Paul Gauguin – letter to wife.
Tahiti, 8 of December 1892 r.
[…] Of course, many images will be incomprehensible and you will have something to laugh about. I will explain to you the most unbelievable of them, this one anyway, which I wish to keep or sell for dear, so that you can understand and pretend, as they say, initiated. His title: Deadly mind. I painted a naked young girl. In this situation, a trifle will suffice and it will become indecent. However, I do, to be like this, what is the, I'm interested in lines and movement. So I give her face a little dread. This fear must at least have a pretext, if not an explanation, and this in the character of a Maori woman. In the traditions of this people, there is great fear of the ghosts of the dead. Here, a young girl would be afraid of being surprised in this position. (A local woman is anything but). I must convey her horror using as little literary means as possible, not like it used to be. So I do a tali: overall dark tone, ringing in the eye like a funeral bell.
Violet, dark blue and yellow orange. I make yellow-green clothes: 1° because the garment of this wild girl is different from ours (they are made of tree bark), 2° because it suggests the existence of artificial light (Kanaczek's woman is never in the dark), and at the same time I don't want lamp effects (it's common), 5° that yellow, tying yellow orange with blue, closes a musical chord. There are a couple of flowers in the background, but they shouldn't look real, because they are imaginary, and that's why i make them glowing, similar to sparks. For Kanak, the phosphorescent lights at night are the ghosts of the dead; they believe in them and fear them. Finally, at the end of the day, I make the ghost quite ordinary - a little woman; because the girl, not knowing the displays of the French spiritists, cannot understand otherwise, as only to connect with the spirit of the deceased death itself, that is, a person similar to her. Here is a short text, who will make you a scientist to critics, since they start attacking you with malicious questions. It's necessary to, so that the picture is painted very simply, since the motive is wild, childish. […]