Paul Gauguin books

Noa Noa: The Tahitian Journal (Fine Art Series)

by: Paul Gauguin
Typically considered a journal or memoir, Gauguin's book is in fact an early type of experimental multimedia novel. Thematically, Gauguin burlesques Pierre Loti's "Marriage of Loti", while structurally he interleaves narrative with his own highly-inventive Post-impressionist woodcarvings. It's a fine book: Gauguin could have been a great novelist, if he weren't already busy.

Paul Gauguin: Artist of Myth and Dream

by: Stephen E. Eisenman
This catalog offers a retrospective of Gauguin’s entire artistic career, beginning with his early impressionist works through to his final masterpieces painted on the Marquesas Islands, where Gauguin was inspired to create artworks that are among the most vivid in the history of painting. "Gauguin had clearly decided to violate social norms, destroy consecrated artistic standards and create a scandal wherever he went, and he was successful. He wanted to be a dissenter, a rebel, an outsider and a renegade, but through art he also wanted to rebuild the fantastic images of a Golden Age that had dominated his mind from his first travels around the world.

The Yellow House: Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin Side by Side

by: Susan Goldman Rubin
During the fall of 1888, Vincent Van Gogh invited Paul Gauguin to come live and paint with him in the Yellow House in the south of France. "...he missed the company of other people, especially artists who could discuss painting. He hoped that warm, sunny Arles would attract fellow painters to join him. Together they would form a kind of family of artists, a Studio of the South." Van Gogh and Gauguin were very different in both temperment and style. Van Gogh worked quickly, painting "exactly what he saw with his own eyes", and often completed a painting in just one sitting.

The Writings Of A Savage

by: Paul Gauguin
The line that has always remained fixed in my mind was Gauguin's comment
on the refinement of a work. I think on a very basic level, to simply make a primary statement and move on has a very satisfying feeling to it. Miles Davis, among others, was fond of one takes because there is a spirit that is captured in that take, often lost on recurrent ones because of increased expectations, abstraction of an "ideal", and trying to recall of the "good stuff" while dismissing the "bad". Gauguin's work and life capture this idea quite well, and he voices a call-to-arms by bringing to light this notion of the non-refinement of the work.

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