At Eternity's Gate (2018)

Oscar Isaac: Paul Gauguin

Photos 

Quotes 

• Vincent Van Gogh : I hate the fog. I'm tired of this gray light. I'd like to find a new light. For paintings that we haven't yet seen. Bright paintings, painted in sunlight.

  Paul Gauguin : Go south, Vincent.

• Paul Gauguin : [in French]  In my yellow room, sunflowers with purple eyes stand out on a yellow background; they bathe their stems in a yellow pot on a yellow table. In the corner of the painting, the signature of the painter: Vincent. And the yellow sun that passes through the yellow curtain of my room floods all this illumination with gold; and in the morning upon awakening from my bed, I imagine that all this smells very good.Oh yes! he loved yellow, this good Vincent, this painter from Holland - those glimmers of sunlight rekindled his soul, that abhorred the fog, that needed the warmth.When the two of us were together in Arles, both of us insane, and constantly at war over beautiful colors, I adored red; where could I find a perfect vermilion? I am the Holy Spirit. I am of sound mind. Paul Gauguin 1894.

• Paul Gauguin : The impressionists, they're out of it, do you agree? Come on. They only paint their babies in their gardens. They'll never go any further. Seurat confounds painting with science. He's lost himself in optical experiments. There's nothing more to expect from Renoir, Degas, Monet. They repeat themselves. They've given everything they could give.

  Vincent Van Gogh : You don't mean that. You like Degas. You have to say thank you for the paintings you like. Monet's pretty good.

  Paul Gauguin : It's our turn.

• Paul Gauguin : You have to plan your paintings slowly. What's the rush? Work calmly, slowly. You're indoors, you're not outside in the wind and the noise.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Paintings have to be done in one clear gesture.

  Paul Gauguin : Think about the surface that you're painting on and how the paint will sit on it. You're changing things so fast, you can't even see what you've done.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Paintings have to be painted fast.

  [We see Vincent in an art gallery as he names a number of master painters] 

  Vincent Van Gogh : Painters I look at: Frans Hals, Goya, Velazquez, Veronese, Delacroix. The painters I like all paint fast in one clear gesture, each stroke. You've heard of a stroke of genius? Well, that's what it means.

  Paul Gauguin : You don't even paint that way. You paint fast and you overpaint. Your surface looks like it's made out of clay. It's more like sculpture than painting.

• Paul Gauguin : Of all the miseries that afflict humanity, nothing maddens me more than the lack of money. But not tonight. Another round, madame.

• Paul Gauguin : You can't pick your family, but you can pick your friends.

• Paul Gauguin : We have to start a revolution. Do you understand?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Yes.

  Paul Gauguin : We do. Us, our generation. We have to change entirely the relation between painting and what you call nature. Between painting and reality because painted reality is its own reality.

• Paul Gauguin : Listen, Vincent, the time is coming when painters won't need anymore to look at models and sit down in front of nature. You know why? Because nature is what we see here in our heads. Nothing else! Without our eyes, there's no nature. And none of us sees the world around us the same way. We sit, you and I, in front of the same landscape, we don't see the same mountains, the same trees.

• Paul Gauguin : I'm telling you, you have to look inside.

  Vincent Van Gogh : You keep saying "look inside." I get it, I do. You keep repeating yourself. What do you think I'm doing? I don't invent the picture. I don't need to invent the picture. I find it already in nature. I just have to free it.

• Paul Gauguin : I want to get as far away from these people as possible. I'm going to Madagascar.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Madagascar? But what about Japan?

  Paul Gauguin : No, no, Madagascar. It's an island. It's a big one. In between Africa and India. Or even further, some remote island where they've never heard about painting, about Paris or schools. Somewhere where I can create a new vision, a new way of painting, far away from all systems and theories. Real freedom. I'd like to be calm and take my time, alone, forget about the rest of the world and just - paint.

• Paul Gauguin : I can't stand them. They pretend to be artists and behave like bureaucrats. Each of them is a little tyrant.

• Paul Gauguin : In other words, you want to re-establish a hierarchy! Those who command and those who obey!

• Paul Gauguin : Why do you always have to paint from nature?

  Vincent Van Gogh : I feel lost if I don't have something to look at. I need something to see. There's so much to see. Every time I look, I see something I've never seen before.

• Paul Gauguin : The faces you paint are yours. And they'll stay because of you. People will be known because you painted them and how you painted them, not because of who they are. And people will go to museums to see paintings of people, not to see people who were painted.

• Paul Gauguin : What do you mean?

  Vincent Van Gogh : What do you mean what do I mean?

• Paul Gauguin : What you paint, what you do belongs to you. You don't need to copy anything.

  Vincent Van Gogh : I don't copy.

  Vincent Van Gogh : I know, but why don't you paint just what's in your mind? What your brain sees?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Because the essence of nature is beauty.