Gauguin by Himself

by Paul Gauguin, Belinda Thomson (Editor)

Gauguin by Himself is unique in its approach, giving equal weight to Gauguin's activities both as an artist and as a writer. It provides a rare insight into his intractable character and uncompromising ideas and follows the extraordinary and complex development of his art from hesitant impressionism, through the experimental synthesis of his Breton paintings to the striking color and powerful forms of his Tahitian work. His letters to his wife and friends, including many to fellow painters such as Pissarro and Van Gogh, comment freely on contemporaries such as Cézanne, Monet and Degas, and challenge head-on the aesthetic concerns of avant-garde Paris in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. They also chart Gauguin's increasingly hazardous travels around the globe in pursuit of his elusive ideal of the primitive; from Paris and Copenhagen to Brittany, Provence, Panama, The West Indies and finally to the South Pacific. His words are both abrasive and confrontational and yet, as we hear him bemoaning his misfortunes and solitude in exile, they also reveal the vulnerability of the disillusioned self-styled 'savage', who, despite chronic illness and disappointment, never lost his intense love of making art. Illustrated with over 230 of his most powerful and decorative works of art, Gauguin by Himself offers a fresh look at the diverse faces and talents of a man who chose to live outside the bounds of bourgeois marriage, family and society, and eventually many miles from his native homeland, in order to fulfill his vocation as a 'great artist'.

Genres: Art, Biography, Nonfiction, Art History

320 pages, Hardcover

First published November 12, 1992

About the author

Gauguin was a financially successful stockbroker and self-taught amateur artist when he began collecting works by the impressionists in the 1870s. Inspired by their example, he took up the study of painting under Camille Pissarro. Pissarro and Edgar Degas arranged for him to show his early painting efforts in the fourth impressionist exhibition in 1879 (as well as the annual impressionist exhibitions held through 1882). In 1882, after a stock market crash and recession rendered him unemployed and broke, Gauguin decided to abandon the business world to pursue life as an artist full-time.

In 1886, Gauguin went to Pont-Aven in Brittany, a rugged land of fervently religious people far from the urban sophistication of Paris. There he forged a new style. He was at the center of a group of avant-garde artists who dedicated themselves to synthétisme, ordering and simplifying sensory data to its fundamentals. Gauguin's greatest innovation was his use of color, which he employed not for its ability to mimic nature but for its emotive qualities. He applied it in broad flat areas outlined with dark paint, which tended to flatten space and abstract form. This flattening of space and symbolic use of color would be important influences on early twentieth-century artists.

In Brittany, Gauguin had hoped to tap the expressive potential he believed rested in a more rural, even "primitive" culture. Over the next several years he traveled often between Paris and Brittany, spending time also in Panama and Martinique. In 1891 his rejection of European urban values led him to Tahiti, where he expected to find an unspoiled culture, exotic and sensual. Instead, he was confronted with a world already transformed by western missionaries and colonial rule. In large measure, Gauguin had to invent the world he sought, not only in paintings but with woodcarvings, graphics, and written works. As he struggled with ways to express the questions of life and death, knowledge and evil that preoccupied him, he interwove the images and mythology of island life with those of the west and other cultures. After a trip to France (1893 to 1895), Gauguin returned to spend his remaining years, marred by illness and depression, in the South Seas.

Reviews

[Nicole Renée · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Art is either plagiarism or revolution.” -Paul Gauguin

I stumbled upon this little gem while exploring the art section of my favorite secondhand bookshop and I must say… I was fascinated. While I had always viewed him abstractly as a man of peculiar (and even controversial) character, I had absolutely no idea how intrigued I would be by getting an almost voyeuristic look into his life and perspectives—especially through his letters. This tiny treasure of a book includes many personal letters from Gauguin—not only to his wife—but also to fellow painters Van Gogh and Pissarro and their free commentaries on contemporaries such as Cezanne, Monet and Degas.

Gauguin styled himself and his art as “savage,” and in a lost, albeit narcissistic urge to escape, I found that ultimately his definition of savageness was only framed around how it suited him in pursuit of artistic success and personal freedom. Gauguin had a thirst for the exotic and his idealization of savageness fueled both his primitive art and subsequent success.

A painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and writer, Gauguin stands today as one of the giants of Post-Impressionism and a pioneer of Modernism. If you enjoy art history, this fascinating read shares over 200 of Gauguin’s most recognized and powerful works of art, while also giving you a unique look inside his elusive, fascinating mind—that of a lonely, depressed, and often disillusioned artist, who helped open the door to the development of 20th-century art.

[T.E. Antonino · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book contains the actual letters that Gauguin wrote during his life time. By reading Gauguin's letters you get an inside view of what this man's personal life was like. There's also pictures of his art work through out the book.