Gauguin's Skirt
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
Gauguin's Skirt Details
Review Simultaneously advances our comprehension of Gauguin and our awareness of the complex condition of today's Tahitian society. -- Art in America Read more
Reviews
Some look at Paul Gauguin as a portrayer of the Pacific and the essential window maker for the West to that region. Others see Guaguin as a disease-spreading colonist who profited off of Pacific exoticism. Here, the author tries to pave a middle ground in whic Guaguin's relationship to the Pacific is deemed "complicated," rather than being given a thumbs up or thumbs down.Of course, Gauguin had European privileges, but the Polynesians didn't just bow to him in an unquestioned mannner, they ridiculed him at times. One blind Tahitian woman put her hands down the artist's pants, rolled her eyes, and said, "Hmph! European!" Gauguin is famous for his art, but the works were not well-received in Europe originally. Guaguin wasn't some naive neutral figure: he wrote publications blasting many European leaders on the islands.The main area in which ambiguity is brought up is around gender. Paintings to me that clearly depict women are deemed gender-ambiguous by the author. Not only does the author add to burgeoning works about the mahu; he also emphasized that France had its gender- and sexuality-atypical people in that time as well. Some of the issues here almost surprisingly predate Freud. This discussion may be especially interesting in communities of color. The author mentions how mahu were mocked and deemed hypersexual, but at the same time embraced and played important roles in the lives of women and teens. In African America, there is much controversy about "the down low," but this work points to how subgroups in a culture can be mocked and celebrated at the same time. The author is very evasive about whether Gauguin kicked it with any of the atypical, and not just females.When I was first learning how to write essays in junior high, we were encouraged to write an intro, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. This book has an intro, 3 body chapters, and a conclusion, so seems unsophisticated in that way. Most of the painting reprinted are in black-and-white and they lose a ton of details this way. Scholarship on art travels a gray area, because anyone can deconstruct a work, but it takes a deep thinker to write pages and pages upon it. This book will be confusing to many, but still may be overly simplistic to some.I'm fasciniated by race, gender, sexuality, colonialism, art, and revisionism. Those who are equally interested in these topics may get a kick out of this book. It didn't rock my world, but I'm glad it's been published.
