WIST Quotations

Gauguin, Paul -- (Attributed)

Dave — Tue, 31 May 2016 14:06:52 +0000

I shut my eyes in order to see.

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) French painter [Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin]
(Attributed)

Gauguin, Paul -- Intimate Journals of Paul Gauguin (1936) [tr. Brooks (1949)]

Dave — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:22:00 +0000

Life is hardly more than a fraction of a second. Such a little time to prepare oneself for eternity!!!

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) French painter [Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin]
Intimate Journals of Paul Gauguin (1936) [tr. Brooks (1949)]

Gauguin, Paul -- Letter in Le Soir (25 Apr 1895)

Dave — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 23:17:37 +0000

In art, there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists. And in the end, doesn’t the revolutionary’s work become official, once the State takes it over?

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) French painter [Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin]
Letter in Le Soir (25 Apr 1895)

Collected in Daniel Guérin, ed., The Writings of a Savage (1996) [tr. Levieux].

Often given as "Art is either plagiarism or revolution," or sometimes "Art is either a revolutionist or a plagiarist." This is often cited from James Huneker, The Pathos of Distance (1913), but there it is given as a paraphrase: "Paul Gauguin has said that in art one is either a plagiarist or a revolutionary."

(Huneker's book elsewhere contains the parallel paraphrase, "Paul Gauguin has said that all artists are either revolutionists or reactionists.")