Gauguin at the Tate Modern

Last weekend we wandered along the Southbank to the Tate Modern to see the new Gauguin exhibition. Gauguin isn't one of my favourite artists but an exhibition like this doesn't come along every year so it was essential to take advantage of it. Of course, that's what everyone else thought and it was full to bursting with a surprising number of French and American voices in the crowd.

The exhibition is made up of a group of 11 themed rooms on the fourth floor of the Tate full of paintings, drawings, prints, carvings and even a few of his ceramics - he turned his hand to most things, did Mr Gauguin. That, I think, helped bring him to life, seeing doodles and rough carvings as well as great paintings, helping to fill him out a bit as a personality in his own right, not just some historical figure known for a few famous paintings. And I really liked a little ceramic vase (I think that's what it was) with two openings and a vague shape of a shepherdess on one side and some rough balls of fluff on the other as sheep - it looked rough and unfinished, damaged even, but it radiated magic to me and would look nice on top of my bureau at home...

I've long learned to ignore the standard way of viewing exhibitions like this, shuffling from one painting to the next in reverential awe. I don't have the patience. I'd much rather stroll through the galleries looking left and right, viewing paintings without a crowd and just glancing over and between heads to see those with crowds, stroll the whole way through and then head back to the start to take a longer look at those paintings or exhibits I've made a mental note to take a good look at.

And that brings me to one the main annoyances about the exhibition - digital guides. Loads of people had little handsets displaying paintings and details while you listen to an audio commentary through headphones. Now, I do think that's a good use of technology, but I found it very frustrating to see a nice painting with a few people clustered in front of it looking down at the screen on the handset rather than at the painting while they listened to the commentary before moving on to stand vacuously in front of the next painting, take a quick look and then look down again at the handset. Why? I mean, really, why? The painting is there in front of you - look at it, not at your handset and if you are going to look at the handset, move away so others can look at the painting.

Mind you, it was nice to be reminded of paintings I'd forgotten about, like 'Bonjour Monsieur Gauguin' (above) that I remembered my old art teacher used to love as well as discovering some new paintings by Monsieur Gauguin that I've never seen before. One of those was a delightful still life of a bowl of fruit with three puppies lapping at a bowl of milk - all have their tails in the air and one has his tongue sticking out and you just know he's the cheeky one of the three, a personality outlined in a few brush strokes.

Another was a beautiful Tahitian landscape with palm trees reflecting the sun and colour around them by having orange, red and all-colours leaves - it really drew me in and made me want to wander across the field to inspect the trees more closely. I also liked the rough nature of his prints, with a room dedicated solely to his print works. I was particularly taken with a small print of a Buddha image, almost incomplete with faint lines but it caught my eye and kept it.

It's an exhibition well worth seeing but it's probably best to go during the week if you can so you can fall into the sumptuous colours and drift into a Tahitian pastoral scene. If you're a fan of Gauguin then you'll need your credit card for the shop outside the exhibition, selling everything you could imagine, including a knitting kit to knit your own puppy. I'll have the painting instead, thank you.