Gauguin: Maker of Myth

Narrated by Willem Dafoe and with Alfred Molina as the voice of Paul Gauguin, this film was made in conjunction with the exhibition Gauguin: Maker of Myth at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Gauguin (1848-1903) abandoned impressionism to create an art driven less by observation than by imagination. His gifts as an artist were matched by a talent for creating myths about places, cultures, and, most of all, himself. This film explores his search for an authenticity he felt missing in modern Europe, a search that took him to ever more remote lands: Brittany, Martinique, and Polynesia. Never finding the paradise of his dreams, he recreated it in his paintings, sculpture, drawings, and prints.