Color Which Like Music Is A

This passage from The Writings of a Savage — which also appears in a closely related form in a letter to the poet André Fontainas — reflects Gauguin's Symbolist conviction that painting could achieve the same direct emotional effect as music, bypassing rational description to reach something deeper. He had been influenced by Wagner's ideas about the unity of the arts and by Stéphane Mallarmé's circle in Paris, where he was a regular presence before his departure for Tahiti. His use of broad, resonant color areas in works like The Yellow Christ and the Tahitian canvases was a direct attempt to give paint the affective power of sound.