The Current Issue

March 2024, Issue 527 Michael Prodger on Gauguin * Piers Brendon on the discovery of dinosaurs * Philip Snow on Japan's war trials * Mark Galeotti on Zelensky's rise * Rory McCarthy on Saddam Hussein's blunders * Norma Clarke on Barbara Comyns * David Bromwich on Enlightenment disillusionment * Peter Moore on shipwrecks * Julian Baggini on the price of life * Graham Daseler on Kubrick * Owen Bennett-Jones on Indian democracy * Adam Brookes on Myanmar's meth industry * Zareer Masani on Queen Victoria's PMs * Costica Bradatan on false messiahs * Sharman Kadish on London fashion * Jonathan Rée on Wittgenstein * William Whyte on London architecture * James Cahill on Edouard Louis * Allan Massie on Paul Theroux * and much, much more  and much, much more…

Michael Prodger

Trouble in Paradise: Gauguin & Polynesia

In 1891, Paul Gauguin arrived in Tahiti on board the Vire and, according to one witness, stepped ashore wearing a cowboy hat and un grand air de profond dédain. He could ill afford such disdain: he had long desired to live and work among the local people in the tropics but they hooted with laughter at the sight of him. Particularly amused by his long salt-and-pepper hair, they followed him in the street, calling him ta’ata vahine (‘man-woman’). It was not the entrance the painter had intended to make. The voyage to Tahiti was not Gauguin’s first attempt at freeing himself from ‘everything that is artificial and conventional’. In 1887 he spent some time in Panama, where a shortage of funds – a recurring... read more

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