Here we make love 1893

Paul Gauguin made this evocative, untitled watercolor some time before his death in 1903. It depicts a nude woman at her toilette. Gauguin spent much of his career in French Polynesia, far from the Parisian art world. He associated the region with a primal freedom absent from European society. He used Tahitian subject matter to shock the bourgeoisie and critique the rigid social norms upheld by institutions like the French academy. Look at how the casual brushstrokes fly in the face of academic polish. Notice how he leaves the image unframed, as though it were a fragment torn from life, and how he titles it with a crude, sexual double entendre. This is a far cry from the tasteful nudes in the Louvre. The archives of French colonial administration and missionary societies can help us to better understand the culture that Gauguin both admired and exploited. For only then can we hope to untangle the meanings of an art that challenges our own cultural moment.