An Epic on Childhood - 17
the richness of the tastes of home-made love
i could say
you do not know
the taste of jambakka
though you are as beautiful as the red and white ones
or: you do not know the taste of
stolen pulinjikka
though your bust is like costly gauguin papayas.
but you, you make me want you as badly as i did salted karakkas
and you, you still add taste to my life like muringakkas and pavakkas
and chakka vazhattiyathu and chakka upperi and chakka halwa but why i really know i love you
is because
when we were children
though we were differently made
spoke different tongues
under the shade of the huge spreading tamarind tree
we threw stones at the raw and ripe puli
and i took off the rind or shell for you
you made a face at the green one - too sharp
and ate the black one happily
and i kissed the rest of its residue off your lips
we both licked ours, then, you smiling, i grinning
and spat out the stone hard black little seeds
in our small-leafed-green-beneath-the-tree-bower
if that wasn't love on your lips that i tasted
i do not know what love is and no man ever did
Ea Haere La Oe Aka (Where Are You Going?) -- Paul Gauguin
the richness of the tastes of home-made love
i could say
you do not know
the taste of jambakka
though you are as beautiful as the red and white ones
or: you do not know the taste of
stolen pulinjikka
though your bust is like costly gauguin papayas.
but you, you make me want you as badly as i did salted karakkas
and you, you still add taste to my life like muringakkas and pavakkas
and chakka vazhattiyathu and chakka upperi and chakka halwa but why i really know i love you
is because
when we were children
though we were differently made
spoke different tongues
under the shade of the huge spreading tamarind tree
we threw stones at the raw and ripe puli
and i took off the rind or shell for you
you made a face at the green one - too sharp
and ate the black one happily
and i kissed the rest of its residue off your lips
we both licked ours, then, you smiling, i grinning
and spat out the stone hard black little seeds
in our small-leafed-green-beneath-the-tree-bower
if that wasn't love on your lips that i tasted
i do not know what love is and no man ever did
Ea Haere La Oe Aka (Where Are You Going?) -- Paul Gauguin
“You paint too fast!" Paul Gauguin (Anthony Quinn) scolded Vincent van Gogh (Kirk Douglas) in the 1956 film, “Lust for Life.” "You look too fast," van Gogh replied.
ReplyDeleteGauguin has been the subject of many biographies, two operas, and various fictionalized accounts of his life. But he has always been controversial. [Art seldom deals in fact. “Lust for Life” began as a 1934 novel by Irving Tennenbaum, who wrote as Irving Stone; the book was rejected 17 times before it was published, and was creatively adapted for film by Norman Corwin, who was nominated for a “Best Writing (Screenplay – Adapted)” Academay Award. The movie was produced by Jacques Haussmann (better known as John Houseman) and directed by Lester Anthony Minnelli ("Vincente Minnelli"); Kirk Douglas (Issur Danielovitch) was nominated for the “Best Actor” Oscar but lost, while Anthony Quinn (Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca) won for “Actor in a Supporting Role.” Notoriously self-aggrandizing, Gauguin painted himself as Jesus the Christ and as the protagonist of Victor Hugo's novel, “Les Misérables,” and sculpted himself as the decapitated John the Baptist.]
Here is one popular version of Gauguin's biography: An erstwile seminarist, sailor, stockbroker, art collector, traveling salesman, bill-poster, ceramicist, laborer, journalist, and editor, he abandoned his wife and 5 children to paint in Panama (where he briefly worked on the construction of the famous canal in 1887), Martinique in the Caribbean (where he contracted both dysentery and malaria), Arles (where he roomed with van Gogh for 9 notorious weeks in 1888), Brittany in 1894 (where he broke an ankle in a brawl, giving him pain and a limp for the rest of his life), and Paris the next year (where he contracted syphilis from a prostitute). Most famously he moved to French Polynesia (Tahiti in 1891 and the Marquesas in 1901), where he took 3 native brides (aged 13, 14, and 14), and infected them and countless others in the islands with syphilis; he christened his island hut La Maison du Jouir (The House of Orgasm). He had planned a triumphal return to Europe but had just 4 francs in his pocket when he arrived. By early 1898 he was suffering from influenza, spitting up blood, and self-medicating for ulcers in his leg. Returning to the South Pacific, he supported the Marquesans against the French colonial authorities. Weakened by excessive drinking, improper nourishment, and an overdose of morphine to treat the syphilis, in 1901 he died of a heart attack.
His father was a radical journalist whose criticism of Louis Napoleon’s government forced him to flee France in 1849 to join his in-laws in South America, but he died of a heart attack en route and was buried in an unmarked grave in Tierra del Fuego. One-year-old Paul continued on to Lima, Peru, where he lived in the home of Jose Rufino Echenique, the country's presidente from 1851-55. Gauguin’s mother, the daughter of the proto-socialist-feminist Flora Tristan, was descended from one of the most colorful families in European history, the Borgias (Borjas). [Pope Callixtus III made his nephew Rodrigo a cardinal, who became pope Alexander VI in 1492. In that capacity he demarcated a line to divide the new lands being “discovered” and conquered
ReplyDeletebetween Spain and Portugal; during his papacy he was accused of adultery, incest, simony, theft, bribery, and murder. As a cardinal he had 4 children by Vanozza dei Cattanei and at least one by another mistress, Giulia Farnese, through whom most of the royal houses of Europe were descended; 5 other children, including the great-great-grandmother of Innocentus X, were of uncertain maternal parentage. He made his 18-year-old son Cesare a cardinal, and gave his other son Giovanni command over the papal army, but Giovanni was assassinated in 1497, perhaps at Cesare's instigation since Giovanni's wife was Caesare's mistress. After Cesare became the 1st person to resign a cardinalate he sought to create a kingdom for himself in northern Italy. Alexander had arranged for 12-year-old Lucrezia to marry Giovanni Sforza of Milano but annulled the marriage 4 years later to further Cesare’s career. Cesare removed Sforza from power in Pesaro and had the ruler of Faenza drowned in the Tiber, and had Lucrezia's lover murdered to prevent any scandal from interfering with her marriage to the son of the king of Napoli. But when Cesare decided to break with Napoli and ally with France instead but was betrayed by a follower and imprisoned and transferred to Spain before his escape. The prince survived one assassination attempt, only to be strangled in his own quarters soon after; it was suspected that he had been poisoned by Lucrezia. Alexander's successor Julius II personally led the papal conquest of Cesare’s territories. Niccolò Machiavelli’s “Il Principe” (“The Prince) was largely inspired by Caesare's career.] Rufino Echenique was the son-in-law of Gauguin’s maternal great-uncle, Don Pio de Tristan y Moscoso, the last Spanish viceroy of Peru. When Gauguin returned to France at seven, he spoke no French, and his preferred language remained Peruvian Spanish the rest of his life, and he boasted of his “Inca” ancestry, declaring “I am a savage from Peru.” In addition to his skill as a painter, printer, sculptor, and potter, he was good at boxing, fencing, and playing the organ and the mandolin. In 1887 he won the unofficial "world billiards championship" in the Hotel Central in Panama City.
Gauguin exhibited 19 paintings and a wood relief at the last Impressionist exhibition in 1886, then went to Panama to work; he spent 6 months in Martinique and produced about a dozen pieces. Some were exhibited at the gallery owned by his color merchant Arsène Poitier, who had dealings with Goupil & Cie, Theo van Gogh’s art dealership. Theo bought three of them for 900 francs and began introducing Gauguin's work to his clients. Theo's brother Vincent also developed a close friendship with Gauguin; their correspondence was instrumental in Gauguin formulating his philosophy of art, and van Gogh also briefly experimented with Gauguin's theory of painting from the imagination before returning to painting from nature. In 1888, they lived together in Arles, but their relationship soon deteriorated. On 23 December 1888, van Gogh cut off the bottom of his left eat lobe, wrapped it in newspaper, and gave it to a prostitute with instructions to "keep this object carefully;" Gauguin promptly left Arles, but though the 2 never saw each other again they continued to correspond, and in 1890 Gauguin even suggested forming an artist studio in Antwerp.
ReplyDeleteIn 1891, Gaughin had a daughter by a Paris seamstress, who later became famous as the painter/sculptor Germaine Chardon. After his final visit with his wife and children in Copenhagen, he left for Tahiti on 1 April 1891. He spent 3 months in Papeete, the colonial capital, and then moved to a bamboo hut 45 km away, in Mataiea, Papeari, where he executed some 20 paintings and a dozen woodcarvings depicting Tahitian life as well as his imaginary recreations of the old Arioi society and 'Oro, their god, and his terrestrial wife Vairaumati. He sent 9 paintings to Paris, which were jointly exhibited in Copenhagen with work by the recently deceased van Gogh; only 2 od Gauguin's pieces were sold, and his work was unfavorably compared to those of his old friend. Still in Tahiti, he contracted to take the model of some of his best paintings, 13-year-old Teha'amana, as his vahine (Tahitian for "woman"), but returned to France in 1893 and continued to work on Tahitian subjects. Edgar Degas organized an exhibition for him (and bought one of his paintings), but it was mercilessly mocked by Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and others, even though he sold 11 of the 40 pieces at elevated prices. In appreciation for his support, Gauguin gave Degas “The Moon and the Earth,” one of the paintings that had generated the most hostility. He affected an exotic persona, dressing in Polynesian costume and conducting a well publicized affair with a teenager known as Annah the Javanese.
He returned to Tahiti in 1895 and spent most of the next 6 years in the Papeete area. For a time he worked in an office, but mostly he supported himself with a steady stream of sales of his art. His new vahine was Pau'ura a Tai, who was 14 when he took her in; they had a daughter, but she died a few days after her birth. For his 1st year back in Tahiti he worked on wood carvings but did no painting. He was a frequent contributor to the anti-government journal, “Les Guêpes” (The Wasps), and became its editor in 1900, and he also published his own monthly “Le Sourire: Journal sérieux” (The Smile: A Serious Newspaper), later renamed “Journal méchant” (A Wicked Newspaper). In April 1897 he tried to poison himself after completing “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?,” which he regarded as his masterpiece. Ambroise Vollard agreed to provide him with art supplies and pay him 300 francs a month as an advance against a guaranteed purchase of at least 25 unseen paintings a year at 200 francs each, but Gauguin was looking for new adventures. “I think in the Marquesas, where it is easy to find models (a thing that is growing more and more difficult in Tahiti), and with new country to explore – with new and more savage subject matter in brief – that I shall do beautiful things. Here my imagination has begun to cool, and then, too, the public has grown so used to Tahiti. The world is so stupid that if one shows it canvases containing new and terrible elements, Tahiti will become comprehensible and charming. My Brittany pictures are now rose-water because of Tahiti; Tahiti will become eau de Cologne because of the Marquesas.” In 1901 he moved to Atuona on the island of Hiva-Oa and worked on landscapes, still lifes, and figure studies that would appeal to Vollard's clientele. He bought a plot of land from the Catholic mission and built the Maison du Jouir, with 2 sculptures at the foot of its steps, “Père Paillard,” lampooning the island’s bishop, and” Thérèse,” the bishop’s servant who was reputed to be his mistress (when it was auctioned for $30,965,000 in 2015, it became his most valuable sculpture). He also got a new vahine, the 14-year-old Vaeoho, who left him to give birth to their son, Emile Marae a Tai, who later became a native artist. In 1902 he tried to present a settlers' protest against taxes mostly going to Papeete instead of being spent locally, but the governor of French Polynesia refused to see him, prompting Gauguin to refuse to pay his taxes. Later he was fined 500 francs amnd sentenced to 3 months of confinement for libeling a gendarme by accusing him of corruption (the gendarme's chief had
ReplyDeleteonce fined Gauguin for public indecency after catching him bathing naked in a local stream). He died suddenly in 1903. At an auction of his effects, his sewing machine sold for 80 francs and his pictures for 2 francs.