Writing a book about Paul Gauguin today means confronting a question that shadows nearly every discussion of art and artists: how do we separate creative achievement from personal conduct?
In her preface, Sue Prideaux opens with modern DNA analysis suggesting that Gauguin’s teeth contained neither mercury nor arsenic, the standard nineteenth-century treatments for syphilis. The implication is provocative. One of the darkest legends attached to Gauguin — that he spread syphilis through Tahiti — may not be true after all.
Yet Prideaux does not attempt a simplistic rehabilitation. Even if Gauguin is partly cleared of one accusation, modern readers cannot avoid the larger moral questions surrounding colonialism and exploitation. Museums today increasingly frame artworks with contextual notes and disclaimers, reminders that the artist’s life is now considered inseparable from the art itself. Gauguin becomes a particularly difficult case because his work cannot be detached from the colonial world that enabled it. The beauty of the paintings sits uneasily beside the realities that produced them when viewed through a contemporary lens.
What makes this biography compelling is that Prideaux avoids reducing Gauguin either to a misunderstood genius or a convenient villain. We see the restless former stockbroker shaped by mentors such as Camille Pissarro, whose influence helped push him away from convention and toward experimentation. We follow his turbulent friendship with Vincent van Gogh, one of the defining artistic relationships of the nineteenth century, portrayed here with energy and sympathy rather than romantic mythology.
In Wild Thing, Prideaux is especially effective in tracing Gauguin’s artistic evolution. His use of color, his move away from strict representation, and his influence on younger painters emerge as central to the story. The discussion of Paul Sérusier and the Nabi circle shows how Gauguin’s ideas spread into modern art, encouraging painters to think of color as expressive and psychological rather than merely descriptive. His influence lies not only in the paintings themselves, but in the permission he gave later artists to use color emotionally, symbolically, and even spiritually.
Art is an Abstraction
At the same time, the book never loses sight of the tension between artistic conviction and personal irresponsibility. Prideaux captures both Gauguin’s charisma and his destructiveness.
Wild Thing insists that readers confront a contradiction: that groundbreaking art can emerge from compromised lives, and that artistic achievement often survives long after the behavior of the artist becomes harder to defend.
It is also a beautifully produced book, with illustrations placed alongside the relevant text rather than isolated in a glossy center section. If there is one weakness, it is Prideaux’s occasional shift into contemporary political references, including mention of the current U.S. president, which briefly pulls the reader out of Gauguin’s world and back into our own.
More than anything, Wild Thing re-emphasizes how radically Paul Gauguin changed modern painting through his use of color. It also raises a larger question: how long does it take before an artist’s work can stand on its own, apart from the personal failings and controversies of the artist himself? Gauguin’s life remains deeply troubling in many ways, but his influence on modern art is so unquestionable that his artistic legacy may long remain unchallenged in spite of the debates surrounding his personal life.
Cover: Manaò tupapaú (Spirit of the Dead Watching), 1892, Buffalo AKG Art Museum
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