Savage Tales
The Writings of Paul Gauguin
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Yale University Press
Published:10th Sep '19
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
An original study of Gauguin’s writings, unfolding their central role in his artistic practice and negotiation of colonial identity
As a French artist who lived in Polynesia, Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) occupies a crucial position in histories of European primitivism. This is the first book devoted to his wide-ranging literary output, which included journalism, travel writing, art criticism, and essays on aesthetics, religion, and politics. It analyzes his original manuscripts, some of which are richly illustrated, reinstating them as an integral component of his art. The seemingly haphazard, collage-like structure of Gauguin’s manuscripts enabled him to evoke the “primitive” culture that he celebrated, while rejecting the style of establishment critics. Gauguin’s writing was also a strategy for articulating a position on the margins of both the colonial and the indigenous communities in Polynesia; he sought to protect Polynesian society from “civilization” but remained implicated in the imperialist culture that he denounced. This critical analysis of his writings significantly enriches our understanding of the complexities of artistic encounters in the French colonial context.
“Taken together, the writings [in Savage Tales] form an episodic account of a complex persona under construction.”—Holland Cotter, New York Times Book Review
“Perhaps Goddard’s greatest contribution in Savage Tales is her restoration of the sense of material complexity to Noa Noa and Gauguin’s other ambitious manuscripts, the richness of which is lost in their transition to later print editions. The collage aesthetic and the brilliant symbiosis of word and image is conveyed through beautiful reproductions of carefully selected album pages, and she demonstrates how this bricolage of motifs, and the process of appropriation, reiteration, fragmentation and repetition are aesthetic strategies shared by the artist’s visual and literary oeuvre.”—Mary Morton, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide
"Anyone who still thinks of Paul Gauguin’s approach as an individual or an artist as that of a simple exoticist should read Linda Goddard’s outstanding book" - Timothy Matthews, French Studies
"The wealth of illustrations further gives the reader a sense of just how much language quickened the inspiration of this symbolist painter, and how much the painted form sculpted his words. For this reason, it is a book one will be glad to revisit many times and find that a small treasure awaits on any of its pages" - Didier Maleuvre, French History
CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 2020
ISBN: 9780300240597
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
208 pages