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Paul Gauguin's Le Grand Bouddha (The Idol), c. 187 an analysis and interpretation.By its subject matter and compositional elements Gauguin (1848-10) expresses symbolically in The Grand Bouddha, painted during Gauguin's second and final period in Tahiti, a mysterious, sensuous and exotic world, that, by its differences makes the viewer, corrupted by western civilization, rethink not only artistic practice but the way we look at the world and its people. Gauguin admired the virtues of less developed societies and used art from these "primitive" societies because its difference, its alternative look, force and creativity, challenged the viewer to make a connection or affinity with these "other" societies. The use Gauguin made of this "primitive" art was revolutionary and initiated a different approach that resulted in tribal art being recontextualized as not only of value in anthropological terms in natural history museums but as aesthetic works of art to be appreciated in art galleries. The images he uses to portray this "other" world are an eclectic mix of recognizable, evocative and decorative elements from Maori, Marquesan and Buddhist art, images of which he studied and collected in drawings, postcards and which he called "my little world of friends." Other non-naturalistic compositional elements, which include broad bands of flat colour, shortened perspective and definite outlines, also help create this exotic, mystic "other"-worldliness of the painting.The subject of this painting comprise two naked Tahitian women with a bitch feeding her litter, sitting before an exotic, religious and cultural idol, with a depiction of the Last Supper where Jesus and his disciples are being served by clothed Tahitian women in the background. The naked women represent the indigenous, "primitive" folk who sit relaxed, with one woman challenging the implied viewer to acknowledge their situation, at ease with their religious and cultural heritage and destiny as represented by the idol. While not complying with traditional western concepts of beauty, the women with their exposed, heavy limbs and direct gaze represent the sexual "other" that Gauguin was not adverse to exploiting to gratify the desires of his buying public, men, many of whom were well aware of the legendary availability of the Tahitian women. The scene from the life of Jesus represents the impact of Christianity on the indigenous people who, now clothed, have turned their backs both literally and figuratively from their traditional culture.
The theme of The Grand Bouddha is the exploration and extolling of the superiority of the non-westernized society. Gauguin depicts the indigenous people as being uncorrupted, simple and unspoiled, instinctively in tune with the real and spiritual world a spiritual world that was shared by different non-western races as coming from a common source. Gauguin struggled to find his own identity, being from French and Peruvian ancestry, and he developed a strong antipathy towards western civilization and what he saw as its corruption. He wrote to the Danish painter J.F.Willumsen, "In Europe…everything is rotten, man and art alike. People are constantly being torn apart" and agreed with Jean Jacques Rousseau in "A Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of Inequality Among Men"(1755), who argued that modern society had been perverted away from the noble instincts of the primitive community. At the Exposition Universelle of 1878, for the first time, a selection of primitive art was displayed and later exhibited at the Palais du Trocadero that Gauguin frequently visited and at the 188 Exposition Gauguin was fascinated by the reconstructed and peopled villages from Africa, Indochina and the Pacific. Tahiti, since the first western contact had been portrayed as a paradise, for example, Capt. Bougainville called it the new Cythera, after the mythical erotic isle of Venus' birth and Pierre Loti in his 1880 work "The Marriage of Loti" told of an idyllic relationship between the author and a thirteen-year-old Tahitian girl. Gauguin believed he would find paradise in Tahiti and continues in his letter to Willumsen, "…the Tahitians …are the happy inhabitants of the unknown paradises of Oceania and experience only the sweet things in life." In fact much of Tahiti in the late 1th century was not utopia but degraded and debased by colonization and missionary zeal so Gauguin created in his paintings this idealized world of the primitive world. In The Grand Bouddha he develops this theme firstly by the portrayal of the women. The Tahitian women are "Eve after the Fall, still able to go about unclothed without being immodest still with as much animal beauty as on the first day." In The Grand Bouddha the women are as Eve, strong, confident, with one staring at the implied viewer perfectly at ease and in tune with the looming idol behind. The idol further develops the painting's theme of the idealized primitive society. As the Tahitians' idols had been destroyed at the behest of the missionaries, Destruction of the Idols of Otaheite (181), Gauguin uses a conglomeration of images firstly to portray these societies' spirituality and tradition, and with its coupling figures, nature and sex, but also portrays the interconnectedness and commonality of these primitive religions. Thus the idol's shape imitates the bell-shaped stupas of Buddhist temple architecture, with the embracing children and head shape of the Maori caring, Pukaki, with the Marquesan tiki figures at the base. Gauguin had found in 18 Jacques Moerenhaut's book on the pre-European culture and mythology in which the author likened the religions of ancient Polynesia to Greek gods and goddesses and from 185 Gerald Massey's book "The New Genesis," in which the author argued that all existing religions and myths drew on one single source, ancient Egypt, a basis for his belief that primitive societies enjoyed a interconnectedness and commonality. Gauguin further develops this theme in The Grand Bouddha with his rendition of The Last Supper where Christ is served by clothed Tahitians women who have literally and figuratively turned their back on their culture and tradition.The theme is enhanced by the different compositional elements in the painting, one of which is the placement of real or physical objects, in this case the women and the dog, in the foreground, moving to the spiritual, of the idol and the Last Supper, in the background. Gauguin uses this same technique in The Vision after the Sermon where the Breton women in the foreground "see" Jacob wrestling with the angel in the background and in Spirit of the Dead Walking where Tehamana lies in the foreground with the background figure of the tupapau or specter. Composition was also highly influenced by the Japanese art and, in particular the woodcut prints that often arrived in Europe as packing when Japan was forced, in the middle of the 1th century, to enter trade relations with Europe. The prints provided Gauguin with the inspiration to reject Impressionism where the artists "search around the eye and not in the mysterious centre of thought" . The Japanese accomplishments he described as "primeval qualities of honesty" . In The Grand Bouddha the Japanese influence can be seen in the blocks of colour in simple shapes with a defining outline and shortened perspective. These elements he also used in The Vision as well as actual figures from Japanese prints, in this case, the wrestlers. The key compositional element in the painting, however, is the use of the idol by which means Gauguin forces the viewer to acknowledge the differences in societies and, from this point, to "allow a plurality of valid, independent and truly different ways of constructing the world" Gauguin was the first artist to appreciate the power these tribal arts had to challenge the ways of depicting the world and, as a consequence, how the world was interpreted and as such he can be called the father of "primitivism". In The Grand Bouddha the image of Pukaki is important both decoratively, to convey the exotic "other" worldliness of the painting, but also symbolically. Gauguin uses the image of Pukaki, part of the five to six metre, carved gateway at the Pukeroa Pa and seen by Gauguin at the Auckland museum, with others from Marquesan and Buddhist art, to convey the message of a universal philosophy, above any racial or cultural differences. Massey had recorded the Maoris' surprise that Jesus reminded them of their own Tawhaki and so to Massey, and Gauguin also, this was further evidence that all religions were inter-connected, linked by a single common source. In The Last Supper Gauguin uses instead of the idol, tiki figures from the Marqueses with the figure from the stern of Te Toki-a-Tapiri, the Maori war canoe that Gauguin had drawn in Auckland, at the base. As with The Grand Bouddha the use of this taonga Maori is for decorative and symbolic purposes. The other paintings, however, that incorporates taonga Maori, do so for purely decorative purposes and to convey an exotic place rather than a world of ideas. In Te rerioa 187, Faa iheihe 188 and Still Life with Sunflowers and Mangoes 101 Gauguin recreates the intricately carved kumete, or bowl, created by Patoromu Tamatea, a respected carver who worked in the Rotorua area in the 1870s. Bronwen Nicholson in her book Gauguin and Maori Art identifies three further paintings that incorporate Maori motifs, Te tamari no atua and two still lives entitled Bouquet of Flowers.Gauguin by his use of taonga Maori and other tribal or "primitive" art challenges the viewer to appreciate such artifacts not only as works of art but as a catalyst for establishing affinities between societies. BibliographyEisenman, Stephen F. Gauguin's Skirt, London, 17.Mead, Sydney Moko, ed., Te Maori Maori Art from New Zealand Collections, Auckland, 184.Nicholson, Bronwen, Gauguin and Maori Art, Auckland, 15.Rubin, William, ed., "Primitivism" in 0th Century Art, vol.1, New York, 184.
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