A Legend in His Own Mind: Gauguin’s Myth Making

After spending some tumultuous time together at the infamous “Yellow House” in Arles, Vincent van Gogh, no stranger to psychiatric help, thought that fellow artist and former roommate Paul Gauguin could use a professional, too. Taking Vincent at his word, modern art’s original odd couple thus seem more alike than different in the fragmentation of their personalities. Gauguin: Maker of Myth, the catalog to the exhibition running at the Tate Modern in London, England, through January 16, 2011 before moving on to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, from February 27 through June 5, 2011, picks up the pieces of what seems to be Gauguin’s shattered psyche and reveals the method behind his madness. Both a deliberate and an accidental mythmaker, Gauguin first became a legend in his own mind before he could become a legend in his own time, or ours. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "A Legend in His Own Mind."

[Image: Paul Gauguin. Self-Portrait with Yellow Christ, 1889-1890.]

[Many thanks to Princeton University Press for providing me with a review copy of Gauguin: Maker of Myth, the catalog to the exhibition running at the Tate Modern in London, England, through January 16, 2011 before moving on to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, from February 27 through June 5, 2011.]