Gauguin’s Skirt

Elegantly printed and sturdily bound in Slovenia, with 110 remarkable illustrations (seven in colour), many from private collections worldwide, this is a handsome book. In its challenging artistic and political insights, and its adventurous yet plausible speculations, it presents an enthralling new view of Paul Gauguin and of fin de siècle Tahiti. Gauguin reached the French colony of Tahiti in 1891, to encounter a society perniciously divided by race, sex and class. Through his drawing, painting, printmaking and sculpture, the artist sought to explore the indigenous Maohi culture, and the contradictions and ambiguities of the unequal colonial relationship. Eisenman uses...