The Last Riot of Color
Georges Braque wasn't born a Cubist. He was a house painter by trade and a rebel by choice. In 1907 the world of art was still reeling from the shock of the Fauves. Braque saw what Matisse and Derain were doing at the Salon des Indépendants and realized his Impressionist training was a dead end. He packed his bags for La Ciotat. He didn't go there to capture the flickering light of a sunny afternoon. He went there to tear the landscape apart and put it back together using colors that shouldn't exist in nature.
The Little Bay at La Ciotat is a snapshot of a man on the edge of a revolution. It is 1907 and the Mediterranean coast is a mix of electric yellow and screaming purple. These aren't the colors of the sea. They are the colors of a brain trying to make sense of a world that refused to stay still.
Braque used rhythmic outlines to lock the coast in place. He gave the water a structural intensity that didn't care about the reality of the sand. It only cared about the internal heat of the moment. The painting is small at 36 by 48 centimeters but it feels like it could blow the walls off a gallery.
This was the final vibrant burst. Within a few months the bright yellows and oranges would vanish forever. They would be replaced by the dusty browns and muted grays of early Cubism. But here in La Ciotat Braque let the world burn with color one last time. It was a loud and messy goodbye to the old way of seeing before he met Picasso and decided to break the sky into pieces.
References
Braque, Georges. The Little Bay at La Ciotat. 1907. Oil on canvas. 36 x 48 cm. Musée de l'Annonciade, Saint-Tropez.
Clement, Russell T. Les Fauves. Westport. Greenwood Press, 1994.
Whitfield, Sarah. Fauvism. New York. Thames and Hudson, 1991.
