Paul Gauguin
1848 - 1903Oviri, 1893-94
Bronze
Conceived circa 1893-1894; this bronze version cast circa 1955
Conceived circa 1893-1894; this bronze version cast circa 1955
Oviri is the name of the goddess of mourning in Tahitian mythology. It is also the title of a traditional Tahitian song that tells of the love and longing between...
Oviri is the name of the goddess of mourning in Tahitian mythology. It is also the title of a traditional Tahitian song that tells of the love and longing between two women whose restless hearts grow cold and silent to each other. Before it was embodied as Gauguin’s last sculpture and masterpiece, Oviri was one of the inner images in the artist’s “little world of friends” that spiritually invited and eventually took him to Tahiti.
This unclassifiable piece Oviri (literally translates as “savage”) is leaning on her mysteriously long and thick hair that curiously leaves the back of the sculptures’s head open. She is depicted as indifferently killing a fox while dispassionately caressing its cub thus communicating “life in death” for Gauguin who undoubtedly blended it with more rough soul than tough clay and wanted it to be placed on his tomb. With its disturbing physical features, confusing sexual characteristics -which may not be sensual but are somehow seducing- as well as its unusual posture, Oviri appears as a strange amalgam between a wild human being and some unknown creature.
Gauguin hints at his empathic connection to the remarkable and unique rigidity of Oviri as if it is part of his inner self: “I am a savage in spite of myself. That's also why my work is inimitable.” Thanks to and despite its perplexing impressions on one, Oviri powerfully stands alive in time like a curiously enduring gaze between its viewer and its creator.
© Cigdem Mirol
The original cast is in the Musée d'Orsay.
This unclassifiable piece Oviri (literally translates as “savage”) is leaning on her mysteriously long and thick hair that curiously leaves the back of the sculptures’s head open. She is depicted as indifferently killing a fox while dispassionately caressing its cub thus communicating “life in death” for Gauguin who undoubtedly blended it with more rough soul than tough clay and wanted it to be placed on his tomb. With its disturbing physical features, confusing sexual characteristics -which may not be sensual but are somehow seducing- as well as its unusual posture, Oviri appears as a strange amalgam between a wild human being and some unknown creature.
Gauguin hints at his empathic connection to the remarkable and unique rigidity of Oviri as if it is part of his inner self: “I am a savage in spite of myself. That's also why my work is inimitable.” Thanks to and despite its perplexing impressions on one, Oviri powerfully stands alive in time like a curiously enduring gaze between its viewer and its creator.
© Cigdem Mirol
The original cast is in the Musée d'Orsay.
Provenance
Private CollectionExhibitions
Rome, Complesso del Vittoriano, Paul Gauguin: Artist of Myth and Dream, October 2007-February 2008, p. 322, no. 94 (illustrated in color, p. 323).Literature
H. Castets, "Gauguin," Revue universelle, no. III:xcvi, 15 October 1903, p. 536.
C. Morice, Paul Gauguin, Paris, 1919, p. 158 (ceramic version illustrated, p. 159).
A. Vollard, Souvenirs d'un marchand de tableaux, Paris, 1937, p. 197.
R. Goldwater, Paul Gauguin, New York, 1957, p. 27.
C. Gray, Sculpture and Ceramics of Paul Gauguin, Baltimore, 1963, pp. 245-247, no. 113 (partially glazed stoneware version illustrated).
M. Bodelsen, Gauguin's Ceramics, A Study in the Development of his Art, London, 1964, pp. 146-149, fig. 99 (painted stoneware version illustrated, p. 147; dated 1893-1895).
G.M. Sugana, L'opera completa di Gauguin, Milan, 1972, p. 111, no. 394-1 (terracotta version illustrated, p. 110).
J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, New York, 1991, vol. I, pp. 459 and 461 (partially glazed stoneware version illustrated, p. 458; dated 1894).
C. Andréani, Les Céramiques de Gauguin, Paris, 2003, pp. 46 and 140 (ceramic version illustrated in color on the cover, pp. 47-49 and 140-141).
Belinda Thomson (ed.), Gauguin by himself, London, 1993, no. 212, illustration in colour of the stone version p. 269
Gauguin in New York Collections: The Lure of the Exotic (exhibition catalogue), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2002, fig. 53, illustration of the cast mounted on the artist's grave site p. 138
Gauguin, Tahiti, L'Atelier des tropiques (exhibition catalogue), Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris & Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2004, figs. 129 & 129, illustration in colour of the stone version pp. 190 & 193
Gauguin, Maker of myth (exhibition catalogue), Tate Modern, London & National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2011, no. 112, illustration in colour of the stone version p. 173