Okay, now they’re pandering to me. I suspect that the Getty’s total purpose for the acquisition of Paul Gauguin’s Artii Matamoe (The Royal End), pictured above is 100% motivated by their knowledge that I will write a post about it, given its severed head-ness. Either that or it has nothing to do with me whatsoever. You be the judge.

I’m not, in any way, enthusiastic about Gauguin’s work. I think he is naive and exploitative, and not a particularly good painter, either. Maybe if I was living in the tail end of the 19th Century and had an extremely limited and somewhat racist perception of the world, I might be sympathetic or have an interest in his work. On the other hand, I’m glad that he did visit one of my favourite subjects, and his body of work does shed light on the European attitude towards other cultures at the time.

Suzanne Muchnic at the LA Times has a write up as does Edward Wyatt of the New York Times. Apparently the acquisition of this work was eight years and millions of dollars in the making. The work will go on view in April - it hasn’t been exhibited publicly since 1946. Wednesday, March 12th, there’s a free panel discussion Building the Getty Collection: A Decade of Acqusitions. Although their site and PR for the panel discussion makes no mention of this particular acquisition, I would presume it will be discussed.

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