FAH245H1 Week 11:
Nov 28
Retreats from the Modern World
-*FINAL EXAM*
-not cumulative
-will draw on concepts throughout WHOLE course but don’t need to memorize premidterm things
-retreat from the subject matter and the world that had constituted the main interests of
both Impressionists + Post-Impressionists
Gauguin, Port de Javel, 1876
-uncharacteristic of its artist
-painting represents the place + painting style that he wants to retreat from
Gauguin, Vision After the Sermon: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, 1888
-visits Breton, the most technologically backward region of France
-women in traditional garb
-picture separated into 2 spaces – the apple tree running between them: the earthly vs.
heavenly world
-realms of visible experience vs. interior relief
Gauguin, the Yellow Christ, 1889
-also made in Brittany
-we’re invited to wonder: are we looking at a genuine scene of crucifixion of Christ
himself, or are we seeing the crucifixion as a religious tradition?
-> something digested and assimilated to tradition?
Javanese dancers, Illustration, “L’Exposition Universelle,” 1889
-mirrored his fascination in traditions that were removed from the realities of living in
modern capital cities and Christendom
-juxtaposition of dancers beneath newly-constructed Eiffel tower reminds him of the
limitations he would experience if he stayed in France
-goes to Tahiti then
Gauguin, Tahitian Landscape, 1888
-this relationship influences the way Gauguin has access to Tahitian life styles
Gauguin, Tahitian Women on the Beach, 1891
-one woman wears “native dress” and woman to the right wears colonial dress
-colonial wear obscures human body, while the woman in native flesh reveals more flesh
+ looks more comfortable in her own surroundings
-represents the transition that goes over time from native culture to colonial culture ->
something Gauguin would like to undo
-> he depicts this by expressing the increasing colonial impositions on Native culture ->
its imposing Natives to wear more clothes
Gauguin, Fatata te miti (Near the Sea), 1892
-woman facing us in implicitly nude, while man faces us
-harmony with nature
-naked body is an expression of unrestrained, unencumbered way of life
-even Gauguin’s longing for a pre-colonial, pure, native, naïve, primitive past is based on
POWER RELATIONS -> even these desires correspond to a colonial desire
-> the colonialist desire of Gauguin to travel to Tahiti and experience its culture, esp its
women
Gauguin, Manao Tupapau (Spectre Watches Over Her), 1892
-his teenaged female mistress in a kind of trance -> menaced by ghostly form hovering
over her -> vulnerability
-increasing removal of boundaries between real + spiritual: spiritual form stands in the
woman’s space
-Gauguin takes the belief system of the Tahitians and turns it to his own needs
-a very bold rejection of European ways of life and Western traditions of painting
-compared to previous depictions of nudity, Gauguin depicts:
-a woman of colour
-teenaged, not sexually developed
as shocking as the upmarket prostitute depicted in Manet’s 1860s painting was,
Gauguin’s painting 30 years later was even MORE shocking
 different racial categories, woman who does not have control in the way Manet’s
prostitute does,
-his desire to return to an unrestrained primitive way of life -> is both a means of
critiquing and underling the radically of earlier European painting, but at the same time,
this desire for primitive earthly experience is what allows him to victimize young women
sexually
-> physical, geographical retreat from Paris
VAN GOGH
Van Gogh, Self-portrait with a Bandaged Ear, 1888
-rejected by the traditional art world
-mentally unstable
-whose genius comes from that instability
-this combination of unjust jurisdiction from dominant academic art critics +
originality/pushing the envelope => becomes the PARADIGM for the MODERN
ARTIST
Van Gogh, Potato Eaters, 1884-1885
-reflects his concern for the poor; one of the peasant homes he visited
-the faces of these impoverished people have a coarse, potato-like quality -> seems to
mirror the potatoes they’re eating
-his pictorial approach is consistent with the crudity of their lives
-unrefined world – thickly applied brushwork
Van Gogh, Night Café at Arles, 1888
-pictures that combine psychic interiority + __
-> reveals what his own mind is like at the moment of production
-sense of spatial + formal dislocation
-yellow floorboards rush up to the corner lkike they’re pop out of picture
-a clock that is so warped its numbers are turned counter-clockwise: the timing is off
-figure in white, waiter, to the right
-small groups of patrons sitting at café tables
-seem to be “forced down” by a kind of intense inertia
-a strange, disoriented relationship btwn figures + gravity
-harsh ,artificial lighting
 “café is a place where one can ruin one’s self… a devil’s furnace.”
-unlike Seurat, who uses colour scientifically, van Gogh’s colours speak of his insanity +
derangedness
Van Gogh, Corridor of St. Paul Asylum in Saint-Remy, 1888-89
-space seems to warp under the pressure of his psychic disturbance
-floor seems conventional from a distance, but closer to us, it seems irregular (irregular
relations between different parts of the floor -> it may open up to swallow us); the
madhouse takes on the LOOK of dementia
Van Gogh, Portrait of Dr. Gachet, 1890
-his personal physician
-Gachet was an expert on “nervous disorders”
-emotional + financial support (he buys pictures from van Gogh)
-interior relations + external reality
-upper right hand corner: swirling contours surrounding head of doctor, seem to emanate
out of interiority of his emotional state
-van Gogh places him in pose of melancholy
-he not only is a neurologist/psychiatrist, he is also deeply depressed
-van Gogh recognizes that this makes the doctor human, fallible, in a way he can identify
-Gachet was able to attend to van Gogh in ways no other doctor could BECAUSE he
there was this connection btwn them
-> though Gachet was a productive member of society, he too was haunted by mental
distress
-deep emotions fused w/ innovative forms: van Gogh’s ability to represent absolute state
of mental disaster inside his head in forms that are innovative enough to convey the
nature of these distresses
Van Gogh, Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear + Pipe, 1889
-a correspondence between art + emotion
-a martyr to modern artist
-ignored of society bc his manners of expression of the interior world is too radical -> too
taboo
James Ensor, Skeletons in the Studio, 1900.
-also like van Gogh wants to map the world of interior desires.
-amassed many oddities from different parts of world
-shows us the way these objects were displayed; from pitchers to muscal instruments +
skulls, masks
Ensor, My Portrait Surrounded by Masks, 1899
-masks = metaphor for?
-he is surrounded by masks that are not really masks,but seem to signify creatures w/ live
+ emotional expressions
-we can’t tell any difference btwn scene of actual carnival or just a view of a
carnivalesque world
-does mask conceal or reveal the person?
-mask as concealing and revealing
Ensor, Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889, 1888
-inability to distinguish mask from face reaches its height here.
-scene is imaginative
-an imagination of what Christ’s coming might be like
-mocks the pageantry of the Catholic church -> places figure of Christ in distance –
golden halo, dead center of picture to the left
-> his role in the religious infrastructure of the Church is marginalised
-this supposedly solemn scene becomes very chaotic by the time it reaches the
foreground
-feeling that you’ll be trampled
-almost a perfect rejection of Seurat’s Post-Impressionism
-the ordinariness of Seurat’s picture vs. chaotic world of Ensor’s vision -> individuals
become as grotesque as the masks that resided in his childhood souvenir shop
-the human automata of Seurat is replaced by psychologically + emotionally deranged
individuals
Edvard Munch, Anxiety, 1894
-existentialist scream emanating from the figure becomes the world itself
-the shift from the bourgeoisie Roccocco to the Expressionist of Munch – only 150 years
– the artist has gone from the INSIDER: decorating the places of the elite to the
OUTSIDER: where his interior and misunderstood world now constitutes his terrain