Gauguin: Maker of Myth - Spotlight review for ForeWord Magazine

Gauguin: Maker of Myth

Belinda Thomson, editor

Princeton University Press

Hardcover $55.00 (256pp)

978-0-691-14886-1

Paul Gauguin is perhaps best known the way he wanted to be known. A driven and pioneering artist, he was also adept at creating a personal mythology that explained his life and artistry in story.

While the study and subject of myth has long been a part of artists’ aesthetic language, what is less commonly understood is the narrative process that some visual artists use to make sense of their own development and artistic influences. Post-Impressionist and early modernist visual artist Gauguin, for example, devoted his artistic life to the illustration and writing of a narrative about himself and about what influenced him visually, culturally, and symbolically. The book and exhibition catalog Gauguin: Maker of Myth traces the artist’s unique approach to storytelling. This beautiful publication accompanies the current Tate Modern exhibition which is also scheduled for the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. The book is stunningly illustrated with more than 200 full color reproductions of paintings, works on paper, ceramics, woodcarvings, writings, sourcebooks, journals, letters, and personal effects.

While Gauguin’s paintings are frequently reproduced, often in larger formats, Gauguin: Maker of Myth is unusual in its inclusion of sourcebook material, not all of which is included in the exhibition itself. Readers looking only for coffee-table-sized reproductions of Gauguin’s more famous works should look elsewhere. This book speaks more directly to artists, teachers, and students who are seeking insight into Gauguin’s process of developing a body of work and an identity as an artist. Images of cups, wood carvings, and other oddments that this book includes are difficult to find in other publications.

A number of perceptive essays by contributors such as Belinda Thomson, Tamar Garb, Charles Forsdick, Vincent Gille, Linda Goddard, and Philippe Dagen address the importance of varied cultural and personal myths to an artist who famously went into self-imposed exile at different phases of his artistic career. The text aims to decipher Gauguin's views of the world he lived in, the effect those views had on his work, his attitude about other cultures, and his role interacting with them.

In “Paul Gauguin: Navigating the Myth,” Thomson illuminates how Gauguin continually recreated himself. As he became more convinced that he must be an artist, the tension between the colorful and bohemian lifestyle of an artist and his parallel existence as a dutiful family man became too much for him. He shed his bourgeois persona, changed his dress and behavior, and began to articulate an identification with his “savage” nature. Gauguin’s creation of this “native” myth later helped him to justify changes in his art. It also, however, impacted his relationship with his mentors and ultimately alienated many of his friends.

According to Thomson, Gauguin made use of his own life as a “narrative strategy”; this impulse was fueled by his upbringing abroad and his extensive travels. Gauguin was striving for recognition during a time when parading one’s individualism had become a kind of artistic currency, especially among such peers as Monet, Cezanne, and van Gogh. Gauguin began his career later than most artists and this development was propelled by an extraordinary level of self-belief. In his own words, “I am a great artist and I know it. It is because I am that I have endured so[such?] suffering. To follow this path otherwise I would consider myself a brigand. Which is what I am, moreover, in the eyes of many people.”

Additional essays address other facets of Gauguin’s artistic life or achievement. In “The last Orientalist: Portraits of the Artist as Mohican,” Vincent Gille discusses the impact that the dazzling colors, rhythms, and narrative modes of Victor Hugo’s volume of poetry, Les Orientales, had on Gauguin. A section of the book entitled “Fictions of Femininity” explores Gauguin’s use of female subjects. Gauguin sampled from his own cultural tradition and others for inspiration and narrative. He avoided more conventional allegories—such as peace, war, and industry—using instead a more personal set of themes: purity, life, virginity, and abandonment. During his time in Tahiti, he created a world of Polynesian legends and traditions mixed with his own version of Christian iconology. The women he painted in this world became timeless abstractions, influenced by the European Romantic tradition blended with Symbolism.

Gauguin: Maker of Myth unfolds a wonderful body of works and research for artists, historians, and art lovers. The book is beautifully designed and liberally illustrated with an attention that assists the reader in moving swiftly though a dense and plentiful history spanning several art movements. (November) Pamela Ayres

For the Catalog "James Nestor Elapsed" October 2010

Nestor: teacher and artist

“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” –Albert Einstein

It is autumn of 2010 and I have been struggling to pen some words about my teacher and mentor Dr. James Nestor. These sentences have proven more difficult to write than I thought because of the daunting idea of writing about the past, present and future of Nestor’s work and his influence on his many students. A multitude of personal experiences, stories and feelings surface in my mind and choosing which ones to include has been difficult. Do I talk about a classroom of anxious young students raising their hands and shouting out answers to complicated questions? Do I mention Nestor’s knack of pushing projects over to test the welds before discussing the aesthetic aspects of the work? When considering the mayhem of memories of those years as a student, I am most struck with the insecurity, stubbornness and floundering that all of us felt as young artists. During my years as a student, and now alumni and friend, I hold a deep appreciation for the safe shelter, open discussion and humor in the sculpture studio at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

I came in at the end of the first wave of students to take sculpture classes with Nestor at I.U.P. This was a rough-edged group of would-be formalists and it was tough going for me at first. I was very shy about being in the studio, working in front of Nestor and my peers, so I had a habit of secluding myself and hiding my work. I would typically go in to the studio around 10 pm and work until 3 am. Nestor would often stop by in the evenings and on weekends, but I was good at listening for him and hiding in the bathroom or the painting studio. One night around midnight, while absorbed in a portrait piece, I was startled to look up and see Nestor standing there waiting to talk to me. My heart jumped into my throat and I could barely talk...I had been discovered. In a calm and quite manner, Nestor questioned me about my work and what I was thinking about while I was working. He also asked me if I was okay. When we where done talking he told me not to be so afraid of class, him or sculpture in general and asked me to be around more when the rest of the class was in the studio. I told him I would. I tell you this story because it was Nestor’s reassuring words I needed at that time. “Ayres,” he said, “you know it’s okay to be an artist…there are lots of people in the world doing just that.” And there it was! A person who simply talked to me, someone who let me know he understood. Those words meant the world to me.

Nestor taught his students to solve problems, meet deadlines, talk about and defend their work in a comprehensive way. Under his direction–and often times with him providing the transportation–we entered numerous student and professional exhibitions on the regional and national levels. We developed proficient portfolios, résumés and artist statements. Many of us went on to graduate school, teaching certifications and varied other professional and personal life endeavors. Nestor is well aware of all that we have done and talks about his students–past and present–with great satisfaction and pride. This is no ordinary instructor; he is a teacher in every sense of the word.

As he has kept tabs on me and followed my career, I too have watched his career with equal pride. Artistically, Nestor’s work has changed a great deal since the 1980’s and I felt strongly about discussing how and why. Nestor “cut his teeth” as a formalist and when I first met him, this was an important aspect of his work. Gradually, Nestor’s work has become more ritualized and organic in nature and is more connected to performance and installation. His work has grown more conceptual, more experimental and more open. He seems more drawn to an immediate reaction of spectators and participants and revels in the rush of running through deserts and standing at the edge of cliffs.

When my friends asked me why I thought his work changed, I had to look at the work Nestor did in Eastern Europe in putting together the exhibition New Works/New Europe. I greatly admired Nestor’s drive to go to areas of the former Yugoslavia, to spend time in a recognized war zone and to make a meaningful connection to the artists there. He looked at the destruction of the rich culture there and found humanity in the artists that lived and continued to work in the face of oppression. I believe that this experience helped Nestor to really understand the power of art, the meaningfulness of the act of performance, and the necessity of creativity. The artists he curated into this exhibition worked in spite of the conflict, in spite of the destruction, in spite of losing everything. His connection to this group of artists–themselves educators–from Ljubljana, Zagreb and Sarajevo, marked a distinct change in Nestor’s attitude and his work. It seems that he not only understood their desire to create but their need for immediacy in their work. It was a fantastic exhibition, put together with insight and understanding, and a testament to the power of the creative act.

When I had time to ask Nestor about his experiences with this project, it struck me at how deeply he felt about it all. He tried to explain the pain of the people there and the frustration of living a soft and safe life in America, and his frustration with this contrast. It seems that he has always made art as a necessity but now he understood its importance to his own life.

Summing up the career and accomplishments of this professor, this artist, this friend is impossible in this amount of space. Perhaps I will just say that I am grateful for the care and support that he has provided to me, and my peers, long after we walked out of his classroom. He invested in us, gave us creative energy and I am thankful for his patience and demanding. I attribute much of my artistic career and my passion for the arts to the support and consideration that Nestor freely gave to me. It is because of him that I pushed myself as an artist. It is because of him that I became a curator. Mostly, however, it is because of him that I learned the difference between being an instructor and being a teacher and, because of Dr. James Nestor, I am proud to call myself a teacher.