Arii Matamoe
Arii Matamoe (The Royal End) | |
---|---|
Artist | Paul Gauguin |
Year | 1892 |
Catalogue | 2008.5 |
Type | Oil on coarse fabric[1] |
Dimensions | 45.1 cm × 74.3 cm (17.8 in × 29.3 in) |
Location | J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California |
Arii Matamoe or The Royal End (French: La Fin royale) is a painting on coarse cloth by the French artist Paul Gauguin, created in 1892 during the painter's first visit to Tahiti. It depicts a man's severed head on a pillow, displayed before mourners, and although it did not depict a common or contemporary Tahitian mourning ritual, may have been inspired by the death of Pōmare V in 1891 shortly after Gauguin's arrival.[2] A curator for the J. Paul Getty Museum suggested Gauguin likely painted the canvas "to shock Parisians" upon his expected return to the city.[2]
Origins and description
In 1891, Gauguin sailed for Tahiti (a voyage lasting two months) expecting to experience an untouched Eden, far removed from his European experience. He was instead disappointed to discover that Pape'ete, the capital of the Tahitian colony, was heavily Europeanized and full of expensive distractions. Not finding life in Pape'ete conducive to his creative work, Gauguin moved after three months to the isolated village of Mataiea, near Papeari. It was here that his Tahitian-inspired vision flourished, and where he completed dozens of paintings.
"I have just finished a severed Kanak [Pacific Islander] head, nicely arranged on a white cushion, in a palace of my invention and guarded by women also of my invention", Gauguin wrote to his friend (and future biographer) Daniel de Monfreid in June 1892.[1] The death of Pōmare V not long after Gauguin's arrival, as well as Gauguin's witnessing of a public execution by guillotine several years earlier, are both thought to have informed the work;[1] Gauguin would later write in Noa Noa [ca], a collage book which includes a photograph of Arii Matamoe (Noa Noa was compiled after Gauguin's stay in Tahiti and first published in 1901), that the death of the last Tahitian King seemed to him a metaphor for the disappearance of native Tahitian culture at the hands of Europeans.[1] Pōmare V, who was pressured to abdicate and give Tahiti and its island dependencies to France in 1880, and who would later succumb to alcoholism, was not decapitated or put on similar public display.[3] At best, such rituals were uncommon in Tahitian history.[2]
In Arii Matamoe, Gauguin achieves a tropical sensibility through a color palette ranging from muted purples and browns to yellows, reds, and vivid pinks.[1] The rustic, exotic qualities of Gauguin's imaginary "palace" are emphasized by the artist's choice of a rough, burlap-like cloth for his canvas.[1] The severed head, displayed on a low-lying table or serving platter, is decorously presented with only a hint of blood; a despairing nude woman crouches nearby, while a figure just outside the room seems to proclaim the man's death to still more people further away.[1] The interior is rich with Tiki-like figures and suggestive geometric patterns.[4] Freely mixing Eastern and Western influences, Gauguin combined motifs and imagery borrowed from Tahitian, Javanese, French, and Peruvian sources, and by doing so created a rich symbolic mélange which, according to Gauguin scholar Elizabeth Childs, indicates that he was "interested in proving himself to a Parisian art market".[2]
The words "ARii" (meaning "noble" or "royal", related to the Hawaiian word ali'i) and "MATAMOE" (meaning "sleeping eyes" and implying, in this context, death) are here written in the upper left background above the severed head,[1] which itself alludes to imagery frequently seen in European painting such as of St. John the Baptist and Orpheus.[1] The phrase "ARii MATAMOE", written in crisp capital letters, serves somewhat like the Latin phrase "ET IN ARCADIO EGO" in paintings by Poussin, for example, reminding both the figures within the scene and the outside observer of their mortality.[4]
Getty curator Scott C. Allan has argued that Arii Matamoe is both a "symbolic self-portrait" and a "self-mythologizing work", which serves both to fetishize Gauguin's fantasies of cultural estrangement and martyrdom while hinting of possible redemption and renewal.[4]
Provenance and exhibition history
The painting was exhibited in Paris by the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel in November 1893,[2][4] along with 40 other recently created Gauguin works, but did not immediately sell; it also failed to find a buyer in the Bernheim-Jeune auction of Gauguin works in 1895.[1] The artist Henry Lerolle would purchase Arii Matamoe at auction in 1895 for 400 francs from Drouot,[5] and eventually bequeath it to his wife in 1929.[1] It was briefly owned by the collaborationist writer and art collector Émile Roche, who sold it "before the war"[1] to Georges Leven [fr], a prominent French-Jewish lawyer and acting director of the Alliance Israélite Universelle until his death in 1941; Leven's heirs consigned the painting to an unknown Geneva gallery between 1941 and 1945.[1]
Although well known to art historians and scholars, the painting was privately owned after World War II by a Swiss collector who, after 1946, lent it only once for an obscure domestic exhibition.[1][2] After eight years of negotiations, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles announced its purchase in March 2008, declining to name the painting's last private owner or the painting's cost (estimated around $30 million by Le Figaro).[5] At the time, Getty curator of paintings Scott Schaefer called Arii Matamoe "the ultimate still life" and "the most famous painting by Gauguin that no one has seen".[3] After a light cleaning, the painting has been on public display since and has been lent by the Getty for several exhibitions.[1][3]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o "Arii Matamoe (The Royal End)". The J. Paul Getty Museum. Retrieved December 16, 2015.
- ^ a b c d e f Wyatt, Edward (March 12, 2008). "Getty Museum Buys a Seldom-Exhibited Gauguin". The New York Times. Retrieved December 16, 2015.
- ^ a b c Muchnic, Suzanne (March 12, 2008). "Gauguin on a platter". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved December 16, 2015.
- ^ a b c d Allan, Scott C. (2012). ""A Pretty Piece of Painting": Gauguin's "Arii Matamoe"". Getty Research Journal (4): 75–90. JSTOR 41413133.
- ^ a b Duponchelle, Valérie (March 26, 2008). "L'Amérique s'empare d'un Gauguin méconnu". Le Figaro. Retrieved December 17, 2015.
External links
- Noa Noa, Paris: La Plume, [1901].
- Noa Noa : édition définitive, Paris: Les éditions G. Crès et Cie, 1924.
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- List of paintings
- Study of a Nude (1880)
- Still Life with Profile of Laval (1886)
- Still Life with a Sketch after Delacroix (c. 1887)
- Vision after the Sermon (1888)
- The Painter of Sunflowers (1888)
- Landscape near Arles (1888)
- The Wave (1888)
- Portrait of Madame Roulin (1888)
- Fields by the Sea (1889)
- The Beautiful Angel (1889)
- Fruits on a Table (1889)
- The Schuffenecker Family (1889)
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- The Yellow Christ (1889)
- The Green Christ (1889)
- Christ on the Mount of Olives (1889)
- Self-Portrait with Halo and Snake (1889)
- Still Life with Head-Shaped Vase and Japanese Woodcut (1889)
- Self-Portrait with the Yellow Christ (c. 1890–91)
- Tahitian Women on the Beach (1891)
- Tahitian Woman with a Flower (1891)
- A Man with an Axe (1891)
- Ia Orana Maria (1891)
- The Bunch of Flowers (1891)
- Conversation (1891)
- Early Evening (1892)
- Landscape with Peacocks (Death) (1892)
- Parau na te varua ino (1892)
- Vahine no te vi (1892)
- Vairumati tei Oa (1892)
- Fatata te Miti (By the Sea) (1892)
- Arearea (1892)
- Spirit of the Dead Watching (1892)
- Te Fare (1892)
- When Will You Marry? (1892)
- Aha Oe Feii? (1892)
- Arii Matamoe (1892)
- The Siesta (1892–1894)
- Merahi metua no Tehamana (1893)
- Otahi (1893)
- Self-Portrait in a Hat (1893)
- Mahana no atua (1894)
- Nave nave moe (1894)
- Arearea no varua ino (1894)
- Le violoncelliste (1894)
- Breton Peasant Women (1894)
- Eiaha Ohipa (1896)
- Nave Nave Mahana (1896)
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- Vairumati (1897)
- Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897/1898)
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- Two Tahitian Women (1899)
- The Great Buddha (1899)
- Tahitian Woman and Boy (1899)
- Landscape, Horse on the Road (1899)
- The Call (1902)
- Still Life with Exotic Birds (1902)
- Landscape with a Pig and a Horse (1903)
- Jug in the Form of a Head, Self-Portrait (1889)
- Soyez amoureuses vous serez heureuses (wood panel, 1889)
- Objet décoratif carré avec dieux tahitiens (sculpture, 1893–1895)
- Oviri (ceramic sculpture, 1895)
- Le Sourire (1899–1900)
- Paul Gauguin Museum (Tahiti)
- Paul Gauguin Cultural Center (Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands)
- Paul Gauguin Interpretation Centre (Martinique)
- Jean René Gauguin (son)
- Pola Gauguin (son)
- Paul René Gauguin (grandson)
- Flora Tristan (grandmother)
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- Vincent van Gogh
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- Charles Laval
- George-Daniel de Monfreid
- Camille Pissarro
- Émile Schuffenecker
- Theo van Gogh
- Ambroise Vollard
- The Moon and Sixpence (1942 film)
- Lust for Life (1956 film)
- Rebel in Paradise (1960 film)
- The Wolf at the Door (1986 film)
- Paradise Found (2003 film)
- Gauguin: Off the Beaten Track (2013 comic book)
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