Gauguin Exhibition at the CMA

Alas, no van Gogh exhibitions opening this fall in the U.S., but opening Sunday October 4th is "Paul Gauguin: Paris 1889" at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The museum website describes the show thusly: "This landmark exhibition gathers about 75 paintings, works on paper, woodcarvings, and ceramics by Paul Gauguin and his contemporaries to explore how the artist created his signature style during the year 1889. Co-organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Paul Gauguin: Paris, 1889 re-creates on a smaller scale the radical independent exhibition that Gauguin organized with his artistic disciples on the grounds of the 1889 Exposition Universelle—a display of about 100 paintings now recognized as the first Symbolist exhibition in Paris."

The "radical independent exhibition" is the so-called Volpini show, which Gauguin organized together with fellow avant-garde artists Émile Bernard, Émile Schuffenecker, Charles Laval, Louis Anquetin, and a few others. It was conceived as a reaction to the French art exhibition at the Universal Exposition, which was limited only to Salon painters and similarly well-established artists. Gauguin chose as a venue for the exhibition the Café des Arts -- run by a Monsieur Volpini -- on the actual grounds of the Universal Exposition, thus thumbing his nose at the establishment. The exhibition ran from May through July 1889, included a small catalogue, and was seen by contemporary critics.

At this time, Vincent had just entered the asylum of Saint-Rémy. His brother Theo did not submit any of Vincent's work to the show, believing it to be an upstart and unseemly enterprise, and in fact did not tell Vincent about it. However, somehow Vincent did learn of it and mentioned it casually in a letter to Theo of early June. Theo responded, "At first I had said you would exhibit some things too, but they assumed an air of being such tremendous fellows that it made one sick...It gave one somewhat the impression of going to the Universal Exhibition by the back stairs" (T10). In his reply, Vincent agreed that it was probably best his work not be shown ("My not yet being recovered is reason enough") but defended Gauguin and Bernard: "It remains very understandable that for beings like them...it would be impossible to turn all their canvases to the wall until it should please people to admit them into something, into the official stew. You cause a stir by exhibiting in cafés" (LT595).

Gauguin himself learned of Theo's disapproval via their mutual friend Émile Schuffenecker. Writing from Pont-Aven in Brittany on June 10--where he'd gone after the show's opening--he defends the show and states, "I organized this little exhibition at the Universelle to show what can be done together and to demonstrate the possibilities." Unfortunately, we do not have Theo's reply to Gauguin.

"Paul Gauguin: Paris 1889" will be at CMA until 18 January 2010, after which it will travel to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Another Ear Theory

Two German art historians are proposing another possibility for Vincent's mutilated ear: that Gauguin did it (see the Guardian article). The book "Van Gogh's Ear and the Pact of Silence" suggests that Gauguin injured Vincent with one of his fencing swords during a fight, either accidentally or intentionally. The two artists, according to this hypothesis, agreed to keep the incident a secret. Now, I am not a big fan of Gauguin and think Vincent's life would have been very different had he not come to Arles, but I am not persuaded. First of all, given that Vincent's ear was sliced only partially, that would have been quite a feat with a fencing sword. Especially 'by accident.'

The Guardian also published a rebuttal blogpost by art and design critic Jonathan Jones.

UPDATE: The Daily Mail also has an article about the new book (thanks for the link, Julianne!) and reveals more of the theory: that the alleged fight between Gauguin and van Gogh was about Rachel. I still am not persuaded Gauguin wounded Vincent with a sword, but otherwise the connection with my novel is really fun...and that's all I'm saying...

UPDATE 2: Wow, this story is being picked up by a lot of news outlets. It's not every day Vincent winds up on TMZ. Martin Gayford, author of the book "The Yellow House," has a rebuttal at Bloomberg.com that I think is spot on (although I think he favors Gauguin more than I do...).

A Letter from Gauguin

Bloomberg.com reports this morning that an 1889 letter from Paul Gauguin to a "Monsieur" sold for a surprising 90,000 Euros ($140,000) at a Berlin autographs auction yesterday. The estimate was 20,000 Euros. The high sale price, I'm guessing, comes from the subject of the letter: in it Gauguin speaks of his time in Arles with Vincent and the end of their cooperation. The description of the letter in the article is so vague that I do not know if its text has been published anywhere or whether it's one I've run across myself. If anybody knows its publication history, please comment!

Paul Gauguin (shown here) is an important part of Vincent's time in Arles and so I've made him a character in my novel. My narrator, Rachel (yes, THAT Rachel) doesn't like him much, so I had a lot of fun with that. The real Gauguin was opposite in every way from Vincent: obsessively neat (where Vincent was a slob), incredibly arrogant (where Vincent lacked confidence), a womanizer, and often a liar. His accounts of what happened on 23 December 1888, given in his much-later autobiography "Avant et Apres," used to be accepted as fact, but nowadays scholars see his inclination to exaggerate and take him with a grain of salt. Add all that to the feeling one gets from looking at his self-portraits and photographs taken of him, and voila! You get one fascinating novel-character and a whole lotta drama.

Gauguin Goes Getty

The LA Times reported yesterday that the J. Paul Getty Museum has acquired its first painting by Paul Gauguin, "Arii Matamoe (The Royal End)," painted in 1892 during the painter's first trip to Tahiti. It is planned to go on view in early April. Museum director Michael Brand is quoted as saying, "We had a clear need for a great painting by Gauguin to accompany our Post-Impressionist masterpieces by van Gogh and Cézanne." The Getty already has two of Gauguin's drawings and a sculpted wood self-portrait.

The Getty owns "only" one van Gogh painting, but if you can own only one, it might as well be the exquisite "Irises" of May 1889, painted early in Vincent's stay at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole at Saint-Rémy. The Getty acquired it in March 1990 in a special deal brokered with Sotheby's, following a bit of a convoluted snafoo between Sotheby's and a collector who had bought it in 1987 at a Sotheby's auction. Neither the purchase price of the van Gogh nor the purchase price of the new Gauguin have been revealed by the museum.