Visions: Gauguin and his Time

Paul Gauguin’s Vision of the Sermon (1888), one of the iconic works of the late nineteenth century, continues to provoke profound reassessment and interpretation by art historians, and it is central to this third volume of Van Gogh Studies: Dario Gamboni discusses the painting as a self-reflexive work dealing in visual terms with issues of perception, cognition and representation; Juliet Simpson addresses the art critic Aurier’s contribution to the promotion of Gauguin as the exemplary symbolist artist; while Rodolphe Rapetti examines Emile Bernard’s artistic response to Vision of the Sermon in the context of Rosicrucianism; the Belgian art world’s critical reaction to this and other works by the artist is meticulously described and analysed in Elise Eckermann’s essay; while June Hargrove presents a challenging vision of Gauguin’s portraits of his ‘alter ego’ Meijer de Haan. Other contributions include Sandra Kister’s examination of the way the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen functioned as a role model for the Museé Rodin in Paris; Richard Thomson’s discussion of the diverse ways in which French artists working in the early Third Republic responded to contemporary concepts of ‘la psychologie nouvelle’; and, finally, a fresh view of nineteenth-century illustrations, including caricatures, offered by Patricia Mainardi. Contents:
-The Vision of a vision: Perception, hallucination, and potential images in Gauguin’s Vision of the sermon
-The décor of dreams: Gauguin, Aurier and the symbolists’ vision -From Gauguin to Péladan: Emile Bernard and the first salon of the Rose+Croix -Gauguin’s critical reception in Belgium in 1889 and 1891 -Gauguin’s maverick sage: Meijer de Haan -Museé Rodin: Thorvaldsen as a role model -Seeing Visions, Painting Visions: On psychology and representation under the early Third Republic -Paths forgotten, calls unheard: Illustration, caricature, comics in the 19th century Also Available:
Current Issues in 19th Century Art: Van Gogh Studies, Volume 1 ISBN: 9789040083501 Van Gogh: A Literary Mind: Van Gogh Studies, Volume 2 ISBN: 9789040085628