The Paintings of Paul Gauguin

In this book 310 paintings are reproduced on 224 color plates. It is a rather large collection in one compendium, covering the prolific painter's and artist's most dramatic and expressive period from 1887 to his death in 1903. The book begins with a biography, a eulogy by Charles Morice (1903), and excerpts from Gauguin's book "Noa Noa" narrating his adventures on Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands. In a somber, slightly hoarse voice, Gauguin said: "Primitive art comes from the spirit and uses nature. So-called refined art comes from sensuality and serves nature. Nature is the servant of the first and the mistress of the second. But the servant cannot forget her origins, she degrades the artist by allowing him to adore her. This is how we fall into the abominable error of Naturalism. Naturalism begins with the Greece of Pericles. Since then, there have been no more or less great artists except those who have somehow reacted against this error; but their reactions have been no more than leaps of memory, glimmers of good sense within a movement of decadence, in the end, uninterrupted for centuries. Truth is purely cerebral art, this is primitive art-the most learned of all-this was Egypt. There is the principle. In our present misery, there can be no salvation without a rational and sincere return to the principle. And this return is the necessary action of Symbolism in poetry and art..."