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2. A happy nude woman and her two children rest at the water's edge.
a. The Day of the God
b. Vision After the Sermon
V. Translate the text into English.
В истории искусства имя Поля Гогена связывают с символизмом, получившим в конце
XIX - начале XX вв. название примитивизм. Несмотря на то, что Гоген стал систематически
заниматься живописью довольно поздно, ему удалось выработать собственную манеру
письма. Разочарованный в европейской цивилизации, Гоген бежал в экзотические страны.
Природа и жизнь туземных племен стали источником его творческого вдохновения. Гоген
сознательно пришел к примитивизации формы, стремясь приблизиться к художественным
традициям туземного искусства. В общении с первобытной природой Гоген хотел обрести
иллюзорный покой. Создав стилизацию таитянского искусства, Гоген вызвал интерес к
искусству неевропейских народов.
VI. Summarize the text.
VII. Topics for discussion.
1. Gauguin as a life-long rebel.
2. Gauguin as a founder of modem art.
UNIT XVI VAN GOGH (1853-1890)
Van Gogh identified art with emotion. The son of a Protestant Dutch minister, the young Van
Gogh was by turns the employee of a firm of art dealers, a language teacher, a student of practical
evangelism and a missionary to the coal miners. Through these fragmentary careers runs the theme
- a love of humanity, and of life. This love was the theme of his art as well, and was to produce one
of the most intensely personal witnesses in the spiritual history of mankind. Even Van Gogh's
mental illness, that brought about his frequent hospitalisations and his untimely death, did not
prevent him from becoming the only Dutch painter whose stature could set him on a level with the
three great Dutch masters of the seventeenth century.
In 1881 Van Gogh started to study art, but remained in a somewhat provincial Dutch tradition,
out of touch with the colouristic discoveries of Impressionism. In 1886 he came to Paris for a two-
year stay with his brother Theo, and under the influence of Impressionism and Japanese prints freed
his palette and worked out a fresh, new, highly original sense of pattern in contour. Having shown
signs of depression and emotional instability, he left the north early in 1888, hoping to find a
happier existence in Arles, in Provence. During the next two years, he painted at white heatoften a
canvas a day - his series of masterpieces in a style unprecedented in European art. He was
fascinated by the beauty of the landscape, by the southern light, absolutely different from that of
northern France with its mists and rain. He noted that the intense sunlight could drive a man mad.
An excellent example of his brief period of happiness is his A View of La Craw, painted in
June 1888, with its almost Renaissance perspective of fields and farms, a surprising revival of the
principles that had been swept aside by the Impressionists and Gauguin. To Van Gogh space
construction became an expressive device, moving the observer forcefully toward the distant moun-
tains. The whole picture is coloured in red-gold and blue that were his own colours. The thick
pigment, blazing colour, and strong, straight strokes are Van Gogh's personal transformation of Im-
pressionist technique. The happy period did not last long. In September 1888 Van Gogh painted the
first of his disturbing pictures, The Night Cafe. The perspective is so strongly exaggerated here that
it seems to catapult the observer into the end wall, in which the red-and-green contrast is insoluble.
In late December of the same year Van Gogh threw with violence a knife at Gauguin and then
cut off his own ear. Van Gogh was cared for at first in the hospital at Arles, and then in the asylum
at nearby Saint-Remy. He was allowed to paint and produced beautiful and moving works. Van
Gogh's Self-portrait, painted in the asylum in September 1889, reveals the period of desperation
through which the artist had passed. The brushstrokes are now curved and vibrate throughout the
picture. In a mood of renewed confidence, the artist has endowed the painting with his own physical