Welcome: Gabriela Salgado, Curator of Public Programmes at Tate Modern
Session one chaired by Belinda Thomson, Curator of Gauguin: Maker of Myth
Tamar Garb: Thinking about Gauguin Now
The paper raises questions about what it is to mount an exhibition and think about Gauguin at this time. After the post colonial and feminist critiques of the 80s and 90s designated Gauguin as a ‘primitivist bad boy’, how might we rethink his practice now? Drawing on the writing of the Martiniquan writer Edouard Glissant, I will think about both Gauguin’s ignorance as a counter-intuitive producer of knowledge which takes us out of our comfort zones, both philosophically and aesthetically.
Nicholas Thomas: Gauguin, Modernity and Myth in Oceania
The Oceania that Gauguin encountered was a modern world, in manifold senses that are partially acknowledged in the artist’s Polynesian oeuvre, and in tension with his renown or notoriety, as primitivist mythmaker. This presentation recontextualizes Gauguin within late 19th cultural exchanges, and argues that those exchanges, rather than the success or failure of any particular artist, represent a necessary starting point for a genuinely postcolonial cultural history.
Discussion chaired by Belinda Thomson
Download Myths of the Other - Part 1 (MP3, 136.5 MB)
