GAUGUIN IN TAHITI
Paradise Lost
This beautiful and authoritative movie includes not only brilliant insights into Gauguin's character, personal relationships and artistic philosophies, but also extensive footage of his superb paintings and the many colourful locations in which he worked - in France as well as Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands.
'Gauguin In Tahiti' includes a distinguished cast of art historians, all of them offering clearly well researched observations and information about an extraordinary man whose life continues to both fascinate and inspire us.
One of the art historians, Caroline Boyle-Turner, provides an interesting explanation for Gauguin's very special appeal - he went on the sort of escape route which so many of us dream about. He gave up a prosperous career on the Paris Stock Exchange to devote his life to art, ultimately giving up the comfortable trappings of European civilisation and moving to remote areas of the South Seas to paint and, he hoped, to live simply in a tropical paradise. He was a married man and he left behind a wife and five children.
Prior to moving to Tahiti in 1890, Gauguin spent time in the wild and rugged coast of Brittany, and the film has some stunning sequences of this intriguing area of France, which appealed to him because of its isolation and a culture markedly different from the rest of the country. It was here that he painted masterpieces like 'The Yellow Christ'. The footage in Tahiti is equally compelling - beautiful landscapes, brilliantly blue seas, amazingly shaped mountains, glorious beaches and strikingly beautiful vegetation. The rugged landscape and isolated splendour of the Marquesas Islands are also spectacularly captured.
Tahiti was not the unspoiled paradise he expected. As a part of the French colonial empire, it was already affected by European influence and development. But he found a quieter area and began his first flow of exotic paintings, inspired in particular by the gold bodies of the scantily clad native women. He acquired a very young mistress which has brought him severe censure on moral grounds. But as the movie points out, in Tahiti young girls became sexually active at puberty and married young. It was a moral code that was also accepted in France.
Gauguin has also been positioned as a hard and selfish man who abandoned his family for the sake of his art, something which 'Gauguin in Tahiti' also refutes. He loved his wife and family, particularly his daughter Aline and he always hoped they would join him in the tropics one day.
From this film's penetrating analysis, Gauguin comes across as a sensitive but complicated man who loved beauty but also described himself as a 'savage'. His wilder side came to the fore when he returned to France in 1893 and got involved in a fight with sailors, badly injuring his leg which ultimately hastened his early death.
Back in France, he expected his Tahitian paintings to be applauded and to achieve big sales, but it didn't happen. He returned to Tahiti and produced more superb paintings, including what was arguably his greatest ever creation 'Where do we come from, who are we, where are we going?' Many of his other most cherished works are given extensive exposure in this fine production.
There is one question that remains unanswered - did Gauguin find the idyllic life and environment that he was looking for? The movie describes his time in Tahiti as 'Paradise Lost'. But in his writing - many parts of which are quoted - he clearly delighted in the country and the simple lifestyle parts of it still offered. He talks of the stillness of the night, the brilliance of the night sky, the relaxed pace of life, the contentment of the people - and above all, the beauty, dignity and calmness of the women and girls whom he painted with such skill, love and dedication.
Gauguin's health deteriorated rapidly after 1893. He moved on to one of the most isolated communities on earth, the Marquesas Islands, and the movie ends with commentary from two of his descendants who still live there. He died in the Marquesas Islands in1903, at the early age of 55 - just as his work was becoming highly sought after and achieving record prices .
On his grave there is a curious epitaph from a local priest who refers to Gauguin as an 'enemy of God' - such a warped view of a man whose paintings of classic beauty are so prominently displayed in all of the world's greatest art galleries.' Gauguin In Tahiti' is a rewarding and inspirational movie. I recommend it without hesitation - it is an art lover's delight.
