A new Berlin show explores how the French artist's world-famous paintings from the South Sea islands contributed to the myth of an exotic paradise.
Even though he was disappointed by the impact of colonization in French Polynesia, he didn't transmit that in his worksImage: picture-alliance/CPA Media
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At the end of the 19th century, French artist Paul Gauguin was tired of the Parisian arts scene. He felt European civilization was "artificial and conventional" and aimed to reconnect with a sense of purity, which he believed could be found in "untouched" civilizations.
He therefore left France and his family behind in 1891, setting sail for Tahiti, and later the Marquesas island of Hiva Oa (French Polynesia), where spent most of the rest of his life, until his death in 1903 at the age of 54.
Inspired by the simple everyday life of the Tahitians, his South Seas paintings with pure, strong colors, conveyed the island's tropical atmosphere.
'Amusements in the spirit of the devil,' a Gauguin painting from 1894Image: Erich Lessing/akg-images/picture-alliance
During that period, he created a large number of important works that are still famous today — portraits of women on the beach, harvesting, sitting under a tree, half-naked, eating fruit.
The myth of the untouched natural paradise
The myth of the islands' exoticism appealed to him. He positioned himself against colonialism, but he also had questionable relations with 13-year-old girls.
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With his South Seas paintings, Paul Gauguin, born in Paris in 1848, contributed to shaping a myth that was already circulating in Europe: In the 18th century, several travelogues by European seafarers stylized islands like Tahiti as utopian natural paradises, where free and public love was practiced like a religion.
However, the painter did not find an untouched South Seas paradise on the colonized island. In his travel diary "Noa Noa," he complained about being "disgusted by the whole European triviality" and "disappointed by things that were so far from what I had wished for and, above all, imagined."
But he didn't portray his disappointment or the traces of colonization in his paintings. Were his depictions more wishful thinking than reality?
Impoverished outsider: Paul Gauguin
Nowadays, his paintings cost millions, but during his lifetime, the French painter and adventurist Paul Gauguin could only dream of so much wealth.
Image: Privatsammlung
Sailor, bank clerk and amateur painter
Before Paul Gauguin decided to become a painter, he spent his time cruising on the world's oceans and working as an investment banker at the Paris Bourse. He earned quite a lot of money and founded a family with five children. The impressionists, holding his amateur paintings in great esteem, encouraged him to present them in their exhibititions - and that's when his social decline began.
Image: J. Karpinski
A career as an artist
At the age of 35, Gauguin radically changes his entire life by turning his hobby into a career. Culture and nature, mysticism and eroticism, dream and reality are the subjects which he tries to tackle in his paintings. Typical for his style are bold colors, large stretches of color, clear contours and lines and rather simplified designs.
Image: akg-images
Fascinated by the supernatural realm
Gauguin flees from civilization, at first to Brittany where he studies traditional costumes and customs, combining a simple lifestyle with Bible stories. In "The Vision of the Sermon" (1888) he tries to depict the supernatural. The women farmers look at Jacob and an angel struggling with each other. But the scene is not real - it rather takes place in their imagination.
Image: Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh
Artist facing crucifixion
In the artist village of Pont-Aven, Gauguin is admired for his post-impressionist works. Following a trip to Panama and Martinique, he reluctantly accepts an invitation from Vincent van Gogh to live with him in an artist community in Arles. However, the trip ends in a disaster. Gauguin feels a higher calling: he himself makes an appearance as Jesus Christ in "Christ on the Mount of Olives" (1889).
Image: Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach,
Between truth and illusion
Gauguin's next destination is Tahiti where he hopes to find freedom at last. But following an invasion of Europeans, the island hardly proves idyllic. The painter laments the "grotesque imitation of our customs, fashions, vices and ridiculous aspects of cultural life." Nevertheless, Gauguin's paintings, much glorifying idleness, show Tahiti as a paradise.
The Tahitians have lost their original instincts, and yet have stayed as beautiful as works of art, Gauguin notes. His paintings satisfy the needs of Europeans longing for exotic beauty and purity. Although exoticism is in high demand in Europe, and few desire Gauguin's art. He continues to live in poverty. His wife has left him and moved to Denmark with their children.
Image: Ole Haupt
The wild European
Impoverished, he returns to France two years later: "wilder than when I left - and yet more knowledgeable." Success continues to elude him, so he returns to Tahiti - fed up with life. Even his suicide attempt fails. He continues to paint. He also writes for satirical magazines confronting the colonial administration and the Catholic Church.
Image: Staatliches Museum für Bildenden Künste A.S. Puschkin, Moskau
Twilight recognition
He pulls himself together once again, producing his most monumental work: "Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going to?" (1897). It shows the cycle of life - from birth to death, with all the fears and joys between. He finally receives the recognition he has so longed for: the Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard offers to support Gauguin financially.
Image: 2015 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Lonely death in paradise
Alcohol, frail health and ongoing disputes with the colonial administration wear down the painter who produces less and less. At the age of 55, he dies on the Marquesas island of La Dominique where he had produced "Barbaric Tales" (1902). Behind the natives squats a European - the Dutch painter Meyer de Haan, whom Gauguin once met in Brittany.
Image: Museum Folkwang, Essen
From an unknown to an icon
Paul Gauguin himself had always been confident of his ability, but only after his death collectors and museums started to show more interest in his art. Today he is one of the most famous representatives of European painting.
Image: Privatsammlung
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'Why are you angry?'
The exhibition "Paul Gauguin — Why Are You Angry?" examines the relationship between Gauguin's South Sea myth and the history of colonization. It explores Gauguin's contribution to colonial ideas, attempting to determine how his perspective depicted or even shaped the narrative of the time.
First shown at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, the touring exhibition now opens in Berlin's Alte Nationalgalerie museum.
The exhibition is named after a painting by Gauguin, which in the Tahitian original is called "No te aha oe riri." Created in 1896 during the artist's second stay in Tahiti, it depicts scantily clad women looking away from the viewer, with a few chicken running among them.
The enigmatic title defies clear interpretation. The exhibition similarly offers different interpretations on Gauguin's artistic work.
The show "looks at Gauguin's oeuvre — which was also shaped by Western, colonial ideas of 'the exotic' and 'the erotic' —, juxtaposing the works with historical material from both Gauguin's past and his present, and with international contemporary art," says the Alte Nationalgalerie in its press presentation of the exhibition.
Gauguin's works from Tahiti are set in contrast with works by contemporary artists Angela Tiatia, Yuki Kihara, Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer. Some of the artists are from the South Pacific. Their works break with the traditional Western views on the South Seas — and especially with the cliché of the exotic, available woman.
"Paul Gauguin - Why Are You Angry?" is on show from March 25 to July 10 at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.
