Two Polynesian art styles
The Cook Islands
The fishermen’s gods of Rarotonga can be taken as
stylistically representative. The body is heavily built and squat, with the
head, abdomen and knees protruding. The head is large in proportion to the body,
and the chin pointed. The eyes are carved as large oval reliefs, having an arc
at the top to represent the eyebrow, and a mouth conceived in a similar fashion
to show the lips and tongue. A simple extension of the line running down the
centre of the forehead forms the nose. The shoulders are raised, flat and
square, and the hands rest on the abdomen. The latter seems to be
characteristic of Polynesia. The same treatment of the facial features occurs
in staffgod fragments from Rarotonga, although the volume of the sculptures has
been reduced by the thinness of the staff form. Below the large head, figures
alternate in full-face and profile. The profile heads each have a penis
projecting from the throat. The staff as a whole often terminated with a penis.
Fan handles and canoe prow and stern boards sometimes show the same stylisation
of the human form as the small figures of the staffgods. These small figures
also seem to be the basis for the largely abstract carvings from Mitiaro, and Mangaia
ceremonial adzes. Other fan handles, though, are closer in style to simplified
fishermen’s gods, placed back to back in a symmetrical composition, joined at
the feet, buttocks, shoulders and heads which are swept backwards.
Tahiti
Like the Cook Islands, figures from Tahiti have squared
shoulders, hands placed on abdomen, which, with the head and knees, projects;
occasionally the eyes and mouth are represented in the same fashion. But the
figures are more rounded, and not carved in great detail. The fly whisk handles
are surmounted by back to back figures, but they are sometimes quite angular
and abstracted. They have sharply pointed chins, abrupt angles at the knees,
elbows and shoulders, and the arms are fused where the hands would be. The
knobs on the head, which appear like eyes, represent topknots of hair; while
the eyes are represented by down-slanting cuts below. Below the figures are
usually a series of discs, the large disc at the base of the handle may also be
carved with figures. The tops of ivory whisk handles tend to bear less relation
to the human form but can be related to a figure doubled over backwards. Some
wooden fly whisk handles have a single, crudely carved figure without arms, or
with arms suggested by incised lines, and the legs are not always separated.
But these still display the squatting posture, pointed chin and the other
characteristics above in Tahiti free standing sculpture.
Two Melanesian art styles
The Solomon Islands
The canoe prow heads (musumusu) have small high craniums,
often with a conical headdress, heavy projecting jaws, with a wide mouth and
teeth, large eyes and a long nose with large nostrils. The jaws, eyes, large
earrings and other planes are often outlined with shell inlay or white paint.
The importance of the head is emphasised by small arms projecting beneath the
jaw. Skulls are built up into face shape with hardened black gum, decorating
with pearl shell inlay or white paint like the canoe prow figures, or with
tridacna and cone-shell rings, and sometimes with the hair of bleached bast
fibre. Small figures are made in two head types: (a) large and rectangular and
(b) rounded and oval, with two braids of hair. Both have short, heavy legs bent
at the knee. On Treasury Island they have large, bulbous crania, short faces
with straight-cut brows, long aquiline noses and short chins. Figurines (kasai)
on handles, painted red, black and white, have a wide, low cranium and a flat
sharp-chinned face typical of Bougainville. There are also half-length spirit
figures which are crudely carved and hollow, to fit over the upper half of the
body. Life size figures in soft wood tend to be female and highly naturalistic.
They are stained and polished black, but the eyes and hairline may be picked
out in white. Shields are inlaid with small pearl shell fragments in a red and
black mastic base, representing human figures with elongated torsos, faces and
decorative forms which emphasise the shape of the shield.
Iatmul of New Guinea
The most prominent feature of the masks (mei) is the nose,
which extends to the chin, and often represents an animal. Both those from the
West and East are fairly slim and tall, but because the Eatern ones are
slightly broader and flatter more decorative attachments are made: such as
paint, shell, boar tusks, rattan or reed. The Western Iatmul masks have sharply
undercut brows. Skulls are built up with clay or gum, shell, hair, fur and
fibre. A forehead band of opossum indicates that the person portrayed was a
good headhunter. The face is painted with designs that might have been used in
life. The canoe prows were mostly carved with crocodile heads. Large communal
canoes, used for raiding, display a woman and a bird as well as a crocodile.
Debating stools, which were never used to sit on, are generally anthropomorphic;
the figure part being more highly finished than the stool part. The figure
usually has small legs turned out at the knees, a bulbous stomach, and a large,
slightly elongated, head. There is sometimes deep engraving on the heavy
pectorals, representing scarification. Undercut brows and a cross-ridge on the
head, possibly representing a feather ornament, is characteristic of Western
Iatmul debating stools. Suspension hooks are sometimes carved with a head at
the top and an unspecified creature below. Again, a contrast can be made
between the tall, thin heads with prominent brows of the West, and the shorter,
broader, flatter more oval heads of the East.
Hawaiian and New Ireland art
Hawaii
Hawaiian Kava bowls sometimes have two figure supports with
thick legs, upturned heads, wide eyes and nostrils, and a large mouth with
prominent teeth. Their religious carvings, too, tend to be muscular and have
fierce expressions. Temple images from the Kona coast are characterised by the
elaboration of the hair with its two downward seeps, figure of eight mouth,
extended nostrils, and eyes located off the face in the hair, following its
shape. It has a protruding jaw-mouth-tongue complex, and the head is thrust
forward from the top of the muscular chest, surmounted by a serrated headdress.
The body is broken up into angled planes and rough-hewn adze marks are
deliberately left on. The legs and arms are slightly bent. Small portable stick
figures also have a squat muscular body, thick bent legs and forward thrusting
head; but tend to be more rounded, smooth, and do not always carry the
distinctive head shape of the temple images. Freestanding images, slightly
larger than the stick figures, are more naturalistic, though muscular, and have
pearl shell eyes, human teeth and human hair.
New Ireland
The ulis figures of New Ireland often have a similar fierce
expression to the Hawaiian temple images but are not so monumental, either in
size or overall impression. The ulis figures are solidly built, sometimes bearded,
have a large phallic protuberance, breasts, and large, squarish, heads. Most
New Ireland carvings, particularly in the North-West, are associated with the
malaggan memorial festivals for the gods, the distant dead and the recent dead.
Single figures, series of figures forming high poles, a variety of masks and
frieze-like reliefs are used in the display, which is subsequently destroyed.
Representative forms are often surrounded by geometric forms. Both the tall
poles and the masks are built up with shell, bark-cloth, fibre, wood and paint
upon a framework. The large carved masks often have perforated side pieces, protruding,
square jaw, hooked nose, low brow and elaborate headdress with a proliferation
of different materials. Red, white and black are the dominant colours, but
yellow and blue is also used.
The mixed media and elaborate decoration of New Ireland
contrasts strongly with the Hawaiian sculpture where surface decoration,
engraving and painting is very restrained; the emphasis being on sculptural
form. But the Hawaiian feather cloaks and wickerwork heads decorated with red,
yellow and black feathers are more comparable. These heads have figure of eight
mouths with shark or dog teeth, large eyes of inlaid pearl shell with wooden
pupils, broad nose and sometimes human hair. But whereas the Hawaiian objects
can be viewed individually, the malanggan objects are meant to be viewed as a
whole, and in performance. Only the ulis figures and the small, simple chalk
figures, and isolated details of the malanggan can be said to have a general,
but unremarkable, parity.
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