Word: marquesan
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...should not forget that in the 1880s, Frenchmen were still talking about Japanese art as art pri-mitif.) When he did quote Tahitian art, Gauguin played fast and loose with it, basing (in There Is the Marae, 1892) a Tahitian fence on the design of a tiny Marquesan earplug. In his Tahiti, primitivism was cousin to Baudelaire's paganism and Delacroix's orientalism-a celebration of what Gauguin called "uncertain luxe barbare d'autre-fois" (a certain barbaric luxury of older times). It rested on sensuality and nostalgia. It was Paradise Depraved...
After all, it is probably pleasanter to sit by the warm fire of a cold winter's evening, and imagine one's self lolling on the "paepae" of some picturesque Marquesan hut, listening to the chatter of Exploding Eggs, the native valet, and Chief Seventh Man Who Is So Angry He Wallows in The Mud, than it would be to explore in the flesh those far-away places, to broll under the tropic sun, flee from the shark and the enraged swordlish, or suffer the stings of the "nones" in deserted Haapa, where the last dregs of the Typee race...
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