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The painter’s work was celebrated by his fellow artists in Paris, but he eventually sought to live and work far away from conventional society.

Sue Prideaux’s gruesomely fascinating “Wild Thing” begins with four teeth in a well. Local inhabitants of Hiva Oa, in French Polynesia, found them in 2000 while restoring the nearby hut in which Paul Gauguin lived. Scientific analysis proved the teeth were indeed the famed painter’s.

When Gauguin died in 1903, he had been on Hiva Oa for two years. All his life he had been in pursuit of wild things. Born in Paris in 1848, he had spent several childhood years with his maternal family in Lima, Peru. For the rest of his life, he would belligerently call himself “a savage from Peru.”

Gauguin always considered himself an outsider. Even while thriving as a young Parisian stockbroker, his amateur painting defied rules. In early works such as “The Market Gardens of Vaugirard” (1879), he rejected the tight, smooth realism of Academic art and caught up with the variegated brushwork and unblended colors of his mentor, the Impressionist Camille Pissarro.

Several of the core Impressionists incubated the generation after theirs, even though the post-Impressionists were moving rapidly toward distinct and remarkably individual styles. The last of the Impressionist exhibitions, held in 1886 and financed in large part by Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas and Berthe Morisot, launched not only the career of Gauguin but also Georges Seurat, with the latter’s monumental “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” (1886). Degas would be one of Gauguin’s most stalwart collectors for the rest of his life. Post-Impressionism quickly delivered more than its fair share of images that have stayed in our collective imagination. By 1889, Vincent van Gogh, who had attended the 1886 exhibition and tried to become Gauguin’s friend, had painted “The Starry Night.”

Gauguin began formulating his own iconic post-Impressionism in Brittany, during the first of many escapes to places he believed to be primitive. He had grown increasingly alienated from industrialized European society. Though Brittany was a French province, it was considered to be so superstitiously Catholic as to verge on the pagan. In 1888 Gauguin painted one of the great masterpieces of Western art history, “Vision of the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling With the Angel).” Looming undulations of white Breton headdresses in the foreground direct their wearers’ gaze, along with ours, to an epic struggle between man and divinity in an alternate reality of glowing red (perhaps inspired by Brittany’s fields of buckwheat in the fall).

From there to Pablo Picasso and on to Jackson Pollock, it was one straight line. “Vision of the Sermon” unleashed color, line and space from the optical world we inhabit, and in its very title endowed that vision with a sacred aura. For almost a century, beginning with the Impressionists, each generation of painters looked at the degree of abstraction achieved by their elders and pushed further in the same direction. Today, we see how many types of Modernism have flourished around the world, but the self-consciously direct lineage of which Gauguin was a crucial part remains astoundingly inventive and productive.

Brittany turned out to be neither primordial enough nor affordable enough. After a financial crash terminated his stockbroking career, Gauguin, who never saved a franc, abandoned his wife and five children, borrowed money from friends, and taunted the art world by forswearing its Parisian sophistication in favor of a supposedly greater authenticity elsewhere. Unsatisfying trial runs in Panama and Martinique were followed by a serious move to Tahiti in 1891, with occasional stints back in Paris and Brittany.

Gauguin’s motives can be debated, but he painted some aesthetically fantastic canvases, among them his 1892 “Manaò tupapaú (Spirit of the Dead Watching),” a hymn, in lush purples, brown and golden yellow, to naive eros (and whose nude subject was 13 years old). When he finally relocated to Hiva Oa, in the Marquesas Islands, Gauguin turned against the French colonial government and the Catholic church. He defended local friends from legal or clerical persecution with petitions and in court. He did not, as tales have commonly told, spread disease among unwitting local girls. (Analysis of his teeth discovered in Hiva Oa proved he did not have syphilis.)

This twist surprises. By the time we arrive at the last years of Gauguin’s life, Ms. Prideaux’s astringent sympathy has accustomed us to one violent or egotistical episode after another. When in 1888 Van Gogh slices off his ear in despair of keeping Gauguin’s friendship, we have come to expect nothing milder.

Gauguin’s artistic reputation has also taken a recent turn. A 2017-18 exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Grand Palais in Paris reoriented our attention away from his paintings and toward his sculptures, many made in carved wood and molded ceramic. Gauguin’s statues, panels and vessels, long overshadowed, now feel almost more original, skilled and, most unexpectedly, self-aware than his paintings. In one of Gauguin’s more rueful moments, influenced by the Moche Peruvian ceramics he collected, he fashioned a mug into an astute self-portrait, with blood-tinged glaze oozing down its sides, as if to say: May my enemies drink to their health in my savage skull.

Ms. Prideaux’s title invokes the title of the 1966 Troggs song, to which this biography bids me respond: “Your art makes my heart sing.” This is a biography for anyone who wants to know about the man behind some irrepressibly memorable art, about one of the most creatively magic moments of European history and about a vividly extreme version of a recurring human situation. Who among us has not heard of stars who leave the care of their parents to a quieter sibling, spouses who ignore their partners’ contributions to their career, parents who neglect their children to pursue their own dreams? Who gets credit for the works of genius? Who should? The accomplishments of the selfish are real.

Luring new backers into the sector has its attractions, but risks fragmenting the system further

England’s beleaguered water sector is pulling out all the stops to woo investors, guaranteeing revenues and capping risks. 

The water regulator Ofwat wants to attract £50bn of investments for new infrastructure projects. Rather than getting utilities to take on more debt — and adding the cost directly to customers’ bills — such projects are being put out to separate tender. That means third parties would design, build, finance and potentially operate this new infrastructure, and the costs would be recovered through a surcharge on customer bills that is outside the normal price review process.

Luring new backers into the UK’s troubled water sector has some attractions. The balance sheets of existing providers have already been rinsed. English utilities are already loaded up with £74bn of borrowings after paying out £83bn in dividends over the last three decades.

While water bills have fallen in real terms since 2010, since privatisation they have risen far faster than overall inflation: 363 per cent according to a parliamentary debate. Meanwhile investment has only dribbled in; newcomers will be taking on projects that represent 36 years of catch-up digging reservoirs and other infrastructure.

Incoming investors will be pitched — in some cases literally — into muddied waters. There are multiple regulators, including Ofwat, the Drinking Water Inspectorate the Consumer Council for Water and the Environment Agency. Also in the mix: angry consumers, equally unhappy creditors and well-paid water bosses. A review due to be completed soon by Sir Jon Cunliffe, chair of the independent water commission, stands to redraw the landscape.

With the water sector in such poor shape, tendering out specific projects to newcomers may not sound like a bad idea. The cost of the projects will still need to be added to bills. But the regulator’s hope must be that, by having bidders compete, it can lower the cost to consumers.

The main problem is that this sort of structure fragments the system further. Operationally, hiving off the ownership of specific assets may not be ideal when managing an integrated water system.

What’s more, those who win the tender process, at least under one of the pathways envisaged, will not be directly licensed by the regulator. They will instead be indirectly overseen through their agreement with the local utility, which will still hold the licence. Investors can tap into the financial wizardry of lawyers and bankers to structure contracts. But that still looks like a recipe for disputes.

Not least, outsourcing such key responsibilities to unlicensed providers is hard to square with the essential nature of the services in question. Water still needs to come out of the taps. Any major mishaps, and it’s to government and regulators that the public will inevitably turn.

New Test Provides Less Invasive Option, Reduces Reliance on PET Scans and Increases Diagnosis Accessibility

Prosecutors are proposing a nonprosecution agreement to resolve Boeing’s violation of an earlier settlement

WASHINGTON—Boeing won’t be prosecuted over violating an earlier criminal settlement under a tentative deal with the Justice Department that would allow America’s biggest exporter to avoid being labeled a felon, according to people familiar with the matter.

The aerospace company would receive a nonprosecution agreement instead of having to plead guilty, which it had agreed to do toward the end of the Biden administration, the people said. The reversal would be one of the most stark examples of how the Trump administration has taken a less aggressive approach to enforcing the law against big companies.

The case stems from Boeing’s admission that former employees deceived air-safety regulators before two deadly crashes of 737 MAX jets in 2018 and 2019. Boeing resolved the criminal investigation in January 2021 and was placed on a form of corporate probation. But prosecutors said last year that Boeing violated that settlement, which had required it to improve its antifraud compliance program.

The Nuclear Company is taking an old approach to building new nuclear reactors. Rather than gin up a new design or try to mass manufacture smaller reactors, it wants to develop a series of reactors using existing designs.

The two-year-old startup announced a Series A last month that included investments from CIV, Goldcrest Capital, MCJ Collective, True Ventures, and Wonder Ventures, though it did not disclose the amount raised. Now, TechCrunch can confirm that the company has secured $46.3 million in a Series A fundraise out of a targeted $51.3 million total. The details were published in an SEC filing.

The Nuclear Company was founded in 2023 by three serial entrepreneurs: former AppHarvest CEO Jonathan Webb, Arcadia CEO Kiran Bhatraju, and CIV CEO Patrick Maloney. The startup is prioritizing sites that already have permits or licenses to operate. Fewer than a dozen sites fall under that rubric, according to filings for combined operating licenses and early site permits at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

At the sites that are closer to groundbreaking, each can support reactors with more than 1 gigawatt of generation capacity. The Nuclear Company is aiming to develop 6 gigawatts in its first fleet.

The funding round arrives as tech companies and utilities are struggling to secure power for data centers. Demand for electricity in the U.S. is expected to surge nearly 16% by 2029, according to Grid Strategies, after years of steady consumption. Data centers are a large driver; their electricity use could quadruple by the end of the decade.

In the face of potential power shortages, tech companies have been cozying up to nuclear startups and developers. Google is working with Kairos to build 500 megawatts’ worth of small modular reactors (SMR), while Amazon participated in a massive $700 million round to fund X-energy’s SMR plans. Meta has solicited proposals from developers to build up to 4 gigawatts of generating capacity, and Microsoft is working with Constellation Energy to restart a reactor at Three Mile Island.

But nuclear power is facing headwinds, both expected and unexpected. Competition from solar power is among the former: Tech companies and data center operators have been snapping up capacity from solar farms, signing sizable deals. These farms are frequently paired with massive batteries to provide 24/7 electricity. The technology is inexpensive, and new projects can be developed in around 18 months.

Nuclear may soon face other financial hurdles, too. This week, the House Ways and Means Committee published its draft of a reconciliation bill that would kill subsidies for nuclear power that were granted under the Inflation Reduction Act. Nuclear power plants are currently eligible for tax credits up to $15 per megawatt-hour.

Most new nuclear power plants, including those on The Nuclear Company’s timeline, aren’t expected to come online until the early 2030s. Given that forecasts for the next five years vary wildly, massive nuclear plants entering service a decade from now could be stuck holding the bag.