To fully understand the events in the Yellow House, a translation is required of Paul Gauguin’s final work from 1903, Avant et Après. This is not a word-for-word translation from French into Dutch. It involves deciphering, page by page, what this painter intended with his literary references and allegorical style of writing, in combination with his way of life and his evolving spiritual and religious ideas, in the light of the two hypotheses that consistently take precedence in Claudia Koole-Gratias Avis’s research.
Paul Gauguin’s earlier text Noa Noa can also be taken into account here, as it contains additional and different references to the events at the Yellow House and explains why he painted in the style he did.
This in-depth translation, in which almost every sentence and every story is carefully weighed up against sources, circumstances and facts, will be completed in 2027 and will be submitted as a piece of investigative journalism to the 2027 Loep Awards organised by the VVOJ (Association of Investigative Journalists) in the Netherlands.
