Fauvism

"How do you see this tree? Is it really green? Use green, then, the most beautiful green on your palette. And that shadow, rather blue? Dont be afraid to paint it as blue as possible."

"What I am after, above all, is expression. Sometimes it has been conceded that I have a certain technical ability but that, my ambition being limited, I am unable to proceed beyond a purely visual satisfaction such as can be procured from the mere sight of a picture. But the purpose of a painter must not be conceived as separate from his pictorial means, and these pictorial means must be the more complete (I do not mean complicated) the deeper is his thought. I am unable to distinguish between the feeling I have for life and my way of expressing it."

"I try to condense the meaning of this body [of a woman] by drawing its essential lines. The charm will then become less apparent at first glance, but in the long run it will begin emanate from the new image. This image at the same time will be enriched by a wider meaning, a more comprehensively human one, while the charm, being less apparent, will not be its only characteristic. It will be merely one element in the general conception of the figure."

"A work of art must carry in itself its complete significance and impose it upon the beholder even before he can identify the subject-matter. When I see the Giotto frescoes at Padua I do not trouble to recognize which scene of the life of Christ I have before me, but I perceive instantly the sentiment which radiates from it and which is instinct in the composition in every line and color."

"Mets to jupe en cretonne Et ton bonnet, mignonne! Nous allons fire un brin De lart contemporain Et du Salon dAutomne (Put on your cotton skirt And your bonnet, my pet! Were going to have a good laugh At modern art and the Salon dAutomne."

"A nude woman, ugly, spread out on opaque blue grass under some palm trees. [over thirty years later, Henri Matisse defended his early painting of 1907 as follows: If I met such a woman in the street, I should run away in terror. Above all I do not create a woman, I make a picture.]"

"This young painter [ Henri Matisse ].. ..assumes, whether or not he wishes to, the position of head of the school. [which Vauxcelles called for the first time in history Fauvism]"

"..the audacities and extravagances.. ..of some passionate young artists.. ..who honor Paul Cézanne as one of their masters, or rather one of their initiators, on a par with Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Claude Monet.. ..Matisses friends Manguin, Camoin, ... Puy, impressed by his vigor, sometimes give a brutal turn to their seniors direct energy."

"When one enters the gallery devoted to their work [of the Fauve artists], at the sight of those landscapes, these figure studies, these simple designs, all of them violent in colour, one prepares to examine their intentions, to learn their theories; and one feels completely in the realm of abstraction.. ..here one finds, above all in the work of Matisse.. ..the act of pure painting.. .Everything which comes from our instinct and from nature, finally all the factors of representation and of feeling are excluded from the work of art.."

"I stayed a long time in this room [The room with paintings of Matisse, at the Salon dAutumne, 1905)]. I heard the people who were walking by, and I heard them cry out in front of the paintings by Matisse. "It is madness!" I had the pleasure of replying: "But no, sir, on the contrary. It is the product of theories."

"It is obvious that Matisse and some of his disciples, like Friesz [ Othon Friesz ], are endowed with a remarkable sensibility.. ..they restore to us the sunlight.. ..Their aesthetic permits them to attempt to blind us; they do not recoil from using the extremes of colour.. ..also the extreme simplicity of their compositions, indicates that nothing remains of the theories of Neo-Impressionism."

"Fauve painting is not everything, but it is the foundation of everything."