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

ithe 'pet tnicitus itmpact of WesIern political, social, and sacred
institutlions on contemporatr Polynesia, quoting the Bible
It rottghtot.2
If "l,tspiit tiodnetie 't le catholicisme" documents Gaugtin's
dis(Liin lot the Catholic Church and its prelates, Ra-
(notars di ralpin (A Danber's (;ossip), written by September
1902, was it settling of accounts with the art world and its
c ri t ics. 26 Molt' than a cdiatribe against critics, however, Racon-
ais pr ovidcs an err'atic blueprint of how Gauguin thought
ahout making art. Its modernity lies in its rambling structure,
crafied to iesist "Beaux-Arts" codification. Similarly, his discutsivc
tinitoirs Avant et apres (Before and After) were
pcimcd in 1903 to persuade posterity to accord him what he
peceived as his rightutl place in the history of art. 2 7 Despite
the earliirt clpistolaty clash between him and the editor of the
Mr) I-i tie' iance, (Gauguin entrusted the latter two manu-
scripts to IFottainias. Regarding Avant et ap@r, he confided to
Georgcs-l)aniel de Monfei'id, "I care about this publication
becausc it's al once a vengeance and a means to make myself
known ;t11l utdel-stood ... .,,28 His words were conceived to
coniphcinc images that lie constructed as visual parables
addressed to a t
European 'lite.
The Identity of the Woman with a Fan
lVoman with a Ian has hitierto been seen only as the beauti-
ful iportrait of Tohotaua, the wife of Gauguin's friend
I IaapItatnii.2'1 Shle is familiar fonmt the photograph taken by
Lotis (0-elei in tlh artist's studio (Fig. 2). "' Grelet was a
young Swiss traveling salesman who struck tip a friendship
wi I the older tant when both were living in the Marquesas.
An immaci tihotographer, be took this picture in 1902 at the
bIehesi of G(auguin. Some years later, in a letter, he explains
that tIhc pholograph
was taken in tlhe stludio of Gauguin, several months before
his dcathI. hlie wornan, who is tiarquesan and not tahitian,
was posed and actually took this position on the indica-
6ions of(Gauguin. We had wanted to photograph her with
a inude Istso. Unfortunately her breasts having already
wilthered (she was baarely twenty!) obliged tis, for aesthetics,
to hide thern by attaching a wrap around her neck.
This xotmia wxas the wife of Gauguin's cook. She represeits
Ihe )it-re minatquesan type, with this anomaly however
hat she t'iiid magnificent chestnut red hair, which is something
of a t arity out there. The negative of the photo has
bccil dialnlagcd.C
This Ittcr docnitcius that Gauguin dictated her pose from
the outset, presumably before he began the painting, as
Grelet tiakes no mention of it. Despite insinuations that her
rclaiionshipl with (Gauguin was "intimate," the altered attire
c'ctssiIatud Iby her sagging breasts implies that he had no
prior physical knowledge of Ier body. Stich assumptions are
more likely at product of' the enduring European fantasy
abouitt the sex.lal axailability ofi non-Western women. 2 His
dilapidated body, with its open sores, was hardly conducive to
his playing lit'e Don Juaitt, even in a society of casual sex.
Morcotxr, although Gauguin complained that access to
women was limited, ite had successfully bartered for Vaeoho
I) join hint in the Maisont dii Jouir in November 1901.)
WOMAN WT1111 A FAA: ALlI (U GAUG IN'S HlAVENIY VAIRX\ MAT I 555
Tohotaua probably remained little more than an acquaintance.
The black-and-white photograph offers a glimpse of the
spartan interior of Gauguin's last abode with his few worldly
possessions. The room had walls of loosely woven bamboo,
furnished with a plain wooden chair and a rudimentary chest
of drawers, above which were tacked reproductions of art.
The latter speak to Gauguin's eclectic taste: Hope by Puvis de
Chavannes; Harlequin by Edgar Degas; Portrait of tlhe Artists
Wl,f and Two Eldest Children by Hans Holbein; and a photograph
of a.Javanese sculpture of Vishnu.ý" Gauguin's extensive
use of photographs is well noted, and the artist himself
wrote to Odilon Redon, "I carrv around photographs, drawings,
a whole little world of comrades, who talk to me evervday."
While the painted resemblance to Tohotata in her artificial
position with the upright fan remains faithful to the
photograph, virtually everything else has been transformed.
She no longer engages the viewer directly but withdraws in
reverie. The coiffure of her resplendent chestnut red hait has
been subdued. A white wrap, tucked above the waist as Gauguin
first envisioned for the photograph, has been substituted
for the floral cotton paren. She sits on a fantastic carved
chair, unlike the banal angles of the actual seat. The traces of
the studio are effaced from the background, and the gallery
of reproductions has blurred into an organic motif sitspended
in the upper left corner, below the signature, "Paul
Gatiguin/1902." All of these changes abstract her from the
quotidian.
In marked contradistinction to the picture of Tohotaua, in
Gauguin's so-called portrait of his first Tahitian love (Fig. 3),
Teha'amana sits primly clothed in a missionary dress, locked
in an elaborate decor. The Tahitian title iroahi metna no
Tehaamana ( Teha amana has many ancestors), is written on the
left, not far from the signature, "P Gauguin./93" on her right
knee. The sitter, wearing fragrant white frangipani and a red
flower in her hair, signs of her sexual availability, looks out at
the viewer. Behind her are glyphs copied from wooden tablets
originating in the Easter Island and a painted frieze
depicting an idol of Hina, the Tahitian goddess of the tnoon.
Over each shoulder, a disembodied head floats, which
may-or may not-be part of the painted background, akin
to other disturbing faces found in other of Gauguin's paintings.ýs"
No chair is visible, but some mangoes, at once an
offering to the gods and an evocation of the apples of Eve, sit
beside her.
Despite the assertion of her identity in the Tahitian title,
the painting is not a portrait of Teha'amana but a fiction
contrived in tandem with a fabrication-Noa Voa, the artist's
pseudomemoirs of his first stay in Tahiti.:'7 The absence of
situating elements in Woman with a Fan retnoves the sitter
from the physical density of Teha'amana's world, but her
image is no less charged. Neither sitter's identity per se is
relevant to the painting because Gauguin's representations of
women are constructs, regardless of links real or imagined to
actual individuals. Over the decade that separates these two,
the synthesis of Polynesian and European references became
less forced. While Gauguin's predilection fot an overt narrative
recedes, images of women remain the vehicle for reflections
about himself, his art, and his world.:"