"The woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'"
Genesis 3:3
It is not until Gauguin leaves Tahiti and returns in 1895, however, that he finally reached the climax of his relationship with his symbolic Eve as she not only stands, but has her arms outstretched to the sky, guiding Gauguin in his ultimate search for his primitive ideal. In one of the culminating pieces of his career, Where do we come from? What are we doing? Where are we going? 1897, Gauguin posed all of the existential questions that brought him to Tahiti in the first place and continued to plague him into his final days. In this painting, Gauguin drew together a range of former paintings about Eve onto one canvas in order to truly address these questions through his ideal, but not wholly accurate, vision of Tahiti as a dwelling place for his Eve. In analyzing this large work, which contains many other artistic allusions and cultural references, the three major sections of this painting each contain a different stage in Gauguin’s relationship with Eve, his guiding force.
Although it would seem sensible to start from Where do we come from?, the rightmost section of the canvas, if read from left to right, however, the painting narrates Gauguin’s evolving relationship with Eve, her development from a into a strong standing woman, and her role as the source of all life and the symbol for a new beginning. Starting on the left side of the painting, Gauguin chose a reproduction of his pre-Tahitian work, Breton Eve, as the first symbol for Where are we going?. Here, in the form of an old woman, holding her head and crouching into her naked body, she is representing the Judeo-Christian school of thought and Gauguin’s world pre-Tahiti. She represents his past, and where his Eves actually came from; from assuming the guilt and shame of humanity.
As we move right towards the What are we doing? section, there is an androgynous figure, reaching up and picking fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Aside from the obvious direct connection to Eden and the tasting of the forbidden fruit, the fluctuating sexuality of this tree-picker (in another version, he is depicted as a woman) is a reference to Gauguin’s attraction to androgyny in his models and the ancient concept of Hermaphroditism (related to the Biblical story of how Eve was created from the rib of Adam) (Walther 49). With his androgynous tree-picker as the major focal point of the painting, Gauguin is highlighting Eve’s most important role as the original source of life and knowledge, which would not have come without the Fall. She is finally standing completely erect and is actively acquiring knowledge and distributing it to those around her (such as the child eating alone) According to Gauguin, the Fall was extremely important to man as without it, we would not be here, and the world would be void of questioning, as is represented by the pondering couple and this existential work as a whole. Eve’s height symbolizes the high point in the timeline of humanity when we first developed our sense of self, and because of her, were able to stand up on our own and take control of our lives.
Finally, on the far right, in the Where do we come from? section, is a baby who is open and looking around, a complete reversal of the closed-in decrepit Eve on the left. This baby is the manifestation of the new beginning that Eve ultimately represented for Gauguin. Although he created this painting at an extremely low point in his life when he was depressed and suicidal (Walther 77-78), he was still reaching towards Eve for a last grasp at hope and inspiration although his multiple attempts at a new beginning in new environments ultimately failed for him. It is through Eve’s physical, postural evolution in Tahiti that Gauguin represents his desire to break away from the restrictions of Judeo-Christian Europe, and attempt to spiritual terms with himself.