ABSTRACT
The picture on the cover of this book – Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? – was painted in 1897 by Paul Gauguin towards the end of his life, during his extended stay in Tahiti. It is a very large canvas – 1.39 × 3.74 metres (4’ 6” × 12’ 4”) – and is generally considered his greatest work. Gauguin indicated that the painting should be ‘read’ from right to left, with the three main groups of fi gures illustrating the questions posed in the title. The three women with a child represent the beginning of life; the central group symbolises the daily existence of young adulthood; and in the fi nal group, according to the artist, ‘an old woman approaching death appears reconciled and resigned to her thoughts’; while at her feet ‘a strange white bird . . . represents the futility of words’. Beyond this, Gauguin wanted the picture to remain a mystery. ‘Explanations and obvious symbols would give the canvas a sad reality’, he wrote, ‘and the questions asked [by the title] would no longer be a poem.’
