Paul Gauguin - Manao tupapau (The spirit of the Dead keep watch) [1891]

Paul Gauguin -

Manao tupapau (The spirit of the Dead keep watch) [1891]

Buffalo; Albright Knox Art Gallery

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Separating the artist from the art exhibition: Gauguin’s World at the NGA (Australia)

By Meisha Vu - Art - September 25, 2024

 

It’s hard to compensate for the long-lasting impacts that French colonialism has had on Tahiti and its surrounding islands with a single exhibition, but if I had to exhibit it, I would emphasise in all aspects of Gaugin’s paintings the confrontation, sinisterism and exploitation.

 

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) exploited Polynesian culture, perpetuating harmful stereotypes among his French audience. He also was a ‘sex tourist’, preying on Polynesian girls as young as 13 years old. So when the National Gallery of Australia decided to hold an exhibition called ‘Gauguin’s World: TŌNA IHO, TŌNA AO’, one can’t help but raise an eyebrow at why we are celebrating such a problematic artist.

 

The 1892 painting, ‘Manao Tupapau (Spirit of the Dead Watching)’ depicts a Tahitian girl called Teha’amana lying on her stomach, nude, with her head facing us, and directly looking at the viewer that’s looking at her. Gauguin attempts to represent the Polynesian fear of the Tupapau, the ‘spirit of the dead’, that looms over her. However, given his sexual predilections and the probability that Teha’amana was Christian and did not believe in these spirits, the self-mythologising essence of Gaugin’s oeuvre is to be questioned. Is Teha’amana fearing the ghost, or is she fearing the man before her — her husband Gauguin?

 

Teha’amana was Gauguin’s first muse after setting sail for French Polynesia, in a search for an untouched land. As he put it, he was escaping “everything that is artificial and conventional,” in reference to the Western art world. She was around 13 years old when she met Gauguin according to Noa Noa (1993-94), his partly autobiographical, partly fantasised journal about his experiences in Tahiti, in hopes of depicting the idyll of the Polynesian Pacific life. She became what was commonly known in French Polynesia as his ‘native wife’, meaning a legally non-binding marriage typically between a French man and a Polynesian woman — or in this case, a girl.

 

Much of Teha’amana’s story is told through Gauguin’s exaggerated perspective from his journal Noa Noa. He described his relationship with Teha’amana as “youth and old age, light and darkness, and life and death.” The age of consent in Tahiti at the time was 13 years old, and many young girls would become ‘native wifes’ to Western men as they provided opportunities for wealth. In other words, marriage to native women was exploitation disguised as a chance for fortune.

 

honisoit.com/2024/09/separating-the-artist-from-the-art-e...

 

 

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