Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) - photo 1

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)

Lot 36
30.07.2020 00:00UTC +01:00
Classic
Starting price
£ 13 000
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 381244
Lot 36 | Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)
Estimate value
£ 15 000 – 20 000
GAUGUIN, Paul (1848-1903). Autograph manuscript, draft of an article on Huysmans and Redon, n.d. [late 1889].

In French. 31/4 pages, 312 x 202mm, numbered in pencil '29' on f.1.

'The artist ... is one of [Nature's] means of creation'. A characteristically discursive, epigrammatic and trenchant comparison of the Decadent novelist and art critic Joris-Karl Huysmans and Odilon Redon, with comments on Gustave Moreau and Puvis de Chavannes. 'Wysmans [sic] is an artist [...] Many painters would like to be musicians or men of letters. He would like to be a painter [...]'; Gauguin felicitates Huysmans for his abandonment of naturalistic art, and continues with a critique of Huysmans's description of a Virgin and Child by Francesco Bianchi, in which he sees the writer projecting himself rather than truly interpreting the painting ('Wysmans critiquant ce tableau a fait du Wysmans'). On Redon, Gauguin remarks on his creation of 'monsters': 'I do not see how Odilon Redon creates monsters – they are imaginary beings. He is a dreamer, a man of imagination [...] If we carefuly examine the profound art of Redon, we find little trace of the monstrous, no more than the statues etc of Notre Dame [...] Nature has mysterious infinities, a power of imagination [...] The artist himself is one of her means of creation and for me Odilon Redon is one of her chosen ones for this continuation of creation [...] In all [Redon's] work I see only a language of the heart, quite human and not monstrous'. Gauguin contrasts with this Gustave Moreau, of whom Huysmans speaks highly: in him, Gauguin is far from seeing an impulsion of the heart: 'He makes of every human being a jewel covered in jewels. (The soul is missing)'. On Puvis de Chavannes, he comments that 'he does not smile at you [...] Simplicity, nobility are not suited to this age'. The manuscript ends with some disconnected notes, including one relating to his fascination with the South Pacific: 'Sea coconut – Coconut in two parts which open like the female genitalia, from which emerges an enormous phallus which embeds itself in the earth to germinate. The inhabitants have long considered it as the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'.

Gauguin, Oviri. Ecrits d'un sauvage, ed. Daniel Guérin (1974), pp. 59-61, dating it 'fin 1889', and noting that it wasy first published in Les Nouvelles littéraires, 7 May 1953. The manuscript shows significant differences from the published text, with a number of sentences silently omitted or re-ordered more logically than in the sometimes disjointed manuscript. Perhaps mockingly, Gauguin spells Huysmans with a W (either 'Wysmans' or 'Wuysmans') throughout.
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
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SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
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09.07.2020 – 30.07.2020
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