Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

A twelve-foot mural Gauguin painted in Tahiti as his last word, three French questions lettered in the corner and no answers anywhere on the canvas.

1. 1
   The questions, lettered on the canvas

   Upper-left corner, in a pale yellow field

   Gauguin painted the title straight onto the picture in the top-left corner, the three French questions ("D’où venons-nous / Que sommes-nous / Où allons-nous") in plain capitals, with no question marks. It is rare for a painting to print its own title inside itself; it tells you Gauguin wanted you reading the canvas as a stated riddle, not just looking at a scene.
2. 2
   Where the life starts (so read backwards)

   The far right edge, a sleeping baby with three crouched women

   At the right edge a baby sleeps near three crouching women. This is the beginning of the human life the painting traces, which means the whole frieze is meant to be read right to left, against the direction you normally scan a picture. Start here, at birth, and travel left toward death.
3. 3
   The reach for the fruit

   Dead center, a standing figure with an arm raised

   In the middle a standing figure stretches an arm up to pick fruit. It is the central act of the picture and an old gesture of knowledge and "sin," the Eve reach, dropped into a Tahitian setting. This is the daily life of young adulthood, the busy middle of a life, placed at the literal center of the canvas.
4. 4
   The blue idol Gauguin called "the Beyond"

   Left of center, in the background, arms raised

   Behind the central figures stands a tall blue statue with its arms lifted. Gauguin said it represents "the Beyond," the world past this one. It is worth knowing it is largely an invention: not a real Tahitian deity Gauguin found and recorded, but an image he made up to look ancient and sacred for a European audience.
5. 5
   The old woman, folded in on herself

   The far left, hunched, hands near her face

   At the very left an old woman draws into herself, hands near her face, beside a white bird. She is the end of the life-cycle, death, and Gauguin paints her as resigned rather than terrified. The white bird clutching a small lizard at her feet, he said, stands for the uselessness of empty words, the painting’s quiet shrug at its own grand questions.
6. 6
   Corners aged like an old fresco

   The two upper corners, painted gold-yellow

   Gauguin painted the two top corners a worn gold-yellow, as if the canvas were a damaged old fresco (a painting done straight into wet plaster, the medium of Renaissance church walls) or a faded tapestry. It is a deliberate antiquing effect, meant to make a brand-new painting feel like something dug up from a far older, sacred tradition.