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Loading... Gauguin's Intimate Journals (Dover Fine Art, History of Art) (original 1918; edition 2011)by Paul Gauguin
Work InformationPaul Gauguin's Intimate Journals by Paul Gauguin (1918)
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Belongs to Publisher SeriesThe Travellers' Library (101)
A beautiful facsimile of the earliest English translation of Gauguin's frank and entertaining memoir, written just before he died, in which he reveals his most inner thoughts on art, life and love Unappreciated in his own lifetime, Paul Gauguin is now recognized as one of the giants of French post-Impressionism and a pioneer of early modernism. A rebel in both art and life, he rejected his bourgeois upbringing and comfortable stockbroker's job to devote his life to painting. Eventually, dismayed by the 'hypocrisy of civilization' and in search of a primitive idyll, he left his wife and children behind in Paris and took up residence in the South Seas, first in Tahiti and, later, in the Marquesas Islands. He would never return to Europe. In the final months of his life, he wrote this witty and revealing autobiographical memoir with the request that it be published upon his death. It first appeared in the original French in 1918, and was translated into English three years later. As his son Émile wrote in the preface, 'These journals are an illuminating self-portrait of a unique personality.... They bring sharply into focus for me his goodness, his humour, his insurgent spirit, his clarity of vision, his inordinate hatred of hypocrisy and sham.' Wide-ranging and elliptical, these candid reflections reveal Gauguin's inner thoughts about many subjects, including frank views on his fellow artists back in Paris, his turbulent relationship with Van Gogh, and the charms of Polynesian women, while providing glimpses into his often far-from-idyllic life in the islands. This beautiful facsimile reproduces the first American translation of the journals, a rare limited edition privately published in New York in 1921 for a select group of subscribers. With full-page sketches by the artist, these entertaining and enlightening musings give us a unique insight into Gauguin the man and the artist. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)759.4The arts Painting History, geographic treatment, biography France and regionLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.38)
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Wikipedia in English
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The English title doesn't really do justice to the text, the last of which was written in the last year of Gauguin's life, while he was living in the Marquesas. To call it digressive would suggest a central course that is missing from a work that is "not a book," as Gauguin declares at the outset and repeats many times. "I could exist without writing this; but then, why should I not write it?--since I have no other aim than to amuse myself" (161). The book wanders through reminiscences and anecdotes, offers opinions, philosophizes, and cracks wise by turns. Gauguin recounts high points from his personal experiences with Vincent van Gogh, he vituperates against the Catholic Church, he discusses fencing and boxing, he gives vent to his animus against Denmark, he tells stories of his youth and family, he criticizes the colonial police of French Polynesia, and he praises the lost arts of the Marquesans.
The book includes drawings and sketches reproduced from the manuscript, along with a variety of black-and-white reproductions of Gauguin paintings from the holdings of various museums. Inserted by Gauguin into the flow of the text are various letters and articles: one from August Strindberg declining to contribute to an exhibit catalog for Gauguin (42-49), one by Achille Delaroche "Concerning the painter Paul Gauguin, from an aesthetic point of view" (49-55), and several letters by Gauguin himself to the colonial authorities.
"I believe that life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will. ... No one is good; no one is evil; everyone is both, in the same way and in different ways. It would be needless to point this out if the unscrupulous were not always saying the opposite." (240)