Jug in the Form of a Head, Self-Portrait facts for kids
Jug in the form of a Head, Self-portrait (usually referred to as the Jug Self-portrait) was produced in glazed stoneware early in 1889 by the French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin. This self-portrayal is especially stark and brutal, and was created in the aftermath of two traumatic events in the artist's life. In December 1888 Gauguin was visiting Vincent van Gogh in Arles when Van Gogh hacked off his left ear (or part of it, accounts vary). A few days later in Paris, Gauguin witnessed the execution of the notorious murderer Prado.
Gauguin portrays himself with closed eyes and a severed ear. As with many of his self-portraits the object is infused with self-pity. The head resembles a death mask. The portrait evokes Van Gogh in a number of ways, most obviously with the removed ear and its dominant red colouring which gives it, according to writer Naomi Margolis Maurer, "a strong fictitious resemblance to the suffering van Gogh."
The stoneware contains subtle green, grey and olive tones that are often not apparent in reproduction, while its brutal physicality is in part achieved by its three-dimensionality. It has been noted by a number of art critics that photographic reproductions of the object largely fail to convey the impact it makes when viewed firsthand. In 1989 the critic Laurel Gasque wrote, "This macabre image, fired at a very high temperature literally and figuratively, fuses life, myth, and history into an unforgettable emblem of a ravaged man."
Background
A number of events in Gauguin's life led to the object's creation. During the November and December of the previous year he had lived with van Gogh in Arles. The objective had been to found an artists' commune. Van Gogh greatly admired Gauguin, and desperately wanted to be treated as his equal. But Gauguin was arrogant and domineering, a fact that often frustrated the Dutchman. Relations between the two deteriorated and eventually Gauguin, alarmed by Van Gogh's drunkenness and temperament, told him he was leaving.
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Iconography
The work is informed by Romantic and Symbolist iconography, as well as motifs from Christian and classical sources; it evokes Christ, John the Baptist and Orpheus, all of whom were martyred for their passion and beliefs. During this period, Gauguin often portrayed himself in a manner similar to representations of Christ, in an attempt to evoke martyrdom. Gauguin was disillusioned with the materialism he saw around him, and at the time felt alienated by the art-buying public, and from members of the art scene who reacted against his domineering and self-aggrandising personality. Younger artists who had been his disciples rebelled, and to an extent he was sidelined. Of another similar self-portrait, Christ in the Garden of Olives, Gauguin wrote
There I have painted my own self portrait ... but it also represents the crushing of an ideal, and a pain that is both divine and human, Jesus is totally abandoned; his disciples are leaving him, in a setting as sad as his soul.
The technique used to create the object was borrowed in part from the Far East, especially in the use of dripped paint on glazed stoneware which was influenced by Japanese craftsmen of the Takatori region. The idea of merging the form of a head and a jug was taken from Peruvian pottery, likely from pieces his mother had collected when he was a child.
See also
In Spanish: Jarra en forma de cabeza, autorretrato para niños
