Details

Object type

print

Title

Nave nave fenua

Artist/Maker

Paul Gauguin

Culture/School

French

Place Associated

France

Date

1893-4

Materials

black ink, paper

Dimensions

image: 352 mm x 204 mm

Description

When Paul Gauguin returned to Paris from his first voyage to Tahiti in 1893, he had made about 70 artworks on the island. In order to make the art more understandable to a French audience, he soon began writing memoirs, which he entitled ‘Noa Noa’ (see below). He also made 10 woodcuts to further illustrate his travels. Some of these prints relate to the paintings created in Tahiti, and ‘nave nave fenua’ is one of the closest, linking to a large oil he’d painted in 1892 (Ohara Museum of Art, Japan). Both the painting and the print show a naked Tahitian woman, standing in a lush outdoor setting, surrounded by plants. The female figure can be understood as a ‘Tahitian Eve’ in an Eden-like garden, Gauguin perhaps hoped to shock his European audience by merging Christianity with the ‘primitive’ South Pacific. This Eve seems to be distracted by peacock-like flowers while a winged lizard, reminiscent of the biblical serpent (there were no snakes on Tahiti- the lizard therefore being the equivalent), flies dangerously close to her head. This ‘Tahitian Eve’ became a favourite motif of the artist, appearing in numerous drawings and watercolours.

At the left of the print is a strip of symbols, appearing similar to a carved Tahitian house-post. The letters ‘PGo’, seen at the bottom of this strip, are a crude reference to the artist’s name. ‘PGo’ was French slang for ‘prick’, a vulgar and provocative signature Gauguin would continue to use for years to come.

Gauguin fantasised about finding a ‘primitive’ life on Tahiti, different from the urban sprawl of Paris he was used to. What he actually encountered on the island was a life much more modern than he’d anticipated. Nevertheless, there Gauguin was able to live out some of his deepest erotic fantasies, in a society where sexual practice was seemingly more liberal than in his native France, and he could take advantage of his privileged position as a white, European man.

In Autumn 1893, within months of returning to Paris, Gauguin began recording his experiences of the island. The resulting book, ‘Noa Noa’ (meaning ‘fragrance (of humans)’ in the local language) describes his life on Tahiti as he wished others to see it, writing shockingly of the young teenagers he had sex with, his rape fantasies, as well as his sexual objectification of both male and female islanders. The book centred largely on his erotic experiences with a 13-year old child who became the 43-year-old’s ‘vahine’- a Tahitian word Gauguin used to mean both ‘whore’ and ‘wife’.

Around the same time he was writing ‘Noa Noa’, Gauguin produced a set of woodcut prints to accompany the book. These were completed by spring, 1894. The ten prints produced for ‘Noa Noa’ are Gauguin’s finest works on paper- modernist prints to inspire later generations of artists. The woodcuts, composed of several blocks of boxwood joined together, showcase myriad techniques, from ultra-fine scratches, to deep gouges in the wood, and were created using carpentry tools rather than traditional engraver’s tools. The ten ‘Noa Noa’ prints are full of mysterious spiritualism, often set in dark tones which give the impression of fear-inducing nightmares.

Glasgow Museums’ collection contains an incomplete set of ‘Noa Noa’ prints, without ‘Te Foruru’ and ‘Te Atua’. They were printed in 1921 by Pola Gauguin, the artist’s youngest child. He printed 100 impressions from each block, Glasgow’s set being number 64. They are carefully printed in black ink, and create a faithful, clear rendering of every scratch and gouge on the block.

Credit Line/Donor

Acquired 1924

ID Number

PR.1924.31.b

Location

In storage