THE PACIFIC
700- 1980 CE
TOPIC 9.2 Interactions Within and Across Cultures in Pacific Art
The Pacific region—including more than 25,000 islands, about 1,500 of which are inhabited—is defined by its location within the Pacific Ocean, which comprises one third of the earth’s surface. The lands are continental, volcanic, and atollian. Each supports distinct ecologies that exist in relation to the migrations and sociocultural systems that were transported across the region.
Patterns of Migration
Geological and archaeological evidence indicates that Papuan-speaking peoples traveled across a land bridge that connected Asia and present-day Australia about 30,000 years ago. Lapita people migrated eastward across the region beginning 4,000 years ago. Populations sailed from Vanuatu eastward, and carried plants, animals, and pottery. This now demonstrates a pattern of migration and connection from what was the Lapita culture.
Setting Sail on the Pacific Ocean
Ships and devices of navigation and sailing expertise were built and used to promote exploration, migration, and the exchange of objects and cultural patterns across the Pacific. Navigators created personal charts of their experience of the sea. Other objects were intended to protect and ensure the success of sailing. Ocean-going vessels carried families, and often communities, across vast distances. Passengers could also return to their place of departure.
The sea is ubiquitous as a theme of Pacific art. As a presence in the daily lives of a large portion of Oceania, art both connects and separates the lands and peoples of the Pacific.
Variations in Art
The arts of the Pacific vary by virtue of ecological situations, social structure, and impact of external influences, such as commerce, colonialism, and missionary activity.
European Arrival
The region was explored by Europeans as early as the 16th century and most extensively from the second half of the 18th century. By the beginning of the 19th century, Dumont d’Urville had divided the region into three units: micro- (small), poly- (many), and mela- (black) nesia (island).
- Micronesia
- Polynesia
- Melanesia
A Force of Power
Arts of the Pacific involve the power and forces of deities, ancestors, founders, and hereditary leaders, as well as symbols of primal principles. These are protected by wrapping, sheathing, and other forms of covering to prevent human access. Ritual dress, forms of armor, and tattoos encase and shield the focus of power from human interaction.
One’s vital force, identity, or strength (mana) is expressed and protected by rules and prohibitions, as well as by wrapping or shielding practices, or tapu. Mana is also associated with communities and leaders who represent their peoples. Objects that project status and sustain structure hold and become mana. These objects are made secure through tapu or behaviors that limit access to and protect the objects.
Human History and Experience
Pacific arts are performed–danced, sung, recited, displayed— in an array of colors, scents, textures, and movements. This aids to enact narratives and proclaim primordial truths. Belief in the use of costumes, cosmetics, and constructions assembled to enact epics of human history and experience. This is central to the creation of and participation in Pacific arts.
Objects such as shields, ancestral representations, and family treasures were and continue to be constructed to give form to and preserve human history and social continuity. Other art forms are constructed to be displayed and performed to remind people of their heritage and shared bonds, such as the significance of an ancestor or leader. These are intended to be destroyed once the memory is created.
Rulers of the Saudeleur Dynasty commanded construction of Nan Madol in Micronesia, a residential and ceremonial complex of numerous human-made islets. Rulers of Hawaii were clothed in feather capes that announce their status and shield them from contact. Societies of Polynesia in New Zealand, Rapa Nui, and Samoa create sacred ceremonial spaces that both announce and contain their legitimacy, power, and life force. In Melanesia, individuals and clans earn status and power and sustain social balance in a set of relationships marked by the exchange of objects. Masks, and the performance of masks, are a recital and commemoration of ancestors’ histories and wisdom.
Art as Commerce
A barter system in art exists in communities, in which one set of objects is exchange for something equally as valuable. The process of exchange is complex and prescribed. Chants, dances, scents, costumes, and people of a particular lineage and social position are called into play to create a performance. This verifies the significance exchange.
(9) 216. Staff god.
Oceanic (Rarotonga). Late 18th-early 19th. Oceanic.
© The Trustees of the British Museum
Learning Objective: Oceanic male fertility sculpture
Themes:
Deities
Religion
Sexuality
Ceremony
Materials with significance
Stylized bodies
Male/female relationships
Museum: British Museum
The Staff god is a figure measuring 12 feet high and is made of wood, tapa, fiber, feathers. It was found on Rarotonga, Cook Islands, in central Polynesia. It is the only surviving wrapped staff god.
The Staff god is comprised of three parts. The stylized and carved wooden head has feathers attached to ears. The rod continues but is now wrapped in tapa cloth/barkcloth. Tapa cloth is made from bark, soaked, beaten, dried, decorated. The carved wooden phallus is now missing.
Little is known about the exact use or function of the Staff god. It was worshipped by Cook Islanders and probably one of their most sacred objects. It likely had to do with reproduction, fertility, abundance, and harvest.
The ceremonies likely had an explicit sexual component to them. It is thought that the phallus was involved in stabbing the ground to ensure a way of fertilizing the land and reaping the harvest.
Men carved the wooden object, while women made the cloth for it.
Content
The Staff god might represent Tangaroa, the creator god. The work Illustrates the stylized head of a god and then small spirits lining his stylized body.
About the Cook Islands
Cook Islands are in the middle of the South Pacific and were settled around 800-1000 CE. In 1773 English Captain Cook made the first sighting but spent little time here. In the 1800s the English set up missions on the islands. The islands were Christianized. The arrival of Europeans meant destruction of native practices.
SUB-IMAGE 1 (Drawing)
© The Trustees of the British Museum
Image caption says “And the idols he shall utterly abolish” – Isaiah 2:18
We can see the staff gods were thrown on the ground. Natives are bowing to Europeans. Revered John Williams and his wife sit in an image in front of European-style homes.
The missionaries removed and destroyed phalluses. They considered them obscene. Natives were now Christians.
(9) 218. Buk (mask).
Oceanic (Torres Strait Islander). Mid to late 19th century. Oceanic.
Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Image source © Art Resource, NY
Learning Objective: Oceanic mask
Themes:
Mask
Animals in art
Ceremony
Ancestors
Materials with significance
Commemoration
Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Buk (mask), from the Torres Strait is made from turtle shell, wood, fibers, feathers, and shell. It stands 21 inches tall. The features are from a frigate bird and raffia is used. The pieces were stitched together.
Why was Buk (mask) made?
This was part of a costume for a masquerade ceremony, which included grass skirts and tops. The ceremony involved fire, drumbeats, and chanting. Only senior men could wear these masks and they were worn like a helmet
The ceremonies were used to invoke heroic ancestors and to contact them. The Buk (mask) is a Totem, an object that connects to spirits or ancestors. The dances were re-enactments of the events of the lives of ancestral heroes.
Ancestors were contacted to ask for their support with:
- Fertility
- Male initiations
- Funerary rituals
- A good harvest
A Closer Look
The mask is divided into two registers. There is a human face and above it the face and body of a bird.
Who is represented?
Is this the face of a hero? Could it be an ancestor ? A heroic ancestor? The frigate bird was probably this ancestor’s spirit animal.
Geography and History
Torres Strait is a body of water between New Guinea and Australia. Most of the islands in this region are uninhabited.
In 1606, Spanish explorer Tovar records the use of turtle-shells in artwork on Torres Strait.
In the 1800s, turtle shells were actively traded by Europeans. Therefore, there was a decline in availability of turtles for native artwork.
In the early 19th century Europeans colonized and Christianized, leading Torres Strait Islanders to burn and destroy masks.
(9) 220. Tamati Waka Nene.
Gottfried Lindauer. Oceanic (Czech/New Zealand). 1890 CE. 19th century. Portraiture.
© Corbis
Learning Objective: European portrait of Oceanic man
Themes:
Portrait
Ideal man
Cross-cultural
Commemoration
Ancestors
West vs Nonwest
Status
Museum: Auckland Art Gallery
Tamati Waka Nene was dead for two years before Gottfried Lindauer was commissioned to paint this oil on canvas portrait measuring 40 by 32 inches. The artist worked from black and white photographs, taken by John Crombie, who had been commissioned to produce 12 photo portraits of Māori chiefs for the London Illustrated News.
Lindauer worked straight onto stretched canvas. Typically, artists will make sketches first. He outlined subjects in pencil, then applied translucent paints, and glazes
Lindauer had to use color theory to help create the right tones and shades. The painting is realistic, illusionistically 3-D, and utilizes light and shadow to cause the figure to glow against the dark background.
Function
This work records the likeness of Nene for Henry Partridge. He asked Lindauer to paint a set of portraits of well-known Māori chiefs to help preserve Māori traditions and to bring ancestral presence into the world of the living. These works were passed down in families and treated with great care and reverence.
About Tamati Waka Nene
Tamati Waka Nene (1780-1871) was Chief of the Ngati Hao people, a tribe of the Māori or native peoples of New Zealand. Baptized in 1839, he picked the name Tamati Waka after the English patron of the Church Missionary Society, Thomas Walker. The chief was regarded as a man of great mana by his people.
Here he wears a fine cloak of kiwi feathers and earring of greenstone. He holds a hand weapon with feathers and a hand grip with an eye. Notice his Moko (facial tattoos) made using scarification.
About the Māori
Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand.
About the Artist
Lindauer was a Czech artist who arrived in New Zealand in 1873. He studied at the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna. He worked as a portrait painter and traveled to New Zealand. There he met a businessman and entrepreneur named Henry Partridge. Partridge wanted Lindauer to paint portraits of well-known Maori.
(9) 221. Navigation chart.
Oceanic (Marshall Islands) 19th – early 20th. Oceanic.
Learning Objective: Oceanic map
Themes:
Man v. nature
Utilitarian
Status
Landscape
Museum: British Museum
Navigation chart a wood and fiber work from Marshall Islands, Micronesia measures 26 by 38 inches. It is made from sticklike midribs of coconut palm fronds. Horizontal and vertical sticks act as framework.
Function
This work organized information about piloting and navigating islands, currents, and swells. The charts were used as memory aides for experienced navigators. The significance of each was known only to its maker. It was made for trainings before voyages. The information was memorized. To carry one at sea would put a navigator’s skill in question.
Content
This chart is a ontentrebbelib (stick chart with shells denoting islands in large sections of water), which covers a large section of the Marshall Islands. Most charts cover smaller areas.
This example represents the two chains of islands which form the Marshall Islands.
- Diagonal and curved sticks represent wave swells
- Shells represent position of islands
- Not constructed to scale
The charts indicate the positions of islands, but they primarily record features of the sea
- Marshallese navigation was based largely on the detection and interpretation of the patterns of ocean swells.
- Much as a stone thrown into a pond produces ripples, islands alter the orientation of the waves that strike them, creating characteristic swell patterns that can be detected and used to guide a vessel to land.
Context
Navigation was an essential skill or sailors would be lost. In the past, knowledge of the art of navigation was a closely guarded secret handed down within certain chiefly families. Ultimately, more and more charts were made to help increase knowledge.
This chart consists of 34 coral atolls spread out across several hundred miles. They are low-lying and hard to see from a distance, as are many of the islands in this region
To maintain connection between the islands, Marshall Islanders built seafaring canoes. This was necessary for trade and community building.
(9) 223. Presentation of Fijian mats and tapa cloths to Queen Elizabeth II.
1953. Multimedia performance. Photographic documentation.
Learning Objective: Oceanic ceremony
Themes:
Commemoration
Utilitarian
Status
Power
Rulers
Appropriation
Politics
Propaganda
Ceremony
Presentation of Fijian mats and tapa cloths to Queen Elizabeth II is a photographic documentation of the Queen’s visit to Fiji in 1953. The presentation to her Royal Highness involved a multimedia performance (costume; cosmetics, including scent; chant; movement; and pandanus fiber/hibiscus fiber mats).
Barkcloth, or masi, is made by stripping the inner bark of mulberry trees. The bark is then soaked. Then it is beat it into strips of cloth. These are glued together, often by a paste made of arrowroot. Bold and intricate geometric patterns in red, white, and black are often painted.
Fijian mats were made by women. This involved stripping, boiling, drying, blackening, and then softening leaves from the Pandanus plant. Dried leaves were then woven into tight, diagonal patterns that have frayed or fringed edges.
Function
Traditionally, cloth and mats are presented as gifts, in important ceremonies such as weddings and funerals. In this case, it was to commemorate a visit by the Queen of England.
This is a display of the power the British have over their colonies/ex-colonies/and parts of the commonwealth. It encourages subjects to still be culturally, ideologically, and politically connected to the British Empire
In the Photograph
The photo shows a procession of Fijian women making their way through a group of seated Fijian men and women. The women in the performance are wearing skirts made from barkcloth that are painted with geometric patterns. They are carrying rolls of woven mats.
This displays the power of the community and the respect towards traditional ceremonies. The mats/tapas are simple. Simplicity is an indication of their importance. The simpler the design, the more meaningful its function.
More About Fiji
Fiji is a group of islands located in the South Pacific Ocean. Fiji is north of New Zealand’s North Island and east of Australia.
Fiji was part of the British Commonwealth (collection of states that used to be part of the British Empire today referred to as the Commonwealth). Post WWII, many colonies were actively looking for independence, some more violently than others.
The Commonwealth Tour
The Commonwealth tour by Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh was to encourage states to stay a part of the Commonwealth. On December 17, 1953, they arrived on the island of Fiji, then an English colony, and stayed for three days before continuing their first tour of the commonwealth nations of England in the Pacific Islands.
They visited hospitals and schools and held meetings with various Fijian politicians.
They witnessed elaborate performances of traditional Fijian dances and songs and even participated in a kava ceremony. Kava is a drink made from the ground roots of kava plant and is sipped by members of the community, in order of importance.
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THE PACIFIC
700- 1980 CE
TOPIC 9.3 Theories and Interpretations of Pacific Art