I dislike this title. I’d rather it be “Gauguin Was a Racist Pedophile”.
In the US (particularly in light of the president we elected), IMHO we should be cautious in conversing like we have of recent moved closer to a place of enlightened sensitivity. I believe we need to have more conversations about what the destination looks like, and how we navigate towards it (assuming we agree it's a destination worth reaching). I fear we are convincing ourselves that we are near something we are not very close to, and that we are practicing something which we are not.
Gauguin was a racist pedophile. Let's get that out there.
Did you know that before today? Are you concerned that you are appreciating art in ignorance of dark origins? Do you try to uncover these dark truths, or wait until they have been brought to your attention?
“What’s left to say about Gauguin,” she added, “is for us to bring out all the dirty stuff.” That's what an exhibit at SFMOMA did for me for Lewis Carroll. I worked for a pedophile. He had this book called "Young Girls" that he kept in a locked cabinet. His wife didn't know about it. It was very soft focus, very over-exposed, very arty and very full of scantily-clad children in suggestive poses. Dude legit started frotteurizing the back of the couch as he showed me this thing. Photographs were different from Lewis Carroll's only in that they were in color. And the world should be allowed to reconsider the context of the art. There's maybe a half-dozen bands I stone cold stopped listening to because having worked with them I found them to be assholes. I think art professionals tend to cling to the objectivity of art while art consumers embrace the subjectivity.To ensure that Gauguin’s artistic legacy is not besmirched by his “marriages” to underage girls, these relationships should be covered in exhibitions, said Line Clausen Pedersen, a Danish curator who has put on several Gauguin shows. With each exhibition, “another layer is peeled off the protection of history that he has somehow enjoyed,” she said. “Maybe the time is ripe to take off more layers than before.”
“Once an artist creates something, it doesn’t belong to the artist anymore: It belongs to the world,” he said. Otherwise, he cautioned, we would stop reading the anti-Semitic author Louis-Ferdinand Céline, or shun Cervantes and Shakespeare if we found something unsavory about them.
Has anyone considered David Brooks might be an Andy Kaufmann skit?
It's an interesting problem. I think it makes more sense to present it as it really is than to try and bury it. On one hand, it seems a little conflicting to reject prejudice and amorality but keep its products. On the other hand, trying to erase it from public consciousness seems like a disservice to progress. The "if we don't learn from history, it's doomed to repeat itself etc. etc." cliche. From that vantage point, it's really important to memorialize the dirty stuff.
Hmmm. This is, and will always be, a tricky one. It's difficult to call out or cancel someone that has been dead for over 100 years. Yes, a lot of the art depicted involves some incredibly nasty stereotypes and we should be cognizant of that. I was not aware of his history before today, nor did I try to uncover these dark truths. He definitely did some reprehensible things. That being said though, no, I don't think he should be cancelled. I don't think they should re-word any exhibits, or hide anything, or fail to show it because of the creator might have been a shitty person. I am not against running an entire exhibit dedicated to him in the year 2019. I do not believe that a museum showcasing artwork from the 1800's is in any way a tacit approval of Gauguin's behaviour, nor an insult to present victims. An exception I would make is if maybe an art show was being put on to advance an agenda. For example, if it was being organized by a cohort of Jeffrey Epstein fans. Or if the implication was DIRECTLY pedophilia is entertaining, colonialism is entertaining (not in an ironic Doug Stanhope sense). This isn't happening. The point is to showcase art that has historical significance, that was part of a movement. I can appreciate the urge not to "throw" people like him into public view, but Christ fam, human history is a fucking nightmare. Anyone who thinks the exhibition is a tacit approval of him as a person is crazy, I think. In the same way seeing John A. Macdonald's shit in a museum as a kid was fine for me. Or Hitler's car with the bullet holes, or whatever. People should be able to display whatever t.f. they want, no matter how nasty its origin. To answer the question, negative.
The application of brush strokes, the mixing of paint colors, the visualization of a scene, has little to do with the way they live their life. Remove the name "Gauguin" from the painting, and there are many admirable qualities, which we are right to admire, learn from, and study. The problem is with the cult of celebrity. Attributing the art to the individual outside of the context of the art. I'd love to see a museum remove all the names from the paintings; let the work stand on its own. See what happens to the viewers' experience when they have to weigh the piece solely on the evidence presented on the canvas (or in the physical sculpture), divorced from the name, the celebrity of the creator... I'm sure this has been done many times in the past, and there are studies showing the results of these experiments... but I feel like the art stands alone from the individual. (Then, someone can study the personalities of artists separate from their work, and provide some deeper understanding of the problematic social proclivities that seem common in many artists, and why those with weird tendencies may also produce other interesting work. But burdening the art with the creator's issues does not seem productive to me...)