Paul Gauguin (1848 to 1903)

Father of the modernist culture of fusion

Like his good friend Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin died a pauper only for history to record him as one of the most influential artists of his generation. Gauguin was the originator of a style referred to as Synthetism, which referred to imagery and colour that was not painted from life, but were a synthesis of the artist's life experiences. Likenesses were abstracted and scenes were imagined then fused with highly symbolic imagery.

The style allowed Gauguin not to just convey emotion, but also explore philosophical ideas about morality, religion, existence and life. He said he wanted to "liberate painting from the shackles of probability" and to "close his eyes in order to see." Although not defined as one, he could also be defined as Europe's first Surrealist painter.

Synthetism was the perfect style for Gauguin because it allowed him to draw upon many of his novel experiences that differentiated him from other European artists. Arguably, no artist in European history has shown such a diversity of external influences in his or her work. His paintings showed copies of motifs from ancient Egyptian, Greece, as well as from Latin America and Polynesia where he lived. Additionally, there were motifs borrowed from fellow European artists such as Botticelli, Delacroix, Millet, Degas, Courbetr, Daumier, Manet, and Rembrandt. In each example, Gauguin did not just copy a motif or an idea, he subordinated it to his artistic purpose, and so allowed his artistic visions to be realised.

Much of Gauguin's approach to art can be understood by considering his background. He spent most of his childhood in Peru. There he experienced a culture where abstracted and surrealist art were commonplace, unlike was the case in Europe where realism and impression reined supreme. At the age of 17, he commenced work as a merchant sailor. In 1872, he settled in Paris and started working as a stockbroker. Despite becoming extremely wealthy, Gauguin did not enjoy the high life. He disliked French bourgeois culture, and disliked Parisian city life. His one refuge was the company of artists and he sought it wherever possible. In 1874, he met Camille Pissarro, with whom he developed a life-long friendship. He was also a prolific buyer of art and purchased works by Paul Cezanne long before Cezanne's genius had been recognised. In 1883, he decided that he could take stockbroking no more and quit to become an artist.

Self-portrait with Halo (1889)

In his new career, Gauguin found himself highly valued by artists, but not valued by art buyers. Other artists gravitated towards his ideas but his work was just too different from other contemporary European art to do the same. Within three years he was broke.

Gauguin's break from traditional European aesthetics became even more pronounced as he gained greater influence from non-European art. Like his good friend van Gogh, Gauguin was particularly attracted to Japanese art, which showed purity of colours separated by rhythmic black lines. The Japanese influence was clearly evident in his early landscapes and their bold flat planes of colour.

Memories of his upbringing in Peru were also triggered when a Parison exhibition displayed a Peruvian mummy. After attending the exhibition, Gauguin was inspired to turn his experiences with the mummy into several paintings and woodcuts.  Shortly later, he decided that Parisian culture was too stifling for him and he decided to head to the South Pacific to continue to artistic growth.

To pay for his ship fare, Gauguin organised an exhibition of 30 of his paintings and enlisted a literacy critic and poet named Charles Morice as his champion. With his connections, Morice gained favourable publicity in avant-garde newspapers and magazines, which helped Gauguin sell all but one of his paintings.

In 1891, Gauguin sailed for Tahiti. He didn't quite find the Eden he was seeking, but he was nevertheless prolific. Creativity literally oozed out of him and he made art out of anything available; oil, watercolour, pastel, ink, and ceramics. When no art supplies were available, he carved tree trunks, painted on windows, and even on his wooden sandals.

He had hoped to survive on continued sales of his work left in Europe, but sales were slow and he found it difficult to survive so in 1893, he returned to France with the hope of picking up where he had left off. Unfortunately, his next exhibition was not as successful as his previous one. There were almost no sales and critics were particularly vicious, one writing that the exhibition contained "apelike female quadrumanes stretched out on green billiard tables."

His return to Europe got worse when he heard racist insults being directed at a female companion named Annah, who was part Indian and part Malay. Gauguin reacted, and got into such a severe a brawl that he was left bedridden for two months and suffering a limp for life. Again disillusioned with Europe, he returned to the South Pacific in 1895.

Back in Tahiti, Gauguin once more struggled with poverty. In 1897, he resolved to take his own life, but before doing so, he created one final work intended to be his last testament. Titled “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?” it was almost 5 feet high, 13 feet wide and painted on Tahitian burlap. After completion, he swallowed a box of powdered arsenic. Fortunately, he swallowed too much and instead of killing him, it caused him to vomit. By the following morning he had reconciled himself that he was “condemned to live.”

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? 1897

In 1900, Gauguin was rescued from poverty when the art dealer Ambroise Vollard agreed to buy all of his future works and give him an allowance for their production. With his health failing, he considered returning to France but was advised against doing so by a contemporary who feared it could damage his growing reputation. While his reputation in Europe continued to grow, his health in Tahiti continued to deteriorate and in 1893 he died alone in his South Pacific hut.

Gauguin’s legacy on European art was immense. His thoughts helped inspire Fauvism (wild beasts), which used colour to communicate raw emotion. Likewise, Picasso followed his lead in appropriating art from "primitive" cultures, which helped him discover the abstraction so lacking in European art. Later Surrealists would implement Gauguin-like ideas on the power of artistic experience in creating imagery that was not related to life, but most certainly a function of it.