Text and textures of Gauguin's Tahiti

Materiality and physicality are at the center of the new exhibit "Gauguin's Paradise Remembered: The Noa Noa Prints" at the University Art Museum. Housed in a single, simply arranged room, the exhibit explores Gauguin's experiments with the medium of the woodcut print. After many exhibits wide in scope, it is a pleasure to delve into the conceptual project of a single artist and to immerse oneself in Gauguin's roughly hewn Tahitian paradise.

Paul Gauguin traveled to Tahiti in 1891 hoping to find a primitive, undeveloped island. What he found was a relatively modern society that had been Christianized by missionaries - but he wouldn't let that interfere with his art. So he projected his original vision of untainted jungles and exotic natives onto the disappointing island he found. He wrote a much-fictionalized travel journal "Noa Noa" (Tahitian for "fragrance"), which was a mixture of his actual experiences and his idealized imaginings.

Gauguin intended the 10 prints at the center of "Paradise Remembered" as accompanying illustrations to the fantastical text. Though such a pairing was never realized, the prints and text are clear complements and reflect each other's primitive style. Curator Calvin Brown's opening wall text explains the impetus for the exhibit: The series of "Noa Noa" prints represents a vastly different style from Gauguin's painting, with which most people are much more familiar.

Though they comprise only a third of the exhibit, the 10 "Noa Noa" prints are the clear highlights, stretching across the entire back wall of the room. Particularly noteworthy are "Te Atua (‘The Gods'), which is almost sculptural in its incredible texture and unusual frieze-like composition, and "Te Faruru (Here We Make Love)," which uses the seemingly accidental technique of printing out of register in a way that makes it seem almost as if it's vibrating. Gauguin's use of these "accidental" techniques creates richly textured tableaux that seem both otherworldly and primitively idealized.

Full explanatory labels accompany each item in the exhibit, which is helpful but somewhat distracting. Though the labels mostly offer the ideal mixture of enhancing detail and insight, they can be a bit repetitive. It may have been more effective to present the 10 main prints as an uninterrupted whole with, perhaps, accompanying excerpts from the "Noa Noa" manuscript - after all, they were originally intended as accompanying illustrations.

In addition to the 10 main prints, the curators include a variety of printed works both from Gauguin himself and from his contemporaries. Unlike Gauguin, who embraced woodcutting's raw power for textured expression, his contemporaries apparently were more interested in applying the archaic technique to modern styles and subjects. A particularly telling work by Louis-Auguste Lepere depicts a decidedly Parisian scene, complete with modern fashion and industrial smoke. The Lepere print is a perfect foil to the roughly carved Gauguin prints.

What is missing in the way of comparative aids are any of Gauguin's own paintings. Small reproductions are included on some labels for prints that have close painted counterparts. This is particularly interesting for "Auti te pape (Women at the River)," in which Gauguin's treatment of textures is drastically different in the printed version than in the painting. The inclusion of even a single painting, however, would have been beneficial in establishing a direct contrast between Gauguin's printed and painted styles. This is not to diminish the power of the prints, however, which strike the viewer as both bold visions of a fantastical world and as unique masterpieces of engraving.