A major show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York offers a fresh take on the French impressionist Paul Gauguin by focusing on prints and transfer drawings and how they relate to his oil paintings, sculptures and wood carvings. These prints and transfers are a revelation, revealing a darker, grittier side of Gauguin's art.
Gauguin: Metamorphoses by Starr Figura, with essays by Elizabeth Childs, Hal Foster and Erika Mosier (The Museum of Modern Art, $60), catalogs this exhibition, which hangs through June 8. Gauguin's prints are often radically different from his canvases. Even the prints made as a part of his Volpini Suite, which is Gauguin's earliest and most conventional attempt at printmaking, are distinctly different from the paintings from which they are derived. As he continued to make prints, Gauguin's innovative approach would pave the way for the German expressionists, who were, in turn, among the 20th century's greatest and most influential printmakers.
With the Noa Noa Suite, Gauguin embarked on woodcut printmaking and "essentially reinvented the medium and ushered it into the modern era," Figura writes. Gauguin used unorthodox methods to carve, ink and print these woodcuts, and the images have a primitive, mysterious look and feel that is enhanced by the artist's unusual methods. Gauguin worked and reworked these prints, which were described by the poet Jacques LeClerque as "rich in design, printed with a thick ink, and, in order to relieve the monotony of black and white, punctuated with a sober accent of red or yellow."
Gauguin used the same imagery over and over again. His painting Watched by the Spirit of the Dead (1892) was the basis for drawings, monotypes and lithographs. The evil spirit from the painting became the subject of the sculpture Head With Horns (1895-97), as well as three monumental transfer drawings derived from that sculpture. Gauguin created art in a wide variety of mediums and his bold, obsessive creativity, combined with his technical skill, made him one of the most influential artists of the 19th century.
The book is well designed and thoroughly illustrated. The text offers insight into Gauguin's work, although occasionally the writing gets bogged down in technical details. An interesting two-page spread in the middle of the book includes a map and a list detailing Gauguin's extensive travels around the world.
Gauguin: Metamorphoses is a rich, detailed look at a little-known corner of the artist's oeuvre; any serious student of his art will want to have it in his collection.
Style on 05/11/2014