- Related Topics:
- Oceanic arts
- art
- Oceania
- Pacific Islander
- dendroglyph
Effects of European contact
The earliest Westerners to explore the Pacific Ocean undertook their dangerous voyages with firm determination to discover wealth in one form or another. Except in rare cases, they had no lively curiosity about the islanders. They engaged neither their interests nor their skills in recording island life; indeed, their visits were often too brief to leave time for observations. Tense and even hostile encounters were frequent and must have further distorted the mutual views of those involved. The few comments and drawings to be found in the records of the expeditions of Álvaro Mendaña de Neira (1567–68, 1595), Pedro Fernández de Quirós (1605–06), Luis Váez de Torres (1606), and Don Diego de Prado (1606), all in the service of Spain, Jakob Le Maire (1616) and Abel Janszoon Tasman (1642–43) of the Netherlands, and others are thus all the more telling. They reveal that in general the material culture they witnessed was approximately the same as was recorded and collected by the late 18th-century explorers and their successors.
Thus it seems that, in many parts of the Pacific, material culture had reached a settled state by the 16th century and remained conservative for two more centuries. Then, in the 18th century, contact with European collectors began to stimulate changes in some areas of Oceania, including the outright faking of antiquities and the adaptation of traditional forms to European fancy. The islanders also began the manufacture for sale of favourite collectibles, such as stone adzes and weapons. (Such adaptation of production has continued and remains in practice today.)
Australia
The art styles of the Australian Aborigines fall into three groups, which follow to some extent the ecological zones of the continent. The first group is identified with the heart of Australia; this region, which covers most of the continent’s landmass, is arid desert surrounded by a belt of savanna. The second zone extends from the central desert region to the southeastern coast and includes sections of open eucalyptus forest and belts of tropical jungle. The third zone is similar to the southeastern zone, but it extends to the northeastern and northern coasts (including Arnhem Land and Cape York). It is thought that, at the time of European contact, the Aboriginal population (about 300,000 people) roughly corresponded with these divisions, the north-northeast region having the greatest numbers and the desert the least.
The material culture of all three groups was limited in types of objects but versatile and highly efficient in its adaptation to the peoples’ hunting-and-gathering economy. All material objects were necessarily portable and often served more than one purpose. For example, wooden bowls were used as both food carriers and cradles; and boomerangs, which were used primarily for fighting and hunting, could also be used, in conjunction with shields, to make fires. The most consistently decorated objects were shields, spears, spear-throwers, clubs, and boomerangs of various forms.
The central desert
The art of the central desert area features arrangements of primarily curvilinear and rectilinear designs engraved on flat surfaces. Stylized depictions of birds, snakes, and human figures occur infrequently. Paint was used sparingly and was usually restricted to red and white.
Curvilinear designs mostly appeared in the eastern and central parts of the area in the form of concentric circles, arcs, semi-ovals, and wavelike patterns. Probably the most striking examples are found on the engraved tjurungas of the Aranda tribe. These oval or disk-shaped sacred boards were made of wood or stone and painted with red ochre. Each design element refers to a specific object or situation; but the application of the reference in its context of the general design, and its relation to myth, is known only to its clan proprietors. It is this relationship that is revealed, in whole or in part, at initiation rituals.
The most elaborate design creations in the central desert area were the settings devised for totemic rituals. The ground was painted with large designs featuring the characteristic circles and serpents, in red or black on an ochre field with white dots. Arrangements of decorated poles and symbolic structures completed the settings. The participants had their bodies painted and then were covered with bird down adhered with the wearer’s blood. In the northern central desert, headpieces, worn transversely or vertically, were constructed of spears sheathed in red and white bird down and represented totemic fauna and flora. In the south and the west, the totemic emblems were smaller panels of string and down worked on stick frames.
Objects made for daily rather than ritual use, such as spear-throwers and boomerangs, were typically engraved. The engraved designs are characteristically curvilinear in the central area, but the engraving of the west and northwest tends to consist of angular grooved key or diamond patterns against a background of parallel grooves (which were sometimes painted alternately red and white). Similar key patterns were engraved onto mother-of-pearl shells by tribes living along the coastal waters of the northwest. Highly prized as ornaments, the shells were traded far into the interior.