“Golfe Juan” is one of the representative creations of the French painter Raoul Duffy and a depiction of the Fauvist movement to which the artist adhered to. The painting, created in 1927 is oil on canvas, measures 32 3/16 x 39 5/8 inches and currently resides in the Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum. Being known for his courageous use of bright colors and vivid illustrations of pleasure and luxury scenes, Raoul Duffy went beyond the act of representing nature – he invented it. In “Golfe Juan” we are offered the scene of the French Riviera or Cote d’Azur, with a single tree planted on a terrace as the focal point. The background represents a vibrant view of the village on the shore that further stretches out onto a distant peninsula.
Dufy skillfully employs different tools and formal elements to convey his message and attribute interest to his painting. The work is a three-dimensional piece, with various geometrical shapes present throughout the painting to illustrate objects in the fore and background. There are no dominant shapes, the artist using equally squares, triangles and seldom circles. The terrace wall in the center is complexly constructed from triangles and squares, the same shapes being used to create the houses and open areas in the village. Two distinct circles are visible in the forefront to confer details to the tree bark.
Color is one of the quintessential elements of Fauvism. In “Golfe Juan” Dufy dexterously uses a combination of subtle and loud colors, as well as lines of different weight, to convey elements of light and shade. The light is seemingly coming from different directions: right to left, as indicated by the azure color of the sky and left to right/center, as evidenced by the light green on the lush vegetation and the heavy lines bordering certain house sides.
The palette is majorly composed of very intense colors of various degrees of concentration, with blue, green and terracotta being dominant in the painting. Besides these three, the artist also uses yellow, beige, lilac and brown. Dufy plays on the contrast of complementary colors (blue and terracotta), accentuating thus the decorative scenes and conveying an overall optimistic feel to the painting.
Dufy puts definite emphasis on lines, employing a wide range in his painting, from thin to thick, defined to amorphous. The lines are used to confer depth, add texture to objects and/or create shapes. One element can encompass different types of lines: thin and ordered ones are used to define the tree leaves while heavy and curved ones give “character” to the bark. Overall, the lines in “Golfe Juan” also play the essential role of dividing the visual space into three dimensions: the shore, the sea with the peninsula and the sky above it.
The painting displays different kind of textures. Heavy brushstrokes, used for the lush vegetation on the right, as well as brisk ones that shape the movement of the sea, are all evidence of actual, tactile texture. The usage of lines is directly employed to create a visual illusion. Dufy tries to mimic the actual rough, unruly texture of the tree bark using thin white and black lines.
Judging the composition of the painting we can definitely outline the tree trunk in the foreground as the axis of symmetry for the entire work, making it overall asymmetric. The foreground surely catches the attention of the viewer first. However it doesn’t keep it captive, allowing to intake the visual beauty of the background as well. The spatial depth is created using foreshortening as well as manipulations of objects scale. The tree in the forefront, although almost similar in size and form to the ones in the background, is depicted of a much larger size. The same diminishing effect although not as dramatic applies to the houses on the peninsula compared to the ones on the shore. This technique allows the artist to skillfully create depth in his painting.
“Golfe Juan” is a beautiful work of art that radiates vivacity and bountifulness. Through the usage of bright colors and copious amount of shapes (vegetation, houses) the artist conveys the message of abundance and luxurious, easy-living. The top-down view that opens to the looker reinforces this message, taking the painting beyond the level of intricate interaction of colors. Instead Dufy offers us through “Golfe Juan” a feeling of serene content and complete satisfaction.
Works Cited
The link to the painting:
http://www.sunipix.com/paintings/paintings4/Golfe%20Juan%20(Raoul%20Dufy)%20(1927).jpg
Fauvism." Tate Collection. Web. 20 Mar. 2012.
Georges-Michel, Michel. "From Renoir to Picasso." From Renoir to Picasso: Artists in Action. Houghton Mifflin, 1957. Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine. Web. 20 Mar. 2012.
"Raoul Dufy Biography." Artzine. Artrepublic. Web. 20 Mar. 2012.
"Scala Archives." Scala Archives. Scala Archives SPA. Web. 20 Mar. 2012.
