Technique and Meaning in the Paintings of Paul Gauguin

This title 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. Examining the artist’s work during a critical formative period, they demonstrate the impact of Impressionistic artistic practice and critical debate on his achievements. 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, as Gauguin began to imitate wax, tempera and fresco, producing works that contemporaries described as ‘primitive’. Indeed, the authors argue, Gauguin’s experimentation with the look of oil painting was deliberate and signaled a rejection of modern Western culture and society. Using Gauguin as a case study, Jirat-Wasiutynski and Newton argue that use of historical painting techniques has specific cultural meanings.

• 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

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.