Gauguin: Maker of Myth French painter, sculptor and printmaker Paul Gauguin was born in Paris in 1848 and died in French Polynesia in 1903. The vivid, unnaturalistic colours and bold outlines of his paintings and the strong, semi-abstract quality of his woodcuts had a profound effect on the development of twentieth-century art. But while modern art largely shunned narrative, for Gauguin it remained central. The authors reveal the importance of story and myth to Gauguin, and the inclusion of an extensive series of self-portraits demonstrates how he consciously mythologised his own image, presenting himself to the public as a suffering, Christ-like figure. Gaugin's move to Polynesia has often been represented as a quest for the other, with the artist in the role of explorer. In fact, collections of Tahitian stories and myths were already available and read by Gauguin before his arrival. His move arose from a desire to find a place where it was cheap to live, but which had a well-estab