In the late nineteenth century Tahiti embodied Western ideas of an earthly Paradise, a primitive utopia distant geographically and culturally from the Gilded Age or Belle Epoque. Stimulated by fin de siecle longings for the exotic, a few adventurous artists sought out this Eden on the South Seas - but what they found did not always live up to the Eden of their imagination. Bringing three of these figures together in comparative perspective for the first time, "Vanishing Paradise" offers a fresh take on the modernist primitivism of the French painter Paul Gauguin, the nostalgic exoticism of the American John LaFarge, and the elite tourism of the American writer Henry Adams. Drawing on archives throughout Europe, America, and the South Pacific, Childs explores how these artists, lured by romantic ideas about travel and exploration, wrestled with the elusiveness of paradise and portrayed colonial Tahiti in ways both mythic and modern.
- ISBN10 0520271734
- ISBN13 9780520271739
- Publish Date 18 May 2013
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of California Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 352
- Language English