Not one girl from the cafe "Dead Rat" captured Vlaminck, and not only Vlaminck.
Portrayed them and a great lover of the half light worlds (and as models, and in general) Toulouse-Lautrec. Vlaminck and Derain invited a model to their studio and wrote it at the same time (
Derain version). Maurice Vlaminck created a whole series of portraits of dancers from the “Dead Rat”.
Lying in a markedly erotic pose, with a defiant make-up on her face, a naked girl from a night cafe seemed to pose not only for Vlaminka and Derain, but also
van dongenand
Kirchner. But with
Odaliska Matisseit certainly does not compare. There is no exquisite bliss and oriental lust in it, it is a different archetype - demonstratively, and not naturally sensual, depraved, corrupt woman of “half light”. She is not the blissful delight of Matisse's world of “luxury, peace and pleasure,” but the embodiment of vice and forbidden voluptuousness.
The portrait palette is bright, shrill, and contrasting. Defiantly painted eyes, raven-wing hair, scarlet lips and scarlet nipples. The red, violent color of passion is generally the leitmotif of the portrait, it is repeated many times - on the body, on the sofa, red spots on the yellow background color. The background is written in strokes of yellow, turquoise, light green. On the steep bend of the naked hips of the girl, a blue blanket is thrown over. The artist himself said about this series “the characters there are not important at all; but black eyes and red lips are important. "
Vlaminck sought to express instinct, and not to follow any method. He was a self-taught artist and was extremely proud of it, believing his talent to be original and not spoiled by the contemplation of museum exhibits. According to him, it is this purity of perception, not spoiled by education and visiting museum halls, that allowed him to show in the pictures “truth - not artistic, but human”. Such a desire fits into the principles of expressionism, it’s not for nothing that Vlaminck is considered to be the closest to expressionism fauvist.
Author: Alain Esaulova