The Tate Modern London is holding an exhibition of the work of Paul Gauguin at the moment, scheduled to run until mid-January. It’s quite an occasion, the first major showing of his art in the city for more than half a century. Despite other demands on my time I simply had to go, spending several hours last Saturday looking at the development of his style, being taken to places as far apart as Brittany and Tahiti.
Gauguin fascinates me both as a painter and as a man, though quite frankly parts of his life, aspects of his conduct, his moral turpitude, I have to say, does not reward close scrutiny. The man and the monster in the man have attracted me ever since I read The Moon and Sixpence, the short novel by William Somerset Maugham loosely based on the artist’s life, though his fictitious Charles Strickland is not nearly quite as callous as the real-life Paul Gauguin!
Sorry: perhaps I’m putting you off; that’s certainly not my intention. It’s easy to forget the man in discovering the artist, and what a discovery he is, as you will find if you visit Gauguin: Maker of Myth. He began working in the Impressionist style but quickly rejected what he thought of as the tyranny of mere appearance. I so agree with this; art for me is a search for deeper things, deeper meanings: in colour, in subject, in object, in imagination. The endless water lilies of Claude Monet bore me absolutely rigid!
Gauguin, in contrast, created something altogether more solid, less ethereal, in what was later to be called Post-Impressionism, really the true beginnings of modern art, impacting on people like Cezanne and Picasso. There are so many striking paintings here, paintings from his Breton period, which includes Vision of a Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel), where women in traditional costume are seen watching the struggle between the two central figures. And I have to make special mention of The Ham, a still life painted in 1889, a painting that does not call for one’s attention, no, it simply demands it!
Gauguin went to Brittany is search of an illusion; he was to continue to pursue the same illusion all the way to the South Pacific: the belief that in the midst of modern sophistication there was a purer, simpler more authentic, more primitive way of life. Primitivism in life, primitivism in art was his quest, attained in the latter, eluded in the former.
The Tahiti paintings, brilliant as they are, brilliant in structure, colour and tone, are really nothing more than a threadbare colonial fantasy. Look hard; this is no paradise; look how detached and sullen his women are, self-absorbed, cut off from the outside world. The paintings tell a deeper story of alienation and demoralisation that the artist is too honest to have missed. In The Spectator supplement on the exhibition Martin Gayford writes that there are moments when Gauguin in his last years brings to mind Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, a novella that depicts the central character’s moral collapse in a tropical colony, though his destiny was squalid rather than horrific.
No matter; it’s possible to enjoy this exhibition without looking for anything deeper than the art itself. It’s unlikely London will ever again see such a comprehensive collection of one of the great masters of modern art, one of the few people to show that there truly are new ways of seeing.
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ReplyDeleteguess i will be the first one to comment on this one:-)
ReplyDeleteprimitivism, right on! never seen that painting of ham. his style is instinctive and primitive, so striking that made van gogh jealous (i seem to remember i read that from van gogh's letters). however, as i getting older i turned to turner's seascape and monet's water lilies:-) but gauguin is still one of my favorite artists who had hugh impact in my life.
there is a rumor saying that it was gauguin who cut van gogh's ear. well, those crazy artsits! who knows...
Thanks, Adam. I bought my tickets well in advance, so it wasn't too bad. The Ham is a splendid painting, possibly the best modern still life, uncomfortably vivid!
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ReplyDeleteYun yi, yes, I'm familiar with that canard! If ever a pair were less suited to one another it was Gauguin and Van Gogh, like fire and kerosene. :-)) Have you seen Lust for Life, the old movie staring Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh and Anthony Quinn as Gaugain which touches on their time together?
ReplyDeletei watched part of that movie from tv, it seemed to be very slow. their living together was so fascinating to me. i personally understand why van gogh envied gauguin's talent because gauguin was simply so striking in his art style, probably in his life too.
ReplyDeleteI thought Douglas was good as Van Gogh, incredibly intense. No wonder he drove Gauguin mad!
ReplyDeleteyeh,... it was long time ago. i remember the scene that van gogh drank turpentine(?) he was much more insane in the movie. i don't know if it was truthful to the real van gogh. i love van gogh's writing very much (even better than his paintings). he was sane when he wrote. he would be a good bloger here:-)
ReplyDeleteI bet he would! There was Van Gogh exhibition here last year, with extracts from his letters. I've also been to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, a super collection of his work.
ReplyDeletei heard amsterdam museum of van gogh. seems to be the best one. both van gogh and gauguin were good writers. have you read "noa noa" by gauguin? i read it long time ago in chinese. i like to read it again some day.
ReplyDeleteNo, I have not. I shall add it to the ever growing list!
ReplyDeleteThe paintings certainly exert a power of fascination, but I am never sure whether I am looking at genius or pathology. It is the same listening to the music of Delius or reading Poe. In the one case, those exquisite sounds are the product of a brain wracked by syphilis; in the other, by TB and rum.
ReplyDeleteGauguin, like several other artists of his time, carried a mixture of pathogens known to affect perception, acquired as a result of his dissolute lifestyle. I cannot help wondering how altered his works were by the lethal spirochaetes infecting his nervous system. Certainly, by the time he reached Tahiti his condition was untreatable. It has been suggested that mood swings and violence caused by his infection were what caused his final quarrel with Vincent - and even that it was he who cut off van Gogh's ear!
It may be impossible to separate the lifestyle from the creative spark in many artists. The muse demands a price.
Calvin, great wits, and great talents, are to madness close allied. Something of a truism, so far as I am concerned. And, yes, the muse does demand a heavy price.
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