Title: PAUL GAUGUIN
1PAUL GAUGUINS ISLAND SCENES
2PaulĀ Gauguin Biography
Born 1848 Died 1903 Gender Male Nationality French"I am a great artist and I know it. It is because I am that I have endured such suffering." Paul Gauguin.
3Paul Gauguin was born in the Paris at the height
of the 1848 Revolution. His childhood was spent
in Lima but in 1865 joined the merchant marines
for two years followed by three years with the
French Navy. In 1871 he joined the stock exchange
and painted in his spare time. He collected works
by artists such as Manet, Monet and Cezanne which
he studied intently. It was Camille Pissarro who
was his greatest influence and in 1883 Gauguin
moved to Rouen to be closer to the man. By this
time, with his wife Mette Gad, he had a family
based in Copenhagen. As he gave up his job he
could no longer support them financially and
effectively abandoned them and everything besides
for his art.
4By 1891 he was gaining quite a reputation but
instead of consolidating this new found success
he fled to Tahiti. It was not the paradise he had
been seeking yet he remained for two years and
produced almost 80 paintings. Poverty and illness
drove Gauguin back to France but after receiving
an inheritance from the death of an uncle he
headed back to Tahiti once more. In 1897 his
daughter, Aline dies and falling into a deep
depression completes one of his finest works,
'Where do we come from...?' Soon after he makes
an attempted suicide then eventually takes up a
post as government draughtsman in Papeete. Three
years after his death a huge exhibition of his
work took place at the Salon d'Automne in Paris.
It is regarded as one of the most influential
exhibitions of the 20thcentury. His richly
coloured, highly evocative work has inspired
countless artists.
5- How do the colours of Gauguins paintings portray
the atmosphere of the Island setting? - What sort of brush strokes did Gauguin use to
place his colours on his paintings? - Which colours complement each other in his
paintings, and which contrast against each other? - Gauguin said I shut my eyes in order to see.
What did he mean? Can you see evidence of this in
his paintings?
6Femmes de Tahiti OR Sur la plage (Tahitian Women
OR On the Beach)1891
7We Hail Thee Mary1891
8There is the Marae 1892
9Aha oe feii? (What! Are You Jealous?) 1892
10Matamoe1892
11Market Day 1892
12The White Horse1898
13Contes barbares1902 Who is the man in the
background?
14Riders on the Beach 1902
15Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We
Going?1897Oil on canvas54 3/4 x 147 1/2 in.
16- How do the colours of Gauguins paintings portray
the atmosphere of the Island setting? - What sort of brush strokes did Gauguin use to
place his colours on his paintings? - Which colours complement each other in his
paintings, and which contrast against each other? - Gauguin said I shut my eyes in order to see.
What did he mean? Can you see evidence of this in
his paintings?
17Commentary on Where Do We Come From? What Are We?
Where Are We Going?
- from "Sister Wendy's American Masterpieces"
- "This is Gauguin's ultimate masterpiece - if all
the Gauguins in the world, except one, were to be
evaporated (perish the thought!), this would be
the one to preserve. He claimed that he did not
think of the long title until the work was
finished, but he is known to have been creative
with the truth. The picture is so superbly
organized into three "scoops" - a circle to right
and to left, and a great oval in the center -
that I cannot but believe he had his questions in
mind from the start. I am often tempted to forget
that these are questions, and to think that he is
suggesting answers, but there are no answers
here there are three fundamental questions,
posed visually. - "On the right (Where do we come from?), we see
the baby, and three young women - those who are
closest to that eternal mystery. In the center,
Gauguin meditates on what we are. Here are two
women, talking about destiny (or so he described
them), a man looking puzzled and half-aggressive,
and in the middle, a youth plucking the fruit of
experience. This has nothing to do, I feel sure,
with the Garden of Eden it is humanity's
innocent and natural desire to live and to search
for more life. A child eats the fruit, overlooked
by the remote presence of an idol - emblem of our
need for the spiritual. There are women (one
mysteriously curled up into a shell), and there
are animals with whom we share the world a goat,
a cat, and kittens. In the final section (Where
are we going?), a beautiful young woman broods,
and an old woman prepares to die. Her pallor and
gray hair tell us so, but the message is
underscored by the presence of a strange white
bird. I once described it as "a mutated puffin,"
and I do not think I can do better. It is
Gauguin's symbol of the afterlife, of the unknown
(just as the dog, on the far right, is his symbol
of himself). - "All this is set in a paradise of tropical
beauty the Tahiti of sunlight, freedom, and
color that Gauguin left everything to find. A
little river runs through the woods, and behind
it is a great slash of brilliant blue sea, with
the misty mountains of another island rising
beyond Gauguin wanted to make it absolutely clear
that this picture was his testament. He seems to
have concocted a story that, being ill and
unappreciated (that part was true enough), he
determined on suicide - the great refusal. He
wrote to a friend, describing his journey into
the mountains with arsenic. Then he found himself
still alive, and returned to paint more
masterworks. It is sad that so great an artist
felt he needed to manufacture a ploy to get
people to appreciate his work. I wish he could
see us now, looking with awe at this supreme
painting."
18Gauguin on Painting
- "Notes Synthetiques", by Paul GauguinFrom the
manuscript, c. 1888 - Excerpted from "Theories of Modern Art", by
Herschel B. Chipp - "Painting is the most beautiful of all arts. In
it, all sensations are condensed contemplating
it, everyone can create a story at the will of
his imagination and-with a single glance-have his
soul invaded by the most profound recollections
no effort of memory, everything is summed up in
one instant. -A complete art which sums up all
the others and completes them. -Like music, it
acts on the soul through the intermediary of the
senses harmonious colors correspond to the
harmonies of sounds. But in painting a unity is
obtained which is not possible in music, where
the accords follow one another, so that the
judgment experiences a continuous fatigue if it
wants to reunite the end with the beginning. The
ear is actually a sense inferior to the eye. The
hearing can only grasp a single sound at a time,
whereas the sight takes in everything and
simultaneously simplifies it at will. - "Like literature, the art of painting tells
whatever it wishes, with the advantage that the
reader immediately knows the prelude, the
setting, and the ending.