150 Years of Modern Art Primitivism

Though they all drew from the same ancient source, those Parisian artists had their own unique influences. At that time, France had established colonies in West Africa, so local handicrafts were continuously brought back to Paris by French merchants returning from Africa. They returned with an assortment of "exotic" souvenirs, such as colorful textiles, statues and objects from African village rituals. Among them, African carved masks are particularly popular. They can be found in antique shops and ethnographic museums in the city. They will become one of the indispensable genes of modern art.

The artist Maurice de Vlaminck (1876-1958) played an important role in guiding the younger generation on this path. According to his own account, in 1905 he saw three African masks in a café in Argenteuil, a suburb of Paris, and it all started here. It was a sweltering day and the artist was looking for a refreshing glass of wine to reward himself for working outside for hours on end. We don’t know whether the combination of too much sunlight and too much alcohol affected his mental state. Anyway, the fact is that after seeing those masks, he was immediately shocked by their expressive power. He believed that this expressive power It is "instinctive art". After a lot of haggling, he finally bought the mask from the cafe owner. He carefully wrapped them and took them home to show them to friends who shared his enthusiasm.

He's right. Henri Matisse and André Derain (1880-1954) were impressed. The three artists had already admired Van Gogh's vivid use of color and Gauguin's original taste. Now, when they study Flemish African carvings, they understand a freedom missing from Western art.

Within a short time, the conversation the mask had stirred among them prompted the three artists to adopt a new approach to painting, one in which expression of color and emotion took precedence over faithful reproduction. That summer, Matisse and Derain, old friends who had studied together in Paris, left behind the somewhat unpleasant Vlaminck and went to Collioure in the south of France for vacation.

After Matisse and Derain returned to Paris, they showed their works from this period to Vlaminck. Derain, who had spent time with Vlaminck in the army and had witnessed the embarrassing consequences of his friend's explosive temper, was on edge, unsure of how the irascible Vlaminck would react. Vlaminck took one look at the artists' holiday work and walked away. He went straight to the studio, grabbed his easel, canvas and paint, and left.

The overall effect of this painting is that of a visual shock. Vlaminck squeezed the paint directly from the paint tube without mixing it, and used it to paint images with extreme colors to express his extreme feelings. Regarding the works of this period, he once said that he "transformed whatever he felt into an orchestral concerto of pure color... I instinctively transformed what I saw without using any method. This way of conveying truth has a greater More human than artistic. I squeezed out and squandered countless tubes of blue, green and vermilion paint." Indeed. "The Restaurant at Bougival" is a work about real life, but most of us don't know it.

In the fall of the same year, the three artists felt that they had enough good works to represent their shockingly rich and colorful painting styles to participate in the 1905 Autumn Salon. The New Salon was founded in 1903 to compete with the increasingly outdated annual exhibitions of the academic school and was intended to provide an alternative venue for avant-garde artists to display their works. Some members of the exhibition committee saw their psychedelic work and recommended that it not be exhibited publicly. However, as an influential member of the committee, Matisse not only insisted on exhibiting his own paintings and those of his two friends, but also hung them in the same room so that visitors could fully appreciate their use of color. wonderful.

The outside world has received mixed reactions to their efforts. Some people find those gorgeous saturated colors interesting, while most people are indifferent.

The influential art critic Louis Wuxell, with his conservative taste, dismissed the paintings as the work of wild beasts. Once again, critical condemnation not only named a new modern art movement but became a driving force in its development.

Derain, Matisse and Vlaminck did not set out to launch a movement, with no manifesto or political agenda. They just wanted to explore areas of expression that Van Gogh and Gauguin had not yet explored, and try to find the original temperament clearly contained in those African handicrafts. However, Wuxell argued that the method of using color they had developed through experimentation might have been too much for art critics in 1905. Certain color combinations are arranged together to create pieces as strong and memorable as the tribal artefacts that are gradually taking over artists' studios. But the eyes of these critics could not stand it at the time. For an art world that was still compromised by Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, Fauvism's heavy use of colors must have seemed extremely vulgar and glitzy, but in fact Matisse and vulgarity and glitz had nothing to do with it.

The Lady in the Hat takes the prevailing maverick style to new heights. The colors are used so freely and loosely that it looks like scribblings on a well-used palette. This is even more embarrassing considering that Matisse painted his own wife. At the beginning, he followed the rules, and the lady he wrote was beautifully and elegantly dressed. As a fashionable member of the French middle class, her dress was appropriate enough. She wore trendy gloves and held a fan, and most of her beautiful auburn hair was hidden under a smart hat. So far, so good. Mrs. Mattis will be content.

Colorful? I agree. Accurate portrayal? Not relevant. When was the last time you saw a person with a green nose? Would this embarrass Mrs. Mattis? For sure. If Matisse had done this to a landscape it might have caused controversy, but he painted a woman and it caused outrage. To add insult to injury, when asked what exactly his wife was wearing, the artist Matisse is said to have replied: "Black, of course." The painting is simpler than the Impressionists and more colorful than Van Gogh's. Brighter, more gorgeous than Gauguin's most passionate works. In fact, it most closely resembles Cézanne's style. Matisse used block after block of color to construct his images, a practice that shows that he had adopted Cézanne's advice to paint what he really saw rather than what he was taught to see. This reserved man revealed his love for his wife in a lively color feast.

After several days of hesitation, "The Woman in the Hat" was bought by an American expatriate named Leo Stein. He and his sister were the then highly respected Stein siblings, who moved to Paris in 1903. Leo and Gertrude Stein's apartment was located on rue Frenluce in Montparnasse, the fashionable district on the south bank of the Seine, and became a central location for artists, poets, musicians and philosophers who visited or lived in Paris. . The regularly held "Salon" is a place that everyone must go to and take a look at. Leo was an art critic and collector, Gertrude a charismatic intellectual and writer. Together they collected an astonishing amount of modern art and established an influential circle of friends. Not only were they prominent figures in the city's intellectual circles, they also served as agitators in the artist's circle. They encourage those artists to continue their efforts and support their statements by purchasing the artist's work - even if they don't like the work. This was the case with Matisse's "Woman with a Hat," which Leo once described as "the most disgusting blob of paint I have ever seen."

However, he gradually changed his views and accepted Matisse's works and the new painting methods being adopted. He was so impressed that the following year he purchased another of the artist's controversial works, Joy of Life (1905-1906, color plate 11). The purchase demonstrated the Steins' trust in their artist friends and in their own judgment.

This example also illustrates the important role that savvy patrons can play in helping artists establish prominent artistic careers, as was the case with Leonardo da Vinci in the 15th century and Damien Hess much later. This is a special situation. Fortunately, the Steins have an apartment large enough to indulge their passions. "Joy of Life" is a magnificent work of about 2.4 meters by 1.8 meters. They had to squeeze it into the many works they already had by Cézanne, Renoir and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. , which also includes Matisse's "Women with Hats."

"Joy of Life" is a typical Fauvist work. Matisse's starting point was the pastoral scene, a time-honored subject in traditional landscape painting. He created a tableau filled with hedonistic pleasures—making love, music, dancing, sunbathing, picking flowers, and leisure—on a bright yellow beach dotted with orange and green trees. The trees bend gracefully, casting shadows on some cool blue-purple grass where couples kiss and embrace. The calm sea in the distance was the same absurd color as the grass, acting as a horizontal divide between the golden sand and the strange pink sky.

Past studies of this painting have focused on his recent trip to Collioure with Teresa, but in fact, the source of his inspiration is much older. This dates back to the 16th century, when Agostino Carracci's (1557-1602) painting Mutual Love depicts almost the same scene. There is a group of happy dancers near the middle ground of both paintings, and two lounging figures in front of them in the close-up. Both have a pair of lovers sitting in the shadows in the lower right corner. Both paintings are framed by the branches stretching above and focus the eye to the center of the painting, leading to a bright opening. Oh, and also, everyone in both paintings is naked. See, the two are strikingly similar.

It's just that Matisse presented a candy-colored visual landscape in which crudely sketched eccentric characters stood out. This highly personal work bears witness to Matisse entering his heyday, both as a great colorist and as a master of design. It is a visual pleasure to pursue the ease, elegance and smooth lines of his paintings. The symbols he left on the canvas, although simple, established a direct and unforgettable connection with the audience. This ability elevated him from a good painter to a great artist. The harmonious effect created by the contrast of shapes in the painting and the unity of composition are rarely matched in the history of painting. As it happened, one of his few equals was living in Paris at the time.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was a young Spanish artist who became famous earlier. When he was still a teenager in 1900, he quickly distinguished himself when he first went to Paris. By 1906, he had established himself in the city as an avant-garde star and a frequent visitor to the Steins' art-filled apartment. It was there that he saw Matisse's latest work and became extremely jealous. The two men appear to be polite on the surface, but secretly they are fiercely competitive and pay close attention to each other's works. Cézanne passed away not long ago, leaving the title of "the greatest artist today" vacant. They all privately realized that there would be a head-on battle between the two for this title.

Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse could not be more different. Fernand Olivier, Picasso's lover at the time and his inspiration, commented on Matisse that the two artists "seemed like one was the North Pole and the other was the South Pole." Picasso came from the hot coast of southern Spain, Matisse from the cold north of France: both had personalities befitting their respective birthplaces. Although Matisse was more than ten years older, he started his career as an artist later because he worked as a lawyer in his early years. Therefore, he was the same generation as Picasso in terms of career.

In her published memoirs, Fernand Olivier described in detail the physical differences between the two artists. She wrote that because of his "regular features and thick blond beard," Matisse "looked like an art senior." She found him "serious and prudent" with "an astonishing clarity of mind."

Her boyfriend was obviously different. She described him as "short, dark, stocky, worryingly worried, with a pair of gloomy, deep and penetrating eyes, but his eyes were unexpectedly gentle." There was nothing "particularly charming" about him, she wrote happily, unless you recognized that he had a "special radiance, an inner fire that gave him a magnetic attraction."

The friendship that the two artists developed with the Stein brothers and sisters led to one of the greatest advances in the history of modern art. One day in the late autumn of 1906, Picasso stopped by Stein's house for a drink. When he arrived he found Mattis already there. Picasso said hello to Matisse and sat down opposite. As he leaned forward to speak to his fellow artist, he noticed that the Fauvist painter was secretly clutching something at the hem of his dress. Picasso, who was sharp-eyed and alert, suddenly became suspicious.

"Henry, what are you holding?" Picasso asked.

"Um, ah, um, no... nothing, really." Mattis replied, unconvincingly.

"Really?" Picasso asked.

"Well," the former lawyer said, nervously fiddling with his glasses, "it's just a silly carving."

Picasso stretched out his arms like an elementary school teacher confiscating a toy from a child. Take action. Matisse hesitated and gave it to him.

"Where did you find it?" muttered the stunned Picasso.

Seeing the effect his things had on the Spaniard, Matisse tried to say lightly:

"Oh, I found it by chance in an antique shop on the way here. , just for fun."

Picasso looked across the room. He knew more than just his opponent. Matisse never did anything “for fun.” Picasso was a fun-loving person, but Matisse was not.

A few minutes passed while Picasso studied the wooden "negro head" that Matisse handed him. Eventually, he gave it back.

"It reminds one of Egyptian art, doesn't it?" The curious Matisse proposed his idea.

Picasso stood up and walked to the window without saying a word.

"Lines and shapes," Matisse continued, "are similar to those of the art of the Pharaohs, aren't they?"

Picasso smiled slightly, made an excuse and left.

He didn't mean to be rude to Mattis, he was just speechless - completely shocked by what he saw. In his opinion, this African carving is an idol, a magical object used to ward off unknown ghosts, possessing strange dark powers that are unknowable and uncontrollable. The Spaniard was seduced by it and fell into a trance. He didn't feel cold or scared, instead his whole body felt warm and full of energy. Picasso thought, this should be the feeling of art. After some persuasion from Delan, he knew what to do next.

He went to the Museum of Ethnography in Paris to see the collection of African masks. When he arrived at the exhibition grounds, he was disgusted by the smell and the neglect of the exhibits. But again he felt the power of those objects. "I was alone," he said. "I wanted to run away, but I didn't. I stayed, kept on. I knew something important: something was going to happen to me." He was scared, believed These artifacts are keeping mysterious and dangerous ghosts at bay. "I looked at these icons and realized that I myself was against everything. I also believed that everything was unknown and hostile." Picasso later said.

The history of art is full of so-called “Big Bang” moments that are said to have dramatically changed the course of painting and sculpture forever. In this case, that's true. Picasso's encounter with these masks caused one of the most profound changes in history. For a few hours, the artist reflected on a work he had been painting for some time. Much later, he recalled that seeing the masks made him "understand why I was a painter."

“I was alone,” he said, “in that terrible museum, with its masks, Indian dolls, and dusty mannequins. It must have been then that Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was with me. The seeds were planted in my heart, not because of the shapes, but because this was my first exorcism oil painting - yes, absolutely!"

It is "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon". (1907, color plate 13) led to the emergence of Cubism, which in turn led to Futurism, abstract art, etc. To this day, many artists of the time consider it to be the most profound painting ever created. It is strange to think that this painting (which we will discuss in detail in the next chapter on Cubism) might never have appeared had Picasso not dropped by the Steins' apartment that autumn day in 1906. Weird.

While receiving hospitality and sponsorship from the Steins, Picasso also enjoyed entertaining others in his Montmartre studio. It is a simple space located in an apartment building called "Le Bateau-Lavoir". The building is full of artist studios. The name of the building means "Laundry Boat" because it emits light in strong winds. A creaking sound like a wooden boat. Picasso held parties there for friends or hosted guests to support and advance the careers of fellow artists. Sometimes, he also held feasts for people he particularly liked...

"Damn it!" muttered a frustrated Picasso.

It was all his own fault, he knew that, and he had no reason to blame anyone. How could he be so stupid? It’s not hard to remember it—the day of the dinner party. What’s more, you are the host! The diminutive Spaniard, whose reputation was rising, looked around the crumbling studio for inspiration—a talent he usually found at his fingertips. But today, on a dark night in November, when everyone was looking forward to it and Picasso was feeling stressed, it was nowhere to be seen.

In two hours, Paris's avant-garde elite will be climbing the steep hills of Montmartre, north of Paris, in anticipation of a fancy dinner and a night of revelry. The poet Guillaume Apollinaire, the writer Gertrude Stein and the artist Georges Braque (1882-1963) were just a few of the impressive guest list. Everyone is looking forward to it becoming an unforgettable night.

Picasso was a striking artist and connoisseur who was fond of conjuring haute cuisine and fine wines, then drinking them in absinthe and reveling in them. But while the guests were getting ready at home, Picasso's plans fell into disarray. He told the man who served the food the wrong date, and even though the unfortunate artist begged for several minutes, the man refused to help him out of his predicament. Picasso ordered food that would last him two days, but he ordered it two days late. Damn it.

But so what? There was nothing that Picasso and his young friends loved more than childish clumsiness and childlike mischief. Even if what happened tonight was a disaster, it would surely be a source of entertainment later on. They will recall the hilarious evening when Picasso's sixty-four-year-old guest, the artist Henri Rousseau (1844-1910), arrived with high expectations that a red carpet would lead him to a show in his name. A grand party was held, only to find that the banquet was cancelled, and all the guests disappeared and ran to the Moulin Rouge on the roadside. Thankfully, that didn't happen. However, the hopelessness of the younger generation is actually a fitting compliment for a self-taught artist whom most art world pundits considered hopeless.

Henri Rousseau was a simple man, with little education and always looking innocent and innocent. The group in Montmartre gave him the nickname "Le Douanier", which means "the customsman", because his job was to collect taxes. Like most nicknames, it has an endearing and mocking tone. The idea that Rousseau was an artist is slightly amusing. Untrained and unconnected with the art world, he began painting as a Sunday afternoon hobby when he was forty. What's more terrible is that he is really not the type of artist.

Artists either have bohemian tendencies or are academically minded individuals who want to solve serious artistic problems, or both. Rousseau was neither. He is just an ordinary person: middle-aged, with no obvious characteristics, living a boring life quietly among all living beings.

An eccentric forty-something tax collector doesn’t become a modern art superstar, or not often. But the result we see is that Rousseau was the Susan Boyle of his time. Remember how people made a joke out of that unseen, grizzled Scottish singer? Is she worthy? Then she started singing. As a result, those who ridiculed and sarcastically discovered that she was very talented. Not only did she have a beautiful voice, but she also had the ability to sing a song with all her heart. This ability came from her simplicity. There may not have been The X Factor in Rousseau's day, but there was another thing like it. The newly established Salon des Indépendants is a non-jury exhibition where all participants are welcome to exhibit their work. In 1886, Rousseau decided to participate in an exhibition. By this time he was already in his forties and optimistically hoped that this would be the beginning of a career as a true artist.

But it didn’t go well. Rousseau became the joke of the entire exhibition. Critics and audiences snickered and ridiculed his work, dumbfounded that such a fool could think his paintings worthy of public display. His Carnival Night was appalled. The theme of the painting is acceptable: on a winter night, a young couple in carnival costumes pass by a cultivated field on their way home, and a full moon hangs over the leafless forest, illuminating everything. However, the public who grew up with academic paintings could not accept Rousseau's naive way of representing this scene. They were still trying to digest the new ideas brought by the Impressionists, and could not cope with the various attempts of the customs collector who were too amateurish. They saw the couple's feet dangling a few inches above the ground, that Rousseau had failed to create a believable sense of perspective, and that the overall composition was hopelessly dull and awkward. People commented, "My five-year-old could do that," and this painting is an early example of that statement.

However, Rousseau's lack of skill and knowledge resulted in a very distinctive style: simple patterns like the ones you see in children's picture books, but at the same time Japanese. The clarity of two-dimensional images in woodblock prints. This is a combination of astonishing power that gives his paintings impact and uniqueness. A man no less important than the Impressionist master Camille Pissarro once praised "Carnival Night" for its "precision of meaning and richness of tone."

Rousseau's simplicity had the advantage that he was less sensitive to criticism. From the moment he began his career for the rest of his life, he believed that he would achieve something great, and nothing could dissuade him. Thus, like an architect faced with an ugly but immovable obstacle, he turned the conundrum - his naivety - into the main feature of his work.

By 1905, he had retired from his job as a tax collector and devoted himself entirely to becoming a respected artist. He participated in the prestigious Autumn Salon with his work "Hungry Lion Pounces on Antelope" (1905, color picture 12). In terms of technique, this painting is still quite poor. The antelope in the title looks more like a donkey, the originally ferocious lion is still evil, but looks like a puppet, and various creatures living in the surrounding jungle are watching this meaningless action, they are like It seems like it was lifted directly from "Visual Discovery". This is one of several of his jungle-themed paintings, all of which follow a pattern: a carnivore in the center is knocking its unfortunate victim to the ground, surrounded by lush jungle filled with exotic leaves, Grass, flowers. The sky is always blue. The sun - if it is visible at all - is either rising or setting, but never casts light or shadow. It is reasonable to say that none of the paintings in this series is close to reality or convincing.

The likelihood that Rousseau visited places more exotic than the Paris Zoo is as remote as those he claimed to have visited.

The customs collector often indulged in fantasy: he was a dreamer, a bully, and was happy to stress that the paintings were inspired by the time he spent in Mexico, fighting with the troops of Napoleon III against the Emperor Maximilian. There is no evidence that he ever took part in the battle—or even left France for it. This made him the object of ridicule by many. But to others, including Picasso, he was something of a hero. Not in terms of his painting ability, everyone knows that in terms of technique Rousseau is not comparable to Leonardo da Vinci, Velazquez or Rembrandt. But there was something in his stylized images that captivated the Spaniard and the circle around him.

That is the childish innocence revealed in Rousseau's paintings. Fascinated by the ancient and mystical, Picasso felt that the customs collector's art had transcended depictions of the natural world and entered the realm of the supernatural. The young artist suspected that Rousseau had a direct passage to the underworld. His innocence allowed him to get to the core of humanity that lies deep in all of us: a place of revelation that education eludes most artists. This intuition was reinforced when Picasso came across Portrait of a Woman (1895), the painting by Rousseau that became the precursor to the aforementioned dinner.

He did not discover the painting at a high-end art dealer, nor at a salon, but by chance in a junk shop on the Rue des Martyrs in Montmartre. It was being sold at a bargain price of five francs by the owner of this shop, a lowly art dealer. Such a price seemed not to come from a work of art, but a second-hand oil painting sold to a poor painter. cloth. Picasso bought it in the store and it stayed with him for the rest of his life. He later recalled that it "engaged me with an obsessive power... it is one of the truest portraits of the French psyche."

If Rousseau created "Portrait of a Woman" not in 1895 but in 1925, it would be considered a surrealist work because its dream-like atmosphere makes the otherwise ordinary Everything seems strange. This is a full-length portrait of a serious middle-aged woman, her gaze coldly passing over the viewer's shoulders. She wore a long black dress with a light blue lace collar and matching belt. Rousseau had her standing on the balcony of what appeared to be a middle-class Parisian apartment, the richly colored curtains pulled aside to reveal a window box filled with plants. Behind her, in the distance, are the city fortifications of Paris, perhaps imitating the background of Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" (Rousseau was allowed to enter the Louvre where the "Mona Lisa" is stored to trace). The woman in Rousseau's painting holds a cut pansy in her right hand, and her left hand rests on an upside-down branch, supporting her like a cane. In the medium shot, a bird is flying in the sky (it looks like it is going to hit her temple, but this is actually Rousseau's lack of perspective).

For Rousseau's Night, Picasso placed the painting in a prominent position in his apartment, even at the cost of removing his growing collection of African tribal artefacts. It was a coup, but he still didn't have any food to entertain the approaching hordes of avant-garde artists. Upon Gertrude Stein's arrival, he immediately took her on a "last-minute food shopping spree" in Montmartre. Meanwhile, Fernand Olivier made a rice dish using everything she could find in the kitchen, plus a plate of cold meat. As she frantically chopped and stirred, Picasso's fellow artist Juan Gris (1887–1927) hurriedly packed up his studio next door to accommodate his guests' hats and coats.

The dinner had all the makings of a failure, but when Picasso got involved, the results were often unexpected and it became a legendary night. When Apollinaire and a satisfied and dazed Rousseau arrived by taxi, about thirty guests were already seated, ready to welcome the distinguished guests. Apollinaire knocked on the door of the studio with his usual exaggerated and dramatic gesture, slowly pushed it open, and introduced the confused Rousseau elegantly.

The most fashionable group of people in Paris cheered and applauded him and led him under the decaying rafters of the studio. The short, gray-haired painter was so excited that he could not move forward. With pride and embarrassment, this painter of jungle scenery and suburban scenery walked to the "throne" prepared for him by Picasso and sat down. Then he took off his artist-style beret and put the violin beside him. on the ground, smiling brighter than ever.

To some extent, Rousseau completely failed to realize that the whole incident was a little joke played on him. Later that night, his already weak self-awareness dulled by the influence of alcohol, the customs collector is said to have approached Picasso and said that they were the greatest painters of our time, "You are ancient Egyptian style, and I am modern”!

No matter how Picasso reacted to this evaluation, he did not stop collecting Rousseau's works. He was inspired and delighted by those works. Picasso is said to have cautiously said that it took him four years to learn to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to learn to paint like a child. From this perspective, Rousseau was his teacher.