October 7, 2019
Gauguin the Provocateur: Portraits in London
The National Gallery's 2019 'Gauguin Portraits' was the first show ever devoted to the controversial Post-Impressionist's portraiture.
In 2019 the National Gallery in London staged the first-ever exhibition devoted to Paul Gauguin's portraits — of himself, his circle, and the people of Tahiti, where he spent his final years.
Gauguin used bold, flat colour and symbolic settings to turn portraiture into something dreamlike and self-mythologising, casting himself by turns as Christ, outsider and saint.
The show could not ignore the troubling side of his Polynesian years and his relationships with young girls — part of a wider, ongoing reassessment of an artist as influential as he is uncomfortable.
Image: “Paul Gauguin - Self-Portrait with Halo and Snake” — Paul Gauguin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.