Tahiti in February

Tahitian Women on the Beach
Paul Gauguin
1848-1903

Sounds good, doesn't it? We went downtown yesterday to the Seattle Art Museum to see their special exhibit called Gauguin and Polynesia: An Elusive Paradise. It was a blustery cold weekend and a good time to be inside looking at tropical paintings.

In 1891 Gauguin sailed to French Polynesia to escape "everything that is artificial and conventional." This included his wife and five children. He died and was buried at Atuona on the Marquesas Islands at age 54, from alcoholism and other diseases.

Paul Gauguin, Self-Portrait
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Paul Gauguin had a rocky friendship with Vincent Van Gogh. It didn't help that both suffered from depression and suicidal tendencies. In 1888, Gauguin and Van Gogh spent nine testy weeks together painting in the south of France, but Gauguin was disillusioned with Impressionism. They quarreled and the famous episode with the razor blade and ear followed.

The SAM show was crowded yesterday but good. All those reproductions of the famous Tahiti paintings only give a sense of the Primitivism and subtle colors of the originals. Gauguin's work was an important step in the development of modern art, and young Picasso was especially influenced by him. As often happens to the artist, his work came into vogue right after his death. Much of it was immediately bought by a Russian collector and is now on display at the Puskin Museum. The paintings we saw at SAM are on loan from collections all over the world. Gauguin paintings are rarely for sale and get snapped up for $40 million dollars or so.

The World Discoverer on Bora Bora

So all of this tropical paradise sent our minds happily wandering back to the mid-1990's when we took a cruise through French Polynesia and the Cook Islands on the World Discoverer. We flew from Los Angeles to Tahiti and the cruise started from there. Our small ship could maneuver into tight harbors and channels and it also had inflatable dingies that took us to remote shorelines, atolls, beaches and tiny islands along with the expedition naturalists. Near Papeete, Tahiti, we toured the Gauguin Museum on a dripping wet warm day. The original Gauguin paintings are long gone from the tropics, which is probably a good thing. His museum in the countryside only had a few reproductions, but was one of many interesting experiences on that trip.

The World Discoverer today

We have our happy memories, but the World Discoverer did not have a happy ending. In April 2000, the ship struck a reef near the Solomon Islands. Unlike the recent disaster in Italy, this rock really was unchartered. The same German captain and crew we had a few years earlier were congratulated for their heroic and professional actions during the crisis and there were no injuries. I remember the rather serious "abandon ship" practice drills we had on our cruise, so it must have paid off.

The closest ship salvage yard was in Australia, and when they finally arrived the World Discoverer had already been boarded and stripped by locals. Now the wreck is somewhat of a tourist attraction and cruise lines pass by so people can gawk at it. Society Expeditions refurbished another vessel and launched it in 2002. Two years later the ship was seized by creditors and the company declared bankruptcy. So I'm glad we went to paradise when we did.

Here's John sharing the SAM elevator with a couple of Tahitian beauties.