Technique and Meaning in the Paintings of Paul Gauguin
Technique and Meaning in the Paintings of Paul Gauguin
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Technique and Meaning in the Paintings of Paul Gauguin provides a new interpretation of Gauguin's art. Reconstructing the artist's changing painting techniques, Jirat-Wasiutynski and Newton demonstrate that Gauguin's technical choices were meaningful. Beginning in 1886, Gauguin produced monumental figure paintings using full-scale cartoons to prepare them in a manner similar to that of the Quattrocento fresco painters. In the following years, brushwork and impasto disappeared from his paintings, producing works that contemporaries described as "primitive" and "decorative." Indeed, the authors argue, Gauguin's abandonment of oil painting was deliberate and signaled a rejection of modern Western culture and society.
- Technique is used to recover the historical meaning of Gauguin's paintings
- The authors document that Gauguin imitated the look, and sometimes the procedures, of traditional techniques such as painting in wax, tempera, and fresco
- Gauguin began as an amateur: this is the first detailed study of his pre-Impressionist painting
- Monumental decoration is the aesthetic framework for his painting
Reviews & endorsements
"This very scholarly and well-researched book traces Gauguin's development as an artist...Reproductions are detailed and beautiful." Choice
"[The authors] draw on the results of scientific study of Gauguin's canvases to show how the use of unorthodox techniques and materials can be linked with the 1primitivism' of earlier European and non-European arts, particularly with the bold painting of early Renaissance frescoes....Rich in ideas and methods that that should reinvigorate the study of late-nineteenth century art..." New York Review of Books
Product details
January 2000Hardback
9780521642903
312 pages
212 × 263 × 24 mm
1.165kg
93 b/w illus. 14 colour illus.
Unavailable - out of print December 2008
Table of Contents
- 1. Gauguin's paintings and the history of technique
- 2. Amateur 1873–78
- 3. Among the Impressionists 1879–85
- 4. After Impressionism 1886–88
- 5. With Bernard in Pont-Aven, August-October 1888
- 6. With Van Gogh in Arles, October-December 1888
- 7. Symbolic nudes and portraits from 1889
- 8. Murals and monumental canvases at Le Pouldu, 1889
- 9. Decoration and the cultural meaning of Gauguin's primitivizing technique.
