Wild thing: a life of Paul Gauguin
(Book)

New York, NY : W.W. Norton & Company, 2024.

Book

First American edition.

xiv, 401 pages : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 25 cm

English

9781324020424, 1324020423, 9781324020424

"First published in Great Britain by Faber & Faber Limited in 2024"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 367-370) and index.

Paul Gauguin's legend as a transgressive genius arises as much from his biography as his aesthetically daring Polynesian paintings. Gauguin is chiefly known for his pictures that eschewed convention, to celebrate the beauty of an indigenous people and their culture. In this gorgeously illustrated, myth-busting work, Sue Prideaux reveals that while Gauguin was a complicated man, his scandalous reputation is largely undeserved. Self-taught, Gauguin became a towering artist in his brief life, not just in painting but in ceramics and graphics. He fled the bustle of Paris for the beauty of Tahiti, where he lived simply and worked consistently to expose the tragic results of French Colonialism. Gauguin fought for the rights of Indigenous people, exposing French injustices and corruption in the local newspaper and acting as advocate for the Tahitian people in the French colonial courts. His unconventional career and bold, breathtaking art influenced not only Vincent van Gogh, but Matisse and Picasso. Wild Thing upends much of what we thought we knew about Gauguin through new primary research, including the resurfaced manuscript of Gauguin's most important writing, the untranslated memoir of Gauguin's son, and a sample of Gauguin's teeth that disproves the pernicious myth of his syphilis. In the first full biography of Paul Gauguin in thirty years, Sue Prideaux illuminates the extraordinary oeuvre of a visionary artist vital to the French avant-garde.

671018c3-2a53-e33c-043d-6f8517687273