Intro to Art History!!

Okay, so I know that I haven't posted anything for quite some time but I have been busy! I am now adjusting to living in Tallahassee, Florida and attending the Florida State University (Go Noles!!). Anyhoo, I decided that I need to keep this blog going just in case I ever get the opportunity to live abroad again! Haha, no, really I want to just keep this going because it has been a great way for me to let people know what I have been up to. And since I'm not visiting any ancient ruins in Mexico (for the moment!), I've decided to try to post something every two weeks that let's my friends and family know exactly what I'm studying. So here is the painting called "Manao Tupapau" or also "Spirit of the Dead Watching" by Paul Gauguin. Gauguin lived from 1848-1903. I've been learning a lot about this particular painting because I have to write a paper solely about this piece. I don't know everything about it, but here it goes! Gauguin left France in 1891 because he wanted to leave civilization and he believed that Tahiti, in French Polynesia, would be the perfect place for this. He wanted to make "simple art" which he basically developed into the art movement known as "primitivism" (he was truly known as being a Symbolist, moving beyond Post-Impressionism into modernity). So the naked girl is reportedly one of Gauguin's "teen-brides" in Tahiti (I know, some of these artists!) named Tehamana. The indigenous peoples of Tahiti believed in these spirits called "tupapau", and they would dwell among the living. Gauguin supposedly came back to his little hut one evening to find Tehamana frightened in the bedroom. He decided to create this painting, envisaging the "tupapau" as an old woman dressed in all black. Some anthropologists have said that the indigenous people would have never seen the "tupapau" as capable of taking human form. But Gauguin believed the opposite. Also, some scholars have stated that this painting is an assault on the contemporaneous European depiction of the nude and how it was always a woman and she was always depicted in a sexual manner. Perhaps this is a response to Manet's "Olympia" as some scholars have posited: Gauguin inverts the position of the nude, hiding her frontside. Anyways, I just wanted to post an entry and show one thing that I have been learning about, so I will next post something about my Islamic Art and Architecture class.