Excerpt: ...instinctively for religious illumination, not in the systems of philosophers and theologians, but in nature and in man. Among the higher types of civilized man he saw only a false system of morality, politics and religion, which elevated the wealthy above the level of the rest of humanity and forbade to the thinker, the artist, the independent workman, the very right to live. Against the organized materialism of the nineteenth century, he recognized in Jesus Christ a revolt and a protest; but a revolt and a ...
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Excerpt: ...instinctively for religious illumination, not in the systems of philosophers and theologians, but in nature and in man. Among the higher types of civilized man he saw only a false system of morality, politics and religion, which elevated the wealthy above the level of the rest of humanity and forbade to the thinker, the artist, the independent workman, the very right to live. Against the organized materialism of the nineteenth century, he recognized in Jesus Christ a revolt and a protest; but a revolt and a protest that had failed. Humanity had not yet produced, save by exception, the higher type of man, the man capable of "selling all and giving to the poor," the man chosen "to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." A terrible epoch, he foresaw, was coming in Europe for the next generation: an epoch where the tyranny of money would destroy mankind. Therefore, in contemplating Christ, he was moved by a sense of despair, of the futility of this sacrifice. His attitude to Christianity became purely Protestant. Across his pictures there moves no gracious shadow of the beneficent Virgin, sharing with humanity the joys and sorrows of maternity. In Le Christ Jaune he gives us the symbol of a faith which has proved impotent to elevate mankind to its level. Le Christ au Jardin d'Oliviers echoes the awful cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The terrible little picture, Les Miseres Humaines sums up in its two figures the despair and hypocrisy of our vaunted civilization. Even the later Tahitian Birth of Christ renders nothing but the physical anguish and exhaustion of maternity. In the Ia Orana Maria, or the Salutation to Mary, the Virgin is represented merely as a happy human mother. Nature, on the other hand, seen by him luxuriant and unfettered, as at Martinique, taught him the uselessness of revolt, struggle and effort, the need of fatalism, of resignation. He grew to believe that man was better, more rational, more harmonious when no longer...
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Add this copy of Paul Gauguin, His Life and Art to cart. $14.51, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2023 by Alpha Edition.
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