Art Blogging

Here's an interesting article about the darker side of Paul Gauguin:

HE romanticised himself as “a savage”, explaining and excusing his own nature. He deserted a wife, children and material security because of the conviction, shared by few, that inside him there existed a great painter. He was abusive, debauched, arrogant, derisive, intolerant, and possibly the loneliest man who ever lived. He also made most of the art of the 20th century possible.

(It strikes me that the last sentence in this excerpt is probably a wee bit overblown.)

I remember seeing a cartoon in, I think, The New Yorker a number of years ago. Two middle aged MMA-type women are looking at one of Gauguin's South Seas pieces full of nubile girls and one of the women is saying to the other, "That son of a bitch!" That thought has always made me smile.

Yips! to Ann Althouse.