Light and colour

The hottest day of the year (so far) and also, for me, one of the busiest.  I was up early to complete the planting of my current stock of bedding plants in pots, strategically placed below the 12 hanging baskets to catch the water.  Next, a 7 mile walk in the sunshine.  Then a video conference for several hours.  And only then, some time to study some paintings and listen to some music.

The first listen for the day was Donald Fagen's 2012 album Sunken Condos, on which my favourite song was Slinky Thing.

Given the eccentricities of art in the late 20th and early 21st century, it is hard to appreciate how shocking some new art movements were in their day. Fauvism was developed in the early 20th century, by a group of artists, including Henri Matisse, Maurice de Vlaminck and André Derain. They experimented with bold, non-naturalistic colour and applied paint in short, energetic strokes. To our eyes, their technique looks far from wild but rather interesting, colourful and attractive.

Derain abandoned his engineering studies and met Matisse and de Vlaminck. In 1905, he went with Matisse to the small fishing village of Collioure, just north of the French/Spanish on the Mediterranean coast. He painted several pictures of the village and its harbour. His Collioure, on a canvas primed with white paint, used blocks of vivid colour to show how bright sunlight affected the landscape. The work was exhibited with other works, dubbed the Cage au Fauves (Cage of Wild Beasts) because of their daring use of bright colour.