Dialogues with the Artist and Functions of Pictures in Arkady Stavitsky’s Play ‘Good afternoon, Mister Gauguin!’

Abstract

The article analyzes Good Afternoon, Mister Gauguin!, the only ekphrastic play by modern Russian playwright and screenwriter Arkady Stavitsky (1930-2020), in the context of the writer’s works and taking into account approaches to the study of ekphrasis and visuality in drama. Following the intermedial approach, the research involved the study of works on art criticism and biographies dedicated to Gauguin’s life and work. Stavitsky focuses not only on the personality of the famous artist Paul Gauguin but also on his works created in the late 80s and early 90s of the 19th century. The ekphrasis of the picture ‘Good Afternoon, Mister Gauguin’ is present in the detailed remark at the beginning of the play. The title of both the picture and the play reflects the emotional state of the hero and ‘loops the finale’. The picture ‘The Yellow Christ’ symbolically sharpens the conflict between life and art, art and society. Stavitsky rethinks Gauguin’s character through his relationship with female characters in the play: the characters of Anna, Juliette, and Mette refer to the images of the myrrh-bearers at the foot of the cross in the picture ‘The Yellow Christ’ or ‘three Joans of Arc’ in the painting ‘Breton Women’.The pictures mentioned in the play are mostly by Paul Gauguin and his friend Emil Necker. Accordingly, while the pictures of the former are real, those of the latter are fictional. The generalized character of Emil Necker in the play suggests a parallel with S. Maugham’s novel The Moon and Sixpence. Necker’s picture ‘A Woman with a Child’ refers the reader to the famous canvases of Western European painters on the plot of the Virgin and Child. Emil’s wife Anna becomes one of the models for Gauguin’s works – the painting ‘Loss of Innocence’ and the sculpture ‘Be in Love and You Will Be Happy’, revealing the other side of her nature. The conflict between Anna and Juliette, another one of Gauguin’s models, is dramatized in the scene with a sketch for these works. The image of Van Gogh, depicted in the play as an unrecognized but ingenious artist, unites and contrasts Emil and Paul. The playwright’s familiarity with the published correspondence between Gauguin and Van Gogh, Gauguin and his wife Mette is obvious. The dialogism of the picture whose name is reproduced in the title of the play correlates not only with the dialogues in the play, organized around other pictures, but also emphasizes the author’s contradictory attitude toward his hero.