and it was the seeming wildness of paintings like this by andre derain that made them, for contemporariesso much more modern than their sources. by their sources, i mean gauguin and even van gogh. and yet, when one looks at a derain like this, i think it's very obvious that the discord, the tension that came with the sexual subject matter of kirchner in germany and of schiele in austria just isn't there. the fauves used their wild way with color-- it was actually much less wild than it seems. they knew exactly how to use a blue against a green, an orange or red against a yellow-- they used their way with color to ravish the eye. they produced versions not only of a golden age, bu also what one might call a tourist's world, a world where the sun is always out. in the early years of this century, modernism came in a tremendous variety of forms in many different places. but one city was viewed as the center of modernism and acted as a magnet to a motley army of artists who came from everywhere-- russians, rumanians, germans, british, americans-- all drawn by what became a sort of bohemian fi

andre derain was a leading fauve at this time, and this is his bathers of 1907.or them, as for the brucke artists, an exciting stimulus was provided by paul gauguin's exotic, highly colored transformations of native life in france's south sea colonies. best known among the fauve was henri matisse. this is matisse's luxe, calme, et volupte. he began in 1904 to use a repertoire of colored patches and marks brilliantly synthesized from gauguin, van gogh, and signac, using them as the sumptuous pictorial vehicle for his own range of preindustrial idylls. his luxe, calme, et volupte is a spectacular example. fauve means wild beast. it was a critic's tag. and it was the seeming wildness their wild way with color-- it was actually much less wild than it seems. they knew exactly how to use a blue against a green, an orange or red against a yellow-- they used their way with color to ravish the eye. they produced versions not only of a golden age, bu also what one might call a tourist's world, a world where the sun is always out. in the early years of this century, moderni