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Paul Gauguin Wreaks Havoc, Exercise in Historiography
A Brilliant Modernist, Colonist, Paedophile, Misogynist, and Postgender Artist
Depending on their ideological allegiances — whether they are modernist, post-modernist, feminist or post-colonialist — interpretations of Paul Gauguin's work can lead to contradictory conclusions.
Chapter 1 - A Modernist Genius, 1900-1970
For modernist historians Alfred Barr and Clement Greenberg, Gauguin was a precursor of abstraction. Original and savage, he claimed to be Peruvian and embodied the psychological characteristics of the cursed artist. His use of flat forms, cloisonnist technique (as seen in Vision after the Sermon, Scottish National Gallery), his liberation from local colours and perspectival distortions established him as a modern artist.
Chapter 2 - The Postmodernist Revision, 1970-1995
However, a postmodern revision has emerged which questions the authenticity of Gauguin's primitivism, in particular that of Abigail Solomon-Godeau. Emile Bernard and Camille Pissarro accused him of opportunism, claiming that he copied his peers and appropriated Polynesian, Egyptian and Buddhist art. Of his former Impressionist companions, only Degas purchased his work. After the Tahitian exhibition of 1893, Durand-Ruel closed his doors to him, leaving Ambroise Vollard as the only dealer willing to acquire his works.
Chapter 3 - The Misogynistic and Colonialist Artist
Even more serious are the accusations levelled by feminist historians such as Griselda Pollock, who claim that he typifies the white coloniser who abused very young Tahitian girls. With the help of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, Manao Tupapo, a masterpiece from his first trip to Tahiti, and part of the Courtauld Institute of Art collection today, - which he explains in his manuscripts Noa Noa and Notes to Aline -, reveals itself as, above all, the work of a misogynistic white paedophile.
Chapitre 4 - The Feminist Ethnographer
However, Gauguin lends himself to an anthropological reinterpretation too. His sculptures, engravings and paintings incorporate elements taken from Marquesan sculpture and tattooing, Easter Island writing and Māori arts discovered in Auckland. Following in the footsteps of his grandmother, Flora Tristan, he accuses Europeans of being misogynists incapable of appreciating the powerful, almost virile Tahitian women he depicts. And this was twenty years before Pablo Picasso.
Bibliography
Griselda Pollock, Avant-garde Gambits, 1888-1893: Gender and the Color of Art History, Thames and Hudson, 1993
Frantz Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs, Seuil, 1952
Stephen F. Eisenman, Gauguin's Skirt, Thames & Hudson, 1999
Bronwen Nicholson, Roger Neich, Gauguin and Maori Art, Univ of Washington pr, 1995
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