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"A SWINEHERD, BRITTANY" & "IA ORANA MARIA" (PAUL GAUGUIN).
Term Paper ID:26240
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Essay Subject:
Examines 2 paintings' lighting, subjects, colors, settings, techniques, messages in context of artist's professional & personal life.... More...
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7 Pages / 1575 Words
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Paper Abstract:
Examines 2 paintings' lighting, subjects, colors, settings, techniques, messages in context of artist's professional & personal life.
Paper Introduction:
The purpose of this research is to examine two paintings by Paul Gaugin, A Swineherd, Brittany (1888), and Ia Orana Maria (1891). The plan of the research will be to set forth the background and context in which Gaugin created each painting, and then to compare and contrast analytically the content and apparent intent informing them, both intrinsically and as part of the larger scheme of Gaugin's body of work.
Gaugin's A Swineherd, Brittany, an oil painting on canvas, hangs in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Measuring 29" x 36(", A Swineherd, Brittany is a horizontally oriented picture depicting a pastoral landscape that would have been familiar to Gaugin during his stay in Pont-Aven in Brittany. In the right foreground, a rocky pasture of grass along either a pond or a river, are the figures of a swineherd and two pigs. The swineherd stand
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The foreground, exceptfor the figure of the swineherd, appears to have been constructed ofvertical brush strokes, including grass, pigs, and rocky bank. But theuse of yellow can also be interpreted as part of a visual strategy that ismeant to draw the eye, not to the yellow as such but rather to the figuresaround which it is organized. Thus immediately one seesthe pigs in the right foreground (the first point of the yellow-pointedtriangle on the canvas), one is drawn to the figure of the swineherd (inblue tunic, brown trousers and cap, and clunky blue-gray shoes) who standsbeside them, right hand under chin, left in his trousers pocket. Pelfrey sees in Ia Orana Maria an evocation ofmedieval tapestry in the background, which "completes the sense ofparadisiacal harmony."[ii] This can be compared to the bucolic scene of ASwineherd, Brittany. In the right foreground, a rocky pasture of grass along either apond or a river, are the figures of a swineherd and two pigs. Further in the distance, perhapsacross the lake hidden by the rocky embankment, is a country village; thechurch spire, as well as a number of rooftops and buildings that, togetherwith rows of trees, define three village streets can be made out. It is a simple life, to be sure, but it is not a hard-scrabble one. Meanwhile, the child is not an infant but rather olderthan the Jesus figures in European Madonna pictures. In the bottom left corner there is a label thatbears the title of the work, Ia Orana Maria. Above all, it is not sophisticated and urban but ratherremoved from complex trappings of modern life. What [Ia Orana Maria] lacks, of course is belief. Nor is the Madonna herself distant and ethereal, aspectedin piety but rather glowing in (nonvirginal) motherhood and looking out atthe painter/viewer, naively curious about who is watching, oblivious of thecomplex formalities of European religious art. AsClark says, "Gaugin was far from naive, and it is surprising that he didn'ttake more trouble to inform himself about Tahiti which, when he went there,had already been corrupted by Europeans for almost a century."[v] Indeed,as Pelfrey notes, the much-vaunted Javanese bride with whom Gauginassociated when returning to Paris in 1893 was actually fromMontmartre.[vi] But as Clark adds, Gaugin, who had a "Byronic hatred of thesociety of his time, was not so much running to Tahiti as running fromEuropean civilization, "whatever the cost."[vii] This explains his returnto Tahiti for good. Hecites as well "the color and charm of a medieval painting from just beforethe Perspective Age.[iii] The use of color as a device of charm can becompared to similar use in A Swineherd, Brittany, where yellow lendsbrightness and warmth. Measuring 29" x 36(", A Swineherd,Brittany is a horizontally oriented picture depicting a pastoral landscapethat would have been familiar to Gaugin during his stay in Pont-Aven inBrittany. In the right foreground is a Tahitian woman with male child; thehalos on mother and child are a proxy for the Madonna figures of Europeanpaintings. The whole effect is acredible perspective within the context of the work. [vii]Clark, 315. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1996. Art and Mass Media. The sametechnique is used for the patch of yellow and orange-red foliage across thewater. The mother's serene eyes and smile are matched by those of the childand together with the dignity attached to the halos lends coherence to thefact that the two younger women approach her with devotion. BibliographyClark, Kenneth. [iii]Ibid. As of theAnnunciation, which involves the angel and Mary, it is a logicalimpossibility for Mary to be a Madonna; that perforce begins only with thebirth of the child. Gaugin's A Swineherd, Brittany, an oil painting on canvas, hangs inthe Los Angeles County Museum of Art. To be sure, the eye goes to the yellow first,but it does not linger there, nor is it meant to. ----------------------- Notes [i]Robert Pelfrey, Art and Mass Media (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/HuntPublishing Company, 1996), 184. New York: Harper & Row, 1969.Pelfrey, Robert. But Gaugin compresses Annunciation with Nativity, andmore than this proceeds to make a project of insisting on his version bypainting the title of the work in the lower left corner. Inaddition, shafts of yellow grass interlineate with the grassy green pasturein the foreground and highlight and define the distant farm fields in thebackground. [vi]Pelfrey, 186. Gaugin was neither a Polynesian nor a Christian; he was a superbly sophisticated Parisian who painted his desire for faith and simplicity.[iv]Belief is absent from Ia Orana Maria first of all because the Madonna isnot represented, as in European paintings, as aristocratic but as aTahitian peasant. There is even a yellow tint to the clouds and a faint white-yellow outline along both the distant horizon and along the rocky bank inthe foreground. The planof the research will be to set forth the background and context in whichGaugin created each painting, and then to compare and contrast analyticallythe content and apparent intent informing them, both intrinsically and aspart of the larger scheme of Gaugin's body of work. Gaugin also violates Christian narrative per se. The whole encounter takes place in a grovewhere, on the green patch, a table or other mat has been stocked (as theforeground at the bottom of the canvas shows) with tropical fruits--bananas, melons, papayas. But again the eye does not rest on the yellowbank; rather, it draws attention to the shapes of the village rooftops andother buildings, in the process drawing the eye back toward the center ofthe painting, which comprises the background to the swineherd, pigs, androcky bank, specifically the buildings and tree-lined streets of thevillage, as well as the church spire. In thedistance, beyond the village, are the rolling agricultural hills thatoverlook the village. Bold patches of yellow are triangulated in the scene: in the rightforeground in the figures of the pigs, in the upper-middle left side,across the lake, with a big patch of grass, and on the upper-middle right,where a yellow patch of grassy bank falls before one of the village housesin the distance. [v]Kenneth Clark, Civilisation (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 315. Another feature of A Swineherd, Brittany is the apparently differenttechniques of paint application used in the work. The cow's prominent udder, contrasting with the otherwisebrownish-orange and gray cow as well as the water, is also yellow. Civilisation. As in A Swineherd,Brittany, Ia Orana Maria represents a rural peasantry, though the cultureof Tahiti is as "foreign" to rural Brittany as to urban Paris. In the center of the painting, approaching the mother and child, aretwo more Tahitian women, both barefoot and bare-breasted, their handsfolded as if in prayer. This use of yellow lends late-afternoon warmth to the scene. But that is the most complex thought he will have to bear; his isnot a life of tension. Behind them and toward the upper left side of thepainting is an ambiguous figure, a Tahitian version of an angel, but withPolynesian rather than Northern European coloring, sporting a translucentgown and wings, and half concealed by a tropical flowering bush at the edgebetween a purple-colored pathway and the deep green patch of grass wherethe Madonna and child stand. Just as A Swineherd, Brittany ignores the difficulties of peasantfarming while celebrating its uncomplicated benefits, the facts of Gaugin'sprofessional and private life give the lie to his depiction of Tahiti. Ia Orana Maria, an oil painting on canvas, hangs at New York'sMetropolitan Museum of Art. Measuring approximately 45" x 35", Ia OranaMaria is vertically oriented, depicting a meeting in a pastoral villageclearing. Finally, in the rooftops andwalls of the village buildings, colors are well-defined geometric planes ofwhite, gray, and blue, with no brush strokes evident. However, sky and background do not show obvious vertical brush work.Rather, strokes are less visible and the colors more flatly applied, butwith obviously discernible geometric planes. Despite abundant use of green in thepasture and in the rolling farmland hills in the distance, the decisivecolor of the painting is yellow, which draws the eye, not so much to yellowfigures and shapes per se as to figures and shapes in the vicinity of theyellow. In other words,the real objective of the painting may be to explode narrative doctrinallogic and religious art, or at least to comment on it by setting it besidelush nature that is equally an object of devotion. One may assume the swineherd willhave a little job of work to do getting the pigs and cow back toward thebarn; that is perhaps what he is thinking about while he holds his chin inhis hand. [iv]Ibid. The swineherdstands before a rocky embankment as the pigs graze. Also, the child is naked, straddling his mother's left shoulderand resting his bowed head on the top of his mother's head. The facts of Gaugin's personal life are important to A Swineherd,Brittany and Ia Orana Maria because both paintings reflect a disaffectionfrom bourgeois culture and contemporary painting conventions in favor ofnew expressions. The purpose of this research is to examine two paintings by PaulGaugin, A Swineherd, Brittany (1888), and Ia Orana Maria (1891). Bothpaintings also make use of color to shape narrative expression. Almostdirectly across from the second point of yellow on the left of the canvasis a third point of yellow on the right, which is the yellow grassy bankbelow the village house. In its role as a participant in orange, yellow also appearsin farmland, rooftop, shrubbery. Similarly, thepatch of yellow across the lake in the left background, at the second pointof the triangle of yellow, draws the eye by its brightness; however, thereal attraction is contrasting orange-red foliage right next to it, andthen the rolling farmland hills and the expanse of azure sky. There are no farmimplements, not even a shepherd's crook. She is wearing bold scarlet,not decorous blue; she is not draped in wimple and cloak but in bare-shouldered muumuu. What this comes down to is thatyellow is the instrument of coherent composition, drawing the eye in andguiding it to the details of the work. The presentation as a whole is consistent withGaugin's determination to rid himself of contact with sophisticated life.In its pastoral simplicity, A Swineherd, Brittany is consistent, too, withwhat Pelfrey describes as Gaugin's declared hope that he and his followerscould "learn how to 'paint like children.'"[i] By the time of Ia Orana Maria, translated as Hail Mary, painted in1891 during Gaugin's first journey to Tahiti, the determination forsomething besides sophistication is even more obvious. The answermust be that they do on both counts, not because they tell the truth aboutrural peasants in France or Tahiti but because they force the viewer toenter the imaginative universe that gives expression to the possibility forfinding moments of beauty, light, and color in the context of naiveexperience. But there is narrative action in Ia Orana Maria,unlike in A Swineherd, Brittany, with the Madonna and child being veneratedby the bare-breasted women, and the whole scene somehow supervised by theangel. Pelfrey sees the use of halos as a nod to Gaugin's Western roots andthe use of "lush pastel tones" an evocation of tropical environment. Given that disaffection, it remains to ask whether theexpressions have artistic validity and give aesthetic pleasure. This would confirm the condition of the cow. In the middle distanceon the left is a cow that appears to have its head raised, perhaps mooing;the udder is swollen, ready to be milked. The relationship of the painting to the whole of Gaugin's work can beinferred from the fact that the scene is colorful, pleasant, plentiful.This is no drought-ridden landscape but a lush, verdant, bucolic picture ofagricultural life. Beyond the village are outlines of high mountains, as well as ayellow and purple sky. [ii]Ibid., 186. The time of day appears to be fairly late afternoon, given the factthat the light is hitting the foreground figures in a way that casts ashadow from the lower right (roughly southeast) toward the upper left(roughly northwest). What ismore striking about the viewpoint of the light, however, is the use ofcolor in A Swineherd, Brittany. Next theeye travels to the blue tunic, contrasted against the rocky bank, which isprimarily the light gray of rocks but which derives its shape from theprofusion of color and contrast that comprise its facets. Through the trees in the background can be seen the thatched roofs ofa village.
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