Gauguin at Tate Modern

[garth cartwright]

We got our tickets at 1.30pm for 3pm and then, when it got to 3, had to join a queue. On entering I thought it was going to be a disaster - the first room was as rammed as Oxford St on a Saturday afternoon. And this was a Thursday afternoon . . . Luckily, it appeared that the Tate's queue monitor had just let a barrage of folk in and most were doing the lemming thing of huddling in the first room. We escaped through to other rooms and later made our way back to room 1 to find it almost empty - the Tate obviously doesn't let a constant trickle of people in but the occasional barrage.

What to say about what's on show? This is a huge exhibition, incredibly thorough, of the 19th C painter I like the most (alongside Degas tho G was more fun than D). It ranges from his days as a stockbroker and Sunday painter to his final works as his health was consumed by syphilis. Some of the works are mediocre. Many are excellent. The hanging of the work is by theme - women, symbol, words etc - rather than chronological which I found annoying as it meant paintings with decades between them get hung beside one another. That Gauguin found in Polynesia the right mix of exoticism and symbolism to inspire his best work is evident - ironically, Tahiti was not the Eden he imagined so he recreated it in paintings as he wanted it to be.

Shamelessly portrayed as mad, bad and dangerous to know in books and movies over the 20th C this exhibition suggests a more level headed man (although his behaviour towards his estranged wife and kids remains abysmal and he certainly spread syphilis in Tahiti). He spoke up for the Polynesian people against their colonial overseers and the missionaries who had done their worst to destroy the pre-European culture. For this he was persecuted.

At £13.50 it's expensive but the two hours I spent in there were worth it. I'd always wanted to see a Gauguin retrospective and this one, while not totally complete, gives a real sense of an artistic life where a raw vision was followed right to the end.

[Des]

I've been a victim of the Tate Modern crowded blockbuster show too often to risk a trip to this one, especially as Gaugin is an artist towards whom I have some ambivalence both in terms of aesthetics and politics. Good to hear that this exhibition addresses some important issues and lays to rest some of the cliches surrounding his work though innit.

[Ted]

I saw it on sunday. It's too big to take in in a single visit, but still seemed strangely incomplete. I was pretty underwhelmed. Maybe thats to do with the way its arranged. I don't know that it does address the cliches about his work. The later Tahitian stuff is pretty much what you'd expect. I liked the room of his woodcuts from this period best - they had a hand made unfinished quality.
The blurb alongside the works didn't really address any of the stuff about his relationship with the culture he was portraying beyond saying that he found Tahiti a bit overdeveloped for his tastes and tried to portray a more "natural" version of it. It did make me think a little about some of the conversations we've had here about separating the artists behaviour from his/her art. What if the art actually portrays the stuff that we find to dislike in the artist? Knowing that Mr. G. liked to dip his syphilitic tadger in the 14 year girls he portrayed does make some difference does it not? I'm sure there's some really obvious metaphor for colonialism in that as well..

[Des]

On the button, Ted.

[garth cartwright]

Ted, I believe you have to remove the art from the biography - otherwise every time I looked at a Caravaggio I'd see a murderous psychopath, Dali a supporter of Franco, lstening to Miles Davis I'd have to think of how he beat his wives etc. That Gauguin was a very flawed individual there has never been any doubt. If we only engage with artists who appear to have lived as saints then it's Billy Bragg on the stereo and Bridget Riley in the gallery. That G was a great painter - to me - there is also no doubt.

The G show is huge and sprawling and the fuzzy way the ptgs are grouped is annoying. But the quality of the best paintings, the carvings, the prints and such is exceptional. He both romanticised the Polynesians and portrayed them with an earthy beauty and mystery that continues to resonate. Looking at Gauguin today is like listening to Robert Johnson - both were a hinge upon much of which was best in art and music would swing through from their influence. That Picasso and the Expressionists owe him a huge debt there is no doubt.

But, yes, a frustrating show in terms of the narratives it sets up.

[Ted]

Ted, I believe you have to remove the art from the biography - otherwise every time I looked at a Caravaggio I'd see a murderous psychopath, Dali a supporter of Franco, listening to Miles Davis I'd have to think of how he beat his wives etc.

Oh totally. But if Dali had made work explicitly glorifying the generalisssimo, Miles had recorded "I'm going to kick you a new arsehole, bitch", Gary Glitter had recorded.. (lets just stop there shall we.) I'd find it pretty hard to engage with their work too.

[AndyM]

I'm not sure you can excise the biographical completely, though we try the most strenuously to do this when we admire the work in question. I've never really responded to Gauguin's art very positively (give me a nice bit of Cezanne any day, or some Seurat), so if he was an immoral scumbag I'm not too fussed.

[Ted]

No I'm not overly concerned about whether he was an immoral scumbag or not. Or indeed a thoroughly lovely but misunderstood old gentleman who just wanted to help those poor beknighted savages (who have a rilly, rilly relaxed attitude to sexuality that us westerners could learn something from y'know).


One painting in particular fascinated me - more for its title than anything else.
Called "What - Are You Jealous".


Yet more naked girls. But does the title refer to our jealousy at the girls ease with their nakedness (in a tropical paradise) or at Gauguin for getting to lech (and possibly more) at them in the flesh and we didn't? Its a key question - if its the first, well its just the standard european romanticisation of indigenous peoples, if the second its rather creepier - however knowingly the question is asked.

[Hugh Weldon]

Maybe Gauguin was the first sex tourist.

[AndyM]

Maybe Gauguin was the first sex tourist.

Shouldn't think he was the first in general, but the first to make such 'practices' the subject matter of his best-known work.

[Ian M]

I was at the Tate yesterday (for the completely wonderful Ai Wei Wei installation),but while I was there was talking to a curator. I asked him about the crowd issues at the Gauguin show, and he recommended that the best time to go, when it is quietest, is the late night openings on Thursday and Friday, and soon to be Sunday. Apparently they have deliberately put less stuff in the first two rooms to avoid crowding them, although people still seem to.

Anyway many people who had come for the Gauguin were finding what a sublime experience the new Turbine Hall installation is, and looks set to be as popular as the Giant Sun thing with the public. On all winter.

[Des]

Ai Wei Wei installation

This does sound wonderful Ian - I'm hoping to see it next Thursday. Hope you didn't take any of them, the artist doesn't encourage it!

[Ian M]

I think one of them got stuck on the sole of my shoe. Honestly, officer.

[Ted]

The catalogue for the Gauguin show is gorgeous (one of the perks of being an art world consort). I'm ploughing through the text. No great revelations yet.