Word: gauguins
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...GAUGUIN, by Henri Perruchot. More than any other painter in history, Gauguin's life has been documented, dissected and glamorized, and yet this book is still a substantial contribution to the body of work about him. Perruchot's achievement is his understanding of Gauguin's drives and motives, set down without sentimentality or bravura...
...Gauguin's instinct for self-dramatization came alive most fully after he settled in Tahiti, where he painted some of his most celebrated canvases, took a Tahitian mistress and fathered two children. He saw himself as "a savage returning to savagery," and he was plainly delighted by the effect of his departure, as described to him in a letter from Europe: "You are at the moment that extraordinary, legendary artist who, from the far Pacific, sends disconcerting, inimitable works, the definitive works of a great man who has, so to speak, disappeared from the world...
...health became worse (he suffered from eczema, asthma and syphilis) and the demand for his paintings declined, Gauguin saw his withdrawal in another light: he had "buried his talent among the savages; no more will be heard of me; for many, it will appear to be a crime." Despondent, he climbed the slope of a mountain, swallowed arsenic and waited to die. But his stomach failed him: he merely became ill and had to climb down again, "condemned to live...
Hatred & Vengeance. It is Perruchot's belief that Gauguin's obsessive concern with how he appeared to the world sapped his powers after his retreat to the South Seas (where he spent six years in Tahiti and the last 18 months of his life in the Marquesas). He wasted the last year writing Before and After, a hysterical book of self-declared "hatred and vengeance" directed against his wife and the Danes. It was an ironic last word for the "austere heretic...
...Gauguin died of a heart attack in 1903 in his hut on the island of Hiva Oa. A sale of his possessions was held after an "expert" in Papeete had rummaged through the watercolors and drawings, throwing most of them "on the rubbish heap-that is, their proper place." Among the surviving papers was a fragmentary note reading, "I am now down and out, defeated by poverty." It was sold in Paris...