New Fauves

What was once a moniker employed to criticise the wild, decorum-less painting of Henri Matisse, André Derain, and others, has now come full circle: the tail is wagging the dog (read: wild beast, fauve in French). Wildness is not a deficit of painting, it turns out, nor of behaviour in general. Decorum is old hat, and today’s sensibilities have moved so far away from the modernist experiments that the seem to be coming around again, catching a few penises along the way. Why? What is it about this moment that

make it rife for such retakes?