But then bin Laden brought down the World Trade Center and the cultural impact of the Chicago show was greatly dampened. This summer, however, Gauguin has a second chance to seduce us at the Metropolitan Art Museum in Manhattan. "Gauguin in New York Collections: The Lure of the Exotic" displays many of the primary paintings of Gauguin's career along with little-seen drawings and sculptures. Because we were interested in the lure of the erotic, we discussed Gauguin's possibly monstrous sexuality with biographer Nancy Mowll Mathews.

At what point did you know that you were going to write an "erotic" biography?

[Laughs] My intention from the beginning was to examine the role that sexuality played in Gauguin's life and art. You may be surprised at this, but what I actually thought was I would be able to rehabilitate him. That the central issue of his divorce from his wife and their relationship might be reexamined 100 years later, and told in a more sympathetic way -- that basically they grew apart. When I really started poking into it, I discovered that Gauguin was in fact a bully and an abusive husband. All sort of things that I never expected to find. I began reading his letters straight through without being edited by someone or other. I began seeing how unpopular he was during his lifetime. How his habits were so in-your-face in a sexual way.

Do you think you could ever be attracted to him?

Could I be attracted to Gauguin? Yes. I think he was a terribly charismatic person. I think he was very seductive when he wanted to be. I think everyone would have succumbed to his charms, particularly a young person. I kind of doubt it at this point of my life -- you meet people like that and you think, "Yeah. Yeah. Right." If you were young and this person were as colorful and intriguing as he was, I could see why people liked him.

Did you dream about Gauguin while you were writing this book?

That's a good question. Not that I remember. But you know dreams -- I could have been dreaming about him the whole time and I thought it was just lunch.

Would you say he was bisexual?

Yeah. In practice he certainly was. [Pause] Let me back off a little bit. When you say, "Would I say he was bisexual," my first response is that I think he found men more interesting, more compelling. But I don't have any evidence that he acted on that. And we certainly have plenty of evidence that he slept with women. So in an erotic sense, I think both men and women appealed to him. I would say men more often, but women at some times as well. I think he loved to have children. God, the man had a lot of children. He loved the whole idea of someone getting pregnant and showing the world that he still had it.

Gauguin is definitely not politically correct for the 21st century. He liked 13-year-old girls ...

No, that's never sexually politically correct. Absolutely.

You don't make a lot of moral judgment on Gauguin in your book.

This is what I would say about pedophilia or abuses in his sexual relationships: I think in practice it is abominable and should never be perpetuated against unwilling or too innocent people, children or whatever. I think what I admire Gauguin for -- I think I can say this -- is when he put these odd and unpredictable twists of sexuality into his art that actually ended up enhancing it. So even people who would say, "Absolutely not. We can't have the sexualization of children" or "We can't have any glorification of violence within a marriage or a sexual relationship" -- the way Gauguin used those themes in his art ended up being quite compelling.

Can you think of an example of sexual violence?

He did a whole series of Eves in the late 1880s. In one that he did in 1889, Eve is covering her ears and crying out. And he did a wood carving which is usually translated into English as "be in love," but it actually means "be a lover." What's happening is, the self-portrait -- a creature -- has his hand grasping the woman in a kind of gesture of forcefulness. It's the ugliness and monstrousness of this relationship between the man and the woman that is violent, and yet the title, "Be a Lover and You Will Be Happy," is even more perverse. It's not what we think of being in love, all this useless romance. This is hardcore physical force. And ugliness. And this is what Gauguin thinks will make you happy. You know it is frightening. And you want to recoil from it. But as a work of art, it's amazingly compelling as is that earlier Eve which is transformed from the biblical Adam and Eve story where Eve tempted Adam in the fall of man kind of thing. In Gauguin's painting, the snake is a predator. A rapist. He is about to introduce sexuality in Eve's life in a way that frightens her.