Go Guin go: female artists challenge racism

History, as is Art History, is sprinkled with great leaders who have fast-tracked the course of developments. They more often than not were individuals who have brought to the day an unmatched ingenuity, imagination, and drive. Their influence is often accounted for only in retrospect through the eyes of the follower, the student, or the descendant.

Through these eyes we see (mostly) men of strong character of (mostly) weak will power. They are (mostly) white and are (mostly) from Europe. They are men of influence and presence. Men of their times, in both vision and oppression.

Though George Washington owned almost 400 slaves, he is still celebrated as the great leader of the United States. Though Wilhelm Richard Wagner was openly racist and his operas are known to have influenced Nazi Germany, he is still recognized worldwide for his talent.

Similarly, Paul Gauguin, a remarkable painter who shaped modern art unequivocally, was a man of pathologies. His sexual tourism and escapades are well documented, yet he remains in the eternal hall-of-fame of Post-Impressionism. Though his acts today would have landed him in prison if not the electric chair, in 1921 he was sainted by the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica.

Artistically, he inspired Primitivism, Symbolism, Fauvism, Cubism and others. Indirectly, he helped in the establishment of non-representational art, which after his 1903 death engulfed most of the 20th Century. Socially, he inspired and contributed to more than a century of inherent racism, which sees people of colour as primitive, simple-minded, and passive, and views women of colour as erotic adventures. His legacy, then, is not only one of great art, but is also one of sexual predation, sexism, and racism.

Yes, he was a man of his times, but the argument here is not that one's contributions to the world must be weighed against one's character. Rather, this is an attempt at an analysis of a legacy, which to a large extent forms today's prejudices.

Born in Paris, Gauguin spent his childhood in Peru. On a voyage there at the age of three, his father passed away, leaving his half-Peruvian mother to take care of him and his siblings. His exposure to art outside of Europe began there, and never stopped influencing him, even after his move back to France. A prominent stockbroker, he spent his free time painting, eventually giving up the profession for the pursuit of art full-time.

A family man he was not, as his biographer Nancy Mowll Mathews remarks 100 years after his death: "I discovered that Gauguin was a bully and an abusive husband." She continues to speak on his abandonment of his family in the pursuit of impregnation of other women, "God, the man had a lot of children. He loved the whole idea of someone getting pregnant and showing the world that he still had it."

Gauguin eventually contracted syphillis from which he eventually died. To deal with the painful symptoms, he self-medicated with opium, morphine, and other drugs.

Gauguin's art has influenced an image of women of colour that continues to plant seeds of racism throughout the world.

His timeless question, "Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?," placed in a painting of the same name is a stark example. Its portrayal of women of colour in various nude poses suggests them as the origins of an ever-progressing humanity.

Travelling to Brittania, and later to Eastern colonies, he settled on the Island of Tahiti on his second visit there, where most of his women of colour paintings originated. He saw them as symbols of liberation from the overly complicated and cultivated Europe. In them he saw a symbol of primitivism and simplicity, of returning back to the roots of humanity at its most primal stages.

In his famous Noa Noa: The Tahitian Journal, he remarks on these thoughts and gives vivid descriptions of his sexual desires and preoccupations.

"In the sunlight it was all an orgy in chrome. They told me that she was of Tonga origin. I greeted her; she smiled and sat down beside me. 'Aren't you afraid of me?' I asked. 'Aira (no).' Do you wish to live in my hut for always?' 'Eha (yes).'"

His influence shapes much of the racism inside the same art history texts that contribute to his celebrated greatness. "[Gauguin] abandoned the sophistication and materialization of Parisâe¦ He painted simple people who possessed intense imaginations and naïve piety,âe states Penelope J.E. Davies in her book Janson's History of Art: The Western Tradition.

It is precisely for this reason that Meera Karunananthan âe" who, in addition to being an artist, is also a writer who contributes to rabble.ca âe" has taken on artistic reinterpretation of his work. Her interest in the issue of the sexual exploitation of children stems from the fact that her native Sri Lanka has a reputation as a paedophile's paradise and is a primary source of sex tourism for Europe and North America.

Karunananthan developed an idea of responding to Gauguin's vision of women of colour with her own. His passively tranquil Two Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms, depicting Eve-like Tahitian women took on an active role in Karunananthan's interpretation. Here, the woman on the left is thought to be Pahura, the mother of his son, who was 14 when Gauguin met her while in his 50s. Karunananthan has reproduced Pahura as an adolescent girl to highlight the predatory nature of Gauguin's relationship with the young girl. The older woman on the right is shown confronting Gauguin in an attempt to challenge his representation of Tahitian women as passive and sexually available. "I wanted to reproduce their art in a way that exposed their patriarchy," she says.

After sharing her idea with Dr. Joann St. Lewis, the ball started rolling on the unique event taking place this Saturday in Ottawa. A panel discussion including Rosalie Favell and Dipna Horra will focus on a critical inter-disciplinary anthology of race in the Canadian context. It will then be followed by an exhibition, Corrective Lenses, that includes works by female artists from Ottawa, Montreal, and Turkey.

"We must challenge and question the racism of these paintings," says Karunananthan. "As an artist, I can recognize these as great painters. For example [Gauguin's] use of colour and texture is inspiring. But we have to understand how they've influenced our society."

Indeed Gauguin has inspired many artists, including a young group of Symbolists which form Les Nabis, who specifically used Gauguin as their adviser and motivator. His artistic genius is dwarfed only by the global recognition of his works, even during his life.

However, his legacy did not stop there. We must look now to this group of brave women who will take Gauguinâe(TM)s work out of the museum and into its social and political context.

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