Opinion by AbigailMcGuire

Over spring break, I had the opportunity to visit the Art Institute of Chicago. I would like to say I was so happy about going because I am an art fanatic (which I am), but in reality, I was more excited to pretend I was a background character in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” And yes, I did watch that movie on the way to Chicago and again while I was there. 

Before we get into my complaints, let me give you some context. The Art Institute of Chicago is GIGANTIC. It could eat the Joslyn Art Museum, the Durham and the Luminarium and there would still be space inside the Institute. I ventured through the halls of Japanese and Korean prints, explored medieval and renaissance art, saw an exhibit on old medieval weapons (and a lot of axes), wandered in confusion among modern art and finally found my home: the impressionist galleries. 

I saw more impressionist art there than I ever had before—I saw the big names, Van Gogh, Monet and Pissarro—but also some lesser-known artists, like Louis Anquetin. But then I made the mistake of stumbling upon a muddy eyesore: Paul Gauguin. His painting, “Merahi metua no Tehamana” (1893) (translation: Tehamana Has Many Parents/The Ancestors of Tehamana) hangs on the entry wall of the impressionist gallery, and I believe it is a horrible introduction to the impressionist era. 

I hear the phrase “separate the art from the artist” a lot. This is how people justify listening to Kanye, Drake and reading J.K. Rowling’s novels. As a fan of Kanye’s early albums, I’ve sputtered off this phrase while listening to “The College Dropout.” But the thing is, Kanye didn’t make these works with the intention of all his current beliefs. That’s how Paul Gauguin is different and why he deserves to be criticized. His paintings feature the exact things he is criticized for, and he glamorizes imperialism and having child brides. 

Think back to one paragraph ago when I mentioned “Merahi metua no Tehamana.” This isn’t a simple painting of an indigenous girl, it is a fetishization of Gauguin’s child bride, Tehamana. As an influential white man, his marriages to Tehamana and the two other unnamed 14-year-olds were swept under the rug, even though he had a wife and five children in France that he abandoned. In the painting, Tehamana is surrounded by ripe fruit. In impressionist paintings, ripe fruit was used to represent fertility, beauty and lust, so having it alongside a 13-year-old girl is wildly problematic. Her holding a shovel in her left hand shows how he views her as a lesser being because she is a worker, and it insinuates that he views her not as her personhood, but something he can use for work and pleasure. 

This painting is a problem—and it’s not like Gauguin is a morally bankrupt guy who is simply painting a landscape—he is showcasing his immoral actions with pride. “Merahi metua no Tehamana” isn’t his only offense. 

Many of his paintings in Haiti idealize their culture, and he essentially creates deep fakes (AI generated images that look realistic, usually of people) where he draws naked women as a way to entice other rich European men to the island. 

But Haiti wasn’t the lustful paradise Gauguin represented it as, and his representation is misleading for those who want to study Haitian history because many of his paintings of the landscape and nudes are taken as true history. In reality, Haiti was a Christian island, and the women dressed very modestly, unlike Gauguin’s distasteful representations. 

So, this is what I propose: Gauguin’s works have value, just not in an art museum. They can, instead, serve as a period study of imperialism and patriarchal power, along with studying sociological patterns related to the acceptance and proliferation of pedophilia throughout imperialism.  

Graphic by Abigail McGuire