Paul Gauguin
Visual Arts • 12m
Directed by Alain Resnais • Documentary • 1949 • 13 minutes
PAUL GAUGUIN uses the artist’s own writings and artwork to trace his creative journey. The film begins with Gauguin losing his job in finance—the catalyst for his commitment to paint every day—and continues through to his final days in Tahiti.
After leaving Paris, Gauguin settles in Brittany, where he is inspired the landscape and the locals. In the sound of their clogs, he writes, “I hear the muffled, dull, powerful sound I seek in my painting.” After a time though, Gauguin, miserable and impoverished, sets off for Tahiti. Here, he would create the paintings that would bring him lasting fame, but near the end of his life he considered his Tahitian sojourn a “crazy sad adventure.”
Recently digitized and restored, PAUL GAUGUIN masterfully melds writing and visual art, providing insights into Gauguin’s life and artistic development.
PAUL GAUGUIN is one of a series of impressive short films on art made by the great French New Wave director Alain Resnais, early in his career.
Up Next in Visual Arts
-
Art and Oligarchs
Directed by Tania Rakhmanova • Documentary • 2010 • 52 minutes
A popular trend among Russian oligarchs is to purchase works of art. Why? It's a way to get into the Kremlin's good graces, to gild their image...and to cover up the origin of their fortunes, often acquired in the shadow of post-Sovi...
-
Bruly Bouabré's Alphabet
Directed by Nurith Aviv • Documentary • 2005 • 17 minutes
In the 1950's, Ivory Coast artist Frederic Bruly Bouabré created several hundred pictograms, based on one-syllable words in his language, Bété, to help people in the Bété community learn to read more quickly. Although some 600,000 Bétés l...
-
The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg
Directed by Michael Schindhelm • Documentary • With Uli Sigg, Ai Weiwei, Cao Chong’en, Cao Fei, Pierre de Meuron, Hans-Peter Fallegger • 2016 • 93 minutes
A documentary about the entrepreneur, diplomat and art collector Uli Sigg, and the tense sociopolitical context of China's ongoing transforma...
