Artist: Paul Gaugin
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
Paul Gauguin. 1897-1898 C.E. France. Oil on canvas
Paul Gauguin. 1897-1898 C.E. France. Oil on canvas
A huge, brilliantly colored but enigmatic work painted on rough, heavy sackcloth. It contains numerous human, animal, and symbolic figures arranged across an island landscape. The sea and Tahiti's volcanic mountains are visible in the background. It is Paul Gauguin's largest painting, and he understood it to be his finest work.
Date: 1897-98
Medium: oil on canvas
Movement: Symbolism
Form:
- continuous narrative
- like fresco, or friezes
- weird multi-perspective view in background
- Symbolist
- colors play an important role
- 2-dimensional
- symbolic meaning, expressive, non-naturalistic
Content:
- Tahitian natives in scenes that show the stages of life (from right to left): infancy, adulthood, old age
- figures are partially unclothed
- dressed in a non-western fashion
Function:
- enigmatic, multiple philosophical interpretations
- essentially a private work, whose meaning was only known most personally to Gaugin himself
Context:
