First,
impressions of the river-
beach-city-tree world,
soft on the eyes,
soft in the eyes,
Monet’s pleasing pastel haze.
Then,
wild animal ecstasy,
Le Bonheur de Vivre**
recommended by Henri Matisse,
prismatic king of the beasts.
Luxury Peace Calm***
became chromatic scandal,
painting with a megaphone,
a shout shoved against whispers,
pigment pushed against pigment,
vivacious color the drug of choice,
red charged hard out of roses,
vermillion rumbled with retinas,
juxtajab – magenta punched puce,
purple flowed from and through irises,
lavender danced up the optic nerve,
yellow spawned green children with blue,
outrage of umber, a blast of orange.
An odalisque from Tangiers
reveled on her crimson couch
swaddled in silks and satins,
her breasts feasting on sunlight.
Black Icarus swims among stars.
There is green where green shouldn’t be,
yet is, startled down the composed face
of Madame Matisse.
A color shaken vivid disarrangement
of the world invades the eying mind.
Things are often, actually seldom,
what they seem.
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*Fauve = French for ‘wild animal.’
In 1905 the art critic Louis Vauxcelles, while visiting a gallery of avant-garde painters in Paris,
came across a statue suggestive of 15th century Italian art and exclaimed; “Donatello among the
wild animals!” The Fauves became the identifying name for these color crazed painters. Chief
among them was Henri Matisse, along with Andre Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Raul Dufy.
The Fauves were preceded by the Impressionists including Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Camille
Pissarro, and Eduard Manet, among others.
**The Joy of Life, painted by Matisse, 1906
***Luxury, Peace, and Calm, a 1904 painting by Matisse, the title taken from a line from a
poem by Charles Baudelaire.