Word: gauguins
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...portly, generous gentleman, more at home with his fellow expatriate Henry James than with the eccentric Bohemians of the art world. He resisted the Pre-Raphaelites and "Ruskin, don't you know . . . silly old thing." He ignored the principles of art for art's sake, detested Gauguin and Van Gogh. His advice to one of his own disciples: "Begin with Franz Hals, copy and study Franz Hals, after that go to Madrid and copy Velasquez...
...neurotic love for his cousin Emmanuele. Novelist-Critic Charles Huysmans promptly labeled it "a product of hideous vulgarities." Few people read it and fewer still bought it; but it admitted Gide to Paris' literary set. It brought him the acquaintance of Maeterlinck, D'Annunzio, Whistler, Gauguin, Rodin and Mallarme...
Such post-impressionists as Gauguin, Van Gogh and Cézanne wrenched the wheel further around, by refusing to paint precisely what they saw. They also painted what they felt about it, and they inclined to look more at their pictures than at their subjects. It remained for the living moderns, led by Picasso and Matisse, to give the final twist. A painting, they decided, is a painting first and foremost, and whatever it represents must be secondary. Granted that much, they felt perfectly justified in making their own rules, regardless of "appearances." Some (the nonobjective painters) chose to ignore...
They felt a compulsion to go on from where the post-impressionists (Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne) left off, and an itch to show that you can forget nature (almost) and still paint pictures...
...Gauguin had gone far beyond the hurried lyricism of Claude Monet (whom he once collected), but he seldom banged the brasses like his fellow pioneer Van Gogh. His island landscapes had a muted harmony which reminded U.S. eyes of moist June afternoons seen through Polaroid sunglasses. The honey-colored people who lived in them possessed the gentle strength and warmth of his models, the wooden stiffness and empty-eyed thoughtfulness of their idols. Each painting was an elaborate, somber tapestry of colors that no other artist had yet dared to weave...