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Lot Essay
The opulent colors, oriental decor and rich costumes in Odalisque couche illustrate Van Dongen's interest in Northern Africa. Van Dongen's taste for exotic subject-matter is further evidenced by a series of paintings of dancers that he created during this period, including Anita en alme, 1908 (Private Collection) and La femme aux colonnes, 1910 (Christie's New York, May 12, 1998, lot 34). The boldness of color and broad, violent brushstrokes employed in Odalisque couche reflect Van Dongen's relationship with the Fauves and anticipates the portraits from the artist's trip to Egypt in 1913.
As Donald Kuspit has explained:
Fauvism everywhere aims at the fusion of opposites, breaking the barrier between them, dissolving them... the Fauvist fascination with the female body... indicated by the attempt to reduce the female body to a crude mass of color, implies a special kind of desire... It is an identification which confirms the artist's power -- which appropriates female power for his art. She is reduced to its raw materials... his most important pictures are those of women, more or less nude, painted between ca. 1905-10. The female theme continues throughout his life, but it is never again as intense and fraught with psychodynamic complexity as in the works of those years. (D. Kuspit, "Kees van Dongen: Unequivocal Colour and Equivocal Sexuality," in exh. cat., Kees van Dongen, Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1990, pp. 37 and 39)
As Donald Kuspit has explained:
Fauvism everywhere aims at the fusion of opposites, breaking the barrier between them, dissolving them... the Fauvist fascination with the female body... indicated by the attempt to reduce the female body to a crude mass of color, implies a special kind of desire... It is an identification which confirms the artist's power -- which appropriates female power for his art. She is reduced to its raw materials... his most important pictures are those of women, more or less nude, painted between ca. 1905-10. The female theme continues throughout his life, but it is never again as intense and fraught with psychodynamic complexity as in the works of those years. (D. Kuspit, "Kees van Dongen: Unequivocal Colour and Equivocal Sexuality," in exh. cat., Kees van Dongen, Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1990, pp. 37 and 39)