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| Chaim Soutine, View of Céret, about 1921-1922. Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, promised gift to Brooklyn Museum |
LACMA has opened "Village Square: Gifts of Modern Art from the Pearlman Collection to the Brooklyn Museum, LACMA, and MoMA." As regular readers of this blog will know, Henry and Rose Pearlman's collection was on loan to Princeton University Art Museum for half a century. Nearly all of it is now being distributed to the three museums in the show's title. It's a big win for LACMA especially, which gains its first paintings by Manet and van Gogh. (More on the background
here and
here.)
The title "Village Square" refers to the painting that started Henry Pearlman's collection, Village Square, Céret (now called View of Céret) by Chaim Soutine. Pearlman (1895–1974), a Brooklyn-born cold storage magnate, favored the School of Paris, that moveable feast of modernism. Cézanne is the founding figure here, and the collection's nexus is a vertical-format view of Mont Sainte-Victoire.
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| Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire, about 1904-1906. Museum of Modern Art, promised gift of Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation |
Cézanne produced many paintings with large areas of bare canvas. Collectors and museums have often shied away from these works but Pearlman prized the "unfinished" aesthetic before it was cool. Route to Le Tholonet is a shape-shifting hybrid of painting, oil sketch, and drawing.
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| Paul Cézanne, Route to Le Tholonet, about 1900-1904. Museum of Modern Art, promised gift of Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation |
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| Paul Cézanne, Trees and Cistern in the Park of Château Noir, 1900–1902; Rocks at Bibémus, about 1887–1890. Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, promised gift to the Museum of Modern Art |
Naturally, the Pearlmans gravitated to Cézanne's watercolors. There's a fantastic selection here, with more coming in a second rotation (starting in April). All the Cézannes are promised to the Museum of Modern Art.
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| Installation view with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's The Sacred Grove, 1884 (on wall at left). Brooklyn Museum, promised gift of Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation |
One of the show's surprises is a 12-1/2-ft-wide painting by Toulouse-Lautrec, The Sacred Grove. Created when the artist was 20 years old, it's a parody of a painting of the same name by Puvis de Chavannes. The latter artist was equally popular with the French art establishment and the avant-garde. Van Gogh considered him "the father of us all," and Puvis' Sacred Grove informed Seurat's La Grande Jatte. Even Picasso's Classical Period has roots in Puvis' pastel visions of misty, toga-clad antiquity.
Toulouse-Lautrec wasn't drinking the Kool-Aid. In the Pearlman painting, he goofs on Puvis by including a crowd of modern Frenchman. The short-statured artist is seen from the back, pissing on Puvis' masterwork.
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Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, The Sacred Grove, Beloved of the Arts and Muses, 1884-89. Art Institute of Chicago (not in show)
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| Detail of Toulouse-Lautrec's self-portrait in The Sacred Grove |
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| Installation view of Gauguin's The House of Joy |
Where is Gauguin, post Epstein files? In this show, skied. Gauguin's painted wood relief The House of Joy is displayed high above eye level, almost invisible due to glare. I don't know whether that counts as stealth cancelation, but it wouldn't be the first time. X-rays show that the woman's genitals were once red, then painted over with green to be less evident.
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| Paul Gauguin, The House of Joy, 1895 or 1897. Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, promised gift to the Brooklyn Museum |
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| Édouard Manet, Young Woman in a Round Hat, 1877–1879. LACMA, gift of Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation |
Roger Fry showed Young Woman in a Round Hat in his pivotal 1910 exhibition, "Manet and the Post-Impressionists."
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| Camille Pissarro, Still Life: Apples and Pears in a Round Basket, 1872. Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, promised gift to the Brooklyn Museum |
The collection has only one Pissarro. Rather than a cityscape or scene of rural labor, it's this still life, created when the artist was working closely with Cézanne.
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| Maurice Utrillo, The White House, about 1937. Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation |
When the Pearlmans started collecting, Maurice Utrillo was a household name. Much like van Gogh, Utrillo was seen as a self-destructive genius in the Romantic mode. Now he's a relic of School of Paris taste.
The White House is one of the few works in the show not promised to a museum.
Pearlman's tastes are a reflection of his time, both in the artists he bought and those he bypassed (notably the Cubists and Fauvists). Actually Pearlman
did buy a great Matisse—the
Bathers by a River now in Chicago
. Matisse himself considered
Bathers one of his five most important works. It was surely the single most important painting Pearlman ever bought. Yet he swapped it for a B+ Toulouse-Lautrec,
Messalina, in a deal with the Art Institute of Chicago. This wasn't entirely the blunder it might seem. After buying the Matisse, Pearlman realized it was in poor condition. He sought an American museum with the expertise to conserve it properly. Of course, had Pearlman really been into Matisse, he might have found a way to keep it.
Messalina is newly gifted to LACMA.
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| Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Messalina, 1900-1901. LACMA, gift of Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation |
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| van Gogh's Tarascon Stagecoach (LACMA gift) with Jacques Lipchitz's Portrait of Henry Pearlman (Brooklyn Museum promised gift) |
Here for future reference is what LACMA's new van Gogh looks like on painted drywall. Two months from now it will be displayed on concrete in the Geffen Galleries.
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| Oskar Kokoschka, Henry Pearlman, 1948. Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, promised gift to the Brooklyn Museum |
The figures in the background of Kokoschka's portrait are Pearlman's daughters, and the setting is probably the family's home in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.
"Village Square" is in the Resnick Pavilion through July 5, 2026. It travels to the Brooklyn Museum Oct. 2, 2026, to Apr. 18, 2017.
Comments
It’s a great show, and it’s wonderful that it’s integrated with the current Impressionist rotation next door. However, including works on paper alongside paintings means the paintings are not displayed under optimal conditions for viewing. To protect works on paper, the lighting is lowered, and as a result, the paintings lose some of their visual power. The otherwise wonderful Cezanne has not one but two shadows. I recommend closing your eyes for a minute and letting them adjust before looking closely.
The cancellation of Gauguin at a major museum is especially disappointing. It’s unfortunate for a museum with the strongest collection of the artist in Los Angeles to sideline one of the premier Old Masters of modern art. Too often, those who seek to cancel him seem are more motivated by professional positioning than by serious engagement with the work.
It is not surprising that Gauguin would be the subject of criticism. He is arguably the most important European artist to center non-European subjects and ideals of beauty in his work. Seeing Van Gogh in person is striking; Gauguin, by contrast, can feel sublime. His decision to turn his back on Europe still unsettles westerners. The attacks on his lifestyle in Martinique and French Polynesia are often framed as moral critique, yet they also raise questions about how we view those cultures and their norm. In other words, criticizing him for acting like a native is criticizing the natives. These same pandering curators would in his time be volunteering to indoctrinate non western cultures with their set of superior culture and norms, raping and pillaging away those native cultures for ethnographic scholarship and self promotion (and salvation - alas the present lot has evolved past God).
Gauguin was, in fact, a vocal critic of French colonial administration and positioned himself—however imperfectly—as an advocate for Indigenous cultures. That tension deserves discussion rather than erasure. Ironically, he may also be one of the last major modern painters to produce a substantial body of explicitly Christian work, albeit, like everything else about him, complicated.
The situation reminds me of the way conservative evangelicals once attacked The Simpsons despite it being one of the only prime-time shows that regularly depicted a family going to church. The paradox is similar: easier to jump on the bandwagon, turn discussion in a wedge issue, rather than to grapple with the work in a serious manner.
> it will be displayed on
> concrete in the Geffen
> Galleries.
I have major qualms about that. I've seen a video of an exhibit located in the Bregenz Museum, Zumthor's space for contemporary art in Austria. To my eyes, large expanses of gray concrete fight the display of artworks in a gallery, even of newer art too, no less. But older styles and periods of art? Oh-oh.
William Pereira 1965 design suffered because spaces were too chopped up (4 levels!) and square footage was certainly very modest. Of course, that wasn't helped by LACMA's collection over 60 years ago justifying saying the word "county" in a drawl similar to, "sou-iee, sou-iee." LOL.
Hey, don't blame me! A review awhile ago of LACMA and its controversy involving Peter Zumthor's design and Govan's management did make light of that aspect of the museum's name.
With all the AnyCity-USA exhibits of generic contemporary art often inserted into way too much of LACMA, saying "count-y" with a twangy southern dialect may be justified for another reason.
Oh, well, when the Geffen Galleries finally do open, hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
As for the Chaim Soutine, something about that painting not being a part of the donation to LACMA hits differently than the Cezannes going to MOMA. I recall an article years ago that described art collectors as preferring to bequeath "strength to strength." But that also means a gift is more likely to end up in storage too.
In turn, having to read LACMA's "first paintings by Manet and van Gogh" is sort of the opposite extreme.
The cruz of the criticism is that Gauguin replicated in his work the prevailing Western fantasies about "natives." He WAS NOT acting like a "native." He was acting like a white European male when he portrayed Tahitian culture as primitive, over-sexualized, and subservient.
His politics complicates, but does NOT excuse the exploitation. Like Gauguin, Epstein exploited young female models. Should we excuse Epstein's offenses because he donated to Democrats and Harvard?
... By the way, do you realize how uneducated you appear by using the term "native"? In postcolonial studies, "native" is what colonial discourse (ethnography and administrative orders) calls the other. There is nothing sincere or historically convenient about the term.
--- J. Garcin
What troubles me is the selective moral outrage. Pablo Picasso was, by many accounts, far worse in his treatment of women, yet museums like LACMA are not lining up to distance themselves from him. Why is Paul Gauguin treated differently? The subject matter seems to be the distinguishing factor. Because he painted Polynesian women and turned away from Europe, he becomes a more convenient target. Picasso painted blonds.
If we are going to apply moral scrutiny retroactively, then it should be applied consistently — to artists, collectors, patrons, and powerful figures across politics and society. Accountability should not be selective or fashionable.
What exactly did Gauguin do that was illegal under the laws of his time? Why are museums singling him out now? And perhaps most importantly, how do Polynesians themselves see him? And all the Epstein criminals, foreign and domestic, democrat or republican, billionaire or president should be prosecuted for their crimes.
I hate to remind the more puritanical curators that the museum’s newest Gauguin acquisition is, ironically, the very “offending” woodcut—now enlarged and presented in full color. Please spare me the moralizing; if I find a work offensive, I can simply take a few steps and continue my museum visit.
To Gauguin’s credit, he chose to leave Europe, live among Polynesians in relative poverty, and depict them as central and monumental subjects. One may question his personal choices, but he immersed himself in their world in a way few European of his time did or any of us here.
As I read the following, I think of the times that LACMA has inserted contemporary art NOT into the Broad building (originally devoted to just contemporary art but now also modern too), but in galleries based on an artist's race, ethnicity or nationality.
Why should an artist whose style is contemporary and whose works are of the here-and-now be segregated in galleries split from the big names in contemporary art? Why should his or her works be sort of ghettoized with art of older times and older styles merely because of the notion that race-based genetics (etc) shared with other artists in that same part of a museum are important?
That actually is casually condescending or patronizing in a "who, me? I didn't mean it!" way.
> Hyundai Motor Company and
> ...(LACMA) announced today
> the extension of their
> longstanding partnership
> through 2037.
> It has advanced Korean art
> scholarship by creating a new
> platform and model that
> explores key aspects of
> Korean art—from historical
> and traditional forms to
> contemporary practices
> In addition, building on
> LACMA’s commitment to
> create welcoming spaces
> on the museum campus,
> the artist will collaboratively
> develop a large-scale
> banner for the exhibition
> that will be installed on the
> exterior [of]...(BCAM)...
I absolutely adore the Puvis source canvas at Art Institute of Chicago, most especially how Puvis draws golden horizontal lines throughout his water features to denote subtle movement in the surface. It's mesmerizing.
As relatively small as the Chicago canvas is, neither it nor the far-larger Lautrec parody come anywhere near the great opus "The Sacred Grove, Beloved of the Arts and Muses," commissioned to decorate a monumental staircase at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. That work is oil on canvas that's been marouflaged. It is three times the size of the Brooklyn parody by Lautrec.
As an aside, the collection in Lyon is well worth a journey, an easy train ride from either Geneva or Paris.
For the comparisons:
Art Institute Puvis: 3 ft. x 7.5 ft.
Brooklyn parody: 5.5 ft. x 12.5 ft.
Lyon marouflage: 15 ft. x 34 ft.
I provide the proportions particularly because, even with the enormity of the Lyon work, Puvis adds three other canvases to complete his staircase decorative ensemble. The result is awe-strikingly beautiful!
See the short video of the Lyon staircase:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PYNWa7Pnobc&list=LL&index=6&pp=iAQB0gcJCaIKAYcqIYzvsAgC
*
About the comment that LACMA lost out in not getting the Soutine: New York is poor in Soutines, just like LA.
Brooklyn has but one Soutine, a not unpretty still life of gladiolas, c. 1919.
The Brooklyn web site notes their pre-existing Soutine was a 1967 bequest of Laura L. Barnes. Moreover, the entry reads: Soutine struggled in poverty after arriving in Paris in 1913 from present-day Belarus. His fortunes changed in 1922, when the American collector Albert Barnes (d. 1951) bought fifty-two of his paintings, likely including the Brooklyn still life. Barnes gave the work to his wife, Laura, who, in turn, bequeathed it to the Brooklyn Museum.
Prescient Barnes.
The link above is not live.
I suggest going on YouTube and searching for "L'Escalier Puvis de Chavannes". Thanks.
> that LACMA lost out
> in not getting the Soutine
When I wrote "hits differently," I meant I'd prefer if LACMA had also received the Cezannes while the Soutine doesn't grab me as much.
Although I get the idea of collectors feeling more enthusiastic about donating to top-flight museums, most of them also have such jammed storage (and display) areas, that a gift is more likely to end up stowed away from public view.
Even if LACMA's permanent collection isn't as good, the museum still setting aside way too much of its gallery space to borrowed (and also traveling) contemporary art irritates me a lot.
A large number of intellectuals associated with postcolonial studies have come from former colonies. They are not strictly-speaking Westerners. Why do you think you are more qualified to speak for the "other" than they are? By saying who are we to judge, you are effectively preempting others from judging something that they are in a better position than you to judge.
… What about Picasso? His work has received the same scrutiny. But not all nudes or distortions are the same. There is quite a difference between fashioning the faces of women in a Spanish brothel out of African masks (as in Demoiselles d’Avignon) and turning a colonial setting into your own brothel. Even after one delves into the details of Picasso’s experiences in brothels, there are no ethical grounds to reject the painting. That is, despite its views of women, the subject/object relations are presented more critically.
With Gauguin, on the other hand, how can one look past the naked fact that his portrayal of a remote location implies a privilege whose insidious effects we are still litigating today? Should we ignore/excuse the ability of elite, white men to find islands far from the reach of “civilization” to indulge their sexual fantasies without punishment or judgment? Should we celebrate these men as we used to celebrate Gauguin? Should we let Leon Black back on the MoMA board because he owns some great paintings and ignore his relationship with Epstein? Let’s note here that MoMa's island pictures remain on display. That’s the actual hypocrisy here. If you are going to show the island pictures, at least put something in the wall label about the artist’s relations to his models.
--- J. Garcin
From the Epstein files, we learned that two victims claimed that Leon Black bit them (during a sexual assault).
... But yeah, let's pretend as if the law always gets things right.
What a cop out!
If we are going to contextualize artists’ personal lives, then let’s do so consistently. Van Gogh and Gauguin reportedly set aside money in a jar for visits to the brothel in Arles. Put that on the Van Gogh label as well. Gauguin had relationships that today would be considered statutory rape. That should not be ignored. But if we are going to judge nineteenth-century Tahiti solely by contemporary Western standards, are we prepared to apply that logic across the board — including to Tahitian men of the same period, in a society where most girls were married by their mid-teens? Those practices were also historically cited by missionaries and colonial powers as justification for intervention and domination.
Regarding the inconsistency in the same room, assuming that German guy was not going where he wasn’t supposed to by present standards, when the nude is white, we are instructed to see “classical beauty.” When the nude is brown, it is more quickly framed as prurient, immoral, or exploitative by default. That shift says as much about us and our bias towards skin color as it does about the painter.
Yes, contextualize the privilege. Yes, acknowledge the colonial dynamics. Whatever the prevailing academic framework may be, gets the PhDs and gives tenure, fine — include it. But let’s not pretend that erasure is the same as ethical clarity, or that viewers are incapable of wrestling with complexity on their own.
If you take what Gauguin wrote in Noa Noa or his other “diaries” (whatever those things are) as straightforward confessions or documentary fact, hm…. It’s a crafted text, shaped by mythmaking and self-fashioning as much as confession.
Gauguin was not simply fleeing to Tahiti in search of promiscuity; he had access to that in France. He was influenced by Montaigne and Rousseau (ahem he read) and their ideals about nature, primitivism, and life outside European industrial modernity. He grew up in Peru, traveled as a merchant marine, was educated by Jesuits, and lived a materially comfortable upper middle class life in one of the wealthiest cultural capitals in the world. That before he became one of the most important artists in western art. Reducing him to a one-dimensional scapegoat for colonialism while ignoring those complexities is not serious contextualization — it is simplification.
As for Leon Black: prosecute him, sell his collection and direct the proceeds to victims. But the fact that a collector behaved immorally does not retroactively corrupt the paintings he owns. Ethical accountability for individuals is one thing; declaring the artwork tainted beyond view is another.
As for your “cop-out” comment, my question was not whether Gauguin was prosecuted, but whether what he did was illegal in his own time. That distinction matters. Even when laws are unevenly enforced, as is the case in our country today, they generally reflect a society’s prevailing norms. My point was that his conduct was not clearly running afoul of the legal or social standards of the period — in Tahiti or, for that matter, in France. In that case he was a product of his time. The outrage should be turned to France and Europe and western culture. He is much more an example, a byproduct than an abnormality. Turning him to a scapegoat is excusing the larger culture.
If you want a cop out, ahem, having very strong feelings about an artist, but unwilling to put them on a wall label, so therefore hanging the work where nobody can see it and feeling like you made a statement - thats the real cop out.
I know little of Gaugin..did he produce this work as intended to hang atop a doorframe? If no, the positioning is dumb.
> conduct was not clearly
> running afoul of the
> legal or social
> standards of the
> period...
The history of *all* peoples and *all* societies is full of sicking behavior. No one's hands are clean.
Look at ancient Rome. Look at what an Emperor Caligula or his uncle Emperor Tiberius was all about. Today there is the elite and their dealings with Jeffrey Epstein.
People enjoying barbaric events in the Colosseum come way too close to people in the 21st century getting a cheap thrill from slasher films full of murder and violence or being into real-life scenes of fighting and mayhem on city streets.
In the 1800s, England forced opium trade on China. In the 2020s, China wants to take over Taiwan or repress Uyghurs.
Figures in British history grabbed artworks from throughout the world, including the Elgin Marbles from Greece. In the past 30-plus years, British authorities have not permitted artworks to be sold to other nations without a lot of pre-conditions,
On that note, how inconsistent is it to trivialize "academic frameworks" and then turn around and use the concept of "self-fashioning"? What do you think "self-fashioning" is? It's an academic framework which Greenblatt used to construct Shakespeare's subjectivity out of his milieu.
As to the biographical details of Gauguin's life, they confirm that he had the habits of a 19th-century, French male of a certain class. Again, let's not pretend because you know a few facts about his life that you have obtained some clarity for your position. It's a gross simplification to think that Gauguin's motives are completely readable and transparent to a 21st century viewer who knows him primarily as an artist. If you want context, tell us why adventure mattered to men of his class and how did his Jesuit education serve a disciplinary purpose at home and abroad. Can you handle that type of complexity?
I doubt it. Because if you could, you would have already conceded that the problem here is NOT going to a brothel. Rather, it's white, European male privilege and how Gauguin's particular application of that privilege can no longer be excused in light of more recent events, no matter how pretty his paintings are.
--- J. Garcin
> male privilege
> Should we let Leon Black
> back on the MoMA board
> because he owns some
> great paintings and ignore
> his relationship with
> Epstein?
> Should we excuse Epstein's
> offenses because he
> donated to Democrats and
> Harvard?
Ideology goes beyond parameters of race, income, religion, nationality, gender/sexuality and...the arts.
Similarly, questions about Peter Zumthor's Geffen Galleries transcend boundaries of "MAGA, Save-LACMA-mob crowd."
Since you always (or only often?) identity yourself, I don't necessarily assume you're the same person who for a few years has smirked about criticism of the Govan/Zumthor project.
Speaking of which - and 1800s Epstein-ism notwithstanding - a Gauguin displayed in the Resnick Pavilion or the "Broad Contemporary Art Museum" (as opposed to the Broad Museum) in the next few months will reveal whether LACMA 2026 duplicates certain major design flaws evident in LACMA 1965.
The Auguste Rodin sculptures apparently are lined up somewhat parallel to Wilshire Blvd, although they've long been displayed close to the street in front of LACMA. But they once were in gardens created in the same location as the museum's old moat that sat below street level. Not ideal there either. But viewing them even more directly against the backdrop of a fence and cars zooming by may be even more compromised? The jury remains out.
I have a hunch the Geffen's main weakness is going to be the many walls of gray (or even tinted) concrete. All the windows are also going to greatly reduce usable exhibit space. Not helped when LACMA already doesn't have many sculptures to begin with---even more so when many of them are already in the current Buddhist exhibit in the Resnick. Or a collection without nearly as many of the type of objects displayed in the Grand Egyptian Museum.
I’m not entirely sure where you want to take this discussion, but my point is simple. Let me use an American analogy. I remember having to read Huck Finn in college. I am by no means a literary expert, but it struck me that the book was written for Southerners in a way that Twain hoped would humanize enslaved people. It certainly reads very differently today. I can understand someone choosing to skip Huck Finn—or Twain altogether. So be it. However, I would never agree to take Huck Finn or all of Mark Twain off the shelf. I personally have no desire to reread it. If I felt strongly enough, I suppose I could write a book criticizing it, and if that critique were good enough, perhaps it would earn its own place on the shelf as well.
Since colonialism and cancellation are the topics at hand, let’s bring it closer to home. Not long ago, many of our compatriots wanted to cancel Bad Bunny before they had heard a single song at the Superbowl halftime show. I assume that judgment was based on his biography, not his music. Thankfully, they did not succeed.
At the show, a song he wrote—sung by the forever-young Ricky Martin—included a chorus along the lines of: I don’t want for Puerto Rico what has happened to Hawaii. And what has been happening to Hawaii? Native Hawaiians have seen their land taken, their culture marginalized, and many no longer even live on the islands. That is not gentrification leading to displacement, it is displacement on a scale that is existential. Moments later in the show, the Bunny climbed electric poles and sang about blackouts—an unmistakable reference to the hurricanes that devastated Puerto Rico, and to the inadequate federal response that followed. Although paper towels were tossed at them.
So we’re fine letting the island “we own” fall apart, but we did use our colonial holding to stage our attack on another sovereign nation that apparently we now also own their oil and our president is now their acting president—so basically another set of brown colonial subjects. So given our reality, it feels really weird to be coming out to cancel a French dude that died 124 years ago and to criticize 19th-century France over their colonialism. By the way, great show, Mr. Bunny—throwing a Latin party on America’s lawn with that message.
Finally, I see your point. I acknowledge your views. I do not dispute what you see. The work in question is probably the strongest example you could wish for to make your argument. It is a missed opportunity that nobody can see it at LACMA and wrestle with it directly.
And to those still on the fence about canceling art, specifically Gauguin: 19th-century French painting is the most popular art in major museums. In the history of Western art, few portrayed female beauty and elegance better than Manet. He painted the women of Paris. Yet in those same galleries, non-European women are often relegated to the margins: servants, attendants, courtesans. Gauguin admired Manet but pursued a radically different aesthetic. Whatever else one concludes about him, he successfully championed non European beauty, a counterpoint to Manet. So if you choose to go the self righteous route, I hope you understand what else you’ll be canceling.
I am calling for a more thorough evaluation of all artists and their work.
I do not think Gauguin would survive that scrutiny.
Because one of the criteria would be that the work should manifest both the prevailing elements of its "representative" regime and its structural blindspots and limitations. As an example of what I mean here, see Foucault's close reading of Las Meninas in The Order of Things.
Huck Finn is as conflicted about its representation of Jim as the modern reader should be. Picasso is as conflicted about the representation of women in Demoiselles as the modern viewer should be. By comparison, Gauguin's pictures are just pretty.
Why is that? ... Because unlike the others Gauguin could not transcend/transgress his own "privilege" and make (as Foucault would put it) a "representation of representation."
--- J. Garcin