I squeezed in a trip to the Met to see “Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism” in the last days of the exhibition. From the Met:
Over an intense nine weeks in the summer of 1905 in the modest fishing village of Collioure on the French Mediterranean, Henri Matisse and Andre Derain embarked on a partnership that led to a wholly new, radical artistic language later known as Fauvism. With this new direction in painting, Matisse and Derain manipulated color in radical ways—nature took on hues responding to the artists’ sensations rather than reality.
This bold new approach painting - the choice in color and brushstrokes- labelled the painters as “les Fauves,” or wild beasts.
Learning the origin of the name, I was reminded of a Shel Silverstein poem, “Wild Strawberries”.
I love this poem. I love the idea of a wild strawberry being a wild animal that you cannot tame. I loved it so much that I used the poem for a SVA Illustration Residency Project back in 2020 where I fully illustrated the poem. For some reason I decided to place this story in a robot world - it seemed to make the most sense that robots would be afraid of fruit. In my illustrations, a little robot child goes to the forest and finds a pack of wild strawberries. He brings one home to keep as a pet, all the other robots are very fearful. Here is a little excerpt.
Looking back at these drawing from four years ago, it’s crazy to see how much my drawing style has evolved. I can tell I am more confident with my ink illustrations. This is also one of the very first attempts at cut out illustrations (of the strawberry bodies). For a depiction of a “wild beast” the illustrations themselves seem very timid - not very Fauve of me.
In the Met Gift store I bought a pack of postcards from the exhibit and used the cards to make some more “Fauves” a la Silverstein - this time Wild Flowers.
And an updated Wild Strawberry cut out from the Met map (which I named Maurice as it rhymes with beast and I kept the MA from “map” in the cut out).
Until next time - I hope you approach all your ventures as a Fauve.