|
|
Style in
The Transitional Zone
The zone between Melanesia and Polynesia, peopled with representatives
from both regions (like Micronesia, which has recently included Malays
as well), is poor in art. Its wooden statuary reduces the human to the
essential features. The two-dimensional face is akin to Melanesian conceptions,
as well as the Polynesian Tonga and Samoan. Of the first-named we know
a few small-sized female figures. The face, without relief, is extended
into a triangle; the rest of the body, with the exception of the arms,
simple flat sticks, seeks to imitate nature. One image of a young girl,
half reclining, is a symbol of idyllic Polynesian leisure. Sometimes,
the primitive artists, for relaxation, abandon pure creation and imitate
what they actually see. In the Santa Cruz Islands, some of which are peopled
by black-skinned tribes, others by brown-skinned tribes from the west,
the statues are akin to the Tongan style, in spite of their heaviness.
Figurines of a similar type, probably modern, appear in the Fiji Islands,
where the blood and cultures of the two Oceanic groups mingle.
Triangular faces, noses forming a cross with the eye-brows, the narrow
arms of the Tongans, and bodies of extreme spareness characterise the
statuary of the Carolines, at Nuku-manu and Takuu. The better-known figures
of Nukuor have more relief. The elongated mass of the heads of these Tino
recur in certain figurines from Tahiti.
Polynesia
The art of Polynesia, the widely scattered
Pacific islands from New Zealand to Easter Island, may seem in comparison
less vital and more decorative. Ancestor figures and masks are rare; not
least because early Christian missionaries completed a thorough and widespread
destruction or mutilation of sculpted ancestral deities. But Polynesian
joy in creating complex rhythms of surface-patterning finds expression
in many different media: from the spectacular featherwork of Hawaii, to
the intricately carved wood and greenstone of the New Zealand Maoris -
including the "living art" of tattoo. The Maori fascination
with curvilinear surface ornamentation was almost obsessive; complex linear
patterning is found in the canoed decoration of canoes and of the doorposts
and lintels of meeting-houses, and still persists,even if the original
vitality appears only rarely in modern work.
Polynesian
Style of Art
Let us approach the heart of the Polynesian
triangle, from which sailed the tribes who colonised the islands of the
South Seas. The Society Islands, the Cook Islands and the Austral Islands,
all once in close relationship, provide evidence of related arts.
Here the masters are the carvers of stones
for the sacred enclosures for the altars and also for the embankments
on which some of the houses stand. Big stone statues are rare. The most
massive are those from Raia-vavae.
The stone images at Tahiti, Moorea and Raiatea are seldom as much as three
feet tall, the majority barely half that. The shapes, dictated by the
block which is merely penetrated by a few notches, verge on indigence.
The tiny wooden images are ritual objects or were used to adorn canoes.
These figures represent the dead, but the Polynesian religion also represented
its higher gods. At Tahiti these are simple symbols. The god of war, Oro,
is a fragment of wood the size of a child's arm, covered with a tightly
laced network of fine coconut-fibre string (sennit). The scarlet feathers
of the red-tailed tropic-bird are attached to it. By contact, they have
become images of the god. Finally, all trace of art has evaporated.
At Mangaia, Tane, the patron of artists, is symbolised by an adze, with
its blade fixed to a monumental handle. Some scholars see the stylisation
of a human figure in the cross-pieces which ornament it. At Rurutu and
Raroton-ga, the images of Tangaroa, the god who created the world and
men, show an almost human figure, with a cylindrical (Rurutu) or flat
trunk, from which humanity emerges like young shoots bursting with sap.
The Tangaroa from Rarotonga, in profile, have big elongated eyes with
heavy eyelids like their mouths. At Raiavavae, some wooden statues of
great rarity exhibit a flat face with features in the form of a cross
on minute geometrical masses. The war clubs, and the state oars with round
or rectangular motifs, their handles engraved with human figures which
are sometimes linear, are once again the most authentic works of art.
On the blades we also rediscover the concave bodies and heads in the round
of the style of Tahiti or Nukuor.
To the north of the triangle (Hawaiian Islands), a wooden statuary of
great size developed towards the 12th century, it is believed, under the
influence of Tahiti, with which island the Hawaiians had established relations.
Still more ancient sculptures have left coarse stone remains on Necker
Island, their faces akin to the primary substratum of Oceanic plastic
art. The big Hawaiian figures represent the gods who guard the sanctuaries.
The first white visitors made drawings of them. Distorted gestures to
inspire fear, the ferocious grimace of the figure-for-eight mouths (recurring
in New Zealand) contrast with the static statuary so far met with. Realism
was pushed even further, as some recently discovered domestic statuettes
prove.
Some figures of plaited rushes, decorated with the orange-red feathers
of the tropic-bird, represented the god of war, Kukailimoku, whose terrifying
image was carried in battle. Feather-work too, of great refinement, gave
the kings splendid cloaks and provided them with headgear like Greek infantry.
The Hawaiians also had a liking for plates and dishes and small pieces
of furniture with pure lines, made of wood polished and grained with yellow.
At the south-west point of the triangle we find the Maoris of New Zealand.
A harsh climate has toughened their character and sharpened their pride.
Their somewhat rustic but essentially decorative art is often symbolical.
Synthetic shapes are covered with the complicated and delicate arabesques
of the Maori spiral possibly derived from the heraldic tattooing (moko)
of the warriors. After death, the head, carefully smoked, is preserved
among the family treasures. The spiral creates an apparent movement which
is sometimes so lifelike that it tires the eye. The carved figures, which
rarely have more than two dimensions, are contorted as if to avoid the
decoration which invades all the objects, undulating around the portals
of the communal houses as well as the prows of the war canoes.
Is it possible to link these Maori ornaments with the ornamentation of
the Melanesians? The latter make a sober arrangement on a plane surface
of the natural motifs they transform. The Maoris, on the other hand, without
actually leaving the plane surface, seem to be constantly escaping from
it.
To the south-east the art of the Marquesas confirms the variety of the
Polynesians' inspiration; however the variety of media is greater among
the black peoples. Like that of the Maoris, the art of the Marquesas is
primarily graphic. Tattooing was its purest expression. The statuary
is surface carving, touching lightly a very simple original shape. The
open-air sanctuaries were peopled with large or small images, in stone
or wood, of Tiki, the first man. His face, with its broad eyes, a sabre-slash
of a mouth and scrolls for nose and ears, recurs equally on men's skin
and on the most insignificant utensils. He has some of the characteristics
of that countenance which could be said to typify an art of the Pacific
from Asia to Easter Island and sometimes even to pre-Columbian America.
Easter Island
The Tuamotu atolls on the route to Easter Island have perhaps known no
art except that religious poetry in which the recently discovered grandiose
and confused personality of Kiho, the greatest of all gods, appears.
At Mangareva (in the Gambier Islands) which contributed to the peopling
of Easter Island, wooden images have been found with trunks and limbs
imitating nature; they bear the flat face already encountered. Only one,
it seems, combines curved and rectangular volumes, an example of those
abstract conceptions which often attract the Polynesian sculptors.
At the southern extremity of this region
is Easter Island, the Rapa-Nui of modern Tahitians. Its quantities of
enormous statues of volcanic breccia were the first revelation of Polynesian
art. Using this material, which is easily carved with stone burins, the
Easter Islanders erected more than five hundred images of their dead,
with heights varying from nine to forty-eight feet. In the past they stood
on the altar of the sanctuaries, which also served as tombs. Teams of
specialists worked feverishly to carve them in a record time of three
or four weeks. Brought down the slopes from the workshops, they were dragged
to the edge of the ocean by hundreds of men and women.
The artists contributed very few variations
to this 'mass-produced type'. They derive from the stele, and only their
great narrow masks framed by long ears are more than two-dimensional.
The bust, cut off at the navel, bears arms in bas-relief. The face occupies
two-sevenths of the height. Shadows contrast strongly with the angular
surfaces lit up by the ocean light.
Wood itself is rare and comes from a single species: the Sophora toromiro,
with stunted scraggy trunks. Sometimes the sea throws up a floating tree.
Thus, in the legends, treasures are always composed of wooden objects.
Wooden statuettes, which are quite unlike the monumental statues, represented
the dead or spirits. They were in keen demand for exhibition around the
sanctuaries on feast days. The works of specialists, some of the oldest
have a finish and a delicacy which Cook noticed on his voyage. The best
known, called moai kavakava (statues with many sides) by the natives,
who still imitate them, represent emaciated and bearded old men with macabre
realism. The local version of the god Tane Make Make is ornamented with
the beak of an albatross. Other sea birds play an important part in religious
life. A being with the head of a sea bird, drawn with a free and accurate
line, swarms over the rocks and lava. Hundreds of rock engravings cover
as much as several square yards of surface, representing the beings and
plants of the island, everyday objects such as canoes, side by side with
figures combining animal and human elements. In the hundreds of minute
signs engraved on wooden tablets some authorities think they see writing.
The most important unifying element in Oceanic art remains its 'two-dimensionalism'
mainly imposed by a poorly developed technique, and a few cultural factors.
This 'primary style' of two-dimensionalism is often shown in the face,
but also in the whole figure, and recurs all the way along the migrant
route followed by the Oceanians from southern Asia. It is salient proof
of the fundamental unity of the arts in Oceania.
|
