Members Digital Content

Yuma, and welcome members to the National Gallery of Australia. This is Gauguin's world, Tona Ihu, Tona Aho, an exhibition that we've been longing for in Canberra.

It's an exhibition of the work of the French post -impressionist Paul Gauguin and brings together more than 130 works by him of across all mediums in which you work, paintings, printmaking, drawing, ceramics and carving. It's an exhibition that's been curated for us by Henri Lorette, previously director of the Musee d 'Orsay and the Musee de Louvre in Paris and it's an exhibition that's been organised by the National Gallery of Australia in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and Art Exhibitions Australia. Shall we go inside?

We're in the first room of the exhibition and we have selection of fantastic portraits by Gauguin. Gauguin produces self-portrait throughout his life and this is one of his most spectacular. We're seeing himself as if he's looking in a mirror because his painting at left the yellow Christ is shown in reverse.

At right we have one of his ceramics so it makes a kind of double signature within the painting and the way in which he positions himself at center sets up a whole series of dualisms that we found throughout Gauguin's oeuvre, ideas of heaven and hell, of self -sacrifice and self -imagining. It's a truly spectacular painting.

In the second room, we have a summary of Gauguin's early career. It's not the sort of painting we expect of Gauguin. It really is quite a traditional painting, with his bands of sky, clouds, and earth. But Gauguin is showing us here that he's mastered the Impressionist painting techniques that are so prominent at the time of these wonderful buttery brushstrokes.

In the rest of the room we see how he learns very quickly in the first 10 years of his career. In the second room we see Gauguin's rapid development. When he decides to be a full-time artist, he rapidly realizes that he can't live in Paris. Not only does he want to avoid the industrialization, but he needs to live more cheaply.

So in Brittany, he finds not only a place to live cheaply, but very picturesque surrounds, both in terms of landscapes and the Breton peasants in their seemingly exotic costumes. And those figures and animals appear throughout his sketchbooks, in his ceramics, in his drawings from the time, and his paintings. And in this wonderful landscape that he's developed from such a range of wonderful textures, colours and patterns, we see exactly this. Around this time Gauguin starts to work in ceramic and you see the repetition of his Breton motifs and his growing awareness of what he can achieve in this new medium.

Between 1887 and 1899 Gauguin travels extensively between Paris, to Brittany, to Martinique and further afield and again in this third room of the exhibition we see the rapid development of his approach to his art and his adoption of new techniques. Around this time he starts to make prints using zincography. At first he produces images of his paintings to date, but again just as he has done with ceramics he develops a new confidence with the medium. Look at the way in which this print he makes visual jokes, the little dogs that seem to exit the scene.

In Brittany, he rapidly decides that Pont -au -Van is too full of artists, and he escapes to Le Poldu, a more remote settlement. And here he produces some of the most radically simplified works of his career, often with extreme angles, with wonderful jokes of Women exiting left and cows exiting right, a whole series of patterns and a visual language that draws on stained glass windows and other local traditions.

Gauguin shows his prints at the World Fair in Paris in 1889, and what he sees there inspires him to travel further afield still. He sees Japanese dances, he sees architecture from Tonkin, Northern Vietnam and he encounters for the first time oceanic cultures, works from New Caledonia, from Tahiti and further afield. He applies to the French government for an artistic mission and he arrives in Tahiti in 1891.

In Tahiti he produces amazing paintings inspired by the light and what he learns about Polynesian cultures. In this painting, Pahe de Mare, you'd think that we were dealing with a specific site, but in reality this is a confection of Gauguin's own. Mare were most often flat areas, not hills as we see here. And look at the way Gauguin has developed this very elaborate fence based on the ear ornaments. And again in the distance, partly obscured by the purple mountain, we see a large tiki figure, probably inspired by those from 800 kilometers off in the Easter Island.

Gauguin's Tahitian works are some of the most exotic, colorful and best known of his career. He paints figures over again and in this painting women of Tahiti we see two of his most striking figures possibly based on the same model. The women look at us as scants. Look at the way he brings us close to the figures it's almost as if we're intruding on a conversation.

In Tahiti, Gauguin also reuses his motifs, we find the same pair of women under the tree over here in the large tree. We get a great sense in this painting of the heat of the day and how we too might want to escape into the shade.

Elsewhere in this gallery Gauguin uses these figures over again, both for deans of daily life that he imagines and more exotic Polynesian creation stories.

Gauguin travels to French Polynesia with prints, with photographs, with reproductions of the works of some of his heroes. He calls them his 'Families of Friends'.

In this final room we see, again, one of his most striking paintings, the Three Tahitians . Notice the way the figures are very sculptural. Some of the photographs he enjoys most are of the reliefs of the sculptures of Borobudur. And in this painting, which again is very mysterious, a sense of dualism, we have a strong contrast between the structure of the figures and the rather more atmospheric background. A truly remarkable painting, very enigmatic, which is often interpreted in many ways.

In September 1901, Gauguin leaves Tahiti for the Marquesas and he settles on the island of Hiva Oa at Atuona and there he builds his final studio. He finds himself at home and he has around him many works of art, but he knows he's dying. The last 18 months of his life is dominated by writing. And when he dies in May 1903, this painting is found on his easel. It poses a bit of a mystery. It clearly dates too much earlier, but Gauguin probably kept it with him as a fond souvenir of his period in Brittany when he worked surrounded by a group of young artists that changed art in the 19th century and into the 20th and beyond.

So Gauguin's World on at the National Gallery in Canberra until the 7th of October. I hope in this short introduction you'll have a sense of the wonderful works of art that we've assembled for this exhibition and that all members will come and enjoy not only the exhibition but the film and other events for Gauguin's World.