G A U G U I N
The Archaeological source

YATRIDES told me that "GAUGUIN's Vahines are seduced". They are mortal beings whose flesh is humiliated, for it rots away. It is useless to seek a natural purity in them, a secret of life, of eternal youth. They are bearers of death, they are the death of GAUGUIN himself. Gauguin came to seek truth and justice in the islands, he found only physical and moral destitution, and venereal diseases. His canvases bear witness to the tragedy he experienced there. Gauguin turned away from our world, our civilisation: he turned away from his own self. Whereas Yatridès' beings, outside of time, are unapproachable.

Georges YATRIDES has scores to settle with GAUGUIN and, through him, with the contemporary painters who have abandoned the world instead of confronting it. Let us retain this hypothesis :

In his "quarrel" with GAUGUIN, YATRIDES came to the islands to seduce and possess his vahines. He carried them away, he brought them back to our society in 1955. He installed them in his abstract universe of light, he metamorphosized them. Or rather, they metamorphosized themselves. The face became more refined, the nose lost its wide-spaced nostrils; the expressionless eyes were transformed into a single voluminal sphere that turns freely and appears in the two sockets; the body has lengthened and has become cleansed of its morbid sexuality. An intense inner life emanates from these now inaccessible beings - how is this?

Paul Gauguin "D'où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous?", 141x411 cm 1897

 

HEGEL used to say that the eyes are the incarnation of spirituality: "This inner principle which shines through, outside any confusion with what is objective and exterior, which is transformed into a concentric point, a source of light".

YATRIDES has deprived GAUGUIN's Vahines of their animal expression, but he has not left them blind. Their open eye-sockets on a rotating sphere allow them to gaze in all directions, a gaze that eludes mortals. All at once he has made his timeless beings inaccessible: one could never prevail over those whose gaze is impossible to catch.

In YATRIDES ' work, there is no more a source of light in the eyes than in the rest of the canvas, and yet spirituality is everywhere present. The light has no need of a source to impose itself freely and to transfigure the temporal.

[ Yatridès and other people ]   [ Picasso - Yatridès ] [ Vélasquez-Picasso ] [ The Biblical Icons - Yatridès ]

[ Léonard da Vinci ] [ Raphaël ] [ Botticelli ] [ Menzel-Manet ] [ Matisse ] [ Gauguin - Yatridès ]

Extracts from following documents and works :
Official Authorities : "Administrative biography"

Arthur Conte : "Yatridès master of time" SGL 04.03.1991
Sacha Bourmeyster : "Yatridès and his century" , "Yatridès the painter of the invisible reality" ,
"Yatridès, l'anti-Picasso" SGL 24.03.1994
"The Interstellars Icons" SGL 31.03.1994 - "Yatridès and the Bible" SGL 30.10.96
Monographic catalogues 1954-1993 : Exhibitions and Retrospectives YATRIDES
Monographic catalogues : "International Biennials art festivals" Canada-France from 1987 to 1993
(Great Master guest of honour - Grand Maître invité d'honneur)
Events, Schools of painting 1900-1959, 1910-1960, 1910-1965 : USA Events achievment held with works,
of which Yatridès ' paintings, lent by US important prominent Private Collections of the United States
(See "His work" and in "His life" : "Bibliography")
Films, Videos, University theses : YATRIDES ' work has fascinated film-makers, movie-directors, semiologists,
among the best of our time.
See in this website "His life" : "Entourage" in which appear  "Jean  DELANNOY", "Marcel  CARNE" famed movie
Directors, film-Makers and  in "His work" :
"YATRIDES - KUBRICK".

Société des Gens de Lettres et ADAGP
Copyrights © 1945-1997, Association "Yatridès and his century" All rights reserved.