Animals 

Curator: Looking at "Animals" by Gr\u00e9goire Michonze, painted with oil paint, what’s your initial impression? Editor: It feels like stepping into a vivid dream, perhaps a memory slightly out of focus. There’s a charming naivety in the depiction, a certain primal energy. The colors sing! Curator: Absolutely. Michonze, associated with Fauvism, breaks from naturalistic color. The vibrant, almost jarring palette – the reds, the greens, the off-whites – pushes against conventional landscape painting. What do you make of this rejection? Editor: It's exhilarating. He's not trying to replicate reality, but to conjure a feeling. The animals aren’t photorealistic; they're symbols of vitality, perhaps the unbridled energy of nature itself. I'm fascinated by the almost clumsy application of paint...the work becomes about the process. Curator: Precisely! It's about the materiality of the oil paint itself. Consider also, how the lack of clear perspective flattens the space, collapsing foreground and background. This deliberate defiance speaks to Fauvism's challenge to academic tradition, relocating production away from strict realism. It’s like they’re dismantling old ideas piece by piece. Editor: That lack of clear depth actually heightens the dreamlike quality, it reminds me a lot of memories blurred at the edges, both charming and oddly disquieting at the same time. Do you get a slightly unsettling vibe as well or is it just me? Curator: The painting certainly doesn’t aim for harmonious tranquility. Michonze perhaps wanted to capture nature’s untamed force, and its unpredictability through a visual experience both startling and somehow primal. The animals also don’t feel entirely at peace. Editor: Well said! In the end, what I feel resonating through Michonze’s animals is freedom. Not the soft gentle freedom of doves, but rather a sort of savage delight that bubbles under everything when all the world is yours. Curator: Yes. And from a materialist perspective, we observe here the freeing of production, of art-making from prescribed structures and historical demands toward a more vital, personal creative liberty.