Wild thing A life of Paul Gauguin

Biographer Prideaux (I Am Dynamite!) presents a sympathetic portrait of 19th-century post-impressionist painter Paul Gauguin. Born in 1848 France, Gauguin spent much of his childhood in Peru, where his anti-Bonapartist parents had fled threats of government persecution. As an adult, he burned through a series of jobs--merchant marine, stock trader--before discovering painting from impressionists exhibiting in Paris. The author depicts her subject as a perennial outsider who spent much of his life wandering the world in pursuit of artistic success, from Panama during the digging of the canal, to Arles, where Van Gogh attempted to enlist him in plans to form a "Studio of the South," to Tahiti--where Gaugin painted his "mythical and monumental" 1898 work Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, which interwove "Polynesian, classical and Christian references" and inspired Pablo Picasso to explore African art, from which cubism evolved. Prideaux draws heavily on Gauguin's own writings, including a recently discovered autobiography, to draw a rich psychological portrait that is buttressed by abundant historical detail. It makes for a revealing window into an unique artistic mind. Illus. (May)

Seeing a pioneering artist in a new light. In an 1895 interview inL'Écho de Paris, Paul Gauguin is described as "the wildest of all the innovators, and of all the 'misunderstood' artists the one least inclined to compromise." Prideaux (Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream,Strindberg: A Life, andI Am Dynamite! A Life of Nietzsche) revisits Gaugin's legacy, which has been marred by controversy; his time in Tahiti, where he sought to escape European civilization, was complicated by accusations of appropriation and problematic relationships with young Tahitian girls. Prideaux bases this work on an unpublished manuscript,Avant et après, which Gauguin wrote during the last two years of his life and sheds new light on his more progressive thinking about women, morality, and the Catholic Church. Long admired for his innovative and bold use of color, his rejection of Western artistic conventions, and his lasting impact on modern art, Gauguin's reputation, however, had been long tainted by colonialism. Gauguin may have idealized the noble savage, but here Prideaux attempts to romanticize him as the savage. She reminds us that Gauguin thought of himself this way; as an outsider in France, he'd shout: "I am a savage from Peru!" The notion was corroborated by his friends: Edgar Degas described him as "a hungry wolf without a collar," and playwright August Strindberg, inspired by Gauguin, claimed, "For I, too, begin to feel a great need to turn savage and to make a new world." What others see as appropriation Prideaux rebrands as forward thinking: About works such asIa orana Maria (Hail Mary), she writes, "Gaugin had taken the foundational legend of Christianity and synthesized it through a multi-racial lens." Newly definitive, impeccably researched, and lavishly illustrated. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.