Love Affair with Tahiti and Tattoos

When one is traveling in Europe, the daily incidents seem all alike; but when he has placed them all two months and two thousand miles behind him, those that were worthy of being remembered are prominent, and those that were really insignificant have vanished.

Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

The same can be said when you look back on your life. After all, it’s the memories that make up a life. But, getting back to our story… When one is traveling in French Polynesia, the same applies. We have placed one year and 6,300 miles (one way) behind us. What follows is what was worthy of being remembered.

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Paul Gaugin in Tahiti

The Gaugin museum in Tahiti has been closed for years. I didn’t know that. We were driving by so we stopped and walked around outside. Although I liked some of his earlier paintings, I’m not a fan of his work. Compare Gauguin with Rembrandt, Monet, and even Da Vinci, and Michelangelo. They all managed to make a living with their art. Gaugin never made any money from his artwork during his lifetime. Van Gogh, his contemporary, also died never having sold his paintings and I can understand why. Then someone comes along and promotes the failed artist’s creations for whatever reason. Usually, it’s for money. The same can be said for writers. Hemingway and Dostoevsky are good examples of overrated talent.

Syphilitic Pig

Gaugin left his wife and 5 children when the stock market crashed in Paris in 1882.

He also left his model and mistress who was pregnant with their child. She posed for his painting called “Loss of Virginity”.

The Fox

In Hindu mythology, the fox symbolizes “arrogance, greed, and lust.” Since he couldn’t draw himself on her neck, he put the fox there.

The Orgasm

After 9 years spent in Brittany, he sailed to Tahiti. There, he worked as a portrait painter of French colonial families and married his first 13-year-old. He was 43. After a while, this relationship failed because they did not speak the same language. He called the house that they lived in “The Orgasm”. How charming. His income dried up so he took arsenic but it wasn’t enough so he moved back to Paris and found a 13-year-old Malaysian girl.

Never satisfied, he returned to Tahiti and married a 14-year-old. When this girl gave birth to their daughter, who died months later, she begged her father to let her move back home. Alone again, Gaugin left Tahiti for the last time and headed to the Marquesas where, you guessed it, he married his last 14-year-old. He died of an overdose of morphine to treat his advanced syphilis at the age of 54.

“Obscene”

Gaugin wrote to his Danish wife “I have painted a naked young girl. Her posture is almost obscene.“ It is dark. An ominous spirit sits facing the girl. The girl is his child-wife and she looks like she is about to be assaulted. There is nothing relaxed in her position on the bed or the look in her eyes. In his book Noa Noa he writes, “Motionless, naked, lying on the bed with her face down, she looked at me with eyes wide with fear“. He made himself the reason for the girl’s terror. The submissive fear in her eyes intensified his lust. This was his favorite painting. He used it as the backdrop for his self-portrait. Every time he looked at it, I am sure that he relived his rape fantasy. He was a syphilitic pig who didn’t die soon enough.