Genius And Anxiety: Paul Gauguin

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ART AND ANXIETY 3 INTRODUCTION 3 BUFFET AND THE AGE OF ANXIETY 4 Who was Bernard Buffet? 5 Bernard Buffet and Anxiety 5 Paul Gauguin and Postimpressionism 7 Who was Paul Gauguin? 8 Paul Gauguin and Anxiety 9 CONCLUSION 13

ART AND ANXIETY

INTRODUCTION

If we look the word anxiety in the dictionary, probably we will find something like the following definition:
“Feeling of worry, nervousness or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome” (Oxford Dictionaries, 2003)
Being this a very literal and ambiguous definition, Sigmund Freud tries to explain it and goes a little further, separating it in three types of anxieties:
The first one is called Reality
He was part of an art movement called Symbolist not only as a painter but also as a sculptor, ceramist and writer. He was born in Paris the 7th of June, 1848.
Gauguin had a distinctive paining style, where he used solid lines and complex forms. He didn’t go to any art school nor had art training.
As a Child he lived in Peru, and after returning to France he entered the Navy and later on worked as a stockbroker, painting only as a hobby in his extra time. His work caught rapidly the attention of the Impressionist, a group of artists who used untraditional methods and topics, and were not too good accepted by the French artists.
In 1883 Paul Gauguin had left his job as a stockbroker so he can give his full time to art. During the following years he painted the “Vision of the Sermon”, one of the most well-known paintings.
Searching imaginative and creative liberty, he moved to Tahiti in 1891, but was disillusioned to discover that the island was westernized and went live far from the capital, among the native people.
We can see this experience reflected on his work; for example the “La Orana Maria” shows a Tahitian version of Jesus and his
It is not that symbolism reflects only anxiety, but they believe that art should reproduce an emotion or idea instead of the natural world (Something seen much in that moment with the impressionism).

The first painting is called The Yellow Christ and was painted in 1889, in France and it is considered one of the key paintings in Symbolism. In contrast with Buffet´s crucifixion painting, this has more vivid colours. We can see that the anxiety is not reflected in colours, but in different elements this anxiety.
We can clearly see that this painting is not reflecting reality; it is a landscape of the north of France (where it was painted), and Christ being crucified there. For me this is how sing the symbolism of the crucifix to capture the essence of anxiety. There is a deeper meaning. For example, it could be how he thought there is a lack of spiritualism during the era and in France.
The composition of the paining makes us instantly focus in the Christ. And although Gauguin uses the Yellow to focus the attention on Christ, for me, these three women in their knees, with their lost eyes, show well the hopeless and uncertain for