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Fauvism (Africa)

  • Writer: The sound of Experiment
    The sound of Experiment
  • Oct 21, 2024
  • 14 min read

Updated: Oct 24, 2024

Introduction

Fauvism was the style of a group of contemporary artists of the early 20th century, whose works emphasized painterly qualities and intense color over the representational or realistic values retained by impressionism. While Fauvism as a style began around 1904 and continued after 1910, the movement itself lasted only a few years, 1905-1908, and had three exhibitions. The leaders of the movement were André Derain, Maurice de Vlamink and Henri Matisse (“Fauvism,” 2023). Fauvism was a pioneering artistic movement that used unconventional, vivid and vibrant colors with bold brushstrokes. Matisse, who was the leader of this group, was also considered the leader of Parisian art (Nadeen, 1912). It was a syncretistic movement where features of nearby artistic currents were used and included, in the spirit of transformation to return to purity of resources, not to be subservient to pictorial heritage, the group wanted to go beyond what had been achieved in painting, so it was groundbreaking (Fauvism _ AcademiaLab, n.d.). Color as a means of personal expression was a primary concern for all Fauvist artists. For Fauvist artists, color gave them a window into the actual expression of subjective perception separated entirely from the original physical form (artincontext, 2021).


History

Fauvism was the first symbolist school of painting to be staged in the 20th century in France. The style of painting is characterized by wild colors and a strong visual impact. Artists are used to painting with striking and intense colors such as red, cyan, green and yellow. They absorb the methods of presenting primitive art in Africa, Polynesia and Central and South America and use simple lines and colors. Fauvism, as a pioneering art in the early 20th century, pioneered carrying the banner of new art. After absorbing the theory of impressionism, it also incorporates East Asian art features and African sculptural art elements, thus forming a unique and brand new painting style. In 1896, Matisse, then an unknown art student, visited artist John Russell, an impressionist painter on the island of Belle Île off the coast of Brittany. Matisse had never before seen an impressionist work directly and was so shocked at the style that he left after ten days, saying: "I couldn't take it anymore." The following year he returned as a student of Russell and abandoned his earthy palette for bright impressionist colors, later stating: "Russell was my teacher and Russell explained color theory to me." Russell was a close friend of Vincent van Gogh and gave Matisse a drawing of Van Gogh. (“Fauvism,” 2023).


As stated in one of art history's most widely repeated narratives, Paris-based avant-garde painters "discovered" African sculpture in the early twentieth century. This marked an important crossroads: it fostered a shift toward abstraction, sparked greater international appreciation of African artistic traditions, and ultimately influenced the practices of modernists around the world. The date presented in leading science places the "discovery" in the fall of 1906, when several artists of the laid-back Fauve cohort – Henri Matisse and André Derain, followed by Maurice de Vlaminck – began studying African wooden masks and statues about six months before Pablo Picasso, who nevertheless became the main innovator. However, there is still some confusion around the specific steps that the Fauves came to reach in African art alongside ocean art, and keeping in mind the concerns of Symbolism and Postempiroticism. Even if Fauves' initial combination of "art nègre" ("black art", as African and oceanic arts were collectively called at the time) was ultimately less influential than that of Picasso, it is worth exploring precisely what it portended for Picasso and many others – or, in other words, for what it reveals about the transitions between late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European avant-garde approaches to non-Westerners material cultures. As early as the 1870s and 1880s, the modern empires of Europe began to channel thousands of African and oceanic objects into Europe, and the notorious tribal discourses used to spread expansionism became known to all citizens and subjects of imperial states. Colonialism, in other words, was by no means accidental in its groundbreaking "discovery." However, colonial logic cannot have been entirely decisive in the creative space. Fauve's painters and other advanced artists defied hierarchical assumptions by recognizing the artistic value of supposedly "wild" masks and figures, at a time when state-backed disciplines such as anthropology had little to say about the sculptural logics of these works. Even as colonialism wreaked havoc on a global scale, it permeated Europe as an ambiguous dense fog, bringing artists randomly face to face with new source material, but with extremely limited peripheral visibility. Whatever artists "knew" about these works came from European misconceptions, as well as – perhaps most importantly – from the objects themselves, whose original cultures and conditions of the colonial era inevitably shaped their official vocabularies.  The European discourse of the end of the century is therefore important for the study of the "discovery" of Faobs, as are the interrelated forms and contexts of African and oceanic objects. A prerequisite for examining Fauve's early interests in art around 1905 of European conceptions of non-Western arts that led to what was known, Europe's avant-gardes had cultivated fascination with a number or "primitive" visual traditions since at least the 1870s: a wide range of Jap and Southeast Asian temple arts,  European medieval and early Renaissance cathedral sculpture, ancient Egyptian iconography, and - especially in the material culture of Oceania, mainly through the Gauguin Paul. African sculpture, howev is considered in these orbits. When diverse cultural goods from Europe Africa with the acceleration of colonization in the 1880s and 1890s, are art galleries or art museums, but rather through curio dealers and ethnographic museums Thus, the relatively few European intellectuals of the nineteenth century who developed interests in "primitive" material culture (or, as it was less often called then,  "Primitive Art") focused not on independent wooden sculpture but almost exclusively on two-dimensional or shallow relief ornament. In perfect contrast to three-dimensional African sculpture, the ornament dominated by lines fits seamlessly into evolutionary models. As its flatness could be correlated with the "primitive" two-dimensional, it could be used as visual data to theorize transhistorical human abilities and development. This approach to "primitive" culture appeared in numerous texts of the nineteenth century that testify to the origin of visual expression. Although the turn of the century saw a gradual increase in interest in African artifacts among a limited number of ethnologists, the sculptural and artistic qualities of these objects were rarely a top concern. On a parallel trajectory, Gauguin—perhaps the most adventurous avant-garde artist to work before the Fauves—turned to Asia and Oceania. Although Gauguin appreciated a wide range of Asian and oceanic visual culture, his two-dimensional translations revealed a preference for embossed features, strong lines, embossed and decorated surfaces, and richly colored sections (Cohen, 2017).

 

In the early 1900s, the aesthetics of traditional African art became a dominant influence among contemporary European artists. Between 1876 and 1912, Africa was annexed and colonized by seven European countries: France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. This geopolitical event, often referred to as the "Struggle for Africa," was triggered, in part, as a result of political competition between increasingly powerful European countries and their attempt to accumulate power. As a result of such conquests, African art became increasingly prominent in Europe, mainly in Paris and France. This was facilitated by the colonial occupation of Africa as well as increased travel to Africa, especially by French elites and campaigners seeking wealth and adventure. Tribal African art was housed in museums such as the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro in Paris and presented as a curiosity that demonstrated the colonization of Africa and was seen by Europeans as "exotic" rather than works of art. However, when I study contemporary artists, particularly Picasso and Matisse, it is obvious that the aesthetics and style of traditional African artworks actually had a profound influence on artists, and African art proved instrumental in artists' visual vocabulary. This suggests that not only did Europe have a strong influence on African culture, in terms of colonization, but Africa also had an influence on European culture by inspiring and influencing great European art that proved vital to artists' visual vocabulary. In the early twentieth century, non-Western form and aesthetics were used by contemporary artists because of their desire to revolutionize and redefine art. The term "primitivism" was associated with negative connotations, that is, it was used to describe the belief that African art was created by primitive people, as it was argued that African and other non-Western nations had "primary" components from which Western art had already evolved. As evidenced by O'Riley, non-Western art and its culture were labeled as "primitive," deriving from "primitif," a nineteenth-century French art history word used in reference to some Italian and Flemish painters of the late medieval and early Renaissance. Eventually the term was applied to African traditional artists." Conversely, however, "primitive" art had a significant influence on the development and evolution of Western art and especially on the search for the contemporary artist, as it played an essential role in radically changing and challenging the direction of Western art. Twentieth-century artists had a desire to revolutionize and redefine Western art. For artists like Picasso and Matisse, African art inspired the exhibition and critique of Western art because it was "stagnant." This questioning, prompted by African art, was crucial to the rejection of sterile art and the development of a vanguard movement. In response to increasing industrialization and urbanization, these artists disrupted complacency in the art world and turned to both the past and other cultures for new inspiration. Artists such as Picasso and Matisse were seduced by primitive art and embraced it as a means of liberation from the restriction of their official art theories (Güner, n.d.). Fauvism spread throughout France from 1898 to 1908, Fauvism used vivid and striking colors applied directly from pipe to canvas in order to create an explosive color preparation. The "leader" of Fauvism, Henri Matisse, came to Fauvès after critically analyzing and studying post-impressionist masters such as Van Gogh, Gauguin and Georges Serrat. The transition from expressionism to this new movement can be demonstrated by comparing a piece of Van Gogh's work with any Fauvist piece. On the right you will see Van Gogh's Starry Night. You can see how bold brushstrokes and simplistic sign-making techniques moved from one style to another. Vlamink, Derain, and Matisse were the first collectors of African sculpture. This early influence can be attributed to simplified images and the inspiration to use basic colors and marking techniques in order to create a strong emotional response without being completely accurate (absence of realism) Derain also used methods such as woodcuts in primitive style as a result of his influence from simplistic Eastern artworks and his collection of African sculpture and masks. Fauvism used bold images and symbolic colors to engage and evoke emotional reactions in a work of art. Fauvism quickly spread to Germany and then immersed itself in the culture and history of modern art as a revolutionary movement in the world of color and expression. At the end of the Fauvist movement, many of the group spread to Cubism, as an example of this I have included a piece by Georges Braque (one moves in cubism) Here you can see how thick brushstrokes and vivid colors have moved with him in his cubist work, the surrealist nature of Fauvism is easily recognizable in cubist works like this. Other artists attributed to this movement include Otto Fries, Raoul Duffy, Georges Braque, Albert Marquet, Kish van Dongen, Georges Rouaud, Henri Manguin, Charles Camoin and Jean Puy ("The Fauves' African Inspirations," 2013). In 1906, Matisse and Derain and Vlamanck began collecting African art first seen at the Ethnographic Museum and incorporated African art forms into their respective artistic creations. Contemporary artists borrow forms from African art in hopes of infusing their works with some raw exoticism and an original authenticity and expressive power. Figures in African art are relatively large, with mask-like heads, bulging torsos, protruding sexual organs, squatting, simplified or elongated limbs. The incomparably strong plasticity of form, expressive sculpture and the power of imagery left an impression on Matisse and his companions. "Blue Nude: Memories of Biskra" was created after Matisse visited Biskra, a lush oasis in the North African desert in Africa. The subject of the image is a reclining female nude, which is close to classic poses of Venus, such as Titian's "Venus of Urbino" and Giorgione's "Sleeping Venus". One arm of the character is bent above the head, and both legs are bent forward. This painting was created by Matisse based on memory and clay models. The chest and hips of the figure show a spherical exaggeration, an extreme dislocation, which makes the figure deformed, as if the torso and thighs of the figure are seen from different angles or combined. The faces of the figures are outlined by bright blue lines, giving them mask-like features. Apparently this work is Matisse influenced by African sculpture, further removing the figure. Inspired by what he called "invented aspects and proportions" in African sculpture, Matisse uses these sources of inspiration in his own subtle and reflective way and incorporates them. in their own creations until it is difficult to stand out. In 1908 Fauvist painters parted ways and went their separate ways, and Matisse continued to explore. He further broke with the traditional method of perspective and used the relationship between colors and arabesques to shape the space of the image, gradually moving towards tranquility, creating a new realm full of the exotic and mysterious. Matisse absorbed abstract decoration into Islamic art, and his exploration of art developed further. He used a large number of abstract motifs in Islamic art in his own creations to achieve the decorative effect of paintings, which is more abstract. For example, in his work "Dialogue" created on the winter solstice of 1908 and 1909, a man standing in pajamas and a woman in a black robe sitting in a chair face each other against a large blue background. The blue background wall is malleable, and the white stripes on the man's blue pajamas appear to be painted on the wall. The woman's blue seat is immersed in a space with strong tones. Men and women face each other in front of the garden, which is decorated with swirling grass, red dots and black arabesques, creating an illusion of space (Liu, 2022).


Art

The Fauves painted directly from nature, as the Impressionists had before them, but the Fauvist works were invested with a strong expressive reaction to the subjects depicted (Fauvism | Definition, Art, & Facts | Britannica, n.d.). Through the Fauvist bent of post-impressionism, they were given the opportunity to perceive the "indigenous", Celtic, Indigenous Canadian, or Aboriginal people, as a strong aesthetic, rather than a primitive and outdated convention. Particular emphasis on artistic iconoclasm and breaking down the traditional bonds of academics was Henri Bergson's influential philosophy. Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, which had seasons in Paris from 1909 to 1914, transcended borders, combining the avant-garde music of Stravinsky or Debussy with the radical choreography of Nijinsky or Fokine and Bakst's post-impressionist costumes and sets, and broke the molds and academic traditions of the nineteenth century. The artistic iconoclasm fascinated Ferguson, who found in his new environment an intellectual stimulus for experimental images. As I have suggested, Fauve's association with "primitivism" is problematic in relation to what I want to claim as inclusive nationalism in Fergusson, Carr and Preston. The admiration of the early twentieth century for so-called "primitive" art erases the representation and history of the indigenous artist. The suggestion that an art can be timeless and depend only on seasonal cycles simultaneously offers the misleading notion of universal values and implies that indigenous artists are children compared to the Western artist who has achieved an individual adulthood. Preston herself repeats this myth of timelessness and a communal identity associated with Aboriginal artists when she speaks of Aboriginal artists who "have never seen or known anything different from themselves" (Topliss 1996: 129). There is also a suggestion that indigenous art, often painted on the body or designed to be worn, is exclusively about the body. Rupert Birkin, in Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence, sees a carved African statue as "Pure civilization in sense, civilization in physical consciousness, truly absolute natural consciousness, foolish, utterly sensual" (Lawrence 1995: 79). The connection with Fauvism is evident. Preston, like Ferguson and Carr, subscribes to an aesthetic that avoids capturing a specific light or fading moment and focuses like her Aboriginal contemporaries on deep structures, totemic objects, and natural textures. Preston's practice has increasingly been to diminish the form of her work: "In my search for forms that will express Australia, I prefer blocking wood to painting, because wood prevents installation and obliges the worker to keep the forms in his compositions serious." Like Carr, she made no distinction between painting and crafts. The First Nation artists they admired were sculptors, basketmakers and potters as well as painters in bark or wood (Smith, 2011).


Influence of African art

A small seated figurine from the Vili people of today's Democratic Republic of Congo played a crucial role in the lives of two of the greatest artists of the 20th century. The carved wooden figure, with its large inverted face, long torso, disproportionately short legs, and tiny legs and arms, was bought in a curio shop in Paris by Henri Matisse in 1906. The French artist, who liked to fill his studio with exotic trinkets and art objects, objects that would subsequently appear in his paintings, paid a small fee for this. However, when he showed it to Pablo Picasso in the home of art patron and pioneering writer Gertrude Stein, its impact on the young Spaniard was profound, as it was, though to arguably lesser extent, on Matisse when the compact but powerful figure had accidentally caught his attention. For Picasso, his appetite was whetted, inevitably followed by visits to the African section of the ethnographic museum at the Palais du Trocadéro. And so premature was the 24-year-old artist that it seemed he had already absorbed all that European art had to offer. Thirsty for something radically different, something almost entirely new to the Western gaze that could give fresh and dynamic impetus to his feverish creative energies, Picasso was fascinated by the dramatic masks, totems, fetishes and carved figures on display, just as he had done with the Iberian stone sculptures of ancient Spain, which he also procured as material. Here, however, it was something completely different, completely more dynamic and visceral. Matisse had painted the colorful, dreamy shepherd Le Bonheur de Vivre in 1906, the year he bought the African figurine and the year the two artists met, and Les Demoiselles was painted in part in response to this. Picasso intended to paint something even more radical and daring, a work that would leave his mark, which, in the last 110 years, has certainly (Güner, n.d.).



Notable Compositions 

The State of the Union - Côte d'Ivoire

 

Mawu ena - Ephraim Kɔku Amu

Ephraim Kɔku Amu (September 13, 1899 – January 2, 1995) was a Ghanaian composer, musicologist and teacher. Amu is particularly known for his use of atenteben, a traditional Ghanaian bamboo flute. He promoted and spread the instrument throughout the country and composed music for it ("Ephraim Amu," 2023).

 

By Akpe/Dzidzɔm – Kenn Kafui

Kenneth Kwaku Avotri Kafui (July 25, 1951 – March 18, 2020) was a Ghanaian composer. He was a lecturer in music theory and composition at the music department of the University of Ghana, Legon (“Kenneth Kafui,” 2023).

 

Speaking Drums: Fear of Amala - Joshua Uzoigwe

Joshua Uzoigwe (1 July 1946 – 15 October 2005) was a Nigerian composer and ethnomusicologist. A member of the Igbo ethnic group, many of his works draw on the traditional music of this people ("Joshua Has Been Born," 2023).

 

Abaafa Luli for wind quintet - Justinian Tamusuza (Decus Ensemble)

Justinian Tamusuza (born 1951) is a contemporary classical composer from Uganda. His music combines elements of traditional Ugandan music and Western music. He is best known for his first string quartet, which was included by the Saturn Quartet on the 1992 CD Pieces of Africa, which contains music by seven African composers. His music has also been performed by Imani Winds (“Justinian Tamusuza,” 2023). Abaafa Luli was written in 1994 for the Richmond Woodwind Symphony Quintet. Translated as "Those Who Died Then," the work draws its inspiration from Joseph Kyaggambiddwa's Martyrs' Oratorio of Uganda (Decus Ensemble, 2020).

 

PLAY TIME - PROF. EMERITUS KWABENA NKETIA

Joseph Hanson Kwabena Nketia FGA GM MSG (June 22, 1921 – March 13, 2019) was a Ghanaian ethnomusicologist and composer. Considered Africa's leading musicologist, during his lifetime, he was called a "living legend" and "easily the most published and best-known authority on African music and aesthetics in the world", with more than 200 publications and 80 musical compositions to his credit ("J.H. Kwabena Nketia," 2023).


Bibliography

artincontext. (2021, June 18). Fauvism—The Origins, Artworks, and Artists of the Fauve Movement. Artincontext.Org. https://artincontext.org/fauvism/

Berklee College of Music (Director). (2019, August 30). Joshua Uzoigwe - Talking Drums: Egwu Amala (Live at Boston Conservatory at Berklee). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iT9o6ZFbvU

Cohen, J. I. (2017). Fauve Masks: Rethinking Modern “Primitivist” Uses of African and Oceanic Art. The Art Bulletin, 99(2), 136–165. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44972832

Decus Ensemble (Director). (2020, June 16). Justinian Tamusuza—Abaafa Luli for wind quintet (Decus Ensemble). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei6pL5IBUno

Fauvism | Definition, Art, & Facts | Britannica. (n.d.). Retrieved February 15, 2023, from https://www.britannica.com/art/Fauvism

Fauvism _ AcademiaLab. (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2023, from https://academia-lab.com/encyclopedia/fauvism/

Güner, F. (n.d.). How a small African figurine changed art. Retrieved February 20, 2023, from https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170818-how-a-small-african-figurine-changed-art

konga. (2022, December 15). Iya Music Sheet “Three Yoruba Songs” by Ayo Bankole. https://kongashare.com/iya-music-sheet-yoruba-ayo-bankole/

The Fauves' African Inspirations. (2013, April 11). Interactivemediatwo. https://interactivemediatwo.wordpress.com/les-fauves-african-inspirations/

Liu, S. (2022). The Influence of Different Arts on Matisse’s Creation. Frontiers in Art Research, 4(6).

Nadeen, P. (1912). Picasso and Africa: How African art influenced Pablo Picasso and his work.

Smith, A. (2011). FAUVISM AND CULTURAL NATIONALISM. Interventions, 4(1), 35–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698010120117370

 
 
 

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