Gauguin and Polynesia

Paul Gauguin is renowned for resplendent, mythic imagery from Oceania, for a life of restless travel, and for his supposed immersion in Polynesian life. But the artist has long been regarded ambivalently, and in recent years both his sexual behaviour and his paintings have been considered exploitative.
Nicholas Thomas’s new book offers a fresh perspective on the artist from the contemporary vantage point of the region which he so famously moved to. His argument foregrounds the deep eclecticism of Gauguin’s work, and his representation - alongside enigmatic and symbolic imagery - of Polynesia’s colonial modernity. Gauguin’s paintings, often at odds with his ‘explanations’ of his own art, are replete with signs of place and identity that acknowledge the life of the time and the presence and power of some of the Islanders he encountered.
This discussion, chaired by Dr Caroline Levitt, will explore the challenges of Gauguin’s art and its legacies. It will include Professor Elizabeth Childs (Washington University in St Louis), Maia Nuku (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and the author Professor Nicholas Thomas (Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge), and will address some of the core issues of the book.
Organised by Ketty Gottardo, Martin Halusa Senior Curator of Drawings The Courtauld Gallery & Caroline Levitt, Senior Lecturer; Head of History of Art Department, The Courtauld.