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Paul Gauguin: An Erotic LifeEditions
Review
Most of us, I suspect, know a bit about Gauguin’s life and the author reveals the self-taught innovator whose boldness, combined with his extraordinary sense of colour, produced ravishing images of Tahitian life which helped create the myth of the noble savage. In avant-garde circles and in the company of figures such as Pisarro, Degas and the brothers Van Gogh, he was a leading light in the Bohemian world of Paris at the end of the 19th Century. An expert on post-Impressionist art, Mowll Mathews examines the artistic output and interprets it in the context of his relationships with the women in his life - Mette, his well-educated Danish wife, and his Tahitian vahines - and in the intense, passionate friendships he enjoyed with men. It is quite upsetting to read about his treatment of women and I can understand why, as a declared feminist, she is sometimes severe on Gauguin, but it is in her judgements in his dealings with men that she is most perspicacious. The absence of any absolute evidence rightly inhibits confirmation of any overt sexual activity, but we are provided with instances of his social behaviour charged with erotic undertows and violent tiffs, which have the whiff of lovers’ quarrels and reconciliations. While he behaved like a misogynist bully to the women, with his men friends he flirted, cajoled, wheedled favours of money and attention and behaved like a little tart. The assessment of his work is very sound. She considers him an important figure in that crucial era, with only a tendency to the decorative, a result of his period with ‘The Nabis’, occasionally marring the power of some paintings. She rates his literary out-put more highly than I would and does not even mention his prodigious skills as a draughtsman. (Some of his massive Tahitian portrait heads, pre-date Picasso’s ‘Dameoiselles D’Avignon’ series in a fascinating way.) But she certainly gives him due credit for his ground-breaking and often ravishing work. This is in some ways an infuriating volume, burdened with feminist revenge but it is stuffed with facts, opinions, revelations and sometimes just good old gossip, which make for a riveting read and it contributes significantly to our understanding of a wayward genius. - review by Stewart Grimshaw |
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John Sandoe [Books] Ltd |
You don’t really need to know this, but as I read, I tuck any handy scrap of paper or card into my book whenever I come across anything either interesting or contentious. ‘Post-It’ number one was slammed on to page vii of the preface when I discovered that the author considered her methodology to be “a mixture of pre-Freudian vernacular psychology and post-modern pluralism”. By the time I reached the last but one page 256 (a post card from Morocco titled ‘Gotts in Tries’ which helped by the image on the reverse, I decided must be ‘Goats in Trees’) I could hardly close the thing!
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