Gauguin

Posted by DanielS on Tuesday, 01 September 2015 21:16.

gaugin

Comments:

Posted by Guessedworker on Wed, 02 Sep 2015 09:42 | #

On the threshold of the late modern, a search in the primitive for a purity, perhaps an innocence, felt lost from life.

Paul Gauguin, of course, was mixed-race (quarter Peruvian), so some accommodation with the exotic and disaccommodation with La France Profonde may have entered from there. But if, more generally, one takes the obsession with a novelty (as against originality, ie, of the origin of la profonde) that became increasingly revolutionary as the 20th century advanced, and finally sicked itself up with Paul Duchamp, as a symptom of a deeper sickness in the European body, one would have to conclude that social hierarchy and Christianity were the diseases - the first for its affront to the twin pillars of European psychology, free-living and personal justice, the second for its murderous intent towards natural kinship and identity.

In other words, the shared attributes of Mind and identity are the origins of the profound, and are so in any age. They are not to be found by Europeans in Martinique or Tahiti, or in the aesthetic violence and absurdity to which art ... a failed course of treatment ... part of the disease itself anyway ... has been reduced today.

Posted by DanielS on Wed, 02 Sep 2015 14:28 | #

My reasons for posting this are primarily to display stellar European artistic ability and its versatility at the same time, not only in the stylistic variance of post impressionism and its indulgence in color and form but in subject matter.

It is certainly not a betrayal of Europeans to take a look at another culture and see an opportunity for beauty in that setting. It is not necessarily judgmental, as if to say that it is worse than European culture or better than ours - that we should be ashamed and emulate these people - it is rather a neutral enough report though it does provide some perspective on a way of life for those who might wish to regulate their philosophy of life by ethnographic comparisons.

How much his quarter Peruvian heritage would be Amerindian and how much Spanish or Portuguese, I don’t know. And while the subject matter and his biography may indicate a wish to be free of European constraints, I would not want to deny the connection of his ability as an artist to native European ability: I believe it is both true (European enough) and worth claiming because he was that good an artist.

Inasmuch as it is possible to distinguish the man as a character and Europeanness from degenerate tangents, I would care to emphasize it and have, by making this post.

I will agree, however, that in Gauguin’s case it is dubious to distinguish his character from the equation - particularly if one is inclined to make excuses on the objective merits and inherently European aspects of his work. These are not sufficient excuses. Where he was worth rejecting, and ultimately, perhaps even his art, is in regard of his moral character.

My understanding is that he was not only a pedophile of Polynesian girls but in effect a murderer of them, as he gave them syphilis.

The Polynesians may not have thought that partaking of young girls was a great sin, but as if that wasn’t indulgence enough.. to then infect them?

These caveats in regard to recommending Gauguin aside, he is something to modern art what Kant is to philosophy. He has to be taken into account as a pivotal figure.

Gauguin was an artistic genius.

Anyone who has an opportunity to see one of his retrospectives should by all means do so: you will be stunned by wall-sized paintings of this kind, bringing forth worlds of brilliantly organized color and figures of just the right level of representation.

It is true that Gauguin personified a transitional period. In fact, “the nabis” were primarily influenced by Gauguin.

This painting inspired by Gauguin provided the visual equivalent to a “key note” to the post impressionist movement - the Nabis, (headed by Bonnard), who then, in turn, spawned modern-abstract art.

If you were to say that abstract art is necessarily bad I would not agree. There is good abstract art and there is bad. There are sincere efforts to capture the abstract essences that were being used, for example, in the form of light and dark patterns in the “underpainting” of traditional representational work - sometimes to very beautiful and stunning effect when rendered by itself - and there were Jewish rackets to sell effortless nonsense for millions of dollars which alienated people from the human and natural world at the same time.

There were decadent things about Gauguin and decadence that could be drawn from him; but it is not necessary to treat him as in all ways alien and promoting alien and decadent values as opposed to providing a neutral enough visual ethnographic report.

Still, while it is not necessary to draw those inferences, I can agree that there is “modernist wailing” in this painting, an apparent yearning to return to simpler, premodern times, which Kumiko might corroborate as being far from innocent, in fact the very dangerous sentiments held dear by Pol Pot.

Having had the misfortune myself of dealing with persons in pursuit of purity (not on the level of Pol Pot but bad enough for my personal fortunes) and not surprisingly finding myself unable to live up to the purity standard, I came to appreciate Oscar Wilde’s observation, “that it is a bad man who admires innocence.”

I came to understand that these people who seek purity and perfection lose sight of the relative gauge which is necessary to apply when judging people and different cultures. We cannot be judged by pure standards and motives..rather, if we are to be moral, fair and reasonable, we must judge “the relatively good person from the relatively bad.”

Gauguin was a fail: he was clearly on the bad side of relatively good or bad.

We’ll also be better prepared, as the most dangerous people will invariably be more dangerous and destructive for having markedly good qualities which have us making excuses for them to our detriment (particularly if we stick to objectivist criteria).

You said:

On the threshold of the late modern, a search in the primitive for a purity, perhaps an innocence, felt lost from life.

Paul Gauguin, of course, was mixed-race (quarter Peruvian), so some accommodation with the exotic and disaccommodation with La France Profonde may have entered from there. But if, more generally, one takes the obsession with a novelty (as against originality, ie, of the origin of la profonde) that became increasingly revolutionary as the 20th century advanced, and finally sicked itself up with Paul Duchamp, as a symptom of a deeper sickness in the European body, one would have to conclude that social hierarchy and Christianity were the diseases - the first for its affront to the twin pillars of European psychology, free-living and personal justice, the second for its murderous intent towards natural kinship and identity.

In other words, the shared attributes of Mind and identity are the origins of the profound, and are so in any age. They are not to be found by Europeans in Martinique or Tahiti, or in the aesthetic violence and absurdity to which art ... a failed course of treatment ... part of the disease itself anyway ... has been reduced today.

I can agree more wholeheartedly with the part that I’ve boldened.

Again, while I agree that Gauguin and many of his admirers may have been misguided in looking for something “authentic” of themselves in pursuit of the exotic and they may have wanted psychological/cultural excuses for decadent liberalism, to be free of European strictures and responsibility, those of us better informed in the White Post Modern do not have to treat Gauguin’s island paintings as a prescription but rather ethnographic notes for the purpose of cross cultural comparison.

The alternative is clearly not acceptable: “no, we do not look at this culture and use our native European ability to record a painting of the beauty that we see there.” If we were to obsess and focus on other cultures, people and exotic ways that would be a mistake indeed and incoherent. But post modern coherence is not lineal, it allows, indeed encourages the return to our culture along with occasional integration of furtive perspectives, because that is how it must be.

Posted by Dining room in the country (south France) on Thu, 03 Sep 2015 03:29 | #

Bonnard: Dining room in the country (South of France)..
...a return to native European culture
..or an expression of never having left.

Posted by DanielS on Sat, 05 Sep 2015 17:41 | #

I’m a little surprised as I experienced the Gauguin retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, as one of the best, if not the best, exhibit I’ve ever seen. I was blown away by the color and composition. My sister had the same experience.

But there is room for differing tastes and even if you are a bit cantankerous, I am happy for your contention and your appearance here, as it bespeaks a robustness and care, particularly as it regards what might typically be considered a detail.

Posted by vo on Mon, 14 Sep 2015 01:44 | #

Cool, Soren is back. I’ll look at a black & white reproduction book of Bonnards instead of going to see a Gauguin exhibit, almost 100% sure.

Posted by Demand for innocence hinders utility, enjoyment on Mon, 14 Sep 2015 06:13 | #

In line with Soren being back (hopefully, he is): We might carry the Oscar Wilde observation a bit further (that it is a bad man who admires innocence), that there is always some utility in our coming together as humans. It has been a bad habit among our peoples to disparage any utility as a part of “love”, rather demanding that it be pure and innocent.

How many amazingly good and important relationships have been blocked, important genetics lost, for the absurd cultural rules invoking unreasonable standards.

How many people come together and find that they like, and even love each other, when they initially came together because it was useful, they served some mutually beneficial purpose to one another.

And isn’t the airy notion of “love”, and all its purity, more often than not a hindrance to our being loving to one another (and warring with others, where and when necessary!), and to taking steps to bringing into reality a better way of life..

Posted by Gauguin on Mon, 05 Oct 2015 18:03 | #

Posted by More than one disease introduced to natives on Fri, 10 Mar 2017 12:52 | #

Gauguin in Tahiti: Search for Paradise (1967)

I may have sold Gauguin a bit short in terms of his ethnographic conscientiousness. I had been citing him as an example of the “artistic genius” who wasn’t worth it for his moral failing. While that argument still has grounds, he may not have been quite as heinous and without effort to be considerate as I had thought in terms of what was important to other people - at least those of Tahiti and their culture.

My line had been that as an artist he is as satisfying as any to me, nevertheless as a man who infected who knows how many native girls with syphilis, he was a killer. His art, no matter how good, not worth that behavior.

However, as I watch this biography, a couple of mitigating facts are revealed. True, he still would have infected at least one native girl with syphilis. However, he married her and apparently did not know that he had the disease when he infected her. Still bad, of course, as there was no effective treatment for the disease even with French civilization settled there. Add to that his knowledge of the risks of his own promiscuity and put that together with his ultimate abandonment of his wife and kids back in France.

However, the biography reveals that before he fell ill, he was really concerned to find and help preserve the authentic Tahitian people and culture. With that, he was dismayed by the impact of French civilization and missionaries, how they’d already by his time begun to destroy the native culture. He was particularly bothered by the imposition of Christian schooling upon the native children that had by then caused them to lose their native religion. He would actually go to the children and their parents with a French law book - reading them their rights so that they would know that they did not have to go to the missionary school. Finally, he went so far as to try to recreate their native religious stories in writing and in his paintings…