GAUGUIN, Paul
(b. 1848, Paris, d. 1903, Atuona, Hiva Oa, French Polynesia)

We Shall not Go to Market Today (Ta Matete)

1892
Oil on canvas, 73 x 92 cm
Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel

In the absence of any remaining native culture in Tahiti, Gauguin gradually began to create a convincing fiction of life in a tropical paradise from an eclectic range of sources. After reading Moerenhout's Voyages aux Iles de Grand Ocean Published in 1892) he constructed some notion of a mythical past, and from a wide selection of photographs and illustrations that he took with him to Tahiti he imposed the cultures of so-called primitive peoples onto Tahitian subject matter in an attempt to make it look authentically 'savage'. In Ta Matete the poses of the figures derive from an Egyptian fresco painting on a Theban tomb that Gauguin had seen in the British Museum. In the work, he has retained the insistent frieze-like composition of his source, observing each of the women full-face or in rigid profile.

The work represents the prostitutes who frequented the market place in Papeete, in response to the demands of the colonial population. Gauguin's retention of the hieratic gestures of the original may be an ironic comment on the constrained sexuality of the native Tahitians, forced to pander to a Western audience.




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