Impressions from two years in Tahiti. Compelling autobiographical fragment. 24 black-and-white illustrations.
Paul Gauguin fled what he called "filthy Europe" in 1891 to what he hoped would be an unspoiled paradise, Tahiti. He painted 66 magnificent can vases during the first two years he spent there and kept notes from which he later wrote Noa Noa 鈥� a journal recording his thoughts and impressions of that time.
Noa Noa 鈥� the most widely known of Gauguin's writings 鈥� is reproduced here from a rare early edition (1919), in a lucid translation capturing the artist's unpretentious style. Page after page reveals Gauguin's keen observations of Tahiti and its people, and his passionate struggle to achieve the inner harmony he expressed so profoundly on canvas. Gauguin's prose is as seductive as his paintings, filled with descriptions of warm seas, hidden lagoons, lush green forests, and beautiful Maori women.
The journal is captivating reading, offering a compelling autobiographical fragment of the soul of a genius and a rare glimpse of Oceanian culture. The brief periods of happiness Gauguin found among the Tahitians are eloquently expressed in his narrative. We understand the motives that drove him and gain a deeper appreciation of his art.
Today the manuscript provides unparalleled insight into Gauguin's thoughts as he strove to achieve spiritual peace, and into the wellsprings of a singular artistic style which changed the course of modern art. This wonderfully affordable edition 鈥� enhanced by 24 of Gauguin's South Seas drawings 鈥� makes a unique and passionate testament accessible to all art lovers.
Gauguin was a financially successful stockbroker and self-taught amateur artist when he began collecting works by the impressionists in the 1870s. Inspired by their example, he took up the study of painting under Camille Pissarro. Pissarro and Edgar Degas arranged for him to show his early painting efforts in the fourth impressionist exhibition in 1879 (as well as the annual impressionist exhibitions held through 1882). In 1882, after a stock market crash and recession rendered him unemployed and broke, Gauguin decided to abandon the business world to pursue life as an artist full-time.
In 1886, Gauguin went to Pont-Aven in Brittany, a rugged land of fervently religious people far from the urban sophistication of Paris. There he forged a new style. He was at the center of a group of avant-garde artists who dedicated themselves to synth茅tisme, ordering and simplifying sensory data to its fundamentals. Gauguin's greatest innovation was his use of color, which he employed not for its ability to mimic nature but for its emotive qualities. He applied it in broad flat areas outlined with dark paint, which tended to flatten space and abstract form. This flattening of space and symbolic use of color would be important influences on early twentieth-century artists.
In Brittany, Gauguin had hoped to tap the expressive potential he believed rested in a more rural, even "primitive" culture. Over the next several years he traveled often between Paris and Brittany, spending time also in Panama and Martinique. In 1891 his rejection of European urban values led him to Tahiti, where he expected to find an unspoiled culture, exotic and sensual. Instead, he was confronted with a world already transformed by western missionaries and colonial rule. In large measure, Gauguin had to invent the world he sought, not only in paintings but with woodcarvings, graphics, and written works. As he struggled with ways to express the questions of life and death, knowledge and evil that preoccupied him, he interwove the images and mythology of island life with those of the west and other cultures. After a trip to France (1893 to 1895), Gauguin returned to spend his remaining years, marred by illness and depression, in the South Seas.
This is a beautifully produced little edition of Gauguin's journal, a work of art in itself. I'm surprised I didn't comment on it when I read it a couple years ago. He describes moving to Tahiti, the friends he won over, the paintings he worked on, little bits of language he learns. He writes with an artists passion and even crosses over to the realm of complete fantasy.
In 1894, Paul Gauguin left France for Tahiti to get away from the decadence of Europe. What he found was beautiful islands, tropical warmth, and most importantly-unspoiled, undecadent, unEuropean and extremely beautiful people. This book was the journal he kept. It is quite a lovely book with his art work. His thoughts and his writing are quite lyrical. He also discovered that Europeans had already tried to change these beautiful people with their religion and customs. He lived there for two years and did some of his best work on the islands. 3.5 stars.
The European invasion and monotheism have destroyed these vestiges of civilization which had its own grandeur. In contact with us, they have become "savages", in the sense which the Latin occident has given this word. (p.47) More than anything else I enjoyed these remarks about the 19th century Tahitians made by Gauguin and his report on their intricate, lost Religion, all in the third half of his notebook. A great mind, as I have suspected.
Paul Gauguin is one of my favorite painters. (Actually, as I write this, there is a print of his painting Mahana No Atua hanging next to me on my bedroom wall.) So, during my winter break, I decided to read his Tahitian journal, Noa Noa.
Noa Noa is a travelogue written by Gauguin, first published in 1901. Although, Gauguin billed the book as his genuine experiences, it seems pretty clear to me and other critics that it's mostly fictional or exaggerated. That being said, I found the book to be very interesting.
From a narrative perspective, Noa Noa is a bit dull. Gauguin's writing style has a tendency to be wordy and pedantic. However, from an ideological perspective it's quite interesting. To my mind, Gauguin is an excellent example of Romanticism and Romantic thought.
If you don't know, Romanticism was an artistic and ideological movement that reacted against the Enlightenment. Romantics believed that the world could not be understood purely though the lens of science and rational thought. Instead, the focused on emotion, individualism, the wonders of the national world, and the past.
Gauguin is famous for his disgust for European society, which he believed had become corrupted by industrialization and modernization. He journeyed to the island of Tahiti in search of a more authentic way of life which would connect him to nature and genuine human experience. As Gauguin says in Noa Noa: All the joys -- animal and human -- of a free life are mine. I have escaped everything that is artificial, conventional, customary. I am entering into truth, into nature. Having the certitude of a succession of days like this present one, equally free and beautiful, peace descends on me. I develop normally and no longer occupy myself with useless vanities.
In some ways, this is lovely sentiment -- and it translates into lovely art. Gauguin's paintings are alluring and colorful, depicting a world that is a mixture of fantastical imaginings and sunlight. Romantic artists attempt to depict the world not as it is seen by the eye but how it is perceived by the human mind and soul. In large part, it is an effective rejoinder to the Neoclassical movement and resulted in the priceless works of artists like Caspar David Friedrich and Th茅odore G茅ricault (who, incidentally, are both on my list of favorite artists).
However, it is very easy to look at Gauguin's paintings, say they are beautiful and otherworldly, and forget that they were modeled on real people and real cultures. Noa Noa, besides being a perfect example of the the Romantic ideology, is also a problematic text. While reading, I winced more than once when Gauguin made an off hand remark about the inferiority or primitiveness of the Tahitian people. While he clearly admires their culture, there are also clear undertones of racism. He repeatedly refers to them as savages and notes that they are childlike.
In some ways, Gauguin's paintings rob their subjects of their humanity, making them stand-ins for his ideological quest instead of real people. One can make the argument that many artists use their subjects in similar ways, however Gauguin's paintings are particularly problematic in that they further stereotype and dehumanize a group of people who were already stereotyped and dehumanized. Perhaps the best example of this is Gauguin's description of a walk through the forest that he takes with a Tahitian friend:
With the suppleness of an animal and the graceful litheness of an androgyne he walked a few paces in advance of me...Was it really a human being walking there ahead of me? Was it the naive friend by whose combined simplicity and complexity I had been so attracted? Was it not rather the forest itself, the living Forest, without sex -- and yet alluring?
While his ideas have a sort of poetic resonance, they are extremely problematic when you consider that he is reducing a real person to vegetation. This makes Noa Noa a difficult text. Should one look at it as a reminder of a past dominated by racism and colonialism? Or, is it more helpful to set Gauguin's artistic achievements aside from his shortcomings as an individual? Whichever answer comes to mind, Noa Noa is certainly a text worth reading.
The place retains its original character of solitude and isolation
Orange sails on the blue sea, and often the line of reefs shown in a sudden silvery gleam under the sun
(Queen) dispersed grace everywhere about her, made everything she touched a work of art
Depleting primitive beauty
(Her Arms were like) two columns of temple, simple straight
Horizontal lines of shoulder
Black dress, with bare feet, and a fragrant flower behind the ear
For a long time I was caressed by the memory
The dream brutally disappointed by the actuality
To find the traces of past if any such traces remained?
Too violent contact with the waves and the rocks. To the left was the wilderness with its perspective of great forests
Mysterious sacred writing of the ancient Orient
I am learning to know the silence of a Tahitian night
These regular intervals of light suggest a musical instrument to me
At night by the grace of the moon calls forth in the memory of the dreamer well-loved melodies
A Maori hut does not separate man from life, from space, from the infinite
(Nature) is rich, she is generous, she refuses to no one who will ask his share of her treasures of which she has inexhaustible reserves in the trees, in the mountains
The landscape with it violent, pure colors, dazzled and blinded me
Single mobile line a mingling of all joy and all suffering
These large eyes --- fear and the desire for the unknown, the melancholy of bitter experience which lies at the root of all pleasures
Civilization (and its absurdities) are falling from me little by little
Clandestine and sadistic colors of love
Dense curtain of trees
Divine brutality
Through her dress of almost transparent rose-colored muslin one could see the golden skin of her shoulders and arms
Laughter and melancholy
Happiness and work rose up together with the sun, radiant like it
I enter into mysteries which hitherto remained inaccessible to me
A phosphorescent light was streaming from her staring eyes
Two opposite beings, infinitely varied, were mingled in one
Tehura is nothing but a black point in a circle of light:
Paul Gauguin's journal of his time in Tahiti, living with a native girl in an attempt to better understand the native Tahitian culture, and make himself a more free and natural artist by getting himself outside of the stifling Euorpean society he comes from. The journal provides a glimpse of Tahiti in the late 19th century and a glimpse into some of Gauguin's artisitc motivations and inspirations, but it also allows the reader to examine some interesting contradictions in Gauguin: he wants to become part of the Tahitian community he adopts as his home, and has a much better understanding and admiration of their customs than some other Europeans, but still is encumbered by his European background and sees things through a European filter even when attempting to leave European ideas behind. He finds love and happiness with the young native girl (the difference in their ages and the fact that he has left his wife in Europe is probably a barrier to complete sympathy with Gauguin for most readers), but suddenly leaves her and his adopted Tahitian community at the end of the journal to return home to Europe. In a way, despite his quest and his deepening understanding, he continues the European history of seeing Tahiti as a place to arrive at, conquer or use for his own purposes, and abandon when convenient.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Dated, sexist, racist and problematic for a modern reader - but also a beautifully written masterpiece of literature and a pleasure to read. The only part of this travelogue that I found dull was the transcripts of Tahitian religion, which were boring and apparently (according to the preface in my edition) not very reliable.
This book is Gauguin complaining about how you can tell the French have colonized Tahiti while he is personally on a government mission, benefitting from government contacts, and sleeping with a 13 year-old Tahitian girl. It's curiously only tangentially about painting.
"Noa Noa e altri racconti" sembra un diario, anche se non ha la struttura tipica di questa forma letteraria, ma permette di entrare ancora di pi霉 nel mondo di Gauguin e della sua arte. Un diario-documento diviso in ben tre fasi che testimoniano i pensieri e le emozioni del pittore in una fase delicata e importante della sua vita. Un diario che, dopo anni, in Europa, lo porta a Tahiti tra il popolo di promitivi, ma anche in mezzo a tonalit脿 e colori lussureggianti di quel luogo che diventa fondamentale nella sua arte. Sono colori che diventano parte di lui e del suo mondo unico. Continua poi con l'epistolario indirizzato da Daniel De Monfreid, pittore francese che diventa il suo confidente al quale Gauguin esprime dubbi, perplessit脿 e paure, in generale. La terza e ultima parte culmina con i Frammenti che sono i pensieri di Gauguin, compresa la sua amicizia con Van Gogh. Un diario che racconta il pittore, l'uomo e la sua arte, ma anche un periodo importante che terminer脿 con alcuni dei suoi quadri pi霉 celebri come "Le donne di Tahiti" in cui l'espressione del colore 猫 pi霉 vivida che mai.
3.75 stars - I enjoyed the way Gauguin painted this view of Tahiti and his diligence in recording all of the gods and goddesses of that place. I found some parts to be beautifully written and others dull. I particularly enjoyed the last section about the double-hauled canoe with the phosphorescent trail sailing in the night back to shore after a day of fishing and legends. His child bride, while a disturbing concept, was my favorite character. In his words and his view of her, she had a mesmerizing combination of wisdom and immaturity. I loved the sorrowful, playful depth of her character in the book. I am going to look up photos or paintings of her now to put a face with her beautiful name. The end left me wishing for a sequel, I wanted to know what became of Tehura's life after Gauguin leaves her on the rock and if they met again when Gauguin returns from France for the last years of his life (although I hope she found a lover who could truly provide for her emotionally and culturally).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.