Primitivism and Paradise: the Myth of Innocence As Depicted in the Works of Ruud Van Empel and His Artistic Influences

Primitivism and Paradise: The Myth of Innocence as Depicted in the Works of Ruud van Empel and His Artistic Influences

A PROJECT SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY

Shauna C. Moore

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF LIBERAL STUDIES

August 2012

To Jim, the love of my life. Without your love, guidance and support this work would not be possible. To Georgie, Carlos, and Lenny who all encourage my search for paradise.

O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall? ― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

CONTENTS List of Illustrations………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…..iv Chapter: 1 - Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……..1

2 - Eden: Historic Origins, Interpretation of its Meaning and Why it is Relevant………………………..4

3 - Primitivist Art and Paul Gauguin…………………………………………………………………………………….…..12

4 - Primitivism as Orientalism………………..………………………………………………………………………………..24

5 - Ruud van Empel………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….30

6 - Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..41

Bibliography………………………………………………………….………………………………………………………………..49

iii

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1 - Ruud van Emple, World, 2005…...... …………….1

Figure 2 - William Blake, The Temptation and Fall of Eve, 1808……………………………………………….…4

Figure 3 -John Calvin, Map of Biblical Regions of the Middle East, 1568…………………………………….8

Figure 4 - Frontpiece of Elvy Edison Callaway's book, In the Beginning locating Eden in the Florida Panhandle, 1971……………………………………………………………………………………..………….8

Figure 5 - Javanese Village at the Paris Exposition 1889……………………………………………………………13

Figure 6 - Henri Rousseau, Eve, 1906……………………………………………………………………………………….14

Figure 7 - Henri Rousseau, The Dream, 1910……………………………………………………………………….…..15

Figure 8 - Photograph of Gauguin’s mother, 1886……………………………………………………………………17

Figure 9 - Paul Gaugin, Exotic Eve, 1890…………………………………………………………………………………..17

Figure 10 - Paul Gaugin, "Te Nave Nave Fenue", or The Delighful Land, 1891…………………………..20

Figure 11 - Paul Gauguin, Merahi Metua no Tehamana (Tehamana Has Many Parents), 1893..23

Figure 12 - P. Godey, French Colonial with Polynesian Woman, 1880………………………………………24

Figure 13 - Explore Tahiti Brochure, 1985………………….…………………………………………………………….27

Figure 14 - Paul Gauguin, Words of the Devil, 1892……………………………………………………….…………28

Figure 15 - Ruud van Empel, World #4, 2005……………………………………………………………….…………..31

Figure 16 - Unknown Artist, Josephine, 1871……………………………………………………………….…………..32

Figure 17 - Ruud van Empel, World #1, 2005………………………………………………………….……………..…33

Figure 18 - Ruud van Empel, World #21, 2006…….………………………………………………………………..….34

Figure 19 - Ruud van Empel, World #3, 2005……………………………………………………………….…………..34

iv Figure 20 - Ruud van Empel, Venus #3, 2007……..………….………………………………………..……………….35

Figure 21 - Ruud van Empel, Venus #7, 2008……………………………………………………………..…………….36

Figure 22 - Robert Mapplethorpe, Rosie, 1976………………………………………………………….………….... 37

Figure23 - Sally Mann, untitled (from Immediate Family), 1986……………………………………..……....37

Figure 24 - Henri Rousseau, The Snake Charmer, 1907…………………………………………………..………..39

Figure 25 - Ruud van Empel, World #24, 2007……………………………………………………….………..……….40

Figure 26-Ruud van Empel, Venus #5, 2007……………………………………………………………...……………..41

Figure 27-Lucas Cranach the Elder, detail from Adam and Eve, 1528……………………………………….45

Figure 28- Ruud van Empel, Venus #1, 2006………………………………………………………….….……………..45

Figure 29- Lucas Cranach the Elder, Venus, 1532……………………………………………………………………..46

v Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION Dark with excessive bright . . . -John Milton

Figure 1 Ruud van Empel, World, 2005

Ruud van Empel is a contemporary photographic artist. Although the images he creates are naturalistic, they depict a paradise that does not--and never has--existed. Using computer technology to manipulate his images, van Emple creates exotic, gardenlike settings populated with dreamy adolescents and children who embody innocence (Figure 1). His extraordinary

1 photographs are simultaneously beautiful and inherently unsettling. What assumptions do artists and we as viewers project on images of innocence? What, if anything, does van Empel try to communicate in his imagery? If anything, his artwork evokes the imagery of late 19th and early 20th century Primitivism, especially works by Paul Gauguin and Henri Rousseau. Reminding us of Gauguin and Rousseau, van Empel’s art resonates, confronting us with the still persistent, complex, and sometimes disturbing imagery that underlies Primitivism with its connection to the Eden myth, specifically the idea of innocence in paradise.

The myth of innocence in the Garden of Eden holds sway over our modern imaginations. The story of the Garden of Eden is one of the most persistent myths in recorded time, a myth that many still literally believe. Prior to partaking of the forbidden fruit, the inhabitants of Eden, Adam and Eve, lived in a garden of peace that promised permanent youthfulness, and, above all, a state of constant innocence. It is my intention to focus on this state of innocence, how it has been depicted by the artists mentioned, and to reveal the both beautiful and dangerous implications that the notion of innocence casts upon its subjects and society. It is also my intention to demonstrate how Ruud van Emple uses the artistic language of Primitivism and how this language is both beautiful and terrible.

The Paradise myth has cross-cultural roots and remains relevant to contemporary culture as demonstrated in art and literature. The Eden myth specifically speaks in a fundamental way to our basic human nature. Paradise, as told in the Eden story, tells of temptation, taboo, and, ultimately, a developing awareness of erotic desire. It is a place that begins in innocence, is taken away, and ends, for some, with a longing to return. Admittedly, these are large themes. I will explore how the element of innocence that underlies this story remains relevant to us today, and how the meaning underlying the myth of Paradise has cross-cultural artistic and social implications.

The idea of Paradise as a garden filled with sensuality, and as a promised place filled with rewards and even sexual discovery, stems from some of our most basic desires. Not simply a

2 nostalgic tale of a simpler time, the Eden myth is a metaphor for making sense of life’s struggles while giving hope for a better place to which we may someday return. The story of Eden persists because of a desire to return to innocence and guilt-free pleasure paired with abundance and peace. The hope for a return to paradise is thus a hope for a return to lost innocence.

In looking at van Empel and his influences, I will further examine how innocence is portrayed and will consider the implications. I will look at how the idealized state of innocence, goodness, and purity still has an allure in contemporary art and thought. Even when not literally recreating the Eden story in their art, the imagery and themes of Eden and innocence reoccur time and again in the works of many artists. If images portrayed in popular culture are any indication, the desire to return to a state of youth and innocence is as strong as ever. The conflict between profane desire and a sacred aspiration for peace and perfection as told in this story holds clues to the aesthetic experience demonstrated in our struggle with suffering and desire. As I explore these ideas I will examine the historic context for Primitivism, demonstrating a connection between Primitivism and the idealization of Edenic innocence. The longing for innocence led to exploitation by Paul Gauguin, a French Post-Impressionist painter. Exploitation was a sub-text throughout the history of colonization during the age of Enlightenment. With library sources and secondary data gathered by others, I will consider many of the ideas surrounding Primitivism, the Eden story, and the social implications of innocence as put forth by a variety of philosophers, religious thinkers and other scholars. The implications are profoundly contemporary.

Chapter Two EDEN: HISTORIC ORIGINS, INTERPRETATION OF ITS MEANING AND WHY IT IS RELEVANT

. . . but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die. -Genesis 2:17

Figure 2-William Blake, The Temptation and Fall of Eve, 1808

The Story “Innocence” is introduced early in the Bible. It is readily lost. In the second chapter of Genesis, Adam (Man) is placed by God in The Garden of Eden and is given free reign as a sort of caretaker provided he avoids eating of “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. Then he is

4 given a companion, Woman, whom he names Eve. A few lines later in chapter 3, the Man and Woman are tempted by a serpent (evil) and eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, breaking God’s one rule. As a result, they are cast out of Paradise.

If one assumes that partaking of the forbidden fruit endows one with “knowledge of good and evil,” then it follows that a necessary condition for living in paradise is a state in which one is ignorant of good and evil, a sort of blissful naïveté. If ignorance is bliss, then paradise is a state of ignorance. This is a very specific type of innocence, not just one in which bad or wrong acts are not committed, but a state in which one is unaware that such acts even exist. It is a childlike state of trust in which there is simply nothing bad in the world. This point is made clear by John Ashton and Tom Whyte in The Quest for Paradise: Visions of Heaven and Eternity in the World’s Myths and Religions. In their chapter on The Garden of Eden, they point out that the presence of the fruit of “knowledge of good and evil” makes this, “a myth of innocence. Children, unaware of the moral difference between good and evil, are indeed innocent. But humanly speaking their innocence is as much a defect as a virtue. Like them, the first man, though physically mature and fully formed, was still spiritually a child” (59). For the purposes of this work, when I refer to innocence, I speak of this defective and virtuous, beautiful and damaging, childlike state, a sort of mythical innocence that existed in paradise prior to what is commonly referred to as “The Fall. “

It is important to explore both the story of Eden as it appears in Genesis, but also to explore origins, interpretations, and reinterpretations of this story in order to understand the meaning behind the myth. It is an ancient myth, one with roots that predate the Genesis story. The Garden of Eden represents a place that is ideal and beautiful, removed from awareness and strife, but also from knowledge. It is a story of loss and betrayal. Satan, disguised as a serpent, attracts and tempts Eve, persuading her to eat the forbidden fruit, which results in both her and Adam being banished from Paradise, forbidden from ever returning.

5 Noted mythologist, Joseph Campbell, in order to understand the intentions of the story, challenges us to look at the myth in reverse. Focusing on the results of lost innocence, Campbell suggests that the snake is not the devil in disguise but is instead a savior. Adam and Eve were not so much kicked out -- they escaped. The Garden of Eden was almost too perfect; everything contained in it was known with no surprises: the never-ending sameness of a happy but endless childhood. Paradise is therefore like Alcatraz and when Eve discovers that there is more to discover about life, and that wisdom can be obtained by eating from the tree of knowledge, she becomes the first true explorer. She is now free to have the opportunity to live, grow old and even die. Their life really began with this particular act of disobedience. Campbell concludes, “Now God must have known very well that man was going to eat the forbidden fruit. But it was by doing that that man became the initiator of his own life” (53). The symbolic role of the serpent plays an important role for Campbell, “The serpent sheds its skin to be born again . . . That’s an image of life. Life sheds one generation after another to be born again” (60).

Thus, Eden can serve as a place of happiness and peace, or serve as a prison housing our souls. It is a concept we still struggle with today. As mythic themes, innocence and Eden resonate across cultures. The name of the myth might change but many of the stories will point to the garden as some sort of beginning. Deborah Klochko mentions the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh as an early example of a garden paradise that ultimately ends with the loss of a simpler life. This myth ends like the biblical Tower of Babel in which the gods complicate things, destroying human serenity, by imposing the confusion of multiple languages (and thereby ethnicities) on humanity (9).

Following in the tradition of Campbell, Harold Kushner in his book How Good Do We Have to Be, provides an alternate interpretation of Eden that gives us permission to be forgiven for our human nature and to understand the meaning behind innocence. He uses the Christian concept of “original sin,” John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and other stories to show how we have interpreted God’s expectations of us to mean that we are born sinners who must become

6 perfect--which are not, as Kushner suggests, God’s expectations of us. His suggestion is that the story of the Garden of Eden is the story of the first human beings graduating from the uncomplicated world to knowing that good and evil exists, and that what is most important to us as humans is to live with integrity. This book also suggests that if Adam and Eve had not eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, they would not have had needs, feelings or independent thoughts. So, it would not have mattered what happened around them (16-33).

Where to Find Paradise Although many, if not most, cultures speak of some sort of garden paradise, the Eden story is the story that continues to persist to the present. In fact, it is central to western culture and beliefs. There are variations to the story and how it has been interpreted, but for the world’s major monotheistic religions, it is truly a central premise,:“ There is a Biblical sense of Eden and Paradise, but there are very modern interpretations of these terms. We know that the word Paradise is from ancient Persia, and whether it was Judaism, Islam, or Christianity, they all had a version of Paradise” (Klochko 14). For almost three millennia, Jews and later Christians and Muslims, believed literally in the story of Eden. Many still do so. The story has formed and solidified attitudes about such important concepts as sin, knowledge, death, redemption, the divine, and, of course, innocence. People’s understanding of the story has evolved over time, but it remains relevant, particularly in its relationship to our attitudes about innocence.

As mentioned, people believed in a literal Eden for millennia. Genesis hints at its location: And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed . . . A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches. The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Cush. 14The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates (New International Version, Gen 2. 8,10-14).

7 For centuries, thinkers tried to locate Eden on maps, and explorers sought out its location. Notably, nobody ever reported finding the garden in its original paradisiacal state. (Figures 3 & 4).

Figure 3 -John Calvin, Map of Biblical Regions of the Middle East, 1568 The earthly Eden versus heavenly Paradise debate is significant. An earthly paradise is certainly a physical place to where our bodies can go. Are only Figure 4 Frontpiece of Elvy Edison Callaway's book, In our spirits, and not our physical bodies, allowed the Beginning locating Eden in the Florida Panhandle, 1971 into a heavenly paradise? If humankind were able to return to paradise, what would we find in either an earthly or heavenly paradise? What pleasures are offered in each? Does Paradise allow (or demand?) that we return to a state of innocence?

Jewish Rabbis continue to speak of this garden, imagining such a paradise to be a place of heavenly delights (Ashton 15). In the Quran, the story of Eden is additionally told in beautiful prose--Eden here is also a paradise, a place to return to in the afterlife (Ashton 15). The Eden story is briefly touched on in the New Testament (Ashton 16), suggesting that the Garden is located somewhere on earth and inspiring many believers over the centuries to set their hopes on locating it. Many medieval and Renaissance thinkers gave credence to this view that The Garden of Eden existed in an exact earthly location, albeit unreachable by humans (Delumeau

8 50). Some of the brightest minds of the middle Ages wrote about Paradise, where it might be, and who might be living there. Cartographers constructed maps of Eden, many times indicating the wilderness into which Adam and Eve were cast (Delumeau 72).

What is clear when considering paradise and the Garden of Eden is that the topic is still open to debate: Milton’s paradise is down below; Dante’s paradise is overhead. Christopher Columbus was among those who sought for Paradise somewhere here on Earth (Delumeau 53-55).

Once thinkers of the Enlightenment began to reject the notion of Paradise on earth, a sort of nostalgia for Eden and a desire to return to innocence began to influence literature and art. In so doing, they demonstrated a fascination with the meaning of original sin, human desire, and the yearning for innocence and paradise.

The Enlightenment, Man in his Natural State The Salient point to be noted about the age of the Enlightenment, as far as (the subject of Paradise) is concerned, is the progressive challenge to the “historical” content and veracity of the beginning of the beginning of the book of Genesis. Several different approaches, which ultimately converged, led to this outcome, but they were slow in gaining possession of men’s minds. (Delumeau 211)

It is worth noting that despite enormous and ever increasing scientific evidence to the contrary, scientists did not easily give up the belief in, and pursuit of, the physical Garden of Eden. In a chapter titled, “The Disappearance of the Enchanted Garden,” John Delumeau, in History of Paradise: The Garden of Eden in Myth and Tradition, relates the historic conflict between reason and spirituality (211-228). In 1695, John Locke (1632-1704) anonymously challenged some of traditional Christian theology of the Eden story, but he held on to the actual story of Adam, Eve, the Tree and Paradise with his entire intellectual might.

9 The study of fossils provided a great challenge to scientists. Traditional beliefs held that the earth was only about seven thousand years old, and that all of creation was created suddenly in a fixed, unchanging state. Changing paradigms, coupled with increasingly sophisticated scientific methods, ultimately, albeit slowly and certainly not universally, led to a shift in belief away from a literal Eden to a metaphorical Eden. In The Natural History of Religion, David Hume (1711-1776) boldly took all of this to the inevitable conclusion, eliminating Paradise from the history of human experience and reasoning instead that human beings rose from crude, difficult, and polytheistic beginnings (Delumeau 212- 217).

Despite Hume’s best efforts, paradise continued to hold sway over even the most rational, intellectual imaginations, perhaps none more than that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) did not believe in or argue for a literal take on the Eden story. But he never gave up on the metaphorical Eden and humanity’s natural state as a state of innocence. Rousseau believed that human beings entered the world pre-civilized state, unconscious of evil. In Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, he describes “man in his natural state.” Rousseau asserted that all people were innately good and noble. Prior to the dawn of civilization humanity lived happily amid nature’s bounty, were typically quite healthy and aged gracefully. As humans developed tools, agriculture, arts and so on, natural physical and social inequalities emerged. As Dealumeau noted, “the help requested from others led to dependence, labor, inequality, and enslavement. All the knowledge and all the progress amassed by the human species have not been able to replace the happy condition it enjoyed in its ‘primitive state’” (227).

Rousseau was not an unbridled optimist. Although not present in pre-civilization, inequality and injustice arrived early enough in human history, when “vast forests were transformed in smiling fields which had to be watered with men’s sweat, and in which slavery and misery were seen to germinate and grow with the crops”(Rousseau 51). Just as in Genesis, Rousseau’s state of carefree innocence is brief, and is followed by a life of toil in the fields.

10 Rousseau does not discard the benefits of civilization wholesale, but he does seriously call into question its value. “He looked yearningly into the past, away from the corruption of civilization, to an imaginary primeval innocence; to a savage state which, in its unconsciousness of sin and corruption mirrored Eden”(Telheit-Fisk 9).

Rousseau’s appropriation of the Eden Myth should not be taken lightly. In extolling the virtue of common people, and criticizing the inequalities inherent in civilized society, he helped inspire the American and French Revolution and generations of other revolutionaries. He also inspired some notable artists.

CHAPTER 3 PRIMITIVIST ART AND PAUL GAUGUIN

It seems that most societies imagine an idea of the other in order to recognize and validate their own identity as a society and as individuals within that society. This concept can apply to individual beings, groups of beings, and places faraway and just across a border, either real or imagined. The concept of an other can encapsulate many concepts including, but not limited to: monsters, aliens, supernatural beings, people from other nations or with different religious or political beliefs, faraway places real or imaginary, including heaven and the Garden of Eden. And, as in the case of self-styled bohemians such as Paul Gauguin and others throughout history, some even imagine themselves as an other. The one thing that appears to be consistent is that the other is always distant, either physically or philosophically, and is always different. In some ways, this idea of the other is a simple way to understand one’s relationship to the environment in which they live. In other ways it is not so simple. In the history of colonialism this simple frame of reference has been muddied, troubled, and greatly complicated by the relationship between the colonizing nations and those who have been colonized.

The European West’s colonization of other lands has manipulated elements of mythology, history, sociology and geography to create speculations and contrived myths about a perceived otherness onto existing civilizations. We who live in Westernized cultures are both beneficiaries and victims of this heritage. The cultural benefits of this practice can be seen in the wide range of “exotic” influences on Western artists captivated by the allure of the exotic other, enriching artistic techniques and widening the vocabulary of artistic expression. These same artists can also be considered the victims of this legacy because they, and we their audience, have inadvertently inherited an unconscious involvement with the colonial transaction that defines these others as primitives and exotics.

12 Susan Hiller, in her editor’s foreword in The Myth of Primitivism: Perspectives on Art, writes that Albrecht Durer in 1520 expressed his admiration and astonishment for the metal works of Mexico in an early example of western awe at artistry from an exotic place. In this instance, the spoils of Mexico did not remain popular to sixteenth century European tastes. This soon changed. In succeeding centuries people would horde and covet exotic items brought from faraway places in the expanding course of European colonization and conquest (13).

Primitivism The fascination with art and artistic styles by others sees a culmination in the nineteenth century art movement known as Primitivism. Artists who practiced Primitivism employed techniques, imagery, and subject matter that they perceived either imitated or evoked the culture of “uncivilized,” “savage,” or “primitive” peoples. The very characterization of other cultures as “uncivilized,” “savage,” or “primitive” is a prime example of one culture defining others and other cultures. Primitivism, which began largely as a French movement, was largely, if not entirely, inspired by a vast number of cultural and biological artifacts taken from colonized lands and brought back to colonizing France and put on display in its capital city, Paris. One of the most extravagant and influential displays of such was the 1889 Exposition Universelle, the Paris World’s Fair. The Expo was an intentional display of Figure 5-Javanese Village at the Paris Exposition,1889 France’s technological and

13 colonial power. One display, constructed along the Place des Invalides, included reconstructions of native domiciles from all over the colonized world, complete with inhabitants (Figure 5)

(Morris and Green 15).

Henri Rousseau

Among the artists who considered themselves Primitivists was Henri Rousseau, known for his flat, darkly colorful jungle images. Notably, Rousseau never traveled outside of Paris but drew all of his inspiration from around Paris, including books, postcards, and visits to the aforementioned Expo, as well zoos and botanical gardens (Morris and Green 14-15). Rousseau is also considered Primitivist because he was never formally trained as an artist. His images were considered naïve and childlike, similar to what an uneducated “primitive” person might paint (Morris and Green 42-43).

Figure 6 Henri Rousseau, Eve, 1906

As an untrained artist with a peculiar vision, Rousseau received more than his fair share of negative criticism, but he was also an influential painter, greatly admired by many great modernist writers and artists such as Andre Breton and Pablo Picasso (Morris and Green 29). It is well worth emphasizing that Henri Rousseau’s “exotic” jungle landscapes were pure invention. At his best, Rousseau paints what can truly be viewed only as dreamscapes (Figure 7): otherworldly inventions populated by lush foliage of unknown species, and creatures alternating amusing and frightening. His primitive landscapes are clearly not a studied, rational

14 view of different lands or cultures. Instead, Rousseau paints the landscape of the turn of the century European imagination.

Figure 7-Henri Rousseau, The Dream, 1910

Paul Gauguin, Savage One of the most significant Primitivists, Paul Gauguin, believed in living in a natural, primitive state and painting “primitive” people in their “natural state.” In the remainder of this chapter, I intend to focus primarily on Paul Gauguin both as a Primitivist artist, and as a man who went to great lengths to live out the ideals of Primitivism as he saw it. Gauguin eschewed the corrupting influences of civilization and literally sought out paradise in search of what he perceived as lost innocence.

Paul Gauguin saw himself as many things, most of them grandiose, many of them true. Many have considered him an artistic genius, a shaman with profound spiritual insight, a great lover of women, a bohemian, and a savage. Many European intellectuals of the late nineteenth century found themselves captivated by the arts and cultures of faraway places in Asia, Africa,

15 the Americas and the South Pacific. Many artists and writers tried to capture the aesthetics of these so-called “primitive” cultures through the use of bold colors, forms, and exotic subject matter. But it is arguable that no one pursued both Primitivism and paradise with such an all- consuming blind passion, as did Gauguin. Gauguin’s pursuit of the Primitivist ideal was extreme, but it hardly occurred in a vacuum. Gauguin was literally born into nineteenth century European colonialism and its ideals. His driving motivation towards a primitive ideal found its basis in the influential works of the 18th century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Aesthetically he split (rather emphatically) from the impressionists of his generation in search for what he considered greater artistic ideals that included symbolism and his own brand of mysticism. As individualistic as he was, Gauguin and his ideas were very much a part of his era and his culture. His story, his art, and his mythology continue to resonate today.

Gauguin considered the life and spirituality of what he perceived as primitive societies to be pure and true; as such he considered primitive culture a source of inspiration in his artwork. And as mentioned, he fashioned himself as a self-made savage. In accordance with John- Jacques Rousseau’s philosophy, Gauguin believed that primitive society was free from corruption and excess, leaving it with only the most basic essentials for life and happiness, a cultural state of innocence free from sin and shame. Gauguin believed that if he could live such a life, he could become attuned to the spiritual mysteries of the “savages.” In an 1891 interview with the Parisian newspaper, L'Écho de Paris, Gauguin proclaims that:

I am leaving in order to have peace and quiet, to be rid of the influence of civilization. I only want to do simple, very simple art, and to be able to do that, I have to immerse myself in virgin nature, see no one but savages, live their life, with no other thought in mind but to render, the way a child would, the concepts formed in my brain and to do this with the aid of nothing but the primitive means of art, the only means that are good and true. (Teilhet-Fisk 14)

Figure 8- Photograph of Gauguin’s mother, 1886

Figure 9 - Paul Gaugin, Exotic Eve, 1890

Gauguin was born into liberal French culture and colonialism. He was born in Paris in 1848 to a journalist father with radical Republican sympathies, Clovis Gauguin, and a Peruvian-born mother, Aline Maria Chazal (Figure 8), the daughter of a proto-socialist leader. Because of their liberal political beliefs, the Gauguins went into voluntary exile in Lima, Peru, in 1851 after Louis Napoleon Bonaparte came to power. Clovis died on the journey (Anderson 16). Gauguin’s early years were spent in an aristocratic household, in a country full of rich color and voluptuous material abundance where many racial types--people of African descent, Europeans, Chinese, and indigenous Peruvians--lived and worked together peacefully in relative freedom. This early exposure to lavish prosperity, tropical climate, and exotic beauty were all among the earliest images to influence Gauguin’s notions of Paradise.

Gauguin would later write nostalgically of his mother, “How gracious and pretty my mother was when she wore her Lima dress!” (Anderson 18). As an artist, Gauguin would often depict these

17 memories with images of his mother in exotic settings, even painting her as Eve in the paradisiacal garden (Figure 9).

In 1873 as a young stockbroker in Paris, Gauguin married Mette-Sophie Gad. Early on, married life agreed with Gauguin, and he and Mette began a family. In 1883 after their fifth child was born, Gauguin asserted that his new professional goal would be to become a successful artist. (Teilhet-Fisk 4). This dream was to take precedence over all other priorities, including those of his family.

In May 1889 Gauguin visited the Exposition Universelle with the displays of people living in tropical and subtropical climates could live in comfortable simple dwellings of local invention. The Expo, combined with his childhood experiences in Peru, a visit as a young adult to Martinique, and the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau all fueled Gauguin’s desire to leave the urban life of Paris. After spending time in rural Brittany, Gauguin remained unsettled. Having read Rousseau, Gauguin took Rousseau’s ideas about the corrupting influence of civilization to heart. Comparing the perceived corruption of civilization to the imaginary primeval innocence, Gauguin longed for a truly savage state where an unawareness of sin mirrored the innocence of Eden (Teilhet-Fisk 9).

In May 1890, Gauguin wrote to his friend, the artist Odilon Redon:

My mind is made up, and since I’ve been in Brittany I’ve altered my decision somewhat. Even Madagascar is too near the civilized world: I shall go to Tahiti and I hope to end my days there. I judge that my art, which you like, is only a seedling thus far, and out there I hope to cultivate it for my own pleasure in its primitive and savage state. (Teilhet-Fisk 10)

In 1891 Gauguin journeyed to Tahiti in pursuit of his self-styled simple and savage lifestyle, and with the hope that he would draw artistic inspiration from the island and its native exotic

18 culture. His bohemian character impressed neither the local French inhabitants nor the native Tahitians. He stepped off the ship, carrying with him a shotgun, a French horn, two mandolins, and a guitar. The shotgun was intended to hunt wild beasts in the jungle in order to supplement his diet of Edenic fruit, and the musical instruments were intended to enable him to pursue his desire to sing and make love for the rest of his living days: an image that is as disturbing and humorous as it is naive. Upon this arrival in Tahiti’s capital, Papeete, he was disappointed not to find the virgin Polynesian paradise he had traveled so far to find. What he encountered, instead, was rampant French colonization (Anderson 52-55). The beauty and mystery that Gauguin had hoped to find in Papeete was mostly, albeit not entirely, absent. There were occasions to celebrate and to love freely. Public dances, the music of brass bands, and plenty of food and drink were held in the parks at least once a week. Papeete also hosted many vahines, Tahitian women and possible mistresses who were available and willing to experience no more than a night of pleasure and fun (Andersen 160). Despite disappointment, Gauguin continued to pursue and paint his image of Tahiti as an untouched and savage paradise, painting many images that depict this myth of an untainted, innocent, beautiful Tahiti.

Gauguin’s preconceived notion of the Tahitian people and their culture may not have been intentionally condescending, but it was abundantly naïve. Although Tahiti was not the idyllic Eden he had imagined, Gauguin continued pursuit of his idea of himself as a “savage” among other “savages,” innocent of the corrupting influence of civilization. It was his intention to embrace his true and noble instincts, his dreams and ideas for living in accordance with what is pure and right. He truly believed his to be the true and best way to live.

1n 1892 Gauguin, writing in his book, Noa Noa, tells his story of going to the rural district of Fanon in his ongoing quest for paradisiacal beauty. There he is invited as a guest by local people to stay, eat and drink. When asked during a general conversation with an older woman about his purpose for travelling there, he replied, “To look for a wife.” The woman offered him her

19 beautiful thirteen-year-old daughter, named Tehamana, happy to give her to him to serve as his vahine. Gauguin wrote:

This girl, a child of about thirteen, charmed me and frightened me: what was going on in her soul? In mine, blushing and hesitation, for this contract had been so hastily concluded and signed, and I almost an old man. During the week that followed, I was “childlike” as I had never known myself to be. I loved her so, which made her smile (she knew I did!) She seemed to love me and did not tell me so. (Teilhet- Fisk 70)

From a Tahitian point of view, the relationship was normal, but, from the socially accepted European standpoint, it was not (Bernstein 141). However, this exotic fantasy as it played out into reality was a subject of both many European fantasies and colonial practices. Although scandalous to some, Gauguin’s ideal of the sexually liberated and noble savage in an exotic and primitive land and innocent of the corruptions of modern civilization, counterbalanced Western ideas of sin. The idea of the exotic, and the realities of colonialism, made opportunities available to men that were not available back home. The illusions of primitivism and the allure of the exotic other allowed many European men to actively act out Figure 10-Paul Gaugin, "Te Nave Nave Fenue", or The Delighful fantasies of innocent young girls with Land, 1891 newly budded breasts, silky skin, and

20 sweet breath, blossoming into objects of sexual desire. It was and remains both a mythology and a historical truth that pedophilia is among the many offerings of the Colonized East made to the Colonizing West.

Tehamana became the subject in many of Gauguin’s paintings. She was literally the subject of his multiple paintings of the “Tahitian Eve.” In “Te Nave Nave Fenue,” or The Delightful Land (Figure 10), Gauguin paints his Tahitian Eve (Tehamana) in the Garden of Eden. Here, an exotic flower represents the fruit of The Tree of Knowledge and the lizard with flaming red wings represents the serpent. Here is a “primitive” Eve, still innocent.

Gauguin regularly depicted Tehamana and other women naked and in traditional clothing in a Tahitian paradise. But this too was a myth. According to Mary Morton, the curator at the National Gallery at Washington, DC, by the time Gauguin landed in Tahiti in the late 1880s the Tahitian people were already fully colonized by the French and largely Christianized. The native women did not walk around naked carrying baskets of fruit and conversing with other naked women despite the fact that Gauguin chose to paint them this way. Gauguin perpetuated the European stereotype, and perhaps even believed it, refusing to see Tahiti and its women the way they really were (Stemberg NPR web). With technical genius and a powerful vision, Gauguin painted beautiful, captivating images, portraying adolescent women as sexual innocents in a tropical paradise. Gauguin exploited and subjectified the very people, his beautiful “savages,” that he glorified in his writing and in his art, as he attempted to live out a beautiful and damaging myth.

After deciding to temporarily leave Tahiti and return to Paris in order to publicly exhibit the images of true beauty and innocence that he had created in his island paradise, Gauguin painted a farewell portrait of Tehamama. In Marahi Metua No Tehamana (Figure 11), Gauguin does not paint his vahine as an Eve, or other exotic nude temptress, instead he presents her as she had wished to be depicted: in her European-style Sunday best. Gauguin wrote that he had told how he wished to paint Tahitian women and this time she refused. Gauguin’s last portrait

21 of Tehamana was painted the way she wished to be remembered, not the way Gauguin projected his ideas upon her (Figure 11). Gauguin writes further that he has come to understand that these “primitive” people were not different than others corrupted by civilization, wanting to be painted or photographed in the their best attire (Andersen 79).

In the end, Gauguin’s fantasy of finding Eden, complete with its innocence the purity of a “natural state,” never came into its full fruition. He was a false savage. At times he claimed to have found this savagery in his art, and in his heart, but in his true character he could not escape the fact that he was and would remain an exiled European. He ironically acted in the manner of the colonizing Europeans he most disliked. He arrived in Tahiti with raging syphilis and in the spirit of the classic European colonialist-conqueror, he sought to better and reform the native community only to literally contaminate them (Stamberg).

In Paris, after selling merely four paintings, Gauguin returned to Tahiti to paint again and to live out the remainder of his life. Tehamama had already taken another husband, but Gauguin found a fourteen-year-old vahine. His return visit to Tahiti was less productive than his first and was marked by serious financial troubles and an attempted suicide (Anderson 244).

As we shall see in the next chapter, Gauguin and his version of Primitivism are indicative of the role that the West played in colonialism. The attitudes, built upon age old myths, including the myth of Eden, allowed for both artistic inspiration and the abject exploitation and destruction of the people admired and chosen as subjects in this blossoming arts movement at the turn of the 20th century.

Figure 11- Paul Gauguin, Merahi Metua no Tehamana (Tehamana Has Many Parents), 1893

Chapter 4 PRIMITIVISM AS ORIENTALISM

Figure 12 - P. Godey, French Colonial with Polynesian Woman, 1880

In exploring the ideas that I have so far laid out, it would be a gross oversight to fail to look at Edward Said’s theories on Orientalism. Entire books can be, and have been, written about this topic. But for the purposes of this paper, it will suffice to explore Orientalism in reference to the social and political influences inherent in the work of the Primitivist artists of the 19th and early 20th century, as well as the influence that these Primitivist ideas still hold in contemporary preconceived notions regarding certain subjects depicted as other. I will, of course, focus on the role that the state of innocence plays in these preconceived notions.

Since its publication in 1978, Edward Said’s book, Orientalism, has been profoundly influential in changing the ways a range of diverse disciplines view their understanding of the other. Its original thesis relates to the contemporary understanding of the “Orient’ and how the people and culture of the “Orient” are represented and understood in history and the media.

In 1850, Gustave Flaubert wrote a letter to his friend Louis Bouilhet in Normandy, telling tales of the exotic Red Sea, recalling “ . . . a whole veiled harem that called out to us like magpies as we passed” (Bernstein 92). A notorious sensualist, Flaubert wrote of swimming in the Red Sea, telling Bouilhet that “ . . . it was one of the most voluptuous pleasures of my life; I lolled in its waters as though I were lying on a thousand liquid breasts that were caressing my entire body” (92)

British soldier Richard Burton, linguist extraordinaire, and considered to be among the greatest explorers of the 19th century, shared similar tales of the exoticism of the Red Sea and the people who lived on its coasts. Although these men were of very different personalities, Flaubert the writer and lover, and Burton the soldier and fighter, shared common experiences. Both frequented young prostitutes throughout their travels and both suffered lifelong struggles with venereal disease contracted and surely spread in the course of their multiple exotic sexual conquests. Said argues that these two men, and many, many other Europeans like them, demonstrate what he calls the Orientalist Fallacy: the failure to see the complex realities that define a culture and instead adopt preexisting prejudices formed by previous exposure to imagery in art, literature, and stories that stereotype exoticism. Said claims that this fallacy is central to the imperialist enterprise.

Said observes that both Flaubert and Burton made the association “ . . .between the Orient and the freedom of licentious sex . . . Virtually no European writer who wrote on or traveled to the Orient in the period after 1800 exempted himself or herself from this quest (190).” For Said, this association was just a small part of the story in the West that contributed to the

25 misunderstanding of and diminishing of the East. For Flaubert and Burton the sexual subjectification of girls, boys, and women was neither fantasy nor stereotype; it was simply affirmable reality.

Tales passed on by European artists and explorers from the East helped to heighten the myth of the “exotic other.” For many Westerners, the myth provided permission to explore tabooed sexual fantasies that Christian-Victorian social norms would not otherwise permit. For those like Burton and Flaubert -- and Paul Gauguin -- the myth became a sort of reality. It is not entirely clear if they were ever disillusioned or disappointed in learning the truth, or if they were either unable or simply refused to see the reality that lay beneath the myth of Orientalism.

At first glance it may seem inaccurate to equate Primitivism with Orientalism, but in the search for a tropical paradise, such as with Gauguin, western desire is projected on an “exotic,” culture, much to the other culture’s detriment. Abigail Solomon-Godeau, in her essay, Going Native: Paul Gauguin and the Invention of Primitivist Modernism (published in The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History, Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrad, eds.) quotes a letter from Gauguin to his wife, Mette:

May the day come soon when I’ll be myself in the woods of an ocean island! To live there in ecstasy, calmness and art . . . There in Tahiti I shall be able to listen to the sweet murmuring music of my heart’s beating in the silence of the beautiful tropical nights. I shall be in amorous harmony with the mysterious beings of my environment. Free at last, without money trouble, I’ll be able to love, to sing, to die. (320)

Solomon-Godeau comments on the same theme:

26 In this as in other letters, Gauguin makes very explicit the equation tropics/ ecstasy/ amorousness/ native. This was mythic speech at the time Gauguin articulated it, and it retains its potency to this day; one has only to glance at a Club Med brochure for Tahiti to appreciate its uninterrupted currency. (320) (see Figure 13)

In searching for a new Eden populated by “savages” in a “natural” or “pre-civilized” state, Gauguin continued a long tradition of European explorers and colonizers to the South Seas. This Eden is a place of sexual conquest:

In the expeditionary literature generated by Captain [James] Cook, (Captain Samuel) Wallis, (Louis-Antoine de) Figure 13-Explore Tahiti Brochure, 1985. Bougainville and the countless successive voyagers to the South Seas the colonial encounter is first and foremost the encounter with the body of the Other. How that alien body is to be perceived, known, mastered or possessed is played our within a dynamic of knowledge/ power relations which admits of no reciprocity. (320)

What Gauguin brings to the mythology of the Paradise is his painted imagery. A visual display of young nude women in tropical settings, not as they actually were but as he wanted them to be: innocents in paradise. Gauguin was not the first European to depict Polynesian nudes. Solomon-Godeau provides a nice history of such imagery (320-323). What Gauguin provides is what we might think of as “high-art.” With the skill of a modern master and the genius of a true artistic visionary, Gauguin brings an enhancement to the mythology of Tahiti as an Edenic Paradise. Gauguin’s Tahiti is not the colonized Island that he found when he landed there. It is the mythic Garden of Eden (Figure 14).

27 Sadly, the reality for the subjects in these museum quality paintings was not paradisiacal. Gauguin (and other colonizers) intended to “go native.” This too was a fantasy, a myth. Again Solomon-Godeau cites Gauguin’s own words, “ ‘I saw plenty of calm-eyed women. I wanted them to be willing to be taken without a word, brutally. In a way (it was a) longing to rape (324).’ ”

Before Said, Orientalism was largely viewed as a harmless fantasy of Western artists, anthropologists, archaeologists and translators who enjoyed the exploration of different cultures. The pursuit of the exotic is certainly a colonial impulse, but that is not the end of it. An interest in other cultures also stems from genuine intellectual curiosity. It seems that this pursuit has almost always originated in the West and been directed toward the East, and rarely the other way around. The impulse to investigate faraway exotic peoples usually often elicits admiring descriptions of their greatness, their

Figure 14- Paul Gauguin, Words of the Devil, 1892 innocence and their way of life. The result of this admiration is, far more often than not, the destruction of their way of life: “By the time of Gauguin’s arrival in Papeete in 1891 European diseases had killed off two thirds of the population. Late nineteenth-century ethnographers speculated that the Maori peoples were destined for extinction. The pre- European culture had been effectively destroyed” (Broude and Garrard 324).

Gauguin’s images of his Tahitian Eden are populated by Eves, but with one exception, no Adams. In Orientalism, Said notes that the Orient is viewed by the West as being like a woman.

28 The Orient is seductive, inarticulate, mysterious, and is something to be acted upon. Time and again Gauguin indicates that this is the experience he desires and expects from his paradise. It is a place for him to insert his desires, his creative impulses, and his image of Tahiti and it’s culture. Tehamama, Tahiti, and their culture wait passively, like an obedient lover, for him to dictate the terms of their relationship.

An irony of Primitivism--clearly an artifact of European culture--is that it promises an escape from European culture, particularly its sexual mores. In Henri Rousseau’s Dream (Figure 7) a clearly white, European woman awakes on her European sofa into one of Rousseau’s junglescapes. Wild animals, including lions, surround the European dreamer in an entirely unthreatening manner. Notably an exotic, very dark skinned piper plays a musical accompaniment of some sort to the entire goings on. Like Eve in the Garden of Eden, the woman is unaware of her nakedness, like Gauguin’s Tahitian women, she is there for our visual pleasure, free from such western labels as “lewdness, “pornography,” or prostitution. It is a state of innocence.

29 Chapter 5 RUUD VAN EMPLE

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -Francis Bacon

What then are the roles and responsibilities of contemporary artists who create art in the Primitivist tradition, or use the visual vocabulary of Primitivism? I have dedicated the previous chapters to demonstrating that Primitivism is a continuation of the Eden Myth, especially the myth of innocence, as it exists before the act of “eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” Surely there is something intoxicating that draws in artists and viewers alike when we take in the beautiful primeval foliage of the Primitivist landscape: a mixture of the painted dreams of Henri Rousseau and the promise of a “golden age” in which we all can exist in a natural state of goodness and innocence a la Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

But today we do not live in an age of unknowing “innocence.” We have witnessed the political and social struggles of civil-rights movements. We have heard the calls of countless minority groups asking to be respected and recognized. We know the social costs of the exploitation of children and the benefits of education and health programs. And we know the hard-won gains of feminism and the on-going endeavors for the international rights of women. Having taken many, many metaphorical bites of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, the contemporary viewer of art can perhaps speculate on paradise, maybe even look into paradise, but can never, ever regain our intellectual state of innocence, and thus enter back into The Garden of Eden.

A “Photographic Artist.” A native resident of the Netherlands, Rudolph Franciscus Maria “Ruud” van Empel, was born in 1958. Trained as a graphic designer, in the mid-1990s van Empel started working in the visual arts, focusing in the photographic media (Ruud). According to Kees Van Twist, Director of the Groninger Museum in Groningen, Netherlands, Ruud van Empel is among the most

30 extraordinary photographic artists of the present day on both a national and international scale (Empel 7).

The term “photographic artist” is often used to categorize van Empel in the art world. This term is used to delineate him from photographers who use more traditional methods and less digital manipulation. Most who appreciate contemporary embrace the fact that contemporary photography involves some kind of digital alteration in one way or another. However, due to the high degree of process and technical manipulation which Ruud Van Empel applies in his artwork, he has encountered resistance from purists and specialists in the photographic medium. Van Empel has developed and perfected a unique technique that involves photography,

Figure 25-Ruud van Empel, World #4, 2005 collage, and a heavy dose of Photoshop in which he layers and layers a countless number of photographed images, one on top of another. Van Empel then further manipulates his photographs, producing images that are beyond lifelike and even surreal: heavily enhanced and colorful with enormous amounts of expressive detail. Through the use of Photoshop, the images are seamlessly collaged into a cohesive and highly fantastic image.

Collage It is worth discussing the role of collage in van Empel’s artistic process. In his image World #4 (Figure 15), van Empel photographed the foliage separately, just as he individually photographed the orchids and the child. This is how Van Empel constructs each of his images, one element at a time. This process mirrors a technique use by painters for centuries. Without a second thought, a painter or draftsman can add an element taken from somewhere into the setting of a painting. Both Gauguin and Henri Rousseau used this technique quite freely (Morris and Green 37) Gauguin wanted to reconstruct his vision of an ideal paradise combining imagery from his travels around Tahiti with his high minded ideals of a lost paradise. Rousseau, as discussed earlier, used everything from postcards and pamphlets to his own imagery borrowed from zoos and botanical gardens to carefully build his jungle fantasies leafy brick by leafy brick.

There does seem to be a difference when the principles of collaging are applied in photography. Photocollage can be a means of simply producing a technically more effective image. The technique is almost as old the photographic medium itself, as it allowed early photographers to overcome the limitations of the new medium to create truer, more lifelike images. The same process was quickly adapted to give artists greater control and the ability to manipulate imagery in a way that went beyond mere observation, something occasionally viewed as having suspicious motives. When used in this manner, the results of collaging can be humorous, or eerie, even intentionally deceptive. Photocollage can also be a Figure 16-Unknown Artist, Josephine, 1871 popular pastime, as it was in the Victorian Era (Empel 11).

32 Finally, collage can evoke innocent childhood memories. Reminiscent of elementary school projects in which a child would cut out images from glossy magazines, the child would then layer and paste the images carefully to boards or construction paper. These cut examples might be borrowed from pop culture magazines or from publications such as National Geographic and Life displaying images of faraway peoples and places.

Sinister Details Van Empel seldom speaks of his own work. When he does, like many artists he leaves us with more questions than answers: “… you have to take time to look at my work. There has to be one image that’s very monumental that grabs you at first sight and then you will see the sinister details” (Empel 11). Because van Empel's work is so layered, and so processed and painstakingly constructed, it is clear that every element of his imagery is intentional. While the intentionality is clear, is the intent also clear?

Van Empel’s body of work contains a number of series with a variety of subject matters. For my purposes here, I will focus primarily on his images of children in gardenlike, pastoral settings: his series World (2005-2010), Moon (2006-2008), and Venus (2006-2010). Each of these series have settings that are heavily swathed with lush botanical life, featuring a wide range of green shades and vibrant colors. These are not “just plants,” but varieties that are sexually charged both symbolically and naturally due to their colors and shapes, often reminiscent of aroused human sexual organs.

“World #1” (Figure 17) features discretely but centrally a white phalenopsis orchid, among other things a traditional symbol of erotic love. The young girl in the image wears a white dress and holds the orchid directly at pelvic level. Around her, van Empel places an erect

Figure 17-Ruud van Empel, World #1, 2005

33 purple liatris, some tropical pitcher plants, firm and open awaiting prey and pollinators. None of these plants exist together in a natural eco-system. Like Rousseau, van Empel borrows plant species from all over the globe to populate his imagery. He is a photographic gardener, working with tropical varieties (water lilies, venus fly-traps, croton, etc.) and then adding, according to his needs, more common garden varieties (clematis and Echinacea). In and of itself the dense, voluptuous garden of van Empel’s imagination is nothing if not filled with promises of fertility and budding sexual temptation.

Figure 18-Ruud van Empel, World #21, 2006

“World #21” (Figure 18) also features mostly dense tropical plants, Many large and red begonias, various shades of pink and more highly aroused reds, sit among the green philodendron and colorful croton. Fig leafs provide a direct allusion to the Eden story, and the spiky purple larkspur from “World #1” pokes up. Also present is a budding pure white delphinium. This van Empel garden is for a girl in a pretty purple dress who leaves us wondering just what she is hiding behind her back.

Figure 19-Ruud van Empel, World #3, 2005 Some plants in these images are overtly threatening, like thistles, stinging nettles, and aralia, which possess sharp thorns (Figure 19). Van Empel uses carnivorous plants like flytraps and pitcher plants, and poisonous plants like foxgloves, castor

34 beans, poison ivy, and intoxicating plants such as poppies, marijuana and ever-suspicious mushrooms. Images of Children

Figure 20-Ruud van Empel, Venus 3, 2007

The children who populate these images leave the viewer with uneasiness. They are children and, as children, they are innocent. Often this innocence implies vulnerability. Often van Empel’s children are clothed; often they are not. In either case, there seems to be borderline pornographic quality in these images: young boys and girls depicted as if they have been swept off the pages of Peter Pan or Alice in Wonderland surrounded by a beautiful but troubling enchanted and forested garden. The children are vulnerable and alone, except for the presence of us, the viewers (Figures 20, 21). As in all of art and pornography, the intention of the viewer determines the interpretation of that being viewed. And the intention of the viewer can vary as greatly as the times the image is viewed. On one hand, these children are innocents in a

35 Garden of Eden. In another sense they are objects in a Primativist paradise, subjects of our colonizing gaze. Van Empel is problemizing innocence.

Figure 21- Ruud van Empel, Venus #7, 2008

36 The photography of children has been emotionally charged and filled with controversy, most markedly and famously in the case of Robert Mapplethorpe’s images of nude, and semi-nude, children (Figure 22). The history of these images and the controversy surrounding it are well documented. The question that remains decades after the controversy is the question of exploitation. In the best of Figure 22- Robert Mapplethorpe, Rosie, 1976 circumstances, children must trust that adults have their best interests in mind. However, even when guardians, artists, curators and critics all have the best of intentions, viewers and collectors of art will project new thoughts, new meaning onto artwork, including artwork which depicts children. Innocence is complex. In her series, Immediate Family, Sally Mann photographed nude (and not nude) images of her own children through their young years. As parent, she chronicled the innocence of their youth and the beauty of their young, growing bodies. As the children aged and ultimately reached puberty, the children would choose to not be photographed and Mann

Figure23-Sally Mann, untitled (from Immediate respected this (Figure 23). Mann anticipates the Family), 1986 difficult themes of van Empel’s very similar and very different work, “We are spinning a story of what it is to grow up. It is a complicated story and sometimes we try to take on grand themes -- anger, love, death, sensuality, and beauty

37 (N.P.,n.d).” These themes are central to the human experience, at all ages. They are central to the Eden story, and artists and writers should be expected to comment on them and they deserve praise when they do it in a significant way. But when the art succeeds, it is often as dangerous as it is beautiful.

For the most part, the children in the van Empel series (and in the examples shown from Mapplethorpe, and Mann) stare out at us, the viewer. If they have an expression, it is faint. If they look away, it is often with indifference. The omnipresent blank stares seem to engage us, without fear or judgment, and again--with innocence. In the end, we are welcome to project our own ideas or narratives on them. Van Empel may be asking questions or hinting at answers, but his subjects do not. They give nothing away, except maybe their freedom to choose.

The Color of Their Skin Anyone commenting on van Empel’s images sooner or later comes up against the question of race. In relationship to Primitivism, the issue is not just unavoidable; it is central. Essayist Ruud Schenk quotes art historian Jan Baptist Bedaux:

The fact that many of the children in his compositions have a dark skin is a facet that cannot remain without comment. Although it is self-evident that a child’s skin colour is not important, the iconography of the innocent child was traditionally represented by “white” children. The earliest examples of this date from the early 17th century. These are portraits in which children are captured in an idealized, pastoral setting. . . In deviating from the standard iconography by giving the children a dark skin, van Empel inadvertently assumes a political stance. After all, this child is still the focus of discrimination and its innocence is not recognized by everyone as being self-evident. (Empel 30)

38 Schenk comments that van Empel asserts that he comes from multi-cultured Amsterdam and that he simply makes no distinction in issues of race (Empel 30). But there seems to be something disingenuous about this stance. His children appear to have no intermediate skin tones. Children of European descent are very white and children of African descent are very black. Their skin color contrasts sharply with the colors of their clothes and their environments. Emphasis strongly implies intentionality. By not directly engaging the issue in conversation, van Empel remains both safely outside of the conversation on race while remaining provocative on the issues inherent to the conversation on race.

Where Bedaux, sees children in early 17th century European pastorals, I see late 19th century Edens. By borrowing imagery reminiscent of Primitivism, the issue of race becomes central to the conversation. Just as Rousseau amplifies skin color within exotic settings (Figure 24), so does van Empel. Just as racial identity is central to Gauguin’s savages in paradise, so too is it relevant to van Empel’s children in paradise. In the case of van Empel, this is not an accusation of racism or stereotyping. Instead, it is a suggestion that the issue is not just a relevant conversation, it

Figure 24-Henri Rousseau, The Snake Charmer, 1907 is an intentional conversation.

If the only difference between the black and white children is their skin color, how can Bedaux suggest that race is inherently “political?” If there is no real difference, there is no real issue, certainly not a political one. Also, unlike Bedaux, I do not think it is an “inadvertent” political stance on van Empel’s part. I think that van Empel’s refined and very deliberate technique and

39 choice of imagery implies intent. Nor do I think that a child’s skin color is unimportant. On the contrary, skin color determines much about a child’s future and how society views that child. In this instance, race is one of the most important issues.

In Primitivism, skin color defines exoticism and invokes “the noble savage” myth. If anything, the racial differences in van Emple’s works draw attention to this. Consider the different roles played by the two races in Rousseau’s The Dream (Figure 7). The white woman on the couch plays the role of the European dreamer and the black skinned piper plays the role of the mysterious person dreamt of, the exotic other. Then, notice the white plastic doll held by the black skinned child in World #24 (Figure 25).

Even through the lens of our deconstructions, the children in van Empel’s images remain in a state of innocence. Perhaps they are on the precipice of knowledge of good and evil. There may be something knowing in the way they stare out at us. After all, how can we know the minds of the innocent? For us that time has long passed. We need to be both careful, and (like the adults we are) responsible when viewing these images. It is a social responsibility to recognize the damaging effects of sustaining and perpetuating a myth of innocence.

Figure 25-Ruud van Empel, World #24, 2007

Chapter 6 Conclusion

Figure 26-Ruud van Empel, Venus #5, 2007

The Garden of Eden is the mythic place where humanity was first introduced to our self- knowledge as sexual creatures. While essential to our animal nature, sexual desire can be the cause of great personal and social conflict and is often considered contradictory to our aspirations towards that which is considered sacred and morally righteous. In the book of Genesis, God creates the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, in his own image and, well, we know the rest of the story. And yet this is an origin myth, so -- quite literally -- it is just the beginning of the story. For adherents of each of the great monotheistic religions it is the beginning of human history. As such, it is the story that begets all other stories. When Adam and Eve eat from the fruit, they immediately recognize their nakedness, feel both shame and

41 embarrassment, and cover themselves. Innocence is lost as knowledge is gained, and Adam and Eve are guilty of partaking of knowledge. Adam and Eve, and all of us with them, are cast out of Eden forever. Many have been searching for a return ever since.

In his own way, Ruud Van Empel tries to take us back to Eden. In creating wildly beautiful and distinctive imagery, reminiscent of the work of Primitivist artists Henri Rousseau and Paul Gauguin, van Empel continues the artistic search for lost Edenic innocence. It would be easy to look at his images simply for the gorgeous and masterful use of saturated color, complex technique, and alluring beauty. It would be likewise easy to look upon his photographic compositions this way, but then the viewer would miss Eden. Van Empel’s creations are paradise. But what van Empel shows us about paradise is the realization that, for those of us who do not reside there, paradise is unsettling. Van Empel’s images are captivating, but in part for his provocative use of multi-racial, pre-pubescent children in sensuous Edenic settings. In this both beautiful and dangerously provocative artwork, Van Empel makes direct comments about Primitivism and the colonialism that marked it.

I have looked only briefly at the long and storied history of the search for Eden. After centuries of looking for the mythical garden to no avail, many thinkers abandoned their belief in the literal garden. But this did not alleviate the yearning for a time and place of lost innocence. For John Jacques Rousseau, his Eden was replaced by the belief in a “golden age” of innocence, a time early in human pre-history when the lives of humans were uncomplicated and untainted by the troubles and ills of civilization. For Rousseau and others who embraced his philosophical views, agriculture, industry, and government -- all the trappings of modern life -- made people unhappy and unequal and were the source of all evils in the world. In short, people are inherently good at heart. It’s just the lives we live that make us bad. Paul Gauguin certainly seemed to believe this. He took this philosophy and his syphilis all the way to Tahiti, where he made some very beautiful paintings.

42 Admiring and embodying the theories of Rousseau, Gauguin carried the ideas of Primitivism to their natural extreme and styled himself into his image of the “savage.” He had hoped to “return” to a natural, primitive state with the “primitive” people of Tahiti, where instead he found the harmful effects of civilization as expressed through colonialism. Refusing to accept this reality, he created for himself the imaginary savage lifestyle that he had fantasized about — a fantasy that found form in his artwork. Gauguin sadly lived and died quite imperfectly within this myth. He sought innocence, believing he could somehow recreate Eden. Instead he found imperfection in the guise of reality and created, not paradise, but a parody of paradise. We can never be certain if he ever fully understood his own folly, but in his art he seldom paints outside of the myth. It is my belief that without fully realizing the impact of his actions, the legacy he left behind in his evocative, powerful masterpieces was the effective perpetuation of a damaging mythology: a series of full-color advertisements of the exotic myth of a tropical Eden filled with beautiful, very young, very alluring, topless women. The great irony of Gauguin and the Primitivism movement is that it is the result of colonialism, a brutal symptom of civilization taking its course. In an added irony, Gauguin continues to be one of the greatest tourist attractions of Tahiti. In Papeete, several streets are named after him. He is simultaneously hero, anti-hero, savior, and serpent.

Knowing what I know today about Gauguin’s tragic journey—including the fantasy he depicts by modeling his thirteen-year-old lover as Eve--makes it hard to see his art as simply beautiful. But I am still an admirer. Should we blame Gauguin for the historic ills of colonialism and the Eden myth? The mythology preceded him by millennia and the mythology, with his help, persists to this day. It is hard to fault someone for dreaming of paradise. Nostalgia for simpler, more innocent times seems to be part of the human condition. At least in part, the Primitivist myth seems certainly a reaction to conventional sexual mores, which were especially restrictive during the Victorian era. The bohemian desire to explore different social norms, to react against conventional rules of behavior can, and often does, lead to the exploration of alternate realities.

43 In the era since Gauguin, social science has demonstrated time and again the damaging effects of subjectifying other cultures. Yes, it can be human nature to fantasize about the “exotic other,” and as I have just observed, it can be normal to hope to live in a better, freer state. But the yearning for Eden ultimately leads to exploitation. Innocence is a state of vulnerability. The conversation ultimately leads to innocence as a “child-like” state. Only the most ignorant and retrograde person would still hold to the idea of “savages,” or non-westernized cultures, as being like children. But we do still recognize innocence in children themselves. The last vestiges of the Eden myth continue to reside in the way we view children. Ideally (although it is sadly all too often not the case) we protect children from harm. We also protect them from many of the more complicated and often painful realities of life: love and sex, sickness, suffering, death, evil intentions and so on. Ruud van Empel captures much of the essence of childhood innocence in his art, but he also plants his gardens with challenges to that innocence. We do not see any serpents in his Eden, but his intentions lurk there. Eden has a dark side.

In considering van Empel’s intention through the lens of history, as I have done here, we confront the question of van Empel’s intentions as an artist. In Chapter 5 I explored the issues relating to van Empel’s use of children and pre-adolescents in his art, as well as the issue of race as it is depicted in his art. I greatly admire van Empel’s art. I also admire Robert Mapplethorpe and Sally Mann whom I briefly discussed in chapter 5. The use of nude or partially clothed children in art photography is resonant, often compelling, often beautiful, and nearly always problematic. In the case of Mapplethorpe and Mann, recent history has shown that these images are often seen as taboo. Just as often they are seen as important works of art. But both in my consideration and in the greater social conversation the issue remains unsettled. This seems to be especially true in the case of photography. The immediacy of the medium as a sort of literal capture of a specific image of a specific person in a specific place and time makes photography provocative in ways that other media, such as painting, circumvent. Maybe van Empel’s work avoids this because of the high degree of digital manipulation. His photographs become somewhat painterly. And yet, the same qualities seem to heighten the impact of his work. While not necessarily making them more “real” than the work of Mapplethorpe and

44 Mann, van Empel’s work implies an entirely different level of intent. His images are deliberately composed. The van Empel image is van Empel’s specific intent.

In Chapters 3 and 4 I call attention to the problems underlying the attitudes of Gauguin and the other Primitivists. Is there a difference between their intentions and van Empel’s? On one hand, yes. I think that van Empel displays a sharp sense of both artistic self-awareness and a sharp sense of history and even irony in his work. Ruud van Empel captures the dangers of innocence, and its inherent vulnerability, in a beautiful and compelling way. While capturing it in a beautiful way, he also exploits it. So did Gauguin. In the myth, by consuming the fruit, we move beyond innocence and into knowledge of good and evil. We, who Figure 27-Lucas Cranach the are not innocent (the Elder, detail from Adam and Eve, 1528. viewers and the artist), cannot reenter paradise, we can only gaze into it. There is something voyeuristic, and wrong and exploitive, about knowingly gazing at, and objectifying, innocence. These issues are made very clear in van Empel’s Venus series.Venus #5 (Figure 26) is not just a Venus figure, she is Eve. This image makes clear allusions to Lucas Cranach’s many

Figure28- Ruud van Empel, Venus #1, 2006 images of Eve (Figure 27). In this way, van Empel is juxtaposing the myth of Venus, goddess of erotic love, onto the myth of Eve just prior to partaking of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. She is both innocent Eve, and Venus, a clear object of sexual desire. In Van Empel’s image she is also a pubescent girl.

I also explored the issue of race in van Empel’s imagery, citing his claim that he simply makes no distinction on race. Race is not an issue claims van Empel. And yet it clearly is. Note in the images just cited that Cranach’s eve is white and northern European. Van Empel’s is black, black like a figure in a Henri Rousseau image. This contrast plays out again in van Empel’s Venus #1 (Figure 28) a direct mirroring of Cranach’s Venus (Figure 29). While van Empel changes very little from Cranach’s painting, we know that his technique is very deliberate, and nothing enters his images by chance. The dark color of his Venus’s skin, and the inclusion of a lush garden, is as deliberate as such inclusions in an Henri Rousseau painting. Figure29- Lucas Cranach the Elder, Venus, 1532 The same deliberate intent applies to the not very subtle white pearl necklace that hangs around her neck. His images are composed down to the slightest detail and race is not a slight detail. Just as in the work of Gauguin and Rousseau, skin color is essential to the artwork.

I have mentioned that van Empel often displays his models clothed in their “Sunday best.” This recalls the story I tell in Chapter 3 of Gaugin’s, vahine, Tehamana requiring that she be painted in her best European outfit. The clean, well pressed clothes present an air of dignity and, of course, innocence. I also have mentioned the inherent danger of wearing such clean, nice clothes in a garden filled with opportunities for staining. There is something unsettling about displaying such tidy, well clothed children next to images of other innocents who are nude. It is even more unsettling that van Empel reserves nudity only for his female subjects. In van Empel’s gardens, boys are allowed a level of modesty that is not given to girls. Boys are exempt from the vulnerability of full nakedness.

46 These are among the most difficult issues in contemporary art and in social commentary. On one hand I recognize the profound beauty and complex meanings inherent to the representation of the human body at all ages and stages of life, and all shades of skin color, and for both the male and female form. I also loathe censorship and recognize the importance of artistic freedom and the power of human creativity and self expression. However, I also recognize the great responsibility that lies with artists when both examining and perpetuating harmful myths. Van Empel should be expected to carry the burden of that responsibility.

In chapter 2 I mentioned Joseph Campbell’s and Harold Kushner’s interpretations of the Eden story. In How Good Do We Have to Be? A New Understanding of Guilt and Forgiveness, Harold Kushner retells and reexamines the Eden myth: We can read it as an inspiring, even liberating story, a story of what a wonderful, complicated, painful, and rewarding thing it is to be a human being. We can read it as an inspiring, even liberating story, a story of what a wonderful, complicated, painful, and rewarding thing it is to be a human being. I would like to suggest that the story of the Garden of Eden is a tale, not of Paradise Lost but of Paradise Outgrown, not of Original Sin but of the Birth of Conscience. (21) In and of itself, innocence is not a negative experience. It is a natural state in childhood. A child born into a loving family is nurtured and protected from the ills of the outside world. Who does not feel a deep love for innocence when viewing true childhood innocence? A great part of what makes innocence so desirable is that it is so fleeting. But like many cheap, mass produced copies of a favorite work of art on t-shirts, coffee mugs, calendars, and hotel room walls, the failed attempt to capture something beautiful becomes banal if not abidingly ugly.

Well-rendered art can be, and often is, simultaneously beautiful and dangerous. Also, nothing compels art to have a social or moral responsibility. It is not required by law or definition to be anything but art, although it is not precluded from being more. By the same standards, there is no obligation to view the art of Gauguin, Rousseau, van Empel or any other artist as anything other than successfully rendered line form and color. But we are not precluded from doing so.

47 Accordingly, if we choose to look more deeply we will be rewarded with new visions, challenging ideas, and oftentimes frustration and confusion. I love this art as I have always sought to fill my life with love and beauty. I am an artist. I am a gardener, and I am drawn to painted gardens. I am a dreamer and lover of great myths and stories, but also a thinker and a progressively minded academic, feminist and believer in compassion toward others. When we move beyond innocence, we must proceed with caution, knowing the world is a dangerous and often unpleasant place. With possession of the fruit of knowledge comes responsibility. It seems wrong to see merely beautiful pictures where there is also a history of misconceptions, struggle and exploitation.

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