Summary Paul Gaugin And The Invention Of Primitivist Modernism

The reading, Paul Gaugin and the Invention of Primitivist Modernism by Abigail Solomon-Godeau shows the myth of Gauguin, as an artists who pursue a “primitive state.” In 1883, at the age of 35, Gauguin decided to break with his bourgeois life, and become a full time artist. In 1886, he travel to Breton in order to find a different atmosphere from the civilized society in what he considered was a country with archaic customs. For the first time he presented himself as a “savage” who wanted to return to a primitive art. I found very interesting the way Gauguin did a construction of a “Bretonism,” by emphasizing certain aspect of Breton’s culture. On a formal level, the developments one observes in Gauhuin’s work of 1886-90, have little to do with Brittany. …show more content…
Secondly, on the level of motif, “Bretonism” shows a new interest in religious and mystical iconography, which again goes back to a primitive state or the “super natural,” which is the opposite to modernity and science. Consequently, Gauguin uses “Bretonism” in order to reject modernity, by conceiving Brittany as feudal, rural, static in time and spiritual, in order worlds the “Other” of the contemporary Paris. Something that I found interesting was the absence of men in Gauguin’s representations of Bretonism. In my opinion, this enhance the idea that women are uncivilized, spiritual and rural by nature; hence, men are the intellectual, educated, civilized counterparts that will always predominate and control women. Consequently, Gauguin’s representation of the primitive becomes progressively