Gauguin’s stylistic innovations were just one component of his self-promotional endeavor that appeared in the Volpini Suite. It was his engagement with ‘primitive’ subject-matter—which included depictions of local peasant and folk culture—that served as a fashionable and marketable technique (Perry 6). In the 1889 suite, Gauguin depicted people in their daily surroundings, including: Breton peasant women chatting, Martinican women carrying baskets of fruit, and women from Arles out walking (Juszczak 119). After his creation of the Volpini Suite, Gauguin’s use of ‘primitive’ subjects intensified, ultimately becoming a defining feature of his artistic practice. Gauguin’s work in the Volpini Show correlated to contemporary ideas about the ‘primitive’. The Exposition Universelle juxtaposed the newly built Eiffel Tower and the Gallery of Machines with ethnographic exhibits from around the world (Chu 439). In previous years, these colonial displays included the presentation of raw materials and manufactured goods from non-Western (or so-called ‘primitive’) cultures; the show was substantially enlarged in 1889 with the addition of live human exhibits known as human zoos (439).
Biography is a useful tool of analysis but it must be combined with a sense of the economic, social and political realities that an artist faces in their time. Rather than tell inaccurate myths about important artists, my research indicates that the art world needs a better understanding of how artists (past and present) orient themselves to market forces.
Brettell, Richard R. “Gauguin and Paper. Writing, Copying, Drawing, Painting, Pasting, Cutting, Wetting, Tracing, Inking, Printing.” Paul Gauguin: Artist of Myth and Dream, edited by Stephen F. Eisenman, Skira Editore S.p.A., 2007, pp. 59-67.
Broude, Norma. “Introduction: Gauguin after Postmodernism.” Gauguin’s Challenge, edited by Norma Broude, Bloomsbury Publishing Inc., 2018, pp. 1-12.
Chu, Petra ten-Doesschate. Nineteenth-Century European Art. Laurence King Publishing Ltd, 2006.
Fénéon, Félix, and Belinda Thomson. “The Impressionists in 1886, Art in Translation.” Art in Translation, vol. 6, no. 3, 2014, pp. 271-285. Taylor & Francis Online, doi:10.275 2/175613114X14043084852958.
Juszczak, Agnieszka. “The Iconography of the Volpini Suite.” Paul Gauguin: The Breakthrough into Modernity, edited by Barbara Bradley and Laurence Channing, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2010, pp.119-163.
Lemonedes, Heather. “Gauguin Becomes a Printmaker.” Paul Gauguin: The Breakthrough into Modernity, edited by Barbara Bradley and Laurence Channing, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2010, pp. 87-117.
Perry, Gill. “Primitivism and the ‘Modern’.” Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: The Early Twentieth Century, edited by The Open University, Yale University Press, 1993, pp. 3-85.
Thomson, Belinda. “Gauguin Goes Public.” Paul Gauguin: The Breakthrough into Modernity, edited by Barbara Bradley and Laurence Channing, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2010, pp. 29-73.
Ward, Martha. “Impressionist Installations and Private Exhibitions.” Critical Readings in Impressionism & Post-Impressionism, edited by Mary Tompkins Lewis, University of California Press, 2007, pp. 49-73.
Gauguin, Paul. Volpini Suite:
Bretonnes à la Barrière. 1889.
Wikimedia Commons. Web. 21 Mar. 2019.
Gauguin, Paul. Volpini Suite: The Grasshoppers
and the Ants, A Souvenir of Martinique. 1889.
Picryl. Web. 21 Mar. 2019.
Political Conditions
Imperialism and Primitivism in the Late-Nineteenth Century
Beyond Biography
Artists and Market Forces
Works Cited
The Paris stock market crash in 1882 not only shook the financial world – the art world too was impacted by a volatile market. With more artists producing than buyers willing to pay, art collectors and enthusiasts controlled prices (Ward 61). To remain competitive, artists had to distinguish themselves from their contemporaries (Green 41). Ultimately, the illusion of rarity increased the value of art.
The Volpini Suite is an early example of Gauguin’s self-promotional endeavours in the 1890s, which later intensified in Tahiti. Gauguin was encouraged to make the suite by his dealer Theo van Gogh, who knew that the prints were not only attractive to specialized print collectors – their low cost appealed to aspiring collectors as well (Brettell 63). The suite presented itself as an opportunity for Gauguin to market himself and his artwork as unique.
Gauguin’s motivation to create the Volpini Suite stemmed from his desire to detach himself from the French exhibiting society known as the Impressionists (Thomson 42). In the final Impressionist exhibition in 1886, Gauguin’s work was largely overshadowed by Georges Seurat’s Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1884-86), which featured his new Pointillist technique. In a review of the 1886 exhibition, anarchist art critic, Félix Fénéon, praised Seurat for his new and innovative techniques, while he pegged Gauguin’s work as unexciting (Fénéon and Thomson 273). Disappointed by his weak critical reception, Gauguin travelled to Brittany, Martinique, and Arles between 1886 and 1888 (Juszczak 119). This two-year period marks the beginning of Gauguin’s self-styling; it was during his travels that Gauguin consciously developed a new stylistic technique called Synthetism.
Gauguin, Paul. The Vision After the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel). 1888. Wikimedia Commons. Web. 21 Mar. 2019.
Seurat, Georges. A Sunday Afternoon on the
Island of on La Grande Jatte. 1884-86. Wikimedia
Commons. Web. 21 Mar. 2019.
Economic Conditions
The Stock Market Crash of 1882
Social Conditions
The Final Impressionist Exhibition of 1886
Gauguin, Paul. Cow in a Meadow, Rouen. 1884. Wikimedia Commons. Web. 21 Mar. 2019.
Like celebrities, famous artists face rumours and myths that overwhelm their public reception. Vincent van Gogh has become inextricably linked to the tale of the tortured soul who sliced off his ear; Pablo Picasso to the tale
of the womanizing innovative artist; and Salvador Dalí as the eccentric artist who did too many drugs. This research dismantles the myth of Paul Gauguin
(1848-1903), who, in the late-twentieth century, became the target of feminist and post-colonialist theorists, who criticized him for sexualized depictions of young women, as well as ‘plagiarizing’ and ‘pillaging’ the art of other cultures (Broude 2-3). In analyzing Gauguin’s work, scholars have fallen into the trap of biography and have largely overlooked the precise historical context in which he worked. By acknowledging the complex economic, social and political conditions of the late-nineteenth century, Gauguin can be freed from the constraints of biography; his relationship to the art market and self-promotional strategies can mediate his reception.
Art historical scholarship that villainizes Gauguin is primarily focused on his ‘Tahitian period’, after he travelled to the island in 1891. This period is characterized by numerous depictions of naked local women posed in nature: this has shaped Gauguin’s reputation as a womanizer and cultural appropriator. In 1972, Linda Nochlin produced a photograph of a nude male model holding a platter of bananas beneath his genitals, with the caption “buy my bananas” (Broude 1). Nochlin was attempting to expose the reality of the male gaze in Gauguin’s art, but her analysis led to numerous ahistorical readings of his work that fail to recognize the precise socio-economic context in which he was working.
In 1889, Gauguin, with the assistance of artists Émile Bernard (1868-1941) and Émile Schuffenecker (1851-1934), organized an exhibition at the Café des Arts on the grounds of Exposition Universelle in Paris (Thomson 29). At the Volpini Show, Gauguin exhibited 17 works (54), as well as a limited-edition set of eleven canary yellow-coloured prints that were listed as ‘available upon request’ in the exhibition catalogue (Brettell 62). The Volpini Suite was Gauguin’s first album of prints and ultimately served as both a visual résumé and an advertisement of his unique style and subject-matter (Lemonedes 87).
Gauguin, Paul. Two Tahitian Women. 1899. Wikimedia Commons. Web. 21 Mar. 2019.
Gauguin, Paul. Frontispiece for the Volpini Suite: Leda
and the Swan. 1889. Wikimedia Commons. Web. 21
Mar. 2019.
Gauguin, Paul. Self-Portrait with Portrait of
Émile Bernard (Les misérables). 1888. Wikimedia
Commons. Web. 21 Mar. 2019.
Introduction
The Gauguin Problem
The Volpini Suite
Gauguin Defines Himself
Gauguin, Paul. Parau api: What News? 1892. Wikimedia Commons. Web. 21 Mar. 2019.
Sarah Kapp Art History and Visual Studies Major (honours)
Business Minor Presented March 6, 2019 This research was supported by the Jamie Cassels
Undergraduate Research Award University of Victoria Supervised by Dr. Catherine Harding
Assistance from Dr. Melissa Berry
