This essay looks at the reception of Paul Gauguin's work in France between 1948 and 1953 by a surrealist group fascinated by histories of Brittany. This reflected a greater interest in post-war surrealism in the Celtic and medieval past of Brittany, which became a focus of writing and curating in the movement from that period. Critical accounts of Gauguin's stereotypes of Brittany by the New Art History and from elsewhere in cultural studies during the 1980s help to explain the flat and reserved tone that now accompanies most writing on the artist, and contrasts with the one of effusive admiration that took hold in surrealism. Reviewing some of those accounts, I argue for the inevitability and even necessity of such artistic, literary and cultural cliches. For the surrealists, such rememoration was the ground of myth, which they placed in the service of the struggle against what they called 'miserabilism'.

中文翻译：

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布列塔尼的神话与记忆：回顾高更的刻板印象

这篇文章着眼于一个对布列塔尼历史着迷的超现实主义团体在 1948 年至 1953 年间在法国对保罗·高更作品的接受情况。这反映了人们对凯尔特人和布列塔尼中世纪过去的战后超现实主义的更大兴趣，这成为那个时期运动中写作和策展的焦点。《新艺术史》和 1980 年代其他文化研究对高更对布列塔尼的刻板印象的批判性描述有助于解释现在大多数关于这位艺术家的作品所带有的平淡和矜持的语气，并与当时盛行的那种狂热的钦佩形成鲜明对比。超现实主义。回顾其中一些叙述，我认为这些艺术、文学和文化陈词滥调是不可避免的，甚至是必要的。对于超现实主义者来说，这种纪念是神话的基础，