Gauguin's Paradise Remembered: The Noa Noa Prints
September 25, 2010–January 2, 2011
Gauguin’s Paradise Remembered presents thirty-two works that concentrate on a series of revolutionary woodcuts created by Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) in Paris following his first Tahitian voyage. Gauguin intended the ten woodcuts to be illustrations for his book Noa Noa (fragrant scent), based on his experiences in the South Seas from 1891–93 and penned with the aim of promoting understanding of his exotic canvases to a skeptical Parisian public. Self-consciously primitive in style and printed by hand, Gauguin’s Noa Noa woodcuts crystallized important themes and compositions from his Tahitian works, which idealized the myth of an untainted Polynesian idyll, in a series of experimental proofs that survive today as one of the most innovative print series produced by a nineteenth-century artist. Gauguin's Paradise Remembered addresses both the artist’s representation of Tahiti in the woodcut medium and the impact these evocative works had on his artistic practice through a selection of impressions on loan from a number of prestigious museums.
Jointly curated by Calvin Brown, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Princeton University Art Museum, and Dr. Alastair Wright, University Lecturer in the History of Art, St. John’s College, University of Oxford, Gauguin’s Paradise Remembered will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by the Princeton University Art Museum and distributed by Yale University Press. The catalogue has been made possible with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Joseph L. Shulman Foundation Fund for Publications. The exhibition will be presented with the generous support of an anonymous foundation, the Frances E. and Elias Wolf Fund, the Judith and Anthony B. Evnin ’62 Exhibition Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Friends and Partners of the Princeton University Art Museum.
Jointly curated by Calvin Brown, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Princeton University Art Museum, and Dr. Alastair Wright, University Lecturer in the History of Art, St. John’s College, University of Oxford, Gauguin’s Paradise Remembered will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by the Princeton University Art Museum and distributed by Yale University Press. The catalogue has been made possible with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Joseph L. Shulman Foundation Fund for Publications. The exhibition will be presented with the generous support of an anonymous foundation, the Frances E. and Elias Wolf Fund, the Judith and Anthony B. Evnin ’62 Exhibition Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Friends and Partners of the Princeton University Art Museum.
