Tiki Pop: America Imagines Its Own Polynesian Paradise / L'amerique reve son paradis polynesien

Urban islands and bamboo hideaways set the stage for a pop culture phenomenon like no other. In mid-century America the imaginative appeal of Tiki penetrated fashion music eating drinking and architecture. Published in connection with an exhibition at the prestigious Muse du quai Branly in Paris Tiki Pop traces the development of Tiki as romantic vision and cultural appropriation. Follow Tiki from James Cooks first Pacific Island expeditions through Gauguins exotic paintings Hollywood jungle fantasies and elaborate temples erected to celebrate Tiki as the god of recreation. With hundreds of previously unpublished images Tiki the pop icon unfolds from its earliest enthusiastic beginnings to its spectacular downfall in the dawning awareness of the Western worlds colonial misdeeds. This book is the culmination of the extensive research of Sven Kirsten urban archaeologist Tiki sage and author of earlier TASCHEN books The Book of Tiki and Tiki Modern which first recovered the figure of Tiki from obscurity. In his widely lauded graphic style Kirsten places venerable ancient godheads next to their Polynesian pop counterparts movie posters next to matchboxes comic strips next to Robinson Crusoe illustrations. The result is at once a visual feast a piece of cultural history and a tribute to a very particular vision of paradise.