Paul Gauguin citations
Paul Gauguin
Date de naissance: 7. juin 1848
Date de décès: 8. mai 1903
Paul Gauguin, né le 7 juin 1848 à Paris et mort, le 8 mai 1903, à Atuona, Hiva Oa, aux îles Marquises, est un peintre postimpressionniste. Chef de file de l'École de Pont-Aven et inspirateur des nabis, il est considéré comme l'un des peintres français majeurs du XIXe siècle, et l'un des plus importants précurseurs de l'art moderne avec Munch et Cézanne.
Citations Paul Gauguin
„Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge — and has to content oneself with dreaming.“
— Paul Gauguin
Quote in Avant et Après, (1903); taken from Paul Gauguin's Intimate Journals, trans. (1923) Van Wyck Brooks [Dover, 1997, ], p. 2
„My Dear Mr. Pissarro; - I accept with pleasure the invitation that you and Mr. Degas were kind enough to extend to me. And naturally in that case I shall abide by all the rules that govern your Societe. Based on this decision, I also have the membership dues available. I will probably see you at Miss Latouche's and we will talk about this.“
— Paul Gauguin
Quote from a short letter of Gauguin, 3 April 1879, to French artist to Pissarro; as cited on [http://natedsanders.com/paul_gauguin_autograph_letter_signed_to_camille_pi-lot13463.aspx 'Paul Gauguin Autograph Letter Signed to Camille Pissarro' - Nade D. Sanders]
Gauguin accepted membership in the Societe Anonyme Cooperative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs, formed in 1873 by Pissarro, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley for the purpose of exhibiting their artwork independently
„In my figures [of his famous painting 'Vision After the Sermon'] I have achieved a great simplicity, which is both rustic and superstitious..... In this picture the landscape and the struggle [between Jacob wrestling with the angel ] exist only in the imagination of the people whom the sermon has moved to prayer. That's why there is a contrast between the people, depicted naturally, and the struggle in its unnatural and dis-proportioned landscape.“
— Paul Gauguin
p. 24: quote in his letter to Vincent van Gogh, c. 1888
„With [https://upload. wikimedia. org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Paul_Gauguin_028. jpg this painting], I tried to make everything breathe faith, quiet suffering, religious and primitive style and great nature with its scream.“
— Paul Gauguin
in a letter to Theo van Gogh (1889-11-20)
Gauguin is referring to the painting Breton Calvary: The Green Christ.
„In Europe men and women have intercourse because they love each other. In the South Seas they love each other because they have had intercourse. Who is right?“
— Paul Gauguin
Quoted by Bengt Danielsson in [http://books.google.com/books?id=u41CAAAAIAAJ&q=%22In+Europe+men+and+women+have+intercourse+because+they+love+each+other+In+the+South+Seas+they+love+each+other+because+they+have+had+intercourse+Who+is+right%22&pg=PA137#v=onepage Gauguin in the South Seas] (1966)
„As I wanted to suggest a luxuriant and untamed type of nature, a tropical sun that sets aglow everything around it, I was obliged to give my figures a suitable setting.It is indeed the outdoor life — yet intimate at the same time, in the thickets and the shady streams, these women whispering in an immense palace decorated by nature itself, with all the riches that Tahiti has to offer. This is the reason behind all these fabulous colors, this subdued and silent glow."But none of this exists!""Oh yes it does, as an equivalent of the grandeur, the depth, the mystery of Tahiti, when you have to express it on a canvas measuring only one square meter."Very subtle, very knowing in her naïveté is the Tahitian Eve. The riddle hiding in the depth of her childlike eyes is still incommunicable to me.“
— Paul Gauguin
p. 137: Diverse Choses, his notebook (1896 - 1898)
„In art, there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists. And in the end, doesn't the revolutionary's work become official, once the State takes it over?“
— Paul Gauguin
p. 107: in his letter, published in Le Soir, (25 April 1895)
„Life at Papeete soon became a burden.It was Europe, the Europe which I had thought to shake off — and that under the aggravating circumstances of colonial snobbism, and the imitation, grotesque even to the point of caricature, of our customs, fashions, vices, and absurdities of civilization.Was I to have made this far journey, only to find the very thing which I had fled?“
— Paul Gauguin
Quote from Noa Noa ,(1893) [Dover, 1985, ], p. 2.
„This Cézanne [a 'Still life with Compotier, Fruit and Glass', Cézanne made c. 1879-1882!! ], that you ask me for is a pearl of exceptional quality and I already have refused three hundred francs for it; it is one of my most treasured possessions, and except in absolute necessity, I would give up my last shirt before the picture.“
— Paul Gauguin
Quote in a letter (June 1888) to Gauguin's friend Émile Schuffenecker; as cited in Impressionism: A Centenary Exhibition, Anne Distel, Michel Hoog, Charles S. Moffett, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, (New York, N.Y.) 1975, p. 56
„How do you see this tree? Is it really green? Use green, then, the most beautiful green on your palette. And that shadow, rather blue? Don't be afraid to paint it as blue as possible.“
— Paul Gauguin
Comment voyez-vous cet arbre? Il est bien vert? Mettez donc du vert, le plus beau vert de votre palette; — et cette ombre, plutôt bleue? Ne craignez pas la peindre aussi bleue que possible.
Quote from a conversation in 1888, Pont-Aven, with Paul Sérusier as cited by w:Maurice Denis, inL'influence de Paul Gauguin, in Occident (October 1903) and published in Du symbolisme au classicisme. Théories (1912), ed. Olivier Revault d'Allonnes (Paris, 1964), p. 51.
„Copying nature — what is that supposed to mean? Follow the masters! But why should one follow them? The only reason they are masters is that they didn't follow anybody!“
— Paul Gauguin
p. 108: cited by Eugène Tardieu, 'Interview with Paul Gauguin,' in L'Écho de Paris, (13 May 1895)
