If you ever took an art history survey in college, you may recall the blur of Fauvism. Fauvism, which lasted from about 1904 to 1908, is the first and probably the shortest of Modernism’s art movements. It is also one of the messiest, populated by a shifting cast of painters and locales. It lacks a manifesto or statement of goals, or even much stylistic coherence, and its tortuous buildup may have been longer than the trend itself. But in at least two ways the achievement of “les Fauves,” or “the wild beasts,” a term coined by the French critic Louis Vauxcelles — is foundational to modernist painting.

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Persons: Picasso’s, Louis Vauxcelles —, Seurat, Cézanne, van Gogh Locations: French