Product Overview
From Follett
"Text adapted from Trouble in Paradise, by George T.M. Shackelford, in Gauguin, Cezanne, Matisse: visions of Arcadia, c2012 by Philadelphia Museum of Art"--Colophon.;Includes bibliographical references (pages 44-48). "The nineteenth-century French painter Paul Gauguin's enigmatic masterpiece 'Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?' is the summation of his years in Tahiti and the crowing glory of his career. This brief introduction explores the painting's rich symbolism and its deep roots in European art as well as in Gauguin's experiences in Tahiti; recounts the crucial period in artist's life when it was made; and invites us to share the artist's meditations on the questions posed by its title"--Back cover.
From the Publisher
The life of Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) is one of the richest and most mythic in the history of Western art. Abandoning a career in banking, a family and his homeland, in the last decade of the nineteenth century he sailed from France to the South Seas to seek a life "in ecstasy, in peace and for art." During his years in Tahiti, Gauguin brought forth a wealth of astonishing paintings, culminating in this monumental meditation on what he called the "ever-present riddle" of human existence posed in the work's title. This compact introduction to Gauguin's masterpiece explores its relation to European models as well as to the artist's own companion pieces.