Tahiti ; the utopia of Gauguin becomes a nightmare

Paul Gauguin has been one of the leaders of the post-impressionism movement. At the end of the nineteenth century. He has been gone through a difficult time. His friend, Vincent van Gogh had cut a piece of his ear off and was dead. And Gauguin himself had tried to commit suicide.

Gauguin has always been different then others in his time. He hated the realistic world with sadness, poverty and ugly industrial influences in daily life. Gauguin lived in his own world, created his own utopian world in his mind. His paintings were just illustrations of the images in his mind.

And so, Gauguin heared people speaking of some pure communities on the other side of the world, and he would love to go there and see the pure world, a happy life and new inspiration for new paintings would follow.

Just an era ago, people like Samuel Wallis and Louis-Antoine de Bougainville were the first of their country to be on Tahiti, the country of which the magnificent painter heared of in the end of the nineteenth century. And many French people were travelling to colonies to become entrepreneur and earn a lot of money in those years. So, when Gauguin went on board in the port of Le Havre in 1891, all the other crew members were entrepreneurs and sea people. The ship went to French Polynesia at first. And only Gauguin and a shipman went on a small boat to go to Tahiti.

At the end of 1892, Gauguin arrived at a pure and beautiful coast, with perfectly yellow sand, the sky was beautiful and the three were full with fresh fruit like bananas and oranges. Gauguin hadn?t taken any clothes with them. Because he knew that the inland people were naked all the day, so he thought that integrate with the should be a lot more easy when he did the same. He had left his clothes in the boat, and the shipman went back to Poynesia.

What Gauguin didn?t knew, is that the French colonists hadn?t been there for almost a year, because of the problems in the other colonies. In the meantime, Tahitian civilians had killed all the French pioneers. The civilization in Tahiti was build in a system, in which the men ruled over women since the creation of the earth. In 1887, the first queen ruled over the community. Pomare IV was a feminist and a cruel tiran, she decided to make the men in the community slaves of their wives and let them bare children. The men tried in 1889 to commit a coup and take over the reign. Queen Pomare and her female army defeated the men and all the other men were ruthlessly killed to solve those problems for ever. The ladies were in charge for almost three years and their sons and daughters grew up, becoming the next generation of the Tahitian empire.

The boys were slaves to their mothers and sisters, doing all kind of domestic tasks. And they were sex slaves to the females, baring daughters with them. The girls were privileged and their mothers took care over them, to become a good civilian of Tahiti in the near future. Queen Pomare hadn?t had a man because he should be special, of royal blood or a chosen one, someone from outside Tahiti, send by the gods, he would serve her and take care of her for the rest of his/her life, and bare a daughter with her, so that their daughter could become the next queen of Tahiti.

Paul was unknown with the current situation, he was only thinking of the paradise this country should be, he was in the tree, picking bananas and oranges, because he was hungry. And then, a female warrior asked him ?What are you doing? Who are you?? ?I?m Paul Gauguin, a French painter and I?m picking bananas and oranges? The female warrior thought of the chosen one and said ?My queen would love to invite you to a dinner, to celebrate your safe arrival, would you come with me?? ?Sure, I would love to? was Paul?s answer. And so, two hours later, Paul was in the biggest three shed of Tahiti, on a wooden table and ate the local species, not knowing his destiny as a servant to the queen.