We are very pleased to announce that the editor Brian Sewell of the London Evening Standard has selected our catalogue GAUGUIN POLYNESIA as one of the 10 best art books of the year 2011.

Here's the original article with a link to the newspaper's website:

GAUGUIN POLYNESIA
by Suzanne Greub (ed.)
(Hirmer Verlag, £45)

This substantial catalogue of an exhibition shared by the Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen (where more wisely could such a show be based?) and the Seattle Art Museum is the most complete and detailed account so far of Gauguin's work (though not his sexual adventures, syphilis and death) in Tahiti, the Marquesas Islands and elsewhere in Polynesia (even New Zealand, usually forgotten). Nevertheless, embracing - as it does - his time in Copenhagen, Brittany and Martinique, his earlier (European) interest in the erotic, and such sources of its influence as the World Fair of 1889 in Paris, it is usefully devoted to the complete Gauguin as an artist, illustrated comprehensively and well. It is also illuminating in its parallel commentary on native Polynesian culture and artefacts, and on the destructive colonialism of the day; the early photographs of natives, revealing, amusing and melancholy, record the rapid waning of a way of life that had lasted for millennia. For Gauguin the wanderer destroyed by lust, the reader must look elsewhere. It is a great pity that this book was not available when Tate Modern mounted its Gauguin exhibition two years ago.

© Brian Sewell, London Evening Standard, http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/article-24023785-brian-sewells-art-books-of-the-year-2011.do

The catalogue is available in Europe in bookstores (the US release is February 2012) and online.