Paul Gauguin - Couverture souple

Several decades have now passed since postcolonial and feminist critiques presented the art-historical world with a demythologized Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), a much-diminished image of the artist/hero who had once been universally admired as the father of modernist primitivism. In this volume, both long established and more recent Gauguin scholars offer a provocative picture of the evolution of Gauguin scholarship in the recent postmodern era, as they confront and consider how the dismantling of the long-standing Gauguin myth positions us now in the 21st century to deal with and assess the life, work, and legacy of this still perennially popular artist. To reassess the challenges that Gauguin faced in his own day as well as those that he continues to present to current and future scholarship, they explore the multiple contexts that influenced Gauguins thought and behavior as well as his art; and they incorporate a variety of interdisciplinary approaches, from anthropology, philosophy, and the history of science to gender studies and the study of Pacific cultural history. Dealing with a wide range of Gauguins production, they challenge conventional art-historical thinking, highlight transnational perspectives, and offer clues to the direction of future scholarship, as audiences worldwide seek to make multicultural peace with Gauguin and his art. Broude has raised the bar of Gauguin scholarship ever higher in this groundbreaking volume, which will be necessary reading for students and scholars of art history, late nineteenth-century French and Pacific culture, gender studies, and beyond.

Dopo aver intrapreso la carriera di broker, Paul Gauguin a venticinque anni si dedicò alla pittura. Dopo i primi successi all'interno del circolo degli Impressionisti, a seguito di una serie di traversie personali, iniziò una vita girovaga che lo fece approdare a Tahiti. Le opere che produsse da quel momento fino alla sua morte nel 1903, gli fecero guadagnare la fama di cui ancor oggi largamente gode. Evitando ogni romanticheria nella raffigurazione delle popolazioni locali, fu in grado tuttavia di comunicare il fascino che quei popoli e quella natura incontaminata esercitavano su di lui.