Great Quotes of Paul Gauguin:

“Art is either plagiarism or revolution.” 3
“I shut my eyes in order to see.” 3
“To me, barbarism is a rejuvenation.” 3
-Paul Gauguin

Gauguin: Engraving an “Impression” on Art History

Abstract: A Legacy Too Large to Summarize

Paul Gauguin was a young child when his father died while on his trip to Peru. And in his teen years, having been adopted by a rich man, Gauguin’s interest in art escalated. He began painting soon after his bank crashed, and was in touch with van Gogh and other renowned artists of the era. Despite the success in his life, and after exhibiting with the Impressionists in 1886, Gauguin renounced “the abominable error of naturalism.” With the young painter Émile Bernard, Gauguin sought a simpler truth and purer aesthetic in art; turning away from the sophisticated, urban art world of Paris, he instead looked for inspiration in rural communities with more traditional values. Copying the pure, flat color, heavy outline, and decorative quality of medieval stained glass and manuscript illumination, the two artists explored the expressive potential of pure color and line, Gauguin especially using exotic and sensuous color harmonies to create poetic images of the Tahitians among whom he would eventually live. Arriving in Paris in 1886, the Dutch painter van Gogh quickly adapted Impressionist techniques and color to express his acutely felt emotions. He transformed the contrasting short brushstrokes of Impressionism into curving, vibrant lines of color, exaggerated even beyond Impressionist brilliance, that convey his emotionally charged and ecstatic responses to the natural landscape. After living a colorful fifty-five years, he tragically died in Tahiti itself and was buried there.

About Paul Gauguin: A Colorful Artist of His Era

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) was born in Paris on June 7, 1848 and is thought of as being a very influential painter of the Postimpressionist period1.

Postimpressionism was born in France during the late 1800s as a novel technique of expressing oneself more freely through uses of color and shape. This form of painting was contrary to the old system of using “the objective naturalism of impressionism” that was commonly seen during the old era (information paraphrased from www.thefreedictionary.com). Post-Impressionism in Western painting, was a movement in France that represented both an extension of Impressionism and a rejection of that style's inherent limitations.

The term Post-Impressionism was coined by the English art critic Roger Fry for the work of such late 19th-century painters as Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and others. All of these painters except van Gogh were French, and most of them began as Impressionists; each of them abandoning the style, later in order to form his own highly personal art. Impressionism was based, in its strictest sense, on the objective recording of nature in terms of the fugitive effects of color and light. The Post-Impressionists rejected this limited aim in favor of more ambitious expression, admitting their debt, however, to the pure, brilliant colors of Impressionism, its freedom from traditional subject matter, and its technique of defining form with short brushstrokes of broken color. The work of these painters formed a basis for several contemporary trends and for early 20th-century modernism.

There are important distinctions between Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. The Post-Impressionists often exhibited together, but, unlike the Impressionists, who began as a close-knit, convivial group, they painted mainly alone. Cézanne painted in isolation at Aix-en-Provence in southern France; and his solitude was matched by that of Paul Gauguin, who in 1891 moved to Tahiti, and of van Gogh, who painted in the countryside at the French city of Arles. Both Gauguin and van Gogh rejected the indifferent objectivity of Impressionism in favor of a more personal, spiritual expression. In general, Post-Impressionism led away from a naturalistic approach and toward the two major movements of early 20th-century art that superseded it: Cubism and Fauvism, which sought to evoke emotion through color and line.

In 1849, when Gauguin, only a toddler, had to move from France into Peru because of his father’s political acts as a journalist, Gauguin, his parents and his sister were headed for Peru, where his great grandfather’s side lived. His father died along the way, which must have been a tragedy for his whole family. In the end, the three individuals reached Lima, the capital of Peru, and stayed there with Gauguin’s great grand-uncle and his family1.

When Gauguin was only seventeen, he joined the French merchant navy and had to voyage around the world for nearly half a decade. When his mother died in 1867, Gauguin lived with his rich guardian, named Gustave Arosa, who had many pieces of art. Some of the important pieces of art he owned included some that were even painted by Eugѐne Delacroix. Delacroix was a French Romantic artist, whose uses of color were very important for the rise of Postimpressionist and Impressionist artwork. By studying these artworks of Delacroix, Gauguin’s interest in art mounted. Gauguin became so interested in the beauty of art that he became an amateur painter himself and collected other impressionist artwork. In 1873, Gauguin married a woman from Denmark, with whom he would have five children over the next decade3. When he attended the Impressionist’s first exhibition, Gauguin was strongly influenced by the Impressionist works and this reinstated his wanting to become an artist. He was a stockbroker at the time, but when his bank was going through financial difficulties, Gauguin was able to paint full time1.

Gauguin was heavily influenced by many impressionists, such as van Gogh, Degan, and Seurat, but was most influenced Pissarro. Later on, Gauguin began to paint in his very own innovative style, primitive form, which he painted in Tahiti. After working shortly in Panama, Gauguin returned to France, and in 1888, Gauguin decided to jointly paint with Vincent van Gogh in Arles, France. Although they painted together prolifically in the beginning, their relationship lasted only nine weeks, during which both Gauguin and van Gogh were depressed, and Gauguin even attempted suicide. The relationship deteriorated severely, which finally ended when van Gogh pursued Gauguin with a razor, but accidentally cut his own lower left ear lobe. Vincent van Gogh was admitted to a hospital shortly after, and Gauguin, after informing van Gogh’s brother (Theo), moved out3.

Gauguin returned to Paris in December and his break from Impressionism came when he painted “Vision after the Sermon”. In this momentous painting, Gauguin illustrated the internal feelings of the subjects. This new form of painting was termed “Symbolism”. Here, he used a lot of color (red for the ground), but emphasized the people in the painting. Women are seen praying as Jacob wrestles with an Angel. By drawing mint-green wings on the angel, this area becomes the primary focus, with the other attention being diverted to the conventional peasant women wearing conservative clothes.

Even though this time was highly productive for Gauguin, he became very depressed and sought a tropical paradise where he could live on “fish and fruit”3. He, like van Gogh, was deeply upset by the materialism and industrialization of Europe during the technological revolution era. He loved “honest” people, peasants and villagers because of their “immaterialism”. After abandoning his family, he moved to Tahiti’s remote area in 1891, where he painted in a primitive form which included expressive colors. This was a completely new way to paint the nineteenth century and Gauguin painted some of the most beautiful pictures of Polynesian scenes and people, which were highly ranked during the time.

“Primitivism” is less an aesthetic movement than a sensibility or cultural attitude that has informed diverse aspects of Modern art. It refers to Modern art that alludes to specific stylistic elements of tribal objects and other non-Western art forms. With roots in late-19th-century Romanticism’s fascination with foreign civilizations and distant lands, particularly with what were considered to be naive, less-developed cultures, it also designates the “primitive” as a myth of paradise lost for late-19th- and 20th-century culture. Behind this captivation with the “other” was a belief in the intrinsic goodness of all humankind, a conviction inspired by French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s notion of the Noble Savage. At the same time, however, industrialized Western culture evoked the “primitive” as a sign on which to map what it had socially and psychologically repressed: desire and sexual abandon. The problematic nature of “primitivism” can be illustrated by the example of Paul Gauguin, who spurned his own culture to join that of an “uncivilized” yet more “ingenuous” people. Although he sought spiritual inspiration in Tahiti, he showed a more earthy preoccupation with Tahitian women, often depicting them nude. This eroticization of the “primitive” was amplified in the work of the German Expressionist group Die Brücke and in Pablo Picasso’s proto-Cubist paintings, particularly Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907).

The influence of tribal craze on Modern painters and sculptors, such as Constantin Brancusi, Alberto Giacometti, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso, has been the subject of much art-historical and critical debate. While the formal impact of ritual objects on these artists is undeniable, recent attempts to locate affinities between the “primitive” and the Modern have been perceived as suspect because they evince a certain ethnocentrism, which is defined as one culture seeing its point of view as superior compared to others cultures. Therefore, primitive is a term that implies another meaning.

Two of Gauguin’s most famous paintings employing primitivism, "Fatata te Miti”, meaning "By the Sea" and "Ia Orana Maria", meaning “Ave Maria” depicted certain cultural aspects of Polynesian Tahitan life. “Fatata te Miti” is a beautiful bright painting depicting polyneisians crossing a colorful river in the nightime, obviously hiunting. The use of color in the water and the colorful leaves immersed inside truly represent the beauty of primitve form painting. He uses bold colors such as red, yellow-green, blue and red-brown to draw attention to the subjects and the water.

“Ia Orana Maria”, Gauguin painted in bold colors, which were used to describe the tropical beauty of Tahitian lifestyle. The apparel the women are wearing are colored in bright red and yellow, and the fruits at the bottom on the canvas seem to be tropical (mangoes, papayas, watermelons, etc.). This painting caught my eye because of the colorful people and objects in it. The exotic woman, who is sm iling, is standing in front of the colorful and wondefrfulkly designed clothes being dried on a rope, and the people praying on the edge, gives me a sensation of what polynesian life really is like. More paintings, including Under the Pandanus and Femmes de Tahiti (meaning “Tahitian Women”) also employ bright colors and primitive form, both including tropical scenes.

When it came to Gauguin’s relationship with the natives of Tahiti, Gauguin was very happy with their “humanness” and often sided with the native people when clashing with the colonial rule and the church because they were westernizing Tahiti. This frustrated Gauguin very much, and that is why he loved painting natural scenes of Tahiti.

However, even then, Gauguin sadly became addicted to drugs and alcohol, and died of a heart attack in French Polynesia’s Hiva Oa Island in the Marquesas. His death was on May 9, 1903, which will be a sad marker in history as the loss of one of the greatest painters in the modern era.

Literature Cited: Bibliography of the Fruitful Resources

1Crew, Robin. “Paul Gauguin Post-Impressionist Artist.” www.lucidcafe.com. 25 Aug
2007. LucidCafé Library. 06 02 2008 .

2Pioch, Nicolas. “Delacroix, Eugène” www.ibiblio.org. 04 August 2002.
Webmuseum, Paris. 06 02 2008
<>.

3 “Paul Gauguin: From Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia” www.wikipedia.org. 05 Feb
2008. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 06 Feb 2008.
<>.