Paul Gauguin

The Mysterious Centre of Thought

Dario Gamboni

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781780234083
• Topic: Kunst
• Subtopic: Kunst Allgemein

French artist Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) once reproached the Impressionists for searching "around the eye and not at the mysterious centre of thought." But what did he mean by this enigmatic phrase? In this innovative investigation into Gauguin's art and thought, Dario Gamboni illuminates Gauguin's quest for this "mysterious centre" and offers a fresh look at the artist's output in all media—from ceramics and sculptures to prints, paintings, and his large corpus of writings.Foregrounding Gauguin's conscious use of ambiguity, Gamboni unpacks what the artist called the "language of the listening eye." Gamboni shows that the interaction between perception, cognition, and imagination was at the core of Gauguin's work, and he traces a line of continuity in them that has been previously overlooked. Emulating Gauguin's wide-ranging curiosity with literature, psychology, theology, and the natural sciences—not to mention the whole of art history—this richly illustrated book provides new insight into the life and works of this well-known yet little understood artist.

References

Abbreviations

Catalogues and Reference Books

[Abbreviations are followed by catalogue numbers to identify works of art]

Bodelsen: Merete Bodelsen, Gauguin’s Ceramics: A Study in the Development of his Art, London, 1964

Druick and Zegers: Douglas W. Druick and Peter Kort Zegers, in collaboration with Britt Salvesen, Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South, exh. cat (Art Institute of Chicago and Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), London, 2001

DW: Daniel Wildenstein, Gauguin: Premier itinéraire d’un sauvage. Catalogue de l’œuvre peint (1873–1888), texts and research Sylvie Crussard, documentation and chronology Martine Heudron, 2 vols, Paris and Milan, 2001

Field: Richard S. Field, Paul Gauguin: Monotypes, Philadelphia, 1973

Gray: Christopher Gray, Sculpture and Ceramics of Paul Gauguin, Baltimore, MD, 1963

Kornfeld: Elizabeth Mongan, Eberhard W. Kornfeld and Harold Joachim, Paul Gauguin: Catalogue raisonné of his Prints, Bern, 1988

Paris 1989: Gauguin, exh. cat. (Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris), 1989

W: Raymond Cogniat and Daniel Wildenstein, eds, Gauguin, vol. I: Catalogue, Paris, 1964

Writings By and About Gauguin

Ancien culte mahorie: see Gauguin écrivain

Avant et après: Paul Gauguin, Avant et après, Taravao, 1989

Cahier pour Aline: Paul Gauguin, Cahier pour Aline, unpaginated manuscript, Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris, Bibliothèque de l’INHA, Collections Jacques Doucet (available online at www.inha.fr/spip.php?rubrique87)

Cooper: Douglas Cooper, ed., Paul Gauguin: 45 lettres à Vincent, Theo et Jo van Gogh, La Haye and Lausanne, 1983

Diverses choses: see Gauguin écrivain

Gauguin écrivain: Isabelle Cahn, Gauguin écrivain: Noa Noa, Diverses choses, Ancien culte mahorie, CD-ROM, Paris, 2003

Gauguin and Morice: Paul Gauguin and Charles Morice, Noa Noa, Paris, 1901

Joly-Segalen: Paul Gauguin, Lettres à Daniel de Monfreid : Précédées d’un hommage par Victor Segalen, ed. Mme Joly-Segalen, Paris, 1950

Lettres à André Fontainas: Paul Gauguin, Lettres à André Fontainas, Caen, 1994

Loize 1966: Jean Loize, Noa Noa par Paul Gauguin, Paris, 1966 [transcription of manuscript held at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Special Collections]

Malingue: Paul Gauguin, Lettres à sa femme et à ses amis, ed. Maurice Malingue, Paris, 1946

Merlhès 1984: Victor Merlhès, ed., Correspondance de Paul Gauguin, documents-témoignages, vol. I: 1873–1888, Paris, 1984

Merlhès 1989: Victor Merlhès, Paul Gauguin et Vincent van Gogh, 1887–1888: Lettres retrouvées, sources ignorées, Taravao, 1989

Merlhès 1995: Victor Merlhès, De Bretagne en Polynésie: Paul Gauguin, pages inédites, Tahiti, 1995

Noa Noa / Voyage de Tahiti [manuscript held at the Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques, Fonds du Musée d’Orsay]: see Gauguin écrivain

Oviri, écrits d’un sauvage: Paul Gauguin, Oviri, écrits d’un sauvage, ed. Daniel Guérin, Paris, 1974

Prather and Stuckey: Marla Prather and Charles F. Stuckey, eds, Paul Gauguin, 1848–1903, Cologne, 1994

Racontars de rapin: Paul Gauguin, Racontars de Rapin, Paris, 1951

Verdier 1986: Philippe Verdier, ‘Un manuscrit de Gauguin: L’Esprit moderne et le catholicisme’, in Wallraf-Richartz Jahrbuch, vols 46–47, 1985–6, pp. 273–328 [transcription of the manuscript on pp. 299–328]

Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters: at www.vangoghletters.org/vg/letters (online edition, Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam, Huygens Institute-KNAW)

N.B.: The spelling and punctuation of Gauguin’s writings have been respected as much as possible, including in the titles of his works when these are based on inscriptions.

Introduction: Irritations, Echoes and Parables

1 Diverses choses [1896–1898], f. 136 r [paginated 263], manuscript reproduced in Gauguin écrivain; partial transcription in Daniel Guérin, ed., Paul Gauguin: The Writings of a Savage (New York, 1978), p. 139.

2 Jules Huret, ‘Paul Gauguin devant ses tableaux’, L’Echo de Paris, 23 February 1891, p. 2 (Writings of a Savage, p. 48).

3 Paul Gauguin, ‘Armand Seguin’, Mercure de France, XII, February 1895, pp. 222–4 (223).

4 Jean Dolent, ‘Chronique’, Le Journal des artistes, 22 February 1891, reprinted in J. Dolent, Monstres (Paris, 1896), p. 121. Gauguin thought very highly of this article, pasting it into the manuscript of Cahier pour Aline and copying it into Diverses choses, f. 118 V [paginated 230].

5 Letter of 11 or 12 November 1888 (Vincent van Gogh: The Letters, Letter 719; all translations of the Van Gogh letters are taken from the online edition at www.vangoghletters.org [Translator’s note]).

6 Lettres à André Fontainas, Letter 1 (March 1899), p. 10.

7 Odilon Redon, À soi-même: Journal (1867–1915). Notes sur la vie, l’art et les artistes (Paris, 1961), p. 100.

8 Dario Gamboni, Potential Images: Ambiguity and Indeterminacy in Modern Art (London, 2002).

9 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford, 1967), p. 193.

10 Cf. Gamboni, Potential Images, notably pp. 18–20 and 148.

11 Ibid., pp. 86–104, in particular pp. 87–8, and Dario Gamboni, Portrait of the Artist as a Landscape (Amsterdam, 2002).

12 Cf. my published articles on this subject, the principal elements of which have been included in the present book: ‘Paul Gauguin’s Genesis of a Picture: A Painter’s Manifesto and Self-analysis’, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, Autumn 2003, available at www.19thc-artworldwide.org; ‘Mana’o tupapa’u: Jarry, Gauguin et la fraternité des arts’, in Michael Einfalt, ed., Intellektuelle Redlichkeit – Intégrité intellectuelle: Literatur – Geschichte – Kultur. Festschrift für Joseph Jurt, Heidelberg, Winter 2005, pp. 459–75; ‘Parahi te marae: où est le temple?’, 48/14: La revue du musée d’Orsay, 20, Spring 2005, pp. 6–17; ‘The Vision of a Vision: Perception, Hallucination, and Potential Images in Gauguin’s Vision of the Sermon’, Van Gogh Studies, III, 2010, pp. 11–28.

13 Felix Thürlemann, ‘L’aquarelle de Dürer Fenedier Klawsen: La double mimesis dans l’analyse picturale d’un lieu géographique’, Revue de l’art, 137, 2002–3, pp. 9–18; Thürlemann, Dürers doppelter Blick, Konstanz (2008); Michel Weemans, ‘Her...