During the first decade of the twentieth century, a group of French artists began creating revolutionary new paintings that featured bright, non-natural colors and rough brushstrokes. Andre Derain’s Waterloo Bridge illustrates this new style. As you can see in our post, Derain used unnatural colors to depict the Waterloo Bridge, Thames River, and London skyline.
Personally, I like Derain’s paintings. But early critics lambasted the new style calling Derain and other avant-garde artists les fauves (“the wild beasts”) because their art looked shocking and completely unrealistic. Outraged critics found the new “Fauvist” art INIMICAL or hostile to their traditional artistic standards.
Normally SAT test writers use positive words to describe works of art. However, a difficult recent question broke this pattern by using the negative word INIMICAL to describe how critics felt about a bold new artistic style.
The question also listed INURE as a tempting but wrong answer. INURE means to become accustomed to something that is unpleasant. The early French critics did not become INURED to Fauvism. However, events have proven that they were shortsighted. Fauvist works are now coveted by museums and collectors. Paintings by Derain have recently sold for over $20 million dollars.
INIMICAL – harmful, hostile, or opposed to something
INURED – to become accustomed to something that is unpleasant