'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'
Posted by Thomas Scarborough
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) -- a painter whose legacy is not only disputed today, but increasingly disputed. An interesting feature of Gauguin's paintings in his 'Pacific phase' was their great beauty on the surface of it, while in the background lurked death, suffering, and cruelty.
In seminary, they taught us like this: Gauguin travelled to Tahiti, hoping to find untrammelled freedom in the ideal of the 'noble savage', but instead he discovered death, suffering, and cruelty. Therefore it was a false ideal.
The photo reminds me of the art of Paul Gauguin. I am the boy on the left -- in my own 'Pacific phase' in childhood. On the surface of it, the photo shows healthy, happy people. But as in the art of Gauguin, a deformed man crouches in their midst. I was fearful of him then.
Yet he was in the photo because he was included. He was loved. He was cared for. Is this what Gauguin saw? Did his fascination with the 'dark side' originate, not in his disillusionment with the ideal, but in the strange goodness of the 'noble savage'?
