ART 235: Pre-Modern Art History

Paul Gauguin was introduced into the Impressionist circle by Camille Pissarro and contributed major works to five of the eight Impressionist exhibitions between 1879 and 1886. During these years he transformed himself from a banker-stockbroker into a professional artist and from a family man into a solitary searcher for artistic, moral, and spiritual truths.

This book explores van Gogh's and Gauguin's conviction that the purpose of visual art in human culture is to communicate a spiritual understanding of existence comparable to the wisdom contained in the metaphors and parables of myths, religions, and literature. Monographic studies in the book, which entail many new interpretations of van Gogh's and Gauguin's imagery, reveal the ways in which their ideas and the specific events of their personal lives shaped their creation of meaningful symbolic motifs.

In 1906 tribal sculpture was discovered by 20th century artists; these objects had suddenly become relevant because of changes in the nature of modern art itself. The main body of the book contains a series of essays on primitivism in the works of Gauguin, the Fauves, Picasso, Brancusi, the German Expressionists, Lipchitz, Modigliani, Klee, Giacometti, Moore, the Surrealists, and the Abstract Expressionists. It concludes with a discussion of primitivist contemporary artists, including those involved in earthworks, shamanism, and ritual-inspired performances.

Twelve insightful and original essays about Paul Gauguin and Polynesia, written by eminent scholars in the field of art history and ethnology, present the development of Polynesian art before and after Gauguin's stay in Polynesia at the end of the 19th century. The book presents over 60 works by Paul Gauguin, fully revealing the extent of the influence of Polynesian art and culture on his work, while also highlighting more than 60 works from the Pacific that exemplify the dynamic exchanges of Pacific Island peoples with Europeans throughout the 19th century.