Dynamic exhibit highlights artist's depth

Before departing for Tahiti in 1890, Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) considered himself nothing more than a "Sunday painter," only practicing art on the side while working at the Paris Stock Exchange. Soon, however, after befriending famed artists Pissarro, Degas and Van Gogh, Gauguin decided to leave France and explore the Tahiti of his imagination; a land he felt would never be touched by modernization.

"Gauguin Tahiti," the Boston Museum of Fine Arts' newest blockbuster show, explores Gauguin's perpetual quest for paradise with an exhibit of over sixty paintings, in addition to woodwork, sculpture and pottery. The show's major strengths are its variety and complexity. The display is also unique in that many of the works, especially those from the Hermitage, are rarely seen in the United States.

The exhibit is organized chronologically, beginning in 1889, and the paintings are hung on matt walls in shades of white, slate blue and deep pink. At the beginning, visitors are presented with the artist's earlier work, which was done while he was still living in France with his Danish wife, but the whole show builds up to the critical piece, "Where do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" And understandably so -- after completing the work in 1898, Gauguin went into the woods, swallowed arsenic, and attempted suicide.

Though Gauguin did not spend all his days in Tahiti as he had planned, the artist did produce a great body of work during his two year stay, much of which is exhibited at the show. Gauguin, in the style he coins as "Synthetism," rejects depicting texture and realism, but rather uses bold colors, stylized forms, and a smooth, modeled look.

In "The Loss of Virginity" (1890-91), a pale woman lies naked on the earth, holding blue and red flowers in one hand. Her eyes are closed, her hair flat and dark; she lies on dirt that isn't quite brown, but more orange. Ambiguous green-gray stones lie at her feet and a fox, Gauguin's symbol for perversity, sits quietly on her chest, his paw casually on her breast.

In "Vahine no te vi," or "Woman with a Mango" (1892), a dark skinned woman casually stands holding a fire-orange mango. She wears a full-length European style dress, which had since replaced the traditional Tahitian cloth skirt (pareu), the garment in which Gauguin had envisioned all Tahitian women. She exemplifies the Tahitian woman of the artist's imagination, with warm hued skin and sculptural, rather muscular bodies. The painting displays Gauguin's illusion of what native women were like, mixed with the reality of a nation already visited by missionaries.

In addition to paintings, ceramic pieces and carved wooden bowls with traditional Tahitian relief prints are showcased in glass cases throughout the space, displaying Gauguin's broad range of skill and adding depth to his body of work. These diverse pieces, however, often go unnoticed with his bright paintings hanging on the walls.

Of particular interest is the original copy of Gauguin's manuscript, Noa Noa. In addition to his travel writings, Gauguin illustrated the document with snapshots, drawings and watercolor sketches. The book is telecasted on two screens, as the pages automatically turn for the viewer, showing his personal writings and drawings. The original book is displayed alongside, marking the first time it has ever been shown outside of France.

The apex of the show lies within the only room painted in dark gray. The entrance is narrower than for the other rooms, forcing the viewer to pay close attention upon entering - thus highlighting the central question of the masterpiece.

When his great masterpiece was painted in 1895, Gauguin had returned to Tahiti following his last trip back to France. He was stunned to find electric lights on the Tahitian streets that he had envisioned as forever archaic and, in response, he created the mammoth piece, "Where do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" displaying various episodes of human life in from childhood to death.

The composition is a sort of Eden, with animals, greenery, one lone Adam, and many Eves. It is the highlight of the show, and, for the first time since 1899, it has been reunited with seven of the small paintings that Gauguin produced following his suicide attempt in response to the monstrous composition.

"Gauguin Tahiti" ends with pieces from his 1901 trip to Hiva Oa in the Marquesas Islands, in search of a land even more primitive and pristine than Tahiti. There, he again painted women, and when Gauguin returned to Tahiti, he lived until his death in 1903 in a house he built on the shore (the carved doorframe is on display as well).

Gauguin never did find the paradise he was eternally seeking, though he read about it in novels and saw it in contemporaries' works, but his art is the art of his illusions of paradise -- illusions that he wished to believe were truly there, even as he makes his viewers believe that they're there.