Slideshow: Gauguin and Polynesia at Seattle Art Museum
The exhibit opens February 9—here’s a sneak peek.
Posted by: Allison Williams on Feb 08, 2012 at 11:00AM
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All images courtesy Seattle Art Museum.
Paul Gauguin, Vahine no te Tiare (Tahitian Woman with a Flower), 1891, oil on canvas, 27 3/4 × 18 5/16 in.
View Slideshow » Illustration:Paul Gauguin, Faaturuma (Melancholic), 1891, oil on canvas, 37 × 26 7.8 in. Courtesy Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri.
Though Gauguin is famously known for his seductive portraits of Tahitian women, his early paintings featured them in conservative western dress, looking forlorn. People “can remain hours and days sitting immobile and gazing sadly at the sky,” Gauguin wrote to his wife.
View Slideshow » Illustration:Gauguin, Te raau rahi (The Large Tree), 1891, oil on fabric, 29 1/8 × 36 9/16 in. Courtesy the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Gauguin left Tahiti’s capital and ventured 45km away to the village of Mataiea, where he sought out authentic daily life.
View Slideshow » Illustration:Paul Gauguin, Parahi te Marae (The Sacred Mountain), 1892, oil on canvas, 26 × 35 in. Courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art.
When Gauguin didn’t find the paradise he was looking, he made it up, said Pam McClusky, curator of Art of Africa and Oceania at SAM. The yellow hillside could invoke yellow feathers, which are a sacred element in Polynesian culture.
View Slideshow » Illustration:Moal Kavakava (Cadaverous Male Figure), Easter Island, early- to mid-19th century; wood, bone, obsidian.
This handsome fellow with obsidian eyes is similar to the artwork Gauguin saw at the World’s Fair in Paris in 1889—a collection of pieces that inspired his desire to see both the savagery and beauty of “the Promised Land.”
View Slideshow » Illustration:Paul Gauguin, Arearea no Varua ino (Words of the Devil, or Reclining Tahitian Women) , 1894, oil on canvas, 23 5/8 × 38 9/16 in. Courtesy Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.
Constantly plagued by wanderlust, Gauguin continued to paint Tahiti even when he was back in Paris from 1893–1895. It doesn’t help that he contracted syphilis and only sold nine of 47 works while he was home.
View Slideshow » Illustration:Paul Gauguin, Three Tahitians, 1899, oil on canvas, 28 3/4 × 37 in. Courtesy National Gallery of Scotland.
Gauguin returned to Tahiti from 1895 to 1901, where he was both prolific—abandoning ethnographic portraits for lush, seductive paintings—and frustrated by syphilis, a lack of cash, and run-ins with local authorities.
View Slideshow » Illustration:Photo: Laura Dannen. Pota (Tiki Figure), late 18th to mid-19th century, stone, Marquesas Islands.
This tiki comes from the island of Hiva Oa, where Gauguin lived at the end of his life in the early 1900s. “It was the Tahiti of former times that I loved,” he once said.
View Slideshow » Illustration:Photo: Laura Dannen.
En route to Tahiti for the second time, Gauguin passed through New Zealand, where he became engrossed with a collection of Maori carvings at the Auckland Museum. This piece (pictured) covered in fine spirals is one of the oldest on display (ca. 1865), but was sadly turned into a collection basket (note the key hole).
View Slideshow » Illustration:Photo: Laura Dannen.
Don’t forget to say hello to Pou (ca. 1840). This figure typically welcomes visitors to a Maori meeting house, and you’re expected to greet it when you pass by.
Originally published December 2011. Compared to the Impressionists, Paul Gauguin was something of a wild card. His painting career was preceded by stints in the merchant marines and the financial sector. Then, rather than paint flowers in rural France, he trotted off to the South Pacific.
Gauguin and Polynesia: An Elusive Paradise, on display from February 9 through April 29 at Seattle Art Museum downtown, traces the rich relationship between the 19th-century artist and his adopted country. The exhibit’s a near-even split: almost 60 pieces by Gauguin, 60 by Polynesians. Gauguin’s own fascination with ethnographic art started early, so some works in the show make references to Breton folk culture and date back to before his first South Pacific trip in 1891. “He was always looking for something raw and authentic…primordial and basic and real,” says SAM curator Chiyo Ishikawa.
Before he went tropical, the artist toyed with forming a kind of hippie art commune with his painting buddy, Vincent Van Gogh. But, says Ishikawa, Van Gogh’s “ethic of self denial” didn’t mesh with Gauguin, who “wanted to eat everything and take advantage of everything and impregnate everybody.” So the hedonist was off to Tahiti.
The French territory wasn’t exactly the virgin paradise he sought. Gauguin was bummed to see the “bourgeois trappings” of Western dress, says Ishikawa. “His idea of paradise as a free place of flowers, where you can pluck the fruit from the trees? That went out the window quickly.” In his portraits, young women have melancholic expressions, a stark contrast to the bright colors of the lush island.
A century later, his works may have steamrolled local style; Google “Tahitian art” and it’s mostly Gauguins and bare-breasted knockoffs. But in SAM’s show, dozens of elaborate carvings and ornamental jewelry show off the Tahitian, Marquesan, and Maori styles that inspired the troubled artist. In the tour’s only U.S. stop, the museum shows off not merely the dissatisfied Frenchman who craved authenticity, but the paradise lost that was so hard for him to find.
View the slideshow for a preview of the exhibit. Photo captions by Laura Dannen.
Gauguin and Polynesia: A Elusive Paradise
Feb 9–Apr 29, Seattle Art Museum
When the museum opens at 10am on Feb 9, the first 100 people wearing sunshine yellow get in free.
In the Studio with Hotel 1000: A Curator-Led Talk on Gauguin and Polynesia
Feb 15, 5–6:30pm, Hotel 1000
Tags: Visual Art, Seattle Art Museum, Slideshow, Preview
