Ryan's Museum Visit; Nasher Sculpture Center.

Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian Girl ca. 1896:

In honor of my groups namesake, and much to my girlfriend and fellow museum visitors chagrin, I decided to do my analysis on a Paul Gauguin piece, from his time in Tahiti.(Although I very much wanted to do the below mentioned Walking to The Sky Borofsky installation!) Tahitian Girl is one of two Gauguin works at the Nasher Sculpture Center, the other a clay sculpture, and is a little over 37” tall.

Paul Gauguin left his native France for Tahiti, in search of a life untouched by modernity. While there he experimented in carving wood, clay sculpting, and continued painting, and created Tahitian Girl ca. 1896, created from two separate but conjoined wood carvings. The Head, and Torso are conjoined by a small metal bracket on the back and the seam is covered by a felt necklace. The necklace includes a mother-of-pearl amulet, a braid, and a small pink shell.

What interested me most, and certainly first, about this piece was that of the two conjoined but very much different wood carvings. The Head is a smooth, well proportioned, but oversized contrast to the more rough or coarse body. The stern stare in the eyes of the head piece, also seem to give a different tone than the relaxed, slightly limp body form. One notices fairly quickly these night and day differences, but after more analysis the head and chin angle, not just the eyes, seem to also command this proud quality; where as the body is much more laid back of sorts, possibly timid.

Gauguin expressed a slightly more organic, ‘quick handed’ of sorts style, with visible ‘shavings’ left un-finished, guiding faint highlights and shadows in and throughout the torso, arms, and legs; Thus contributing to the already hodge-podge nature of the work. As stated, the un-finished shavings, guide interesting highlights and shadows in the body form, but the head (in person really) has a much more polished nature to it. The head has no visible cut, or chisel lines, conveying a more tedious carving process.

Upon close inspection the felt necklace is nailed right above the shoulders, a crude covering job, suggesting all together maybe Gauguin felt the more contrasting and misplaced the two pieces seemed the better. I agree, what I enjoy most about the piece is its eerie, almost creepy presence, and questionable nature from the apparent separate and unrelated, Head and Body parts. It has a mysterious archaic character to it, but making it all the more enjoyable being made in the 1890’s.

The Tahitian Girl also seems to embody Gauguin’s own experience in his getaway. Tahiti was not untouched like Gauguin envisioned, linked by industrial might, like the metal column linking the piece, a Tahitian woman head-strong, proud, and beautiful, but still very much native, rough, and uncertain. Or maybe after 500 words, I’ve gone off track, (the latter is more likely). Although after considering all of the above, I wonder if Gauguin intended the two separate pieces for each other all along, or in a fit of inspiration grabbed a bracket and some nails.

Can you tell who is who? Haha