Afdeling for Æstetik og Kultur — Tværæstetiske Studier - AU Library ...

Speciale af Helle Børsen Rosholm Vejleder Hans Jørgen Frederiksen
Årskortnummer 20032411
English summary
In the last three decades of the 19. century, various ideas from psychology, philosophy and
religious trends merged with other currents to feed broad-based dissatisfaction, with the values
inherent in biological and evolutionary ideas of human achivement, and specifically with the
dominant ideals of elaborate mimesis in art. A key to progress in the artistic field of thought
in
the 1880s and 1890s was a revival of an Enlightment view of the mind, separate from
biological and historical considerations. This was the intellectual environment for Gauguins
carreer as an artist. In creating new works of art, Gauguin drew from countless sources of
inspiration in an eclectic and subjective manner. He combined his impressions and ideas
with
his fellow artist’s imageries and notions into astonishing painted collages. The metaphorical,
expanded use of the term ”collage” developed by arthistorian Camilla Paldam is inspired
by a
pragmatic
notion of the collage in which the collage is defined by structure rather than
technique: elements that are in the wrong place, in the wrong context in surprising
constellations. The collage consists of juxtaposed elements, elements that we as viewers
combine into a unit. This mode of borrowing sources used for the first time in ”Nude study
(Woman Sewing)” was to serve Gauguin throughout his life, and when Gauguin paid homage
to the provincial art of Brittany, he took the most general stylistic encouragement from its
rustic naiveté; and he mixed these admirations with a seemingly capricious attention to
Oriental, South American, and early Western arts into an eclectic, ambigous and surprising
unity.
One of the philosphical trends that inspired Gauguin and his circle was the
Neoplatonic way of thinking that offered a metaphysical security, an antidote to and escape
from the relativity of everyday world. This philosophy made an attractive alternative to the
widespread dissatisfaction with positivism. In this notion, the use of memory would help
simplify the image, in fact necessitated the paring down to essentials and the exaggeration of
certain aspects. Memory also had an epistemological and ontological prioriry given to it by the
Neoplatonic tradition wherein the soul had the ability to recognize Truth because it had
prenatal aquaintance with the Forms or Ideas. The turn inwards to paint from memory offered
Gauguin a way of using all his sources of inspiration freely and eclectic.
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