Gauguin: Artist First, Adventurer Second

There are snaking lines of people waiting to see "Gauguin-Tahiti" at the Grand Palais. By the look of the crowds, you might think Paul Gauguin was a rock star, not the commercially unsuccessful artist who died broke in his Marquesan Island shack 100 years ago last May.

Gauguin's subsequent fame was fueled by the "noble savage" legend he himself put into play. The story of this Parisian stockbroker's flight from civilization and his discovery of a primitive paradise in Tahiti, has always threatened to eclipse his artistic achievements.

And that's exactly why this exhibition at the Grand Palais is so important. It doesn't undo the myth, but it does offer us a much better story-one steadily focused on the art.

You get a sense of this curatorial focus early on in the second gallery, where Polynesian sculpture and contemporary Tahitian photographs are shown together. The stone tikis and wooden carvings-from New Zealand, Easter Island, and the Marquesans-are objects Gauguin would have seen in Paris before he left for Tahiti. They directly inspired Gauguin's art; you will see how in the galleries that follow. (The special attention paid to Gauguin's sculpture and carvings, where that influence is most pronounced, is another reason why the exhibition is so revelatory).

Gauguin was, in fact, one of the first to mine the creative potential of non-western art forms, at a time when everyone else considered them just ethnographic curiosities. He single-handedly launched the "primitivism" that, beginning with Picasso, would nourish countless European artists throughout the next century.

When Gauguin arrived in Tahiti in 1891, however, almost none of this indigenous art remained. The photographs on the opposing wall give us a better idea of the thoroughly Europeanized Tahiti that a disappointed Gauguin discovered. One image depicts Tahitian women in the shapeless dresses introduced by Protestant missionaries, weaving the straw hats worn to Sunday services.

This fascinating juxtaposition makes an ideal introduction for Gauguin's paintings in the galleries that follow. His Tahitian work is far more interesting when it is not taken literally, when it is seen as a fantasy of a paradise that no longer existed.

Gauguin was most forthcoming about that (and also most poetic) during his second stay in Tahiti, from 1895-1901. Works from that period are installed in the bottom floor of the exhibition. Here, the unchallenged highlight is the enormous frieze of a painting, "Where are we from? What are we? Where are we going?" (1897) (D'où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous?)

Gauguin sought to sum up his entire artistic experience in this masterpiece (see image), made just before an unsuccessful attempt to take his own life. Even with the painting's slightly dark and existential mood, it remains a mystery how someone planning suicide could create such a gorgeous tribute to the pleasures of light and color.

Lent by Boston's MFA, this fragile painting has not been seen in Europe for half a century. To make the occasion even more exceptional, the curators have recreated the original exhibition in which "Where Are We From?…" was shown in 1898, when it was sent back to France with a naval officer. It is once again surrounded by nine, smaller related paintings that form a stunning decorative ensemble. And yet not one visitor to Vollard's gallery that year was moved enough to buy anything-not one sale! (The dealer stepped in and bought the entire set for a song).

The first generation to appreciate Gauguin's radical approach to design and color mainly consisted of other artists. When Gauguin's work was shown again at a memorial exhibition in 1906-Picasso, Matisse, and Derain (not yet modern masters) each seized on different fertile ideas they saw there. It would be impossible to imagine Matisse's "Blue Nude" or Picasso's "Demoiselles d'Avignon" (both 1907) without Gauguin's example.

Today, many of the Gauguin fans out front are lured by the popular story of a rebellious and misunderstood outsider, but all are eventually blown away by the art inside. It is Gauguin's gifts as a colorist, not an adventurer, that are most striking when his Tahitian paintings are seen together (there are over 50 of them here). Stepping in from the gray skies of a Parisian winter, you too will be dazzled by the warmth of the artist's dream-like vistas.