History of World Art II: Day 70

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (1848 – 1903) was an important painter, woodcut, engraver, ceramist, sculptor and writer in the Sympolist movement of French Post-Impressionism. He used unusually bold colors experimenting with bright hues juxtaposed to create luscious, exotic scenes. He was influenced by the impressionists and lived for a time with Van Gogh in Arles where there styles and ideas mingled. He spent much of his adult life in Tahiti doing exotic primitive pictures heavily laden with symbolism which is what he is known best. He paved the way to Primitivism and a return to pastoral subjects in modern art.

I didn’t realize that Gauguin did sculpture, and thought that it was so interesting how primitive his style was and how he used natural materials that would have been used by Tahitian artists. It reminds me of the tourist curios you might find in the shops of downtown Juneau… made to represent the Alaska the tourists hope to find when they arrive. I saw a movie about Gauguin recently in which they stated his portrayal of Tahiti was much idealized and different from how it truly was for him; according to the end credits, much of what he continued to paint while he lived there and towards the end of his life was to fuel the hype over the fascination with this primitive and exotic notion of his work in France. It was probably also out of a desire that Tahiti had truly been as free and welcoming as he had envisioned. Unfortunately for him the Victorian age spanned the oceans and instead of nude natives lounging on the beach he found corsets and petticoats.