The Symbolism of Paul Gauguin: Erotica, Exotica, and the Great Dilemmas of Humanity (review)

Synthesizing over fifty years of research on Gauguin and symbolism, The Symbolism of Paul Gauguin, published posthumously, is Henri Dorra's definitive statement on the artist. It revisits familiar terrain—the longest chapter is devoted to Gauguin's Breton "Eves," a subject on which Dorra first published in the 1950s—but develops it in an accessible, chronological narrative that will introduce the work of one of Gauguin's first modern scholars to a wider audience.¹

If it is by now a commonplace that Gauguin's Tahitian symbolism had its roots in Europe, Dorra was among the first to reveal this, by showing the relevance of Western religious iconography to Gauguin's "exotic" visions of Oceania. He elaborates on this argument here, demonstrating conclusively how influences born in France remained relevant throughout Gauguin's career. Even as he encountered new visual and literary sources in Tahiti, he continued to draw on European theosophical texts, the theories of his socialist feminist grandmother Flora Tristan, and the theme of the "fallen" woman. Addressing lesser-known paintings, sculpture, prints, and illustrations, as well as canonical masterpieces, Dorra's interdisciplinary analysis reflects Gauguin's diverse range of media and his literary references. Throughout, contemporary texts on literature, criticism, philosophy, and theology, as well as the artist's own writings, enrich the interpretation of works of art, attesting to Gauguin's—and Dorra's—erudition.

Dorra paints a portrait of the artist as highly literate and self-aware, far from the stereotype of the naïve "savage" that Gauguin himself promoted. For his main concern is to elucidate the complex and ambivalent symbolism—visual and literary—which clothed Gauguin's musings on philosophy, religion, sexuality, and society. In this sense his approach—less obviously grounded in the postcolonial revisionism that informs much recent scholarship on the artist—continues the work of the generation of art historians who first provided vital in-depth studies of his influences and iconography.² Careful not to undermine the deliberate mystery of Gauguin's symbolism with overly rigid interpretation, Dorra stresses the polysemy and ambiguity of recurrent motifs, gestures, and symbols. His interpretations are ingenious, combining close visual analysis—often exploiting the symbolic potential of semi-abstract or barely visible forms—with social and literary context.

For example, the reliefs of ballet dancers on the carved-wood Jewelry Casket (1884) function both as a social critique and a meditation on theosophy. Recalling Degas's ballet scenes, the dancers and their older male observer, together with an indigent mother and the corpse-like figure entombed inside the casket, form a suggestive narrative of poverty and exploitation, which Dorra fleshes out with references to contemporary novels and Tristan's feminist writings. Moving from modernity to metaphysics, abstract spherical shapes, alongside biblical apples, evoke the origins of the soul, as described in the theosophical tracts of Helena Blavatsky, and echoed in Gauguin's Diverses choses (1896–7). Since, for Gauguin, the evolution of the soul parallels the development of artistic creativity, the imagery of the casket can be read as a "cosmic fable" (35), in which the dancers' physical ordeal is transcended by their aesthetic and spiritual triumph: the victory of art over material reality.

Still-Life with Profile of Laval (1886–7), in Dorra's analysis, similarly functions on multiple levels, and contains a cryptic celebration of the Symbolist aesthetic. Ostensibly a tribute to the artist's disciple Charles Laval, the true focus is a metaphorical self-portrait in the form of one of Gauguin's ceramic pots. Its unusual form resembling a jester's cap, it hints at Gauguin's sardonic intent. Residual forms in the wallpaper reveal a pear and turnip, which carry associations of failure in colloquial French, enhancing the suggestion of caricature in the timid, peering features of Laval's cropped profile. At once more tongue-in-cheek and more sophisticated than it first appears, this seemingly...