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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Kiesel who wrote (14445)	11/21/1998 3:18:00 PM
From: Ilaine	Respond to of 71178

Tom, if we are talking about the same painting, the name of the painting is, "D'ou venons nous? Que sommes-nous? ou' allons-nous?" It was Paul Gauguin's last great work before he died. He wrote to a friend of his, before he painted it: "Before I died I wished to paint a large canvas that I had in mind, and I worked day and night that whole month in an incredible fever. . . . It is done straight from the brush on the sackcloth full of knots and wrinkles, so the appearance is terribly rough. . . . I put into it all my energy, a passion so dolorous, amid circumstances so terrible, and so clear was my vision that the haste of the execution is lost and life surges up. It does not stink of models, of technique, or of pretended rules, of which I have always fought shy, though sometimes with fear. It is a canvas four metres, fifty long and one metre, seventy high. The two upper corners are chrome yellow, with an inscription on the left and my name on the right, like a fresco which is spoiled with age and which is appliqued on a golden wall. To the right at the lower end a sleeping child and three crouching women. Two figures dressed in purple confide their thoughts to one another. An enormous crouching figure, out of all proportion and intentionally so, raises its arms and stares in astonishment upon these two, who dare to think of their destiny; two cats near a child; a white goat; an idol, its arms, mysteriously raised in a sort of rhythm seems to indicate the Beyond. Then, lastly, an old woman nearing death appears to accept everything. She completed the story. . . . It is all on the bank of a river in the woods. In the background the ocean, then the mountains of neighboring island. Despite changes of tone the colouring of the landscape is constant - either blue or Veronese green. Where does the execution of a painting commence and where does it end? At that moment when the most intense emotions are in fusion in the depth of one's being, when they burst forth like lava from a volcano. . .? The work is created suddenly, brutally if you like, and is not its appearance great, almost superhuman?"