Van Gogh And Gauguin: The Search For A Sacred Art Analysis

The line, ‘colour is in itself enigmatic in the sensations which it gives us’, resonates with Faa Iheihe due to the mysteriousness of the overall composition. The image is a depiction of what appears to be a paradise-like setting. Primitive-looking men and women are placed across the long painting accompanied by a horse and a dog. Reds, yellows, greens, and browns are recognizable throughout the entire painting.
These colors often are related to warm colors. This is suitable due to the climate that this setting is located in. The reds are soothing, especially on the woman’s skirt. Flowers are also painted red and are harmonic with the yellow and orange background. The primitive figures have a consistent skin tone of brown outlined with a black line which Gauguin painted in many of his works. These colors are well balanced with one another– nothing is contrasting. Also, the colors are representational rather than hyper-realistic. In a symbolic sense, Gauguin uses green to depict trees. This green helps create a separation between the foreground and the background. The trees are not articulated in any way. Instead, they are green vertical lines painted in a consistent way. …show more content…
Debora Silverman, author of Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for a Sacred Art, wrote that Gauguin studied how art could be intangible. These colors took away all sense of realism and created mythical scenes. One of these scenes specifically, is Gauguin’s painting Vision After the Sermon: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel 3 (1888). Gauguin, who held high esteem for Japanese woodblock paintings, created a non-natural landscape composed of a consistent red color. This background causes the overall painting to feel warm and pulls it out of reality. The flat setting builds a mythical scene, where the figures, especially Jacob and the angel, seem to be