File:Paul Gauguin, his life and art (1921) (14768447981).jpg

Identifier: paulgauguinhisli00flet (find matches)
Title: Paul Gauguin, his life and art
Year: 1921 (1920s)
Authors: Fletcher, John Gould, 1886-1950
Subjects: Gauguin, Paul, 1848-1903
Publisher: New York, N. L. Brown
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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learly read in his pictures. Hestrove incessantly for a renewal of the deco-rative art of the great Venetians, by blend-ing the Venetian glow of color with the calmline of Primitive and especially of EgyptianPrimitive design. His problem was essen-tially the same as that of Puvis de Chavan-nes, the problem of how to cover a flat wallspace with design and color so as to leave itstill essentially a wall and not, as Veroneseand Tiepolo left it, an optically deceptivepiece of stage-scenery. Puvis had solvedthe problem by the artificial means of low-ering his scale of colors and by simplifyinghis drawing. Gauguin solved his by theelimination of modeling, and of graduationsof tone, and by reducing his drawing to thestrongest possible arabesque of outline. Ineverything he sought for the essential form,the form that contains all the other inessen-tial forms. As Serusier puts it: Thesynthetic theory of art consists in reducingall form to the smallest possible number of ^PUh TiLOEIs) ^^ -^^^^ I
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HIS LIFE AND ART 95 component forms:—straight lines, arcs of acircle, a few angles, arcs of an ellipse.And to express this form he sought for themost harmonious balance of color. Mau-rice Denis says:—Recall that a picture, be-fore being a war-horse, a nude or some anec-dote, is essentially a flat surface covered withcolors arranged in a certain order. Therefore and above all, Gauguin told hispupils not to draw from the model, but frommemory. He admitted that it was usefulfor young painters to have a model, as allknowledge of facts could only be obtainedfrom the study of models. But he addedthat it was better to draw a curtain beforethe model while painting it. One of his pu-pils declared: We went into the countryto paint seascapes and to the seashore to dolandscapes. Gauguins teaching in this respect exactlyagrees with the methods practiced for cen-turies by the great Chinese and Japanesepainters. He would have enjoyed thatstory of a Chinese painter, who was sent out 06 PAUL GAUGU

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