Friday, March 24, 2017

Hermitage Paintings made in France, 1900-1910

Henri Matisse
Luxembourg Gardens
ca. 1901
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Paul Gauguin
Sunflowers
1901
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

"Unlike white, yellow is the less synthetic colour, possessing a strong optic pulsation and tending toward real space, to an unmooring of itself from the material structure and to expanding itself. It tends toward the sign, in a more profound sense, and to the optical signal (or indicator) in a superficial sense. It must be noted that the meaning of the indicator is of no interest to us here, for coloured structures function organically within a fusion of elements, constituting an organism that is separate from the physical world, from the surrounding space-world. So its meaning would indicate a return to the real world and, therefore, a trivial experience, consisting merely in the signage and virtualization of real space. Here, the meaning of the signal is one of direction; it is internal to the structure and in relation to its elements, the sign being its profound, non-optical, temporal expression. Unlike white, yellow also resembles a more physical light, closer to terrestrial light. What is important here is the time-light sense of colour; otherwise it would still be another representation of light."

August Renoir
Landscape - Le Cannet
1902
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Charles Guérin
Young woman reading
ca. 1906
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Maurice Denis
Cupid carrying Psyche to heaven
1908
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Henri Matisse
Nympyh and Satyr
1908
canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Henri Matisse
Dance
1908-09
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

"Luminous red differs from darker blood red and possesses special characteristics within this experience. It is neither light red nor vibrant sanguine red, but a more purified luminous red that does not quite become orange because of dark colours, but as a pigment it is open to light and warmth. It possesses a cavernous, grave sense, such as might be produced by a dense light."

Henri Rousseau
In a tropical forest - struggle between tiger and bull
ca. 1908-09
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Maurice de Vlaminck
Town
ca. 1908-09
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Maurice de Vlaminck
Town on lake shore
ca. 1909
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

"The other derived and primary colours  blue, green, violet, purple and gray  may become more intense as they approach light, but they are colours of an opaque nature, closed to light, except for gray, which is characterized by its neutrality in relation to light. I shall not deal with these colours now, for they possess more complex relationships that have not yet been explored here. All we have seen thus far is the relationship of colour to colour, of the same quality, in the sense of light. The colour-light of various qualities has not also been explored here, for such an investigation will depend upon a gradual development of colour and structure."

Maurice Denis
Psyche's family bids farewell on the mountaintop
1909
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Jean Puy
Portrait of the artist's wife
1909
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Henri Rousseau
View of fortifications
1909
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Maurice Utrillo
Rue Custine, Montmartre
1909-10
oil on cardboard
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

"In representational painting, the meaning of space was contemplative, and that of time mechanical. Space was what was represented upon the canvas, fictitious space, and the canvas functioned as a window, a field for the representation of real space. Time, then, was simply mechanical: the time from one figure to another or from that figure's relationship to perspectival space; finally, it was the time of figures in a three-dimensional space which became two-dimensional on the canvas."

 quoted passage are from Body of Colour by Hélio Oiticica, first published in Brazil in 1960, translated by Stephen A. Berg and issued in English by Tate Publishing in 2007