The Faun - The "Van Gogh and Gauguin" Exhibition

The "Van Gogh and Gauguin" Exhibition

On September 21, 2001, The Faun became part of a major exhibition, "Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South". Organised as a joint venture between The Art Institute of Chicago and the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the event ran for four months in Chicago before shifting to Amsterdam. Funding was unprecedented, with support from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities, and a $1.5 million grant from the Ameritech Foundation. The exhibition brought together works from "63 public and private collections around the world, including the U.S., Canada, Europe, Israel, Japan and Russia". It took years to prepare. Joseph Harriss wrote in the Smithsonian:

New findings from the archives and technical research using microscopic study, x-radiography, thread counts, and fiber- and paint-sample analysis have allowed curators to piece together an almost day-to-day picture of the ... collaboration .

Promoters described the exhibition as "extraordinary" and a "serious and very beautiful show." Art critic Suzanne Hoefaerkamp felt viewers were "unified by their experience of great art."

Of the 134 items on display, most were paintings, plus three Japanese prints by Hokusai, Hiroshige and Korin. The focus of the exhibition, and the critics, was very much on the interplay between the paintings. In fact, there were only seven sculptures, all by Gauguin. The others were Portrait Vase of Jeanne Schuffenecker, Cleopatra Pot, Leda and the Swan, Self-portrait Jug, Self-portrait Jar, and Female Nude with Flower (known as Lust). The slideshow for the exhibition was arranged chronologically, so that The Faun (slide 02) could be clearly seen as Gauguin's first ceramic. Equally self-evident is how well the forgery fitted in thematically.