Gauguin in Polynesia: The Late Career

3 units

This seminar focuses on the late career of Paul Gauguin, in Tahiti and the Marquesas. This course examines closely the colonial context of fin-de-siecle French Polynesia, Gauguin's reponse to indigenous culture, his ongoing interests in European currents of theosophy and anarchism, the development of his primitivist style in response to the French avant-garde, and Gauguin's legacy to modern art and culture in the early twentieth century. Readings will range from primary texts (literature and journals read by the artist, his letters, his satirical articles and caricatures produced for a Tahitian newspaper, his treatises on religion), to post-colonial theory and recent critiques of primitivism. French reading skills are useful, but not required for the course. We will visit the St. Louis Art Museum to view both the Oceanic collection, and prints and paintings by Gauguin.