Woman with a Fan: Paul Gauguin's Heavenly Vairaumati-a Parable ...

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itial in ihe nmodern world. His summary of the origins and latc of himankind unfolds in a life cycle from right to left, wheire a replica of the goddess as depicted in Vairumati sits next to an old woman, uniting rebirth with death. 7 s These ideas all inforin his renewed interest in Vairaumati as a inctaplhot lot regeneration. The snllject of Woman w/ih a Pan bears a strong resemblance to that of Vairumali. Although the poses are reversed, each liguire leans on a fully extended arm, pushing her shoulder up iunder the thrust of her weight, borne on the palh of her hand flat against the surface beneath her. Each perches askew oin an exotic support, her legs to the side, throwing the burden of her tot-so onto the column of her armi. Vairatnnati is poised on the edge of an elongated seat with an ornate headboard, not unlike a tombstone, whereas tme woman with a fan is ensconced on a chair with a carved back oddly rcriliniscent of bones, an ossified relic of the b)eyond.7' Vairauniati's throne, framing her silhouette like a lialo, is replaced by an aureole of light in Woman with a Fan. Bloth women emanate a distinctive glow that matches the dcscriplion of Vairaumnati in Noa Noa: "the fire of the sun shines ini the gold of her body," 7 5 Next to Vairaumati, a white bird chitiches a green lizard in its claws. Its luminosity delaclies this winged companion from the fiery background, an fIfect ecthoed in Woman wilh a Fan by the intense white Iatl fes ofl heir fan and drapery against the paler warm colors. Vaiirauimati appears outdoors, in front of green and yellow bIushes, accompanied by two seated women, one of whom bears a pflater of offe ings, whereas the woman with a fan is conspicuously alone. In contrast to the crowded surroundings of Vairaumnati, the woman with a fan is isolated in an ethereal zorie, where the organic forms hang in symbolic ratlicr than real space. Neither woman is concerned with the viewer each looks off to the side, conveying a dreamy air. I lowcwvr, Vairautnati is tied to the earth, in contrast to the woman with a fan, who inhabits a spiritual realm: the timeless godden ground of Cimabue, so revered by Gauguin. 7 ' The apposition of WoUman with a Fan to Vairunmati makes it a plausible oonclusion to the canvases that Gauguin devoted to "tlhis beloved of the gods."' 77 The radiant serenity and sovereign moutnentality of the former coincide seamlessly with tlic myth's finale, when Vairaumati takes her place "almiong Ilie deities." iler shroudlike white wrap suits her passage rotim the terrestrial to the celestial. To emphasize thtm Vairauminai has shed her earthly bonds, Gauguin may have norrowed the ancient. Egyptian usage of the fan as an idcograph for a shade or spirit.7" Her feather fan is arguably the vcstige of the white bird sacred to Hina, designating Vairanttti as the vehicle of regeneration decreed by the mooti god(lcss. The canvases depicting Vairatutati accunmulate a force that climaxes with Woman with a Fan. The exotic eroticism of the itortaf's stori that lirst intrigued the artist gave way to his regard (tI ht Iter role as the vessel of renascence. The pose gives visual unity Io the figures, while anecdotal accessories progiessivcly disappear. The changes themselves took on added significaric folr him as he transformed the mythical subject ovw(t the years. What had begun as the depiction of a myth that prolffc'rd an ersatz authenticity for Gauguin's Tahitian project shifted to the mode of a parable of regeneration, WOMAN WITH A IFAN: PAUL GAIGUIVN'S HEAVENLY VAIRAUMATI 56(1 6 Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Hope, 1872, oil on canvas, 27'. X 32Y/ in. Mus& d'Orsav, Paris (artwork in the public domain; photograph by D. Arnaudet, provided by the Reunion des Musees Nationaux) steeped in allusions to his convictions and experiences. Woman with a Ean brings closure to the myth by coumnemorating Vairaumati's immortality through the aesthetic of transposition. Hope by Puvis de Chavannes The parallel between Gauguin's figures of Vairaumati and that of Hope in the painting of that name by Puvis de Chavannes (Fig. 6) introduces another dimension to the metaphor of transposition invested in W4oman With a Fan.79 As the accepted prototype for the pose of Vairauniati, Hope reinforces the metaphysical ties among Gauguin's different versions. Gauguin held an abiding admiration for Puvis de Chavannes, whose work imparted an ineffable aura of mystery that Gauguin emulated. Although the two men differed greatly, both in terms of their personalities and their art, Puvis exerted a persistent influence on his younger colleague. This could take the form of specific links between compositions or in the more subtle ways that Gauguin manipulated or repudiated the other's symbolism as a foil. His penchant for the decorative found reinforcement in the older man's art, with his similar taste for the primitive, rendered with flat, matte surfaces. Puvis's murals lent their measure of scope and scale to Mhere Do 11c Come P'rom?"" In the nude version of Hope, the maiden, turned toward the viewer, her legs to the side, occupies a flowery mound. She leans on her right hand, extending an oak branch in her left. Behind her can be seen a castle in ruins and a field of crosses marking the graves of soldiers, a scene of hibernal desolation. Her youthful innocence and purity against a backdrop of destruction and death signify rebirth, the rites of spring. The hope in question refers to the ardent desire of the French to see the nation's prestige restored after the Franco-Prussian War-the war that deprived them of the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, as Gauguin notes in Racontars de rapin.I 1
562 ART BULL ETIN SEPTEMBER 2006 VOLUME LXXXVIII NUMBER 3 7 Gauguin, after Puvis de Chavannes, drawing published in the Mercure de France 13 (February 1895): between 128 and 129 (artwork in the public domain) Hope has a long history in Gauguin's oeuvre.,2 Both 1892 paintings of Vairaumati, noted above, are indebted to it. Puvis's Hope sits parallel to her hand resting flat on the covered mound, out of doors, whereas Gauguin reverses the body in Vairaumati Tei Oa and Te aa no Areois. Each holds her attribute in the direction of her legs, instead of extending it to the side. They, too, are nudes surrounded by nature, where autumnal colors emphasize the cycle of seasons, the earth's death that precedes rebirth. In Vairumati and the repetition in Where Do We Come From? the contours of the body and the alignment of the figure are closer to the original configuration by Puvis. One arm is to her left and the one on which she rests is stiffer. The shadow on her right is quite similar to that in Puvis's painting. The woman with a fan, seated askew and leaning on one arm, mirrors Puvis's counterpart, visible behind Tohotaua in Grelet's photograph (Fig. 2). The juxtaposition of Tohotaua to Hope lends credence to the speculation that the photograph was commissioned less as an aide-memoire (and even less a souvenir) than as testimony to the figure's ancestry, underscoring the symmetry between the two compositions. While the background details of the photograph disappear in the painting, the aura of Hope lingers. Woman with a Fan marks the last transformation of this image that Gauguin admired enough to put on the wall of the Maison duJouir. Whatever his criticisms of Puvis, his writings also evidence his high esteem for this artis,S83 The history of Puvis de Chavannes's art gave added weight to its place in Gauguin's thinking. Gauguin undoubtedly knew Hope firsthand as it languished in the Durand-Ruel Gallery in the 1880s, a legacy of the negative press that dogged Puvis's early work. 8 4 In Racontars de rapin, he blasted critics who currently hailed the painter as a hero of French art for conveniently forgetting that "twenty years ago the Poor hisherman and the Prodigal Son by Puvis de Chavannes mildewed at Durand-Ruel's, rue de la Paix, with no chance to be sold, even at modest prices." 8 5 The checkered reception of Hope comforted Gauguin as another instance of a painting scorned before its resurrection as a triumph. He saw in Puvis's critical fortunes reassurance for his angst over the assessment of his art in the twentieth century. Prior to his return to Tahiti, Gauguin furnished a drawing after Hope to accompany the poem dedicated to Puvis de Chavannes by Morice in the Mercure de France (Fig. 7).86 Gauguin's calculated modifications to Puvis de Chavannes's composition are striking in light of his working method. In lieu of the field of crosses, he placed a crouching mourner at the base of a truncated Crucifixion. For the oak sprig tendered by Hope, he substituted a flower, usually read as a lily, connoting purity, but it has been allied with the lotus, an Eastern symbol of regeneration. Moreover, as he well knew, the plucked flower could serve as a euphemism for the loss of virginity. In so transforming Hope, Gauguin altered the substance of Puvis's theme of death and rejuvenation to suit his drift. The confrontation between the nude female and the fragmented souvenir of Christ's martyrdom flips the focus from the young woman as bearer of life to the one sacrificed for its sake. 8 7 Gauguin exploited this homage simultaneously to align himself with and to distance himself from the older master. His subsequent observations about Puvis pertain to this mutation, but the remarks are no more a description of the drawing than it is a rote copy of Hope: Puvis explains his idea, yes, but he does not paint it. He is a Greek while I am a savage, a wolf in the woods without a collar. Purvis would call a painting "Purity," and to explain it he would paint a young virgin holding a lily in her hand-a familiar symbol; consequently one understands it. Gauguin, for the title "Purity," would paint a landscape with limpid waters; no stain of the civilized human being, perhaps a figure. Without entering into details there is a wide world between Puvis and myself. As a painter Puvis is a lettered man but he is not a man of letters, while I am not a lettered man but perhaps a man of letters. 88 Few were better able than Morice to appreciate Gauguin's words, written in conjunction with Where Do We Come From? in July 1901, preceding Gauguin's departure for the Marquesas, a prologue to the year in which his ideas took their final form. For all his purported disdain for Puvis's iconography in this passage, Gauguin, too, reverted to symbols, as the drawing attests, but he enlisted them in the service of his idiosyncratic ends. He modified Hope to reflect the differences between Puvis and himself. To crystallize Puvis's mode of symbolism, he specified the lily, the Renaissance attribute of the Virgin Mary signifying purity. Whereas Puvis relied on a convention to convey a finite message, Gauguin chose symbols to disrupt preconceived definitions, even to reverse the thrust of the expected message-as in subverting the picked flower to sully the maiden's innocence. He shuffled them at will to instill his images with religious and aesthetic dimensions based on his homespun philosophies, and he sought to make the pictorial field integral to the message. Thus, "purity" is notjust a virgin landscape, it is a work of art purified of the taint of academic protocol. In Racontars de rapin, he stressed that "it is not the attribute, the symbol that the model holds in her hand that
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