Are You Jealous? 1892

Paul Gauguin painted 'Are You Jealous?' with oil on canvas during his first trip to Tahiti, seeking an escape from what he saw as the superficiality of European society. Here, Gauguin presents two Tahitian women in a landscape saturated with vibrant, non-naturalistic colors. This wasn't just an aesthetic choice. Gauguin was creating an image of Tahiti as an untouched paradise, free from the complexities and constraints of Western civilization. The title itself, "Are You Jealous?", seems to taunt the viewer with this vision of exotic sensuality and freedom. But let's think about that freedom for a moment. Gauguin, a white European man, is projecting his desires and fantasies onto these women and this landscape. What do we know about their stories, their desires, and their experiences? Do these women have agency, or do they exist within the confines of Gauguin's imagination? Gauguin once said, "I am escaping everything that is artificial and conventional." Yet, isn't this image also artificial, a construction of his own making?