Exhibition: Gauguin Portraits

Is it possible to love the art but loathe the artist? Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin’s art is problematic. I hate so much of his behaviour and I’m struggling to reach beyond that. He was self-obsessed, arrogant, and petulant, brimming with hypocrisy and lacking integrity. He abandoned his wife and five children, and at the age of 43 years set sail for Tahiti. He used his French colonial privilege to satisfy his exotic fantasy of the primitive savage and had repeated sexual relationships with young girls.

Alternatively, a critic from The Guardian argued that The National Gallery is, in fact, being somewhat hypocritical and that the exhibition is: ‘a buttoned-up, nervous and nude-light cop-out of a show’ …