Fishing Boats on the Collioure, 1905, Andre Derain Derain's work bears the hallmarks of Matisse, while Vlaminck is more akin to van Gogh. |
"Art Now and Then" does not mean art occasionally. It means art NOW as opposed to art THEN. It means art in 2020 as compared to art many years ago...sometimes many, many, MANY years ago. It is an attempt to make that art relevant now, letting artists back then speak to us now in the hope that we may better understand them, and in so doing, better understand ourselves and the art produced today.
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Saturday, August 13, 2011
Andre Derain
Every style of painting has artists from the past whom its devotees fervently admire. Realists worship Corot and Courbet; Impressionists, Monet and Renoir; Expressionists van Gogh and Gauguin; Abstractionists, Picasso and Kandinsky; Surrealists, Dali and Miro, and so on and so on. There are those like myself who worship lines and order while others detest both in favor of free-flowing emotional expression, regardless of style. If this latter group is in search of a painting icon from the past to whom they might pay homage, let me suggest one--Andre Derain (pronounced der-RAN). This contemporary of Picasso, heir to van Gogh, protege of Matisse, and colleague of Vlaminck could easily be considered one of the most expressive of the Expressionists and among the least bound by traditional art styles or painting techniques. Right-brained painting mavericks would adore him.
Derain was born in Chatou, France, in 1880, his father a pastry shop owner who had dreams of his becoming an engineer. While still a teenager however, young Andre showed such skill and determination in becoming a painter, his father had little choice but to send him to the Academie Carriere in Paris (little choice because it was all he could afford). There he met Matisse. There he picked up Fauve (beastly) color. While still a student under Matisse, he was involved in a minor railway accident where he met fellow victim, Maurice Vlaminck, who was also a rebellious young color-demented painter. Discovering they had much in common, the two young pups decided to spend the summer of 1900 near Derain's birthplace where they rented a dilapidated old house situated on an island in the Seine. There, while worrying daily that the structure might suddenly tumble into the river, they set up shop to each other how to paint.
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