Russell buried her next to his home and destroyed 400 of his oils, Auguste Rodin despaired at the destruction of those marvels, and in one of his final letters to Russell, said Your works will live, I am certain. One day you will be placed on the level with our friends Monet, Renoir. Russell returned to Sydney, where he suffered a heart attack. Thea Proctor, a cousin of Russell prominent in Sydney art and society circles, Russell was a friend of Auguste Rodin and Emmanuel Frémiet, and his wifes beauty is immortalised in Rodins Minerve sans Casque and Fremiets Joan of Arc. Five of Russells sons served in France during World War I and his portrait of van Gogh, painted about 1886-87, was acquired by the Van Gogh Museum, at Amsterdam in 1938
41.
Brittany
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Brittany is a cultural region in the north-west of France. Brittany has also referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain. It is bordered by the English Channel to the north, the Celtic Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and its land area is 34,023 km². Since reorganisation in 1956, the administrative region of Brittany comprises only four of the five Breton departments. The remaining area of old Brittany, the Loire-Atlantique department around Nantes, at the 2010 census, the population of historic Brittany was estimated to be 4,475,295. Of these, 71% lived in the region of Brittany, while 29% lived in the Loire-Atlantique department, in 2012, the largest metropolitan areas were Nantes, Rennes, and Brest. Brittany is the homeland of the Breton people and is recognised by the Celtic League as one of the six Celtic nations. A nationalist movement seeks greater autonomy within the French Republic, the word Brittany, along with its French, Breton and Gallo equivalents Bretagne, Breizh and Bertaèyn, derive from the Latin Britannia, which means Britons land. This word had been used by the Romans since the 1st century to refer to Great Britain and this word derives from a Greek word, Πρεττανικη or Βρεττανίαι, used by Pytheas, an explorer from Massalia who visited the British Islands around 320 BC. This term probably comes from a Gallic word, aremorica, which close to the sea. Another name, Letauia, was used until the 12th century and it possibly means wide and flat or to expand and it gave the Welsh name for Brittany, Llydaw. Later, authors like Geoffrey of Monmouth used the terms Britannia minor, breton-speaking people may pronounce the word Breizh in two different ways, according to their region of origin. Breton can be divided into two dialects, the KLT and the dialect of Vannes. KLT speakers pronounce it and would write it Breiz, while the Vannetais speakers pronounce it, the official spelling is a compromise between both variants, with a z and an h together. In 1941, efforts to unify the dialects led to the creation of the so-called Breton zh, on its side, Gallo language has never had a widely accepted writing system and several ones coexist. For instance, the name of the region in that language can be written Bertaèyn in ELG script, or Bertègn in MOGA, Brittany has been inhabited by humans since the Lower Paleolithic. This population was scarce and very similar to the other Neanderthals found in the whole of Western Europe and their only original feature was a distinct culture, called Colombanian. One of the oldest hearths in the world has found in Plouhinec
42.
Renaissance
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The Renaissance was a period in European history, from the 14th to the 17th century, regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. It started as a movement in Italy in the Late Medieval period and later spread to the rest of Europe. This new thinking became manifest in art, architecture, politics, science, Early examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, the Renaissance began in Florence, in the 14th century. Other major centres were northern Italian city-states such as Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, the word Renaissance, literally meaning Rebirth in French, first appeared in English in the 1830s. The word also occurs in Jules Michelets 1855 work, Histoire de France, the word Renaissance has also been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century. The Renaissance was a movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism, however, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life. In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were back from Byzantium to Western Europe. Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò Machiavelli, sought to describe life as it really was. Others see more competition between artists and polymaths such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Masaccio for artistic commissions as sparking the creativity of the Renaissance. Yet it remains much debated why the Renaissance began in Italy, accordingly, several theories have been put forward to explain its origins. During the Renaissance, money and art went hand in hand, Artists depended entirely on patrons while the patrons needed money to foster artistic talent. Wealth was brought to Italy in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries by expanding trade into Asia, silver mining in Tyrol increased the flow of money. Luxuries from the Eastern world, brought home during the Crusades, increased the prosperity of Genoa, unlike with Latin texts, which had been preserved and studied in Western Europe since late antiquity, the study of ancient Greek texts was very limited in medieval Western Europe. One of the greatest achievements of Renaissance scholars was to bring this entire class of Greek cultural works back into Western Europe for the first time since late antiquity, Arab logicians had inherited Greek ideas after they had invaded and conquered Egypt and the Levant. Their translations and commentaries on these ideas worked their way through the Arab West into Spain and Sicily and this work of translation from Islamic culture, though largely unplanned and disorganized, constituted one of the greatest transmissions of ideas in history
43.
Vlaminck
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Maurice de Vlaminck was a French painter. Vlaminck was one of the Fauves at the controversial Salon dAutomne exhibition of 1905, Maurice de Vlaminck was born on Rue Pierre Lescot in Paris. His father Edmond Julien was Flemish and taught violin and his mother Joséphine Caroline Grillet came from Lorraine and his father taught him to play the violin. He began painting in his late teens, in 1893, he studied with a painter named Henri Rigalon on the Île de Chatou. In 1894 he married Suzanne Berly, the turning point in his life was a chance meeting on the train to Paris towards the end of his stint in the army. Vlaminck, then 23, met an aspiring artist, André Derain, when Vlaminck completed his army service in 1900, the two rented a studio together, the Maison Levanneur which now houses the Cneai, for a year before Derain left to do his own military service. In 1902 and 1903 he wrote several mildly pornographic novels illustrated by Derain and he painted during the day and earned his livelihood by giving violin lessons and performing with musical bands at night. Vlaminck participated in the controversial 1905 Salon dAutomne exhibition, in 1911, Vlaminck traveled to London and painted by the Thames. In 1913, he painted again with Derain in Marseille and Martigues, in World War I he was stationed in Paris, and began writing poetry. Eventually he settled in Rueil-la-Gadelière, a small village south-west of Paris and he married his second wife, Berthe Combes, with whom he had two daughters. From 1925 he traveled throughout France, but continued to paint primarily along the Seine, resentful that Fauvism had been overtaken by Cubism as an art movement Vlaminck blamed Picasso for dragging French painting into a wretched dead end and state of confusion. During the Second World War Vlaminck visited Germany and on his return published a tirade against Picasso, a gifted story teller, Vlaminck wrote many autobiographies, which were somewhat marred either by vagueness or lack of absolute truthfulness. Vlaminck died in Rueil-la-Gadelière on 11 October 1958, two of Vlamincks groundbreaking paintings, Sur le zinc and Lhomme a la pipe were painted in 1900. For the next few years Vlaminck lived in or near Chatou, painting and exhibiting alongside Derain, Matisse, at this time his exuberant paint application and vibrant use of colour displayed the influence of Vincent van Gogh. According to art critic Souren Melikian, it is the cartoon of a type. In his landscape paintings, his approach was similar and he ignored the details, with the landscape becoming a mere excuse to express mood through violent colour and brushwork. An example is Sous bois, painted in 1904, the following year, he began to experiment with deconstruction, turning the physical world into dabs and streaks of colour that convey a sense of motion. His paintings Le Pont de Chatou, Les Ramasseurs de pommes de terre, La Seine a Chatou, Vlamincks compositions show familiarity with the Impressionists, several of whom had painted in the same area in the 1870s and 1880s
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