South Pacific: In Fiction, Film, and Culture

Prof. Harvey

REVIEW OF LECTURE FOR SOUTH PACIFIC ART/TATTOOING/MAORI DESIGNS
(drawn from Nicholas Thomas's Oceanic Art, Anne D'Alleva's Arts of the Pacific Islands, Terence Barrow's An Illustrated Guide to Maori Art

and other sources; images/text links below should not be duplicated for purposes other that Prof. Harvey's South Pacific course)

OVERALL POINTS

--missionaries destroyed/discouraged much "idol" art and art with genitalia

--encouraged abstract designs in pottery and other crafts
--consequently we may today have a distorted sense of what South Pacific art was like before Cook et al.

--Westerners aestheticize landscape; Polynesians do not (to revere sacred places in which dieties interfuse with landscape is not the same as gushing sentimentally over it or perceiving it as beautiful)

--likewise there would not be separate aesthetic objects, although their would be specialists skilled in creating various products—tohunga

--i.e., there would be no concept of a museum

--but also things we would not think of as being artistic—pig boar tusks—would receive intense cultivation (to get them to curl)

BELIEF POINTS

--lots of male objects (war club--pic#1, Thomas, 71) but also female/male interfused objects or women hidden within as an opposite or generative principle (fused figure--pic#2, Thomas, 67)

--representations of forefathers or deities, especially in ceremony, are not representations per se but intended to solicit/bring magic power of forefathers/deities into occasion, ritual, etc.(Maori walls--pic#3, Thomas, 65)

--need to keep in mind: we "look" on art, for Polynesian culture art was used ritualistically to accomplish something. Art is, in effect, a verb, not a static noun.

--thus what would seem to be ornamental abstraction might have been intended to dazzle or shock or overwhelm (war club--pic#1.jpg)

--bark cloth, used to wrap a shaman or sacred figure, is a device to induce/contain deity, to make the sacred less dangerous or possible to handle

--the magical intensity of new born children of chief status was so strong that their "taboo" or "tapu" had to be reduced—sort of like putting radiating isotopes in cold water—and so covering of various sorts were used

--Ariori youth, during certain rituals, would defecate and urinate on king during power switch/new generation; byproducts of the body opposite of sacred would help diffuse sacredness of newly made king

--feathers covered some gods and so feathers from some types of bird conveyed sacredness

--red feather were associated with God of War, Ku, and chief wearing a Ku cape would in effect become "god-ed" (Ku figure--pic#4 D'Alleva, 100) & (Ku cape--pic#5, D'Alleva, 108)

--later yellow feathers, from a rare bird, superseded red; suggests that genealogy and privilege more important

--but not just symbolically: Western kings wear crowns and crowns symbolize royalty—but does not give royalty

--a feather girdle handed down genealogically would have sacred power

--so a king might be defecated upon and then wrapped in a girdle, which would at once be a battery of power of sorts and  a diffuser/ground wire of power

--for Polynesians there is divine energy which would overwhelm, and it needs to be covered up/located in an icon, or fetish, or girdle---that simultaneously conveys it.  Recall discussion of mana in Mr. Bligh's Bad Language

--in Western mono-theology the Godhead is transcendental to this world (more or less); although in Christianity, God is/was incarnated in Christ, Christ is now in the heart only.  Puritan/Protestant tradition dislikes Catholicism because of "heathen" ritual/vestments/popery and so on that seems to profanely corporealize the deity

MAORI BELIEFS

--Maori very warrior-oriented and very ancestor oriented (haka—projecting tongue=ritualized challenge)

--house was like the body of the ancestor, but also divided between male and female elements (lattice panels made by women; carvings/sculptures by men) (Maori walls--pic#3)

--one would feel safe within it

--sculpture/designs intended to dazzle with dynamism

--heads within heads within heads or carving with sequential heads represent genealogies and the power of forefathers (non-Maori example of forefathers, pic#6.jpg, D'Alleva, 98))

--swirling patterns create awe, but also indicate a metaphysical principle of opposites yoked in tense fusion

--the manaia, for example, combine human/reptile/bird (man between reptile and bird?) (manaia--pic#7, Barrow, 38)

--lizard=evil/death + bird/human life?

--in fact, such tension of opposites seems to be an aesthetic principle that led to abstraction

--koru, or fern design, turns in on itself (but also sort of reptilian and bird beak like) (fern design--pic#8, Thomas, 69)

--symmetry but also inversion

--an authority is quoted as saying Maori art characterized by "contradiction and ambivalent tension"

--see also Tiki designs

 TATTOOING

--tattooing not just a (sexual) ornament or accessory

--but a second skin: a shield or armament that would have sacred power

--Westerners see self as complete and indivisible; Polynesians tends to see self as a "divisible entity incorporating substances and attributes from a number of sources.  This may be so in a corporeal sense: bones are considered a hardened form of the father's semen and the blood a direct inheritance from the mother.  In a social, rather than a physiological sense, however, various capacities and attributes of the person are seen to be bestowed through gifts or nurture, as they can be made equally visible, extended or disposed of through exchange relations.  Just as the person is not complete at birth, but produced through a variety of subsequent transformations, including initiation, defloration and marriage, death does not definitively undo what has been put together…." (Thomas, 106).

--Polynesian cosmology = realm of darkness, death, and the gods (po) preceded world of the living and light (ao)

--but interlinked, because po source of divine influence, fertility, vitality

--realm of po/Gods had to be drawn upon (via chants, rituals, etc.) for various day-to-day activities—canoe-building, for example—but also rendered those activities taboo and thus dangerous to non-priests/specialists.  The gods had to invoked and channeled for efficacy; but they also had to be compelled to return to the realm of po.

--the newborn emerge directly from po and "therefore underwent rites that diminished their tapu character and made intercourses between themselves and others … safe" (Thomas, 107)

--people could also have a sort of personal tapu (=sacred, restricted, magical power) that was dangerous and contagious

--thus "Tattooing appears to have partially redressed this problematic permeability.  The operation wounded the skin under controlled circumstances and then fixed and sealed its surfaces with motifs such as additional faces.  As vision and power were closely identified, a proliferation of eyes conveyed diminished vulnerability.  The process of wrapping in images . . . not only provided the warrior with an additional skin or shell, but diminished both the body's proneness to contagion and its capacity to suffer through attracting and diminishing the tapu of others."

WAR CLUB


FUSED FIGURE


MAORI WALLS


KU GOD


KU GOD CAPE FOR CHIEF


GEALOGICAL STATUE


MAORI LIZARD/BIRD DESIGN

MAORI FERN DESIGN