The clash between European, so-called "civilized", and Polynesian, so-called "primitive" cultures initiated contemporary art. Paul Gauguin (1843-1903) was its guide. Where did this taste of barbarism come from? Without a doubt, Peru, where Paul Gauguin was able to live his most tender youth, represented his lost paradise. We can then imagine that his wild quest is in reality a childhood quest. For him, for the artists who followed, this desire for wildness was a need to return to the primitive, in the sense of the first, the original.