Word: derains
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...color plates in this superb collection are by far the best reproductions offered this year, and it is fitting that they should be, since shocking, vibrant use of color was what earned the school of Les Fauves (The Wild Beasts) its name. The painters are Matisse, Rouault, Derain, Braque, Dufy...
...time he was 40. the late André Derain was one of the most successful painters in Paris; no one listing the four or five top names in the French art world in 1920 would have dared to omit his. But by the end of World War II, Derain's name usually came up only to be dismissed with a shrug. One of the original "wild beasts." he has been difficult to appraise; but at its best, his work has also been almost impossible not to like...
...proof of this could be seen last week at a tastefully selected Derain show in the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston. The show was the first big thing for James Johnson Sweeney since he was appointed director last January after angrily resigning from Manhattan's Guggenheim Museum. Sweeney stuck to Derain's pre-World War I output, but even with the span thus limited, one fact about Derain comes through. Only seemingly did Derain belong with his contemporaries; essentially he was a traditionalist. In the words of Jean Cassou. curator of the Museum of Modern...
...Derain's father, a baker, was prosperous enough to want his son to have the most respectable of careers, preferably engineering. But André was already painting, and his best friend was the young ruffian Maurice Vlaminck, whom Papa Derain would not let into the house. Then one day an older painter by the name of Henri Matisse saw some of André's work, spoke so glowingly of his talents and prospects that Derain's father finally relented. Maurice and Andre rented a shack on an island in the Seine, and their careers finally began...
...Houston show, Derain is at one moment a pointillist, painting with dots (see color), at other moments he is under the spell of Van Gogh or Cézanne. But in his whole work, the old masters are also present, for unlike Vlaminck, Derain spent hours copying in the Louvre. "I do not innovate," he explained. "I transmit." While his greatest contemporaries wanted to shed the past, Derain wanted to bring the Western tradition up to date. While Leonardo or an Ingres would paint a ball as round or oval, he said, Picasso or Leger would "turn it into...