Historical significance

Primitivism was an art movement of late 19th century painting and sculpture; characterized by exaggerated body proportions, animal totems, geometric designs and stark contrasts. The first artist to systematically use these effects and achieve broad public success was Paul Gauguin. The European cultural elite discovering the art of Africa, Micronesia, and Native Americans for the first time were fascinated, intrigued and educated by the newness, wildness and the stark power embodied in the art of those faraway places. Gauguin like Pablo Picasso in the early days of the 20th century was inspired and motivated by the raw power and simplicity of the so-called Primitive art of those foreign cultures.

Gauguin is also considered a Post-Impressionist painter. His bold, colorful and design oriented paintings significantly influenced Modern art. Gauguin's influence on artists and movements in the early 20th century include Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, André Derain, Fauvism, Cubism, and Orphism among others. John Rewald, one of the first art historians to focus on the birth of modern art, wrote about Post-Impressionism in his pioneering publication called Post-Impressionism: From Van Gogh to Gauguin (1956). Rewald considered it as a continuation of his earlier volume History of Impressionism (1946). In his book about the Post-Impressionists he limited the scope to the years between 1886 and 1892. Rewald mentioned that a " subsequent volume dedicated to the second half of the post-impressionist period" - Post-Impressionism: From Gauguin to Matisse - was to follow, extending the period covered to other artistic movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, unfortunately he did not complete that volume. An interesting essay by John Rewald entitled Paul Gauguin-Letters to Ambroise Vollard and André Fontainas, (included in John Rewald Studies in Post-Impressionism, published by Abrams in 1986), discusses Gauguin's years in Tahiti, and the struggles of his survival as seen through correspondence with the dealer Vollard and others.

Legacy

The vogue for Gauguin's work started soon after his death. Many of his later paintings were acquired by the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin. A substantial part of his collection is displayed in the Pushkin Museum and the Hermitage. Gauguin paintings are rarely offered for sale; their price may be as high as $39.2 million US Dollars.

Gauguin influenced many other painters, but one especially notable connection is his imparting to Arthur Frank Mathews the use of an intense color palette. Mathews met Gauguin in the late 1890s while both were at the Academie Julian. Mathews took this influence in his founding of the California Arts and crafts or California Decorative movement.

The Japanese styled Gauguin Museum, opposite the Botanical Gardens of Papeari in Papeari, Tahiti, contains some exhibits, documents, photographs, reproductions and original sketches and block prints of Gauguin and Tahitians. In 2003, the Paul Gauguin Cultural Center opened in Atuona in the Marquesas Islands.

Paul Gauguin's life inspired Somerset Maugham to write The Moon and Sixpence. It is also the subject of at least two operas: Federico Elizalde's Paul Gauguin (1943), and Gauguin (a synthetic life) by Michael Smetanin and Alison Croggon. Dé odat de Sé verac wrote his Elegy for piano in memory of Gauguin. Mario Vargas Llosa has also based his 2003 novel The Way to Paradise on Gauguin's life.

Paul Gauguin is referred to in Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. Calvin is seen walking past his mother, shouting " Paul Gauguin once said, 'Where do we come From? What are we? Where are we going? '" Then, a couple of panels over, Calvin comes back and asks, " Who is Paul Gauguin anyway? "

Gauguin has been sainted by the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, a modern revival of Gnosticism.

SUPPLEMENT 2