|
Born in Paris, he was descended from Spanish settlers in South America and the viceroy of Peru, and spent his early childhood in Lima. He was, through Alina María Chazal, the grandson of Flora Tristan, a founder of modern
feminism. After his education in Orléans, France, Gauguin spent six years sailing around the world in the merchant marines and then in the French navy. Upon his return to France in 1870, he took a job as a broker's assistant.
His guardian Gustave Arosa, a successful businessman and art collector, introduced Gauguin to Camille Pissarro in 1875.
A successful stockbroker during week-days, Gauguin spent holidays painting with Pissarro and
Cézanne. Although his first efforts were clumsy, he made rapid progress. By 1884 Gauguin had moved with his family to Copenhagen, where he unsuccessfully pursued a business career. Driven to paint full-time, he returned to
Paris in 1885, leaving his family in Denmark. Without adequate subsistence, his wife (Mette Sophie Gadd) and their five children returned to her family. Gauguin outlived two of his children.
Like his friend Vincent Van
Gogh, with whom he spent nine weeks painting in Arles, Paul Gauguin experienced bouts of depression and at one time attempted suicide. Disappointed with Impressionism, he felt that traditional European painting had become too
imitative and lacked symbolic depth. By contrast, the art of Africa and Asia seemed to him full of mystic symbolism and vigour. There was a vogue in Europe at the time for the art of other cultures, especially that of Japan
(Japonisme). He was invited to participate in the 1889 exhibition organized by Les XX.
Under the influence of folk art and Japanese prints, Gauguin evolved towards Cloisonnism, a style given its name by the critic
Édouard Dujardin in response to Emile Bernard's cloisonne enamelling technique. Gauguin was very appreciative of Bernard's art and of his daring with the employment of a style which suited Gauguin in his quest to express the
essence of the objects in his art. In The Yellow Christ (1889), often cited as a quintessential Cloisonnist work, the image was reduced to areas of pure colour separated by heavy black outlines. In such works Gauguin paid
little attention to classical perspective and boldly eliminated subtle gradations of colour—thus dispensing with the two most characteristic principles of post-Renaissance painting. His painting later evolved towards
"Synthetism" in which neither form nor colour predominate but each has an equal role.
In 1891, Gauguin, frustrated by lack of recognition at home and financially destitute, sailed to the tropics to escape
European civilization and "everything that is artificial and conventional." (Before this he had made several attempts to find a tropical paradise where he could 'live on fish and fruit' and paint in his increasingly
primitive style, including short stays in Martinique and as a worker on the Panama Canal). Living in Mataiea Village in Tahiti, he painted "Fatata te Miti" ("By the Sea"), "La Orana Maria" (Ave
Maria) and other depictions of Tahitian life. He moved to Punaauia in 1897, where he created the masterpiece painting "Where Do We Come From" and then lived the rest of his life in the Marquesas Islands, returning to
France only once. His works of that period are full of quasi-religious symbolism and an exoticized view of the inhabitants of Polynesia. In Polynesia he clashed often with the colonial authorities and with the Catholic Church.
During this period he also wrote the book Avant et Après (before and after), that is a fragmented collection of observations about life in Polynesia, memories from his life and comments on literature and paintings. In 1903 due
to a problem with the church and the government he was sentenced to three months in prison, and he owed a fine. At that time he was being supported by an art dealer. He died of syphilis before he could start the prison
sentence. His body had been weakened by alcoholism and a dissipated life style. He was 54 years old.
Quotations by Gauguin
- Life is like a song, you have to enjoy it while it plays because you never know if it will come on again.
- Life is like a boardwalk. There may be some tacks and nails, but you will get through it.
- In order to do something new we must go back to the source, to humanity in its infancy.
- I have tried to make everything breathe in this painting: belief, passive suffering, religious and primitive style, and the great nature with its scream.
- How do you see this tree? Is it really green? Use green, then, the most beautiful green on your palette. And that shadow, rather blue? Don't be afraid to paint it as blue as possible.
- To me, barbarism is a rejuvenation.
- Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
- I shut my eyes in order to see.
- Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.
- Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?
- How long have I been here? Hence, foreword, for I shall not know. For I have been traveling for too long. My bones too weary to remember my age. Hence, how long have I been here? Thou shalt never know.
The vogue for Gauguin's work started soon after his death. Many of his later paintings were acquired by the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin. A substantial part of his collection is displayed in the Pushkin Museum and the
Hermitage. Gauguin paintings are rarely offered for sale; their price may be as high as $39.2 million US Dollars.
Gauguin influenced many other painters, but one especially notable connection is his imparting to Arthur
Frank Mathews the use of an intense color palette. Mathews met Gauguin in the late 1890s while both were at the Academie Julian. Mathews took this influence in his founding of the California Arts and Crafts or California
Decorative movement.
The Japanese styled Gauguin Museum, opposite the Botanical Gardens of Papeari in Papeari, Tahiti, contains some exhibits, documents, photographs, reproductions and original sketches and block prints
of Gauguin and Tahitians. In 2003, the Paul Gauguin Cultural Center opened in Atuona in the Marquesas Islands.
Links
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
List of paintings by Paul Gauguin from Answers.com
WebMuseum: Gauguin
|
