Whispered Words (Parau-Parau)
Artist: Paul Gauguin
Year: 1892
Eugene Henri Paul Gauguin was a French painter with a post-Impressionist style influenced by Picasso, Matisse, and more. His work often contained symbolism like primitive art. He was born in 1848 and was ahead of his time. His fame didn't come until after his death, which occurred in 1903.
1954 Commentary by John Rewald:
AMONG THE MANY NOTES ON HIS LIFE and work which Gauguin jotted down in the loneliness of his hut in Tahiti, there is a passage that seems to have been written almost specifically for this canvas:
"In order to explain my Tahitian art, since it is held to be incom"prehensible: as I want to suggest an exuberant and wild nature and a tropical sun which sets on fire everything around it, I have to give my figures- an appropriate frame. It really is open-air life, although intimate; in the thickets and the shaded brooks, those whispering women in an immense palace decorated by nature itself with all the riches that Tahiti holds. Hence these fabulous colors and this fiery yet softened and silent air.
"But all this does not exist!
"Yes, it exists as the equivalent of the grandeur and profundity of this mystery of Tahiti, when it must be expressed on a canvas three feet square.
"She is very subtle and very clever in her naïveté, the Talfitian Eve. The enigma hidden at the bottom of her childlike eyes remains incommunicable. Like Eve's, her body is still that of an animal, but her head progressed with evolution, the mind developed subtlety, love impressed the ironical smile upon her lips, and naïvely she searches in her memory for the why of present times. Enigmatically she looks at you.
"All this is intangible they say.
"This may well be so."
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