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La peinture est le plus beau de tous les arts; en lui se resument toutes les sensations, a son aspect chacun peut, au gre de son imagination, creer le roman, d'un seul coup d'?il avoir l'ame envahie par les plus profonds souvenirs; point d'effort de memoire, tout resume en un seul instant. - Art complet qui resume tous les autres et les complete. - Comme la musique, il agit sur l'ame par l'intermediaire des sens, les tons harmonieux correspondant aux harmonies des sons; mais en peinture on obtient une unite impossible en musique ou les accords viennent les uns apres les autres, et le jugement eprouve alors une fatigue incessante s'il veut reunir la fin au commencement. En somme, l'oreille est un sens inferieur a celui de l'?il. L'ouie ne peut servir qu'a un seul son a la fois, tandis que la vue embrasse tout, en meme temps qu'a son gre elle simplifie.

Paul Gauguin#1

ArtPaintingMusicPerceptionSenses

About this quote

What does it mean?
Painting surpasses music because it unifies all sensations instantly through the eye.
In plain terms
Painting is better than music because you see everything at once.
What can you take from it?
Visual art offers immediate, unified sensory impact.

Where it applies

  • art critique
  • aesthetic theory

Putting it to work

  • observe visual art deeply
  • compare art forms

Questions to consider

  • Which sense is most important?
  • Is art a hierarchy?

Another view

Music provides depth through time that painting cannot.

More from Paul Gauguin

  1. With this painting, I tried to make everything breathe faith, quiet suffering, religious and primitive style and great nature with its scream.

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  2. Life at Papeete soon became a burden. It was Europe, the Europe which I had thought to shake off - and that under the aggravating circumstances of colonial sno…

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  3. D'ou venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Ou allons-nous?

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