Paul Gauguin, Philosopher and Musician of color (Translated from French by: Alexander Tchikine)

Abstract

At the heart of the dialog between the art piece and the world, the artist works at communicating his sensations. For Gauguin, this work involves a self-claimed philosophical bent, as he considers his paintings as the result of a philosophical refoundation of color. His idea is that the artist’s sensations don’t stem from his contact with the empirical world but rather with the metaphysical one. This is due to the fact that the painter competes with nature: his imitation is inventive (no matching with the original) and his truth is creative (true to his subjective perception). An artist-philosopher, who is also a thinking subject, thus reasserts the pragmatic necessity of the perception. Being diverse, the color is an instrument by which the artist expresses his thinking (he reveals his metaphysical sensations and offers them to the receptor). There is an arrangement that reveals the inner musical harmony of things and beings – by which the painter thinks out from words, within the symphony of pure colors.