「Look at the Picture and Talk about the Painting」There Are No Beasts in Fauvism!

There are no beasts in Fauvism, just as there is no wife in wife cake; when it comes to Fauvism, Henri Matisse is inevitably mentioned.

Why were the paintings, which are soft, elegant, bright and relaxed in style, given such a rough name as “Beast”? This term originated from the Paris Autumn Salon of 1905. The avant-garde painters represented by Matisse broke away from the natural colors and perspective rules of traditional painting, creating with intense high-saturation primary colors and unrestrained direct brushstrokes, completely subverting the aesthetic standards of the academic school at that time. A critic joked that Donatello was surrounded by “beasts”, and thus the name “Fauvism” spread.

Fauvism, centered on Matisse, truly achieved the liberation of color in modern art. Artists used unmixed pure colors and spontaneous brushwork to directly express subjective emotions, abandoning three-dimensional perspective, a planar composition was adopted. While both Fauvism and Expressionism employed highly saturated, pure colors and created visual tension through color contrast, they differed significantly: whereas Expressionism distorted forms to convey inner turmoil, anxiety, and psychological struggle, Fauvism maintained a consistently free and serene emotional tone, creating decorative beauty through harmonious rhythms of color blocks.

Thus, the “wild” in Fauvism is essentially a bold rebellion against visual conventions. As Matisse himself said, he used art to create an ideal “easy armchair” for the world.

The tea for today is all gone. Next time, I’ll brew a fresh pot and enjoy art with you again.