Archive for February 1st, 2010
Gauguin in Brittany
Gauguin, who had studied landscape painting under Pissarro, and began his career as an Impressionist, abandoned Impressionism in Brittany. He created a new system called Synthetism (also known as Symbolism) by building on Cloisonnism. This term comes from cloisonné, an enameling process in which colored enamels are poured into metal chambers that outline figures and objects. His paintings had large patches of vivid color bordered by thick black lines, each patch being one color with a minimum of shading.
The turning point in his career was the painting ” The Vision After the Sermon” (Jacob wrestling with an angel). In this painting, praying Breton women are imagining the battle between Jacob and the Angel.
The psychological side of the painting is even more revolutionary than the technique. Gauguin combines the physical world of the Breton women and the psychological world of their visions of the wrestling match into one painting. By using flattened perspective and Cloisonnism, he was able to combine people’s inner visions with the world around them.