I
nspired by one of van Dongen’s most iconic and captivating muses,
La Célèbre Fatima et sa troupe is a brilliant encapsulation of the artist’s defining motifs. Employing the bold Fauvist color for which he became known, van Dongen renders his subjects with expressive, almost palpable delight.
Around 1905, van Dongen met Anita, the main subject of the present work. His studio at the Bateau-Lavoir situated the artist at the heart of the nightlife in Montmartre and nearby Pigalle where he frequented the lively cabarets and dances of the bohemian élan and encountered the working girls of the neighborhood. Van Dongen met “Anita la Bohémienne” on such a night in Pigalle; captivated by her belly dancing and sultry features, he soon befriended her and persuaded the dancer to become his model. Over the ensuing years, Anita would inspire his most sensual nudes and energetic performing scenes like La Célèbre Fatima et sa troupe.
Discussing van Dongen's work of this ensuing period, Marcel Giry wrote: “Numerous models came to his studio in rue Lamarck including Anita la Bohémienne, who was a dancer at a dive in Pigalle…We are struck by the extraordinary chromatic subtlety which goes far beyond Van Dongen's earlier accomplishments... The determination to emphasise the plastic values of the modeling is the second characteristic of these works which extol Anita's sensual beauty... ‘I exteriorize my desires’ [Van Dongen] said, ‘by expressing them in pictures. I love anything that glitters, precious stones that sparkle, fabrics that shimmer, beautiful women who arouse carnal desire... Painting lets me possess all this most fully'" (Marcel Giry, Fauvism, Fribourg, 1981, pp. 224-26).
Like Matisse, whose early career similarly arose out of the Fauvist idiom, van Dongen had a proclivity for the Orientalist themes of the period. Following in the French tradition of Delacroix and Ingres, the theme’s exoticism and intensity perfectly suited the artist's temperament. Inspired as well by the African sculptures in the Louvre and the traveling performances that came through France, van Dongen’s figures took on stylized forms with exaggerated facial features. His travels to Spain and Morocco in 1910 and Egypt in 1913 further informed his work, with intricate designs and traditional attire becoming more apparent thereafter.
Anita la Bohémienne
Reflecting on van Dongen’s work, legendary poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire wrote in 1918: “Today, everything that touches on the voluptuousness is surrounded by grandeur and silence. But voluptuousness survives among the extravagant figures of van Dongen, with their violent and desperate colours. The blaze of made-up eyes sharpens the novelty of the yellows and pinks, the spiritual purity of the cobalt blues and ultramarines shaded to infinity, the dazzling reds ready to die for passion.... This nervous sensuality, so young and fresh, is composed only of light; these colours, so magical and so suggestive, are, as it were, incorporeal. The colourist was the first to take the sharp glare of electric lights and add it to the scale of nuances. The result is an intoxication, a vibration, a bedazzlement; colour even while preserving an extraordinary individuality, swoons, flares up, soars, pales and disappears without ever having been darkened by so much as the idea of a shadow.... European or exotic as he chooses, van Dongen has a violent, personal sense of Orientalism” (quoted in L.C. Breunig, ed., Apollinaire on Art, Boston, 2001, pp. 459-461).
As seen in La Célèbre Fatima et sa troupe, van Dongen’s canvases from this period are populated with women clad in gauzy shawls and layered beads and inspired by the exoticized notions of the harem and the dance routines that fed into them. His models assumed the imagined identities of far-away cultures, with Anita often transformed into an Arabic archetype by the name of Fatma or Fatima. However, while many of van Dongen’s models conform to a particular ‘type’ in his works, Anita stands out among them. Often shrouded in ethereal white or purple fabrics, she is recognizable for her short dark hair and alabaster complexion. Though the top of her face is obscured by her elevated arms in the present composition, she is no doubt the iconic beauty of works like Anita en almée and Nu couché (see fig. 1).
Van Dongen's particular achievement, as exemplified in the present work, was to achieve a synthesis of the brilliant and pure chromatic vision of the Fauves with a great sense of movement and compositional audacity. La Célèbre Fatima et sa troupe comes alive with a sense of sheer abandon and pleasure. Not one performer’s gaze lands in the same spot, as each is given over to the movement. The melodic rapture of each woman transports the viewer to the scene, as if we too could share in the transcendent moment.
“A new god stirs in him. His eyes close, his nose is pinched, and his hands clench… Van Dongen dances frenetically.”
The artist’s own enjoyment and appreciation is evident in this work. A sociable and enthusiastic part of the Parisian nightlife scene, van Dongen greatly enjoyed the lively parties of Montmartre and carried the ethos of the cabaret into his home and studio throughout his life. As Anita Hopman describes “At Van Dongen’s one could always be sure of finding ‘a large and varied company of élite bohemians, enjoying original performances, music and dancing’. Van Dongen was a passionate dancer. Swept away by movement, a ‘new god’ possessed him and he gave himself up to it totally” (Anita Hopman, All Eyes on Kees van Dongen (exhibition catalogue), Museum van Boijmans Beuningen, Rotterdam, 2010, p. 146).
It was with works like La Célèbre Fatima et sa troupe that van Dongen was to come closest to German Expressionist art, and it is possible to see the present work as a precursor to the wild dancing girls of Nolde and Pechstein (see fig. 2). Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, the first owner of this painting, was van Dongen's main dealer until 1908 when the artist signed a contract with Bernheim-Jeune. Kahnweiler was instrumental in promoting the reputation of van Dongen not only in Paris, where he held an exhibition of the artist's work at his gallery in 1908, but also in Germany where later that year he organized an exhibition at the Galerie Flechtheim in Düsseldorf. Pechstein visited Paris in 1908 and invited van Dongen to collaborate with Die Brücke. The exhibition, organized by Kahnweiler, proved to be of substantial influence on the artists associated with Die Brücke and spread van Dongen's reputation into the German speaking world. A beguiling scene of one of van Dongen’s most important muses, La Célèbre Fatima et sa troupe comes to the market for the first t.mes in more than 15 years.
