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1. 1 2020-10-12T11:36:21-07:00 USC Pacific Asia Museum d5c1cdb8968a27aeb8620e4c0c5fc7e36e111c30 Introduction: The Pacific Islands and Paul Jacoulet USC Pacific Asia Museum 22 google_maps 2020-12-24T13:23:22-08:00 USC Pacific Asia Museum d5c1cdb8968a27aeb8620e4c0c5fc7e36e111c30

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• 1 2020-10-12T11:44:51-07:00 Closeness to Nature 19 gallery 2020-12-24T13:02:25-08:00 What is your favorite Jacoulet portrait? How do you interpret the subjects of his prints? What do you think Jacoulet wants you to feel when you see his work?
  
  Jacoulet’s focus on paradisal leisure and adornments evoke this theme of his subjects’ proximity to nature as a sign of “primitiveness”: primitive ways that inferred a natural progression to civilization through colonization. Between his watercolors and prints his subjects shift back and forth between melancholy and mischief as Jacoulet interprets their collective shift into “civilization” at the time of Japanese colonization. Overall Jacoulet provides a snapshot of Western understanding of the Pacific Islanders in the 20^th century and how his art contributed to the sentiment of disappeared communities.
  
  
  
  
  
• 1 2020-10-12T11:39:09-07:00 Adornments of Paradise 10 plain 1025343 2020-12-17T14:30:05-08:00 The body as an aesthetic form adorned with tattoos, clothing, and jewelry is an important theme of Pacific cultures. In the Marshall Islands tattooing is a decorative device urged by the gods and embedded in social and economic life. Clothing and adornments can mark sanctity, rank, and wealth of the people who wear it. Jacoulet’s portraits often feature adornments that refer to subtle cultural markers of status within Pacific societies. Within his interpretation of these cultures, however, he tends to change the appearances of his subjects into exoticized “types” that were better received then his original watercolors. He also insisted the islanders posed in their traditional outfits rather than their modern clothes.
  
  
  Paul Jacoulet
  Japan, c. 1939
  Woodblock Print
  Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard W. Child
  1981.117.29
  
  The original watercolor version of this image was not well-received, probably due to the unpleasant look of the young girl’s face and polka dot shawl over her shoulders that was most likely an import. In the print, Jacoulet made her face appear “doe-eyed” while also changing the shawl to a colorful Chamorro floral. Jacoulet often used his subjects’ eye expression to increase their sensual appeal, creating a “type” that was more alluring and appealing to his audience and moving away from the real humans that were his subjects.