We went on Thursday.
Gaugin – Maker of Myth is on at Tate Modern until January 16.
There are 11 big rooms full of stuff and having the six self-portraits in the first room is a good idea. You go in and the first thing you see is the man who created all these paintings, prints and wood carvings.
Paul Gaugin was a Paris stockbroker who at first painted as a hobby, then wanted to explore places more primitive than Paris. His Brittany painting of three young girls dancing in clogs is a classic image, if a bit obvious.
His own clogs are on display in a glass case. He wrote, “I love Brittany. I find the wild and primitive here. When my clogs resonate on this granite ground I hear the muffled, powerful thud that I’m looking for in painting.”
Gaugin went to Martinique in 1887 and to a European artist that tropical island must have seemed very exotic and overloaded with new colours. Arriving in Tahiti in 1891, he was dismayed to find that Polynesia had been westernised by Christian missionaries a century before. Some say Gaugin was colonial, racist and sexist, but most Europeans were colonial, racist and sexist 120 years ago.
His painting of Two Tahitian Women is very beautiful. The women are intimate with each other but inscrutable to us, deliberately blank . I love his explosively colourful Tahitian Landscape with a red mountain, fiery palm trees and a single figure walking toward the mountain. A tiny 15-year old girl, just in front of me, cradled her sketchbook in her left hand, started drawing with a pencil. Her little friend said, “I won’t leave you” and then disappeared. With assured, swift strokes, the youngster reproduced Gaugin’s composition as this old beatnik looked over her shoulder. She’s done a lot of drawing, this girl, I thought. I wonder if she’ll do her 10,000 hours?
Tate Modern was crowded. The only time I’ve seen more people in an art gallery was the Van Gogh at the Royal Academy back in January. Van Gogh was a far better painter and Gaugin was well aware of that. When the Frenchman was coming to stay with the Dutch maestro, Van Gogh painted The Sunflower and put it in Gaugin’s room to welcome him. His friend immediately realised that this was a great work of art and spent the next year trying to buy it off him. Van Gogh painted more sunflowers and Gaugin learned a helluva lot from him. Van Gogh’s brother Theo was Gaugin’s dealer.
VERDICT: Yes, Gaugin was a calculating self-publicist/myth-maker and a patchy painter but this exhibition is definitely worth a second visit. If only it wasn’t arranged thematically. You always want to see the progression through the painter’s life.
A powerful thud in my painting? I like it. Thud is a lovely word, don’t you think? Not many painters would talk about putting a thud on their canvas.And not many musicians would use the word in a song, although a guy from New Jersey sang these lines :
Eighth Avenue sailors in satin shirts whisper in the air
Some storefront incarnation of Maria, she’s puttin’ on me the stare
And Bronx’s best apostle stands with his hand on his own hardware
Everything stops, you hear five, quick shots, the cops come up for air
And now the whiz-bang gang from uptown, they’re shootin’ up the street
And that cat from the Bronx starts lettin’ loose
But he gets blown right off his feet
And some kid comes blastin’ round the corner but a cop puts him right away
He lays on the street holding his leg screaming something in Spanish
Still breathing when I walked away
And someone said, “Hey man, did you see that? His body hit the street with such a beautiful thud.”
When I hear a line like that, I never forget it.
His body hit the street with such a beautiful thud. Thanks, Bruce.
Coming home from the Tate on the Jubilee Line, we were talking about Mad Men, which we always watch on Wednesday night.
The agency, Sterling Draper Cooper Pryce, were nominated for a Clio, an ad industry trophy. At the annual awards dinner, as the winner’s envelope is about to be opened by the MC, redheaded office manager Joan sits between Don and Roger. She holds Roger’s hand below the table and also holds Don’s hand under the table. Their commercial wins and Don, the creative brains of the company, goes up to collect the bauble.
Later on, Roger is totally sozzled and feels he has missed out on some glory.
Roger: “They don’t seem to give awards for what I do.”
Joan (teasing) : “What is it that you do?
Roger (moment of illumination) : “Find guys like him!”
There’s always some lovely dialogue in Mad Men.
Don celebrated by getting bombed and going to bed with a brunette. He was woken up by a phone call from Betty, his ex-wife, and found he was in bed with a blonde and blearily realised that he had lost a whole day and didn’t remember who the blonde was. Then he noticed her waitress uniform on the furniture.
I had been wondering whether Don was just a binge-drinker, so I asked Mrs Palmer
“Roger Sterling’s obviously an alcoholic. D’you think Don’s an alcoholic as well?”
“Yes, of course,” she replied.