The Maison du Jouir, or “House of Pleasure,” was the carved, two-story house and studio that Gauguin built in Atuona on the island of Hiva Oa. In Wild Thing, it stands as the ultimate embodiment of his late-life synthesis of art, social commentary, and cultural defiance. The house was not merely a dwelling but a public statement, what Gauguin called “[his] little fortress in the Marquesas” (330). Its entryway was adorned with carved panels bearing the inscriptions “Be mysterious” and “Be in love and you will be happy” (338), setting the tone for a space that rejected European conventions.

Most pointedly, the stairs leading to Gauguin’s private studio were flanked by two satirical tiki carvings: one depicting the local bishop as “Père Paillard” (Father Lechery) and the other the bishop’s young mistress, Thérèse. This was a direct and humorous critique of the hypocrisy of the Catholic mission on the island. The house also functioned as a salon where Gauguin hosted gatherings that blended music, art, and political discussion, becoming the center of his resistance against the colonial administration; it was from this home base that he combined his final artistic output with his legal and journalistic campaigns on behalf of the Marquesan people.

Noa Noa, a Tahitian phrase meaning both “fragrant” broadly and the particular scent of the island’s white florals, is the title of Gauguin’s hybrid literary and visual project intended to explain his first Tahitian journey to a European audience. Conceived with the poet Charles Morice, the book was a mix of memoir, myth, and artistic manifesto designed to accompany his 1893 Paris exhibition. Its creation was protracted and contentious, with Morice delaying his contributions for years. Nevertheless, the text is significant for its narrative method, which blends autobiography with symbolic interpretation. A key example is the story of Gauguin’s expedition with a young Tahitian man, Jotepha, to cut down a tree in the mountains, an event that Gauguin recasts as a complex allegory of temptation, cultural corruption, and spiritual rebirth in a modern-day Eden. This approach modeled the Symbolist storytelling that he sought to achieve in his painting. The project also gave rise to the Noa Noa Suite of woodcuts, a series of dark, dreamlike images that further developed the book’s themes and became a crucial element in the construction of his “savage” persona in Paris.

Synthetism was the artistic philosophy that Gauguin developed in the late 1880s, marking his definitive break from the optical realism of Impressionism. It also stood in direct opposition to the “scientific” method of Georges Seurat’s pointillism, rejecting its detached application of color theory. Synthetism instead proposed that art should synthesize observations, feelings, and abstract forms into compositions driven by ideas. In an interview, Gauguin explained that his goal was to “create symphonies and harmonies” from arrangements of line and color (282), stimulating the imagination rather than reproducing reality. This approach privileged the artist’s inner world and emotional response.

A key turning point in the movement was a lesson in Pont-Aven with the young painter Paul Sérusier, which resulted in the seminal painting The Talisman and helped form the group of followers who became known as the Synthetists. Notable examples of the style from Gauguin’s own oeuvre include Vision After the Sermon and his later Polynesian paintings. Synthetism became Gauguin’s core contribution to modern art theory, profoundly influencing the Nabis, Henri Matisse, and the Fauves, and laying the groundwork for later abstraction.

Painted in 1897-98, this monumental work is Gauguin’s most comprehensive philosophical and artistic statement—a vast panorama addressing the fundamental questions of human existence. As Prideaux demonstrates, the title originated in the catechism taught by Bishop Dupanloup during Gauguin’s school days: “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?” (24). This connection suggests that the painting’s existential inquiry revolved around questions that haunted him throughout his life. The work was created under dramatic circumstances; following near death by suicide and struggling with poverty and illness, Gauguin painted it on a rough, four-meter-long piece of copra sacking. It was thus an urgent summary of his life’s struggles and artistic beliefs.

The painting’s composition is unconventional, designed to be read from right to left, in defiance of European convention. As Prideaux explicates it, the narrative flows from the innocence of birth (a sleeping baby), through the gathering of knowledge (a central figure plucking fruit), to the finality of death (an old woman in a pose reminiscent of a Peruvian mummy). The canvas is populated with symbolic figures drawn from a synthesis of cultures, including a Polynesian idol, crouching figures in attitudes of sorrow, and a bounding Moche dog fox. In the corner, a white goose clutching a lizard signifies what Gauguin called the “futility of words” (307), positioning the work as a purely visual statement. It represents the culmination of his Synthetist method, fusing lived experience, spiritual searching, and a cross-cultural lexicon of symbols into a personal vision of the human condition.