Paul Gauguin, together with Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Cezanne, was one of the great masters of postimpressionism. His life story, prototypical of the artist-rebel, was the subject of films and novels, such as The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham. Born in Paris, Gauguin spent his youth with his mother's family in Peru and went to sea as a 16-year-old. He then became a stockbroker in Paris, painting only in his spare time. His early paintings were in the impressionist style. In 1883 he broke with his bourgeois life and eventually separated from his family. In 1888 he visited Van Gogh in Arles---with disastrous results. In 1891 he went to Tahiti. Apart from a short return to Paris, he… spent the rest of his life in the South Sea Islands, suffering from poverty, poor health, and recurring struggles with the colonial authorities. In his art, Gauguin sought to return to nature and truth. Inspired by the islanders, among whom he was living, he covered his canvases with stark forms, rhythmic patterns, and strong color, going far beyond naturalistic representation. Through this, his influence on modern art was powerful. His book Noa Noa (1894--1900) is a moving account of his thoughts and life.
Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on December 7, 1928. Son of a Russian emigrant who was a Hebrew scholar, Chomsky was exposed at a young age to the study of language and principles of grammar. During the 1940s, he began developing socialist political leanings through his encounters with the New York Jewish intellectual community. Chomsky received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied linguistics, mathematics, and philosophy. He conducted much of his research at Harvard University. In 1955, he began teaching at MIT, eventually holding the Ferrari P. Ward Chair of Modern Language and Linguistics. Today Chomsky is highly regarded as both one of… America's most prominent linguists and most notorious social critics and political activists. His academic reputation began with the publication of Syntactic Structures in 1957. Within a decade, he became known as an outspoken intellectual opponent of the Vietnam War. Chomsky has written many books on the links between language, human creativity, and intelligence, including Language and Mind (1967) and Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use (1985). He also has written dozens of political analyses, including Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), Chronicles of Dissent (1992), and The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many (1993).