Gauguin, Tahiti et la Photographie

The temptation to explain the work of a painter by a single influence Exterior is not without danger. It could, in this case, to suggest that Paul Gauguin owed his artistic salvation only to the presence of photographic prints. The generic title "Gauguin, Tahiti and Photography" conceals a multiple reality. The first category of photographs that the book relates to the work of Paul Gauguin is that of photographs of works of art that constituted his imaginary museum. "I take with me in photographs, drawings, a whole small world comrades who will talk to me every day," he wrote to Odilon Redon in 1890. The second type of photographs to which the book refers is that of ethnographic photographs that are inspired by of Courbet's precept: "Learn from the common people" and are interested in the street and its actors. The photographs that Paul Gauguin was able to acquire allow him to make Pose to infinity subjects that are "the reflection of a reality disappeared and forever resurrected". The Third category of photographs presented here concerns those which, Without having a direct resonance on the work, irrigate the memory of the painter. These photographs reproduce the places and people that the Painter was able to visit or meet between 1891 and 1903. They are powerfully evocative and lend themselves to infinite correspondences, even if they have a greater interest in the historiography of Tahiti than for the history of art in general and that of Paul Gauguin in particular. source: www.librest.com