ABSTRACT
For those who witnessed the 1890 movement, there are no surprises left: the most absurd, the most incomprehensible efforts of the artists known as the 'Fauves' can do no more than re-awaken our memories of the extravagances of our own generation. Everything has been said on this subject: the absence of all rules, the ineptitude of academic teaching, the triumph of naturalism and the influence of Japanese art had caused the joyous birth of an art which appeared to be free from all constraint. The new motifs of sunlight, artificial lighting and the whole picturesqueness of modern life had been admitted to the domain of art. Art is no longer just a visual sensation that we set down, a photograph, however refined it may be, of nature. No, art is a creation of our imagination of which nature is only the occasion.
