100 Notizen - 100 Gedanken (100 Notes – 100 Thoughts): No. 019, Dario Gamboni

As a prelude to the 2012 exhibition, dOCUMENTA (13) and Hatje Cantz are publishing a series of notebooks, 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts, that is comprised of facsimiles of existing notebooks, commissioned essays, collaborations, and conversations. The series is edited by Bettina Funcke.

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Dario Gamboni
The Listening Eye: Taking Notes after Gauguin

n this notebook, Dario Gamboni embarks on the trail of the notoriously restless European 19th-century artist Paul Gauguin. During the “period of incubation” that the artist customarily underwent after arriving in a new environment, such as Brittany, New Zealand, or Tahiti, he drew in order to familiarize himself with the place. Gamboni followed Gauguin’s traces, capturing his own observations in photographs, drawings, and notes. The resulting comparisons, elaborated in extensive captions, bear witness to the intensive approach made by the author toward Gauguin’s way of working and thinking. In his introduction, Gamboni delves into processes of perception and cognition, employing various techniques—among them the note-taking after Gauguin’s notes—that he applies in his own practice, techniques that lead him to a form of imitative agency, witnessing witness.

Dario Gamboni (*1954) is Professor of Art History at the University of Geneva.