She lies naked, on her belly, palms flat on the pillow. Her skin is dark as wet earth, hair black as night. A traditional Tahitian cloth covers the mattress, marigold yellow petals against midnight blue. The wall behind the bed is violet-dark with phosphorescent flashes of white. At her feet, a shadow crouches with a black shroud covering the head, so that the face appears as a death mask. This old woman at the young girl’s feet is a tupapau, or spirit of the dead.
The first time I saw Spirit of the Dead Watching was in 2001 as a tiny colour reproduction embedded within a magazine article about Paul Gauguin’s life – how the French painter had left western civilisation behind in order to find an untouched world and a new way of seeing. The article also described how he’d died of syphilis.
.jpg?w=600)
