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Our Paradise: The Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia
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13004 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1995 |
228 Words |
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Photographed by Mark Downey; written by Christopher Baker
Mark Downey is a free-lance photographer and frequent
contributor to the Culture section. Christopher Baker is a
free-lance writer. |
Located 750 miles northeast of Tahiti, the Marquesas were the final stop for the French painter Paul Gauguin in his search for an untamed place. Gauguin came in 1901 hoping to light a final fire to his imagination on islands reputedly still inhabited by "savages" and cannibals. He was sorely dismayed to find that a culture once acclaimed by Capt. James Cook as the most artistically refined in the world had been overwhelmed by missionary influences so that Jehovah might triumph over the local tikis (idols).
Gauguin spent his last two years painting on Hiva Oa and is buried in a now-overgrown cemetery near Atuona. The Belgian singer and composer Jacques Brel lies a few feet away, buried on the island that he called "my paradise."
In the past decade the islanders have begun to find a renewed sense of identity in tune with their past. Art forms once deemed pernicious--dancing, tattooing, wood carving, and scented tapa cloth--are blossoming as brightly as the white starburst tiara buds that Marquesans wear in their ears. Skilled artisans are again coming to occupy the position of tuhuka (craftsman) so esteemed in former times. Moreover, while church attendance in the nineteenth century was considered a drab substitute for the kaleidoscope of traditional ceremonials, the islanders of today no longer find that their Catholicism need inhibit the expression of their artistic and cultural identity.
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