Van Gogh and Gauguin

The Studio of the South

The personal and professional history of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin - their rivalrous friendship and brief period of collaboration in Arles in 1888 - constitutes one of the most dramatically revealing sagas in the history of modern art. In many ways, it is the quintessential story about the beginnings of modern avant-garde practice as it developed in the wake of the last Impressionist exhibition, held in 1886.

Contemporary art-making

Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh were, by circumstances of personality and history, "isolés": at once inherently self-involved and faced, in the absence of a single dominant "school," with a dizzying array of contemporary art-making. Brought together by circumstance, each artist played a vital role in the other's search for a personal style that would relate to current developments yet be unique.

Mutual influence

Over the course of this century, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin have received a prodigious amount of scholarly attention. Recent contributions to this literature - including new biographies, studies of particular aspects of their art, and publication of their letters - have expanded our knowledge significantly. But while references to their problematic interaction abound, sustained analysis of their mutual influence has yet to be the subject of a major study.

Landmark exhibition

This book, published on the occasion of a landmark exhibition organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, systematically explores the relationship in the context of the larger cultural and political background implied in their ideas for a "Studio of the South." It charts the connections between the two men through their stay together in Provence and beyond to Vincent's death in 1890. A final section considers the remainder of Gauguin's career, both in Tahiti and the Marquesas (where he died in 1903), as an attempt to realize the ideals of the "Studio of the South" developed with Vincent van Gogh and shaped by his posthumous reputation. 575 illustrations, 400 in color.

Douglas Druick and Peter Kort Zegers

Douglas Druick is Curator of Prints, Drawings, and European Painting and Peter Kort Zegers is Research Curator at the Art Institute of Chicago. Andreas Blühm is Head of Exhibitions and Louis van Tilborgh is Curator of Paintings at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.