Divine Gauguin or savage Christ?
Violeta Banica, Princeton Class of 2009You must remember that there are two natures in me, the Indian and the sensitive. The sensitive one has disappeared which permits the Indian one to march straight ahead firmly. - Paul Gauguin
In this confession made in February 1888, Gauguin acknowledged that the two forces shaping his personality were savagery and divinity, represented here by the Indian and the sensitive. Nevertheless, he was conscious of the continuous conflict between them and of the ultimate victory of the savage, even though he was at this time creating a series of self-portraits as Christ. Although Gauguin’s own words provide this key for deciphering these self-portraits as indicative of his growing savagery, art critics insist on a mystical interpretation of his paintings. According to them, Gauguin’s self-portraits as Christ reflect the artist’s increasing desire to establish a connection with the divine and to sever the bonds with the world of perceptions. Specifically, in his article “Paul Gauguin’s ‘Self-portrait with Halo and Snake’: the Artist as Initiate and Magus”, Vojtec Jirat-Wasiutynsky argues that by rendering himself as a replica of Christ, Gauguin “triumphed over the temptations of feeling, desire and life”. (Jirat-Wasiutynsky, 25) Jirat-Wasiutynsky’s words imply that Gauguin, by identifying himself with Christ, “triumphed over” his own physicality and elevated himself to an emanation of the divine. Therefore, Gauguin’s identification with Christ has been understood by critics like Jirat- Wasiutynsky as the artist’s success in becoming an exterior manifestation of the divine.
But if we look at Gauguin’s own words, we see that he thought the “Indian” or savage part of himself was his dominant persona. Thus, by equating his persona with that of Christ, Gauguin, rather than defining himself as the embodiment of a divine legacy, makes a statement about the savage nature of Christ. In this series of self-portraits Gauguin first portrayed himself as the magus, with the facial traits overtly expressing his disgust towards humankind. However, these facial features remained within the sphere of the human, whereas in the later self-portraits, as his bitterness amplifies these features, they are gradually transformed into those of a brute. The evolution of the facial features in his self-portraits as Christ from elongated and well refined to brutal and robust reveals the inner evolution of Gauguin’s savagery. This complex evolution manifested at two different levels, the physical one and the psychological one, is incredibly well expressed in the Self-portrait with Yellow Christ (1889-1990). Thus, the progression of the facial features from human to bestial shows that the divine half of Gauguin’s personality gradually diminished and that in the end his savage part became dominant. So what could be the implications of Gauguin’s having been conquered by his own savagery? That Gauguin continued to identify himself with Christ while portraying himself with the facial features of a savage leads to the rather scandalous conclusion that he went as far as implying a savage nature of Christ.
The Exhibit
