Valminck’s early work appears as vibrant as ever in this comprehensive survey in Paris, writes David Platzer.
David Platzer,
Sunday, 22nd June 2008
The generally low opinion of Vlaminck’s later work, together with his voyage at Goebbels’ invitation from occupied France to Nazi Berlin in 1941, a mere two years after the former Dreyfusard and self-proclaimed anarchist had burnt Hitler’s picture in public, have unjustly obscured not only the innovative aspects of his early work but also its considerable pleasures. In the midst of worries about the climate, economic and environmental, a bit of colour therapy cannot come amiss and who better to give it than the fauve Vlaminck of the early 1900s?
Vlaminck wanted to shock. ‘What I couldn’t do to society because it would have led me to the scaffold I tried to accomplish by painting with colours straight from the tube’, he wrote. ‘In that way, I satisfied my longing to destroy, to disobey and to recreate a world that was sensitive, alive and free.’ There was something of Rimbaud about the early Vlaminck and, like many rock stars of the 1960s, his greatest achievements came at the start of his career.
The National Galleries in Edinburgh and London and the National Trust have formidable fund-raising tasks in hand, but the targets would be even higher were it not for Britain's tax laws – which could be about to get better.
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