‘Noa Noa’ by Paul Gauguin and Charles Morice

Noa Noa is one of the best examples of a nineteenth-century artist’s book. Part- travelogue, part-autobiography and rich in imagery, it sealed Gauguin’s reputation as a painter of the tropics. This edition brings the original co-authored text of Noa Noa to the public, allowing a new interpretation of Gauguin to emerge. Written together with the poet Charles Morice, it sets up a dichotomy between the ‘savage painter’ and the ‘civilised poet’, one which reveals the painter’s careful orchestration of his persona and manipulation of its reception. Claire Moran’s introduction situates the text within Gauguin’s aesthetic, detailing its complex history and signalling its themes. Noa Noa is followed by a first print edition of the Manuscrit tiré du Livre des métiers de Vehbi-Zumbul Zadi, an artistic treatise, penned by Gauguin. Through both texts, Gauguin emerges as an extraordinary teller of tales, a painter for whom the truth was never black and white.