Spirit of the Dead Watching

A young Tahitian woman lies face-down and nude on a bed, her eyes wide and fearful, while behind her a dark, hooded figure - the spirit of the dead of the title - sits in profile against a ground flecked with phosphorescent flowers. Gauguin based the picture on the terror of the dark felt by his young Tahitian companion. Now in Buffalo, Spirit of the Dead Watching fuses sensuality and dread, the reclining nude of the European tradition recast amid Polynesian belief - a striking, unsettling work whose beauty is shadowed by the troubling circumstances of its making.