Gauguin and Polynesia

by Nicholas Thomas

Overview

Paul Gauguin is commonly regarded as one of the greatest modern artists. He is renowned for resplendent, mythic imagery from Oceania, for a life of restless travel and for his supposed immersion in Polynesian life. But he has long been regarded ambivalently, and in recent years both Gauguin's sexual behaviour, and his paintings, have been considered exploitative.

Gauguin and Polynesia offers a fresh view on the artist, not from the perspective of European art history, but from the contemporary vantage point of the region – Oceania – which he so famously moved to. Gauguin's art is revealed, for the first time, to be richer and more eclectic than has been recognised. The artist indeed did invent enigmatic and symbolic images, but he also depicted Polynesia's colonial modernity, acknowledging the life of the time and the dignity and power of some of the Islanders he encountered.

Gauguin and Polynesia neither celebrates nor condemns an extraordinary painter, who at times denounced and at other times affirmed the French empire that shaped his own life and the places he moved between. It is a revelation, of a formative artist of modern life, and of multicultural worlds in the making.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781801105231
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	05/14/2024
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	6.65(w) x 9.55(h) x 1.55(d)

About the Author

Nicholas Thomas first visited Polynesia in 1984 to undertake research in the Marquesas Islands. He has since travelled extensively across the Pacific, and written on Indigenous histories, empire and art; his books include Islanders: the Pacific in the age of empire (2012), which was awarded the Wolfson History Prize. Oceania, which Thomas co-curated with Peter Brunt for the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris in 2018–19, was acclaimed as a landmark exhibition. Since 2006, he has been Professor of Historical Anthropology, Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He lives in London and in the Corbières, in the south of France.

Editorial Reviews

Imagine a book about Gauguin written by someone who truly knows, first hand, the Pacific islands, their history, their cultures. Imagine an author capable of looking at Gauguin's paintings not as illustrations of 'primitivism' or 'colonialism' but as attempts – failures, successes, improbabilities – to come to terms with another way of life. This is the book. There is no other like it.” —T. J. Clark, art historian and author of The Painting of Modern Life

“Refreshingly original, Gauguin and Polynesia is an impressive and deeply engaging dive into aspects of Gauguin's oeuvre that have largely evaded discussion and analysis. Guiding the reader through a crisscrossing series of historical trajectories and personal encounters, the author leans confidently into the puzzling contradictions and ambiguities that have intrigued Gauguin's admirers and detractors alike, deploying paintings, people and places as sites of connection. A crucial addition to the literature, this remarkable volume draws on the unique vantage point of Indigenous histories and the powerful spiritual agency of the Islands to reveal a penetrating glimpse of life in Polynesia as it might have been for Paul Gauguin. Pointing to saliences and possible confluences, Thomas offers readers a compelling and imaginative analysis of Gauguin – one that illuminates and heightens our understandings yet leaves things open, fugitive and deliciously unresolved (just as the artist himself would have it).” —Maia Nuku, Metropolitan Museum of Art

“This brilliantly argued book by a distinguished anthropologist and historian of Oceania offers new perspectives on a figure until now understood through a Western-centred history of art. Drawing on ethnographic and historical sources, local knowledges and the experiences of Pacific artists, he reopens our response to many familiar paintings, complicating the ideas of primitivism, cultural appropriation, and sexual exploitation that currently frame discussions of Gauguin. By showing both Europe and Oceania in transformation, their histories dialectically linked, Thomas crafts a complex realism – a model for studies of travelling art and artists in an uneven modernity.” —James Clifford, author of The Predicament of Culture

“PRAISE FOR VOYAGERS

'Takes readers on a narrative odyssey' Wall Street Journal, Books of the Year

'Highlights a dizzying burst of new research' The Economist

'A refreshing addition to the canon of literature that contemplates Oceanic navigation' Noelle Kahanu

'I would not be surprised if, after reading this masterpiece, many readers are compelled to take up voyaging themselves' Science Magazine

'An elucidating, accessible, and well-illustrated guide to the long history of Oceanic settlement and connections'” —Minerva Magazine

From the Publisher