In societies whose members are largely self-reliant, some degree of craft skill is practically universal. Men make their own canoes, build their own houses, and carve simple household equipment such as hooks and stools; individuals are responsible for decorating their own belongings, including their bodies. In the case of body decoration, however, which can be culturally prescribed in form, highly skilled in execution, and dense in symbolism, the more lavish displays usually entail more than the wearer’s sole efforts. Tattooing and scarification, usually tokens of ritual or hierarchical status, were the work of esteemed specialists.

To progress beyond simple skills, a craftsman not only required the will to excel but sometimes was subject, in theory at least, to socially defined restrictions. There seems to have been an inclination to regard artistic talent as passing from father to son, or from mother to daughter when appropriate; but, in cases in which this was true, society’s concept of the role of the artist probably played a bigger role than heredity.

In many societies the artist was—and still is today—expected to begin his career as an apprentice to a known master, often working on preparatory tasks or the less-demanding details of a project. In some parts of Melanesia, among the Kilenge of New Britain, for example, or in the Solomons, artistic progress is recognized as covering several stages. The apprentice grows into an independent worker with limited skills and eventually, if he has talent and ambition, becomes a master in his turn. In the Solomons the aspirant is actually expected to produce test pieces for approval by his peers and mentors. Elsewhere the process is apparently less formal and, particularly for grandiose projects, less individualistic. Large-scale projects are often an affair of communal effort under specialized supervision. In Papua New Guinea several men at a time may work on a single large architectural carving among the Kwoma, and a whole team may paint one of the huge gables of the Abelam. Individuals, however, may carve major sacred objects when they are inspired by dreams or induced visions. These interventions by the supernatural world can be quite common: if work goes badly, the failure is attributed less to the workers’ incompetence than to the displeasure of the spirits concerned.

In Polynesia, with its more sharply graded societies, the role of artist was more closely related to the religious expert (for instance, the Maori tohunga) than it was in Melanesia. Indeed, in Hawaii and elsewhere carvers formed a special priestly class, and their work was accompanied at every stage with rituals and prayers. The New Zealand Maori considered carving a sacred activity, surrounded by spiritual and physical dangers. Myths of the origins of carving connected it directly to the gods, and its subjects linked it intimately to the ancestors. Carving was one of eight proverbial attainments of a chief, and young Maori of high rank were trained in the formal schools of learning. There were cases of chiefs being captured and enslaved for their talents and, conversely, of slaves celebrated as artists.

The material rewards were not great. While the carver and painter was preoccupied with his work, it was the business of his employer to keep him well fed. On completion, the artist received agreed amounts of valuables, but he might well give away some of them (among the Kilenge at least) to those who praised him. Praise and esteem were in fact the main rewards and were steps toward the making of a “Big Man” of power and influence in Melanesian communities; in Polynesia, mana—personal prestige and moral authority—was achieved in the same way. Equal or even greater credit often went to the man who commissioned the work, for he was regarded as its true author. His achievement in seeing that the work was first instigated and then carried through to a successful conclusion earned him fame and prestige.

Aesthetics

Pacific languages seem to be deficient in terms to express appreciation of or reactions to art, apart from a few that designate the mastery of individual specialists. Little is understood, moreover, about the islanders’ aesthetic concepts. Reactions to works of art seem to range from the pragmatic and rational in the secular realm to the violently emotional in the religious. At a fairly simple level, aesthetic appreciation is expressed as approval of the manner in which a work has been accomplished, of its compliance with possibly unformulated but nevertheless well-understood standards. Craftsmanship and suitability to function are highly valued.

In general, innovation does not seem to have been highly prized. Nevertheless, changes have certainly taken place in the arts over the long period of Pacific history, even though, in the absence of more than a scattering of archaeological examples, such changes are difficult to document. One technique used by artists to attain success was to copy models of recognized excellence and symbolic soundness; old works were often retained precisely for this purpose. The inevitable introduction of variations in these situations, as a result of variations in individual talent, was largely ignored, and the intention of identity between old and new objects was accepted as always having been achieved. The ideal of the local tradition was thus maintained, even though actual stylistic fluctuations must have occurred over time.

In some areas the exotic was deeply admired and therefore copied: in parts of New Guinea, for instance, certain items captured in warfare are known to have been duplicated. Such cases were probably comparatively rare, however. More often works displaying special craft techniques (such as work in ivory imported by Fijians from Tonga) were treasured because it was accepted by the importers that the imports were beyond their skills to manufacture for themselves.

The Maori of New Zealand developed the most precise aesthetic terminology of Oceania, describing both the innate properties of a work and its effect on the viewer. A masterpiece possesses ihi (power), emanates wana (authority), and inspires wehi (awe and fear). The belief that art and religion overlap is widespread in the Pacific, and religious objects are often works of visual art (though not invariably). These objects are not considered sacred in themselves, however; they are humanly worked things into which supernatural beings can be induced for human purposes. These supernaturals are always powerful, unpredictable, and thus dangerous. In New Guinea their destructive power may turn against the object itself, causing a carving to rot, self-consumed; or an object may become so loaded with accumulated power that it has to be buried or otherwise eliminated. It is possible that the practice of abandoning elaborate and painstakingly made carvings after ritual use—as in New Ireland and among the Asmat of Papua, Indonesia—was inspired by such beliefs. In many societies an uninitiated person who glimpsed the sacred objects would be executed, but it is likely that the offended spirits were considered the killers, not the men who acted for them and performed the execution. Among the Maori, ancestral heirlooms were not to be touched without ritual purification, and mistakes in ritual, especially in the building of meetinghouses, with their powerful ancestral associations, could be fatal. Awe and fear are understandable emotions in such circumstances.

In areas where religion depends more on ritual dances or oratory than on objects, expression of the visual arts may be channeled (as in Samoa and much of Micronesia) into an exquisite refinement of craftsmanship, often in the making of utilitarian objects. In these circumstances, the quality of an object often becomes a symbolic reference to social status.

Oceanic visual art, then, although rarely baldly pictorial in a Western manner, is replete with references to both religious and social values. It may even, it has been suggested, be a material means by which values are transmitted nonverbally to those qualified to understand the messages involved, thus becoming a mode of communication that reinforces and is vital to society.