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Paul Gauguin, NAFAE faaipoipo  (When Will You Marry?) 1892  Rudolph Staechelin Collection The Phillips Collection's latest loan exhibition, "Gauguin to Picasso: Masterworks from Switzerland," draws upon a pair of collections assembled by two prominent but very different Swiss art collectors. To me, the theme of dualism, pairs and split identities stands out strongly.  The exhibition highlights one of Gauguin's most famous paintings, When are You to be Married ? -- a painting that recently was sold.  (The Staechelin and Im Oberstag collections of modern art are normally on display at the Basel Kunstmuseum. Here's an article for background on the collectors why the paintings are traveling .)  Like so many other paintings by Gauguin, the two women in this infamous painting express two realities, which could represent the split identities within Tahitian society. He painted it during his first stay in Tahiti in 1892. The woman in front is natural, organic, rel...

   Semen Fridliand, Die kaüfliche Presse (The Venal Press ) 1929 halftone reproduction,  6 1/4 x 8 1/4 in. (16 x 21 cm)   National Gallery of Art Library, David K.E. Bruce Fund   At least four exhibitions on the Mall, at the National Gallery of Art and Hirshhorn Museum, take a look at printed word in painting and other art forms of the past century.  Chronologically, these exhibits begin with the avant-garde artists of circa 1910 at the National Gallery of Art's "Shock of the News" exhibition.  They end with today's leading provocateur-artist, Ai Weiwei of China, at the Smithsonian's contemporary art museum, the Hirshhorn.   So we search for the meaning of the word in art.    Jean-Léon Gérôme, O Pti Cien, 1902, is an academic style In 1902, Jean-Léon Gérôme, a leading academic artist of the day, painted O PTI CIEN, a puppy wearing a monacle. The letters suggest a reading of "au petit chien" ("at the little dog"), which would...