Gauguin – The Master, the Monster and the Myth

Hailed as a pivotal figure of early modernist art yet also long denounced for his character and life choices, Gauguin remains an ambiguous figure.

His story still feeds the romantic notion of the Dionysian savage, whose self-destructive impulse was directly proportionate to his genius, leading him to clash with the world around him. Recently the #MeToo campaign has placed him under renewed scrutiny for his alleged sexual relations with prepubescent girls and the part he played in colonialist misdemeanours during his French Polynesian sojourns. Yet top auction prices and undiminished interest in his oeuvre ophold Gauguin’s celebrity status.

Flemming Friborg reveals the fascinating story of the artist’s life and times in and around the circle of Impressionists and Symbolists, as well as his travels in France, Denmark and the tropics, by exposing and analysing hitherto unheeded material and themes. This comprehensive study maps Gauguin’s intricate web, linking painterly, musical and literacy traces throughout his artistic output and writings.

It is an attempt to approach the artist and his work from new angles, in order to align the seemingly disparate traits in Gauguin – and to present an image which accommodates both the Master and the Monster.

Flemming Friborg (MA), b. 1965, is a Danish art historian and freelance exhibition curator and currently a Carlsberg Foundation research scholar in art market currents between 1875 and 1935 at the Copenhagen Business School (Dept. of Business, Humanities and Law). From 2002 to 2017 he was director of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. Friborg has received several academic awards and honors, among them the French Ordre des arts et des lettres and the N.L. Høyen Medal of the Danish Royal Academy of Art.