AP Art History - Chapter 39 - Pacific & Oceania

- Because perpetuation of the social structure was crucial to social stability, Chiefs' regalia, which visualized and reinforced the hierarchy of Hawaiian society, were a prominent part of artistic production. - For example, elegant feather cloaks, such as the early 19th century example shown here, belonged to men of high rank. - Every aspect of the cloak reflected the status of its wearer. - The materials were exceedingly precious, especially the red and yellow feathers from particular species of island birds. - Some of these birds yielded only six or seven suitable feathers, and because a full length cloak could require up to 500,000 feathers, the resources and labor required to produce the cloak were extraordinary. - The cloak also linked its owner to the gods. - The Polynesians associated the plaited fiber-based for the feathers with deities. - Not only did these cloaks confer the protection of the gods on their wearers, but their dense fiber base and feather matting also provided physical protection. - The artists who fashioned the cloaks chanted as they worked, believing the power of the sacred chants permeated the fabric lining.

'Ahu'ula (feather cape) Hawaiian Late 18th century C.E. Feathers and fiber

- This mask from the Metropolitan Museum of art was made by a group of people who live in the Torres Strait, a body of water between New Guinea and Australia. - This body of water contains thousands of island's most uninhabited but this mask is from the Mabuiag (mah-BOO-yahg) island. - This is a turtle shell mask divided into three registers: the bottom is a human face, above that is the face of a bird, and above that feathers. - It is only in the Torres Strait that we find masks made out of this very precious tortoise shell material. - The bird depicted is a Frigatebird, the human face has raffia attached to it as if it were hair. - In other examples of masks of this type, actual human hair was used. - In looking at this mask, you notice a lot of pieces that were formed and stitched together: three decorative pieces around the face, additional decorative pieces underneath, - And in the back, the bird itself is made up of many pieces of turtle shell. - The different materials used, The turtle shell raffia Shell and feathers all add to the textural elements of this piece. - This mask would've been one part of an elaborate costume used in a masquerade. - The mask would have been seen in motion in front of an audience when it had been used, art historians conjecture that the person depicted in a mask was a hero someone who lived in the past and did supernatural deeds and is being remembered. - It might also represent an older person, such as ancestor, with a lattice work around the sides of the face and at the bottom representing a beard. - The bird could be seen as the totem, A mythological creature that had a connection to the family or the wearer of the mask. - Perhaps the bird was an animal they didn't hunt , One they've regarded as unique and special. - It is likely that this mask connected the wearer and a culture to the supernatural. - Actual human hair used. - Mythological possibly, lattice symbolizes beard.

Buk (mask) Torres Strait Mid to late 19th century C.E. Turtle shell, wood, fiber, feathers, and shell

- Nukuoro is a small isolated atoll in the archipelago of the Caroline Islands. - It is located in Micronesia, a region in the Western Pacific. - An atoll is a ring-shaped coral reef including a coral rim that encircles a lagoon partially or completely. - Archaeological excavations demonstrate that Nukuoro has been inhabited since at least the eighth century. - Oral tradition corroborates these dates relating that people left the Samoan archipelago in two canoes led by their chief Wawe. - The canoes first stopped at Nukufetau in Tuvalu and later arrived on the then uninhabited island of Nukuoro. - These new Polynesian settlers brought with them ideas of hierarchy and rank, and aesthetic principles such as the carving of stylized human figures. - However the new inhabitants also incorporated Micronesian aspects such as the art of navigation, canoe-building and loom-weaving with banana fiber. - Because Nukuoro is geographically situated in Micronesia, but is culturally and linguistically essentially Polynesian, it is called a Polynesian Outlier. - The Spanish navigator Juan Bautista Monteverde was the first European to sight the atoll on 18 February 1806 when he was on his way from Manila (in the Philippines) to Lima (in South America). - The estimated 400 inhabitants of Nukuoro engaged in barter and exchange with Europeans as early as 1830, as can be attested from the presence of Western metal tools. - A trading post was only established in 1870. - From the 1850s onwards, American protestant mission teachers who had been posted in the area, visited Nukuoro regularly from the Marshall Islands and from the islands Lukunor, Pohnpei, and Kosrae. - However, when the American missionary Thomas Gray arrived in Nukuoro in 1902, to baptize a female chief, he found that a large part of the population was already acquainted with Christianity through a Nukuoran woman who had lived on Pohnpei. - Smoothed with pumice. - Central in religious ceremonies, each represents a separate deity, breast on female.

Female Deity Nukuoro, Micronesia 19th to 20th century C.E. Wood

- Polynesia is one of the three major categories created by Westerners to refer to the islands of the South Pacific. - Polynesia means literally "many islands." - Our knowledge of ancient Polynesian culture derives from ethnographic journals, missionary records, archaeology, linguistics, and oral traditions. Polynesians represent vital art producing cultures in the present day. - Each Polynesian culture is unique, yet the peoples share some common traits. - Polynesians share common origins as Austronesian speakers (Austronesian is a family of languages). - The first known inhabitants of this region are called the Lapita peoples. - Polynesians were distinguished by long-distance navigation skills and two-way voyages on outrigger canoes. - Native social structures were typically organized around highly developed aristocracies, and beliefs in primo-geniture (priority of the first-born). - At the top of the social structure were divinely sanctioned chiefs, nobility, and priests. - Artists were part of a priestly class, followed in rank by warriors and commoners. - Polynesian cultures value genealogical depth, tracing one's lineage back to the gods. - Oral traditions recorded the importance of genealogical distinction, or recollections of the accomplishments of the ancestors. - Cultures held firm to the belief in mana, a supernatural power associated with high-rank, divinity, maintenance of social order and social reproduction, as well as an abundance of water and fertility of the land. - Mana was held to be so powerful that rules or taboos were necessary to regulate it in ritual and society. - For example, an uninitiated person of low rank would never enter in a sacred enclosure without risking death. - Mana was believed to be concentrated in certain parts of the body and could accumulate in objects, such as hair, bones, rocks, whale's teeth, and textiles. - Gender roles were clearly defined in traditional Polynesian societies. - Gender played a major role, dictating women's access to training, tools, and materials in the arts. - For example, men's arts were often made of hard materials, such as wood, stone, or bone and men's arts were traditionally associated with the sacred realm of rites and ritual. - Women's arts historically utilized soft materials, particularly fibers used to make mats and bark cloth. - Women's arts included ephemeral materials such as flowers and leaves. - Cloth made of bark is generically known as tapa across Polynesia, although terminology, decorations, dyes, and designs vary through out the islands. - Naturalistic motifs, designs decease in size as it goes toward the center.

Hiapo (tapa) Niue 1850-1900 C.E. Tapa or bark cloth, freehand painting

- This figure was made for malangan, a cycle of rituals of the people of the north coast of New Ireland, an island in Papua New Guinea. - Malangan express many complex religious and philosophical ideas. -They are principally concerned with honoring and dismissing the dead, but they also act as affirmation of the identity of clan groups, and negotiate the transmission of rights to land. - ​Malangan sculptures were made to be used on a single occasion and then destroyed. - They are symbolic of many important subjects, including identity, kinship, gender, death, and the spirit world. - ​They often include representations of fish and birds of identifiable species, alluding both to specific myths and the animal's natural characteristics. - For example, at the base of this figure is depicted a rock cod, a species which as it grows older changes gender from male to female. - The rock cod features in an important myth of the founding of the first social group, or clan, in this area; thus the figure also alludes to the identity of that clan group. - This figure was collected by Hugh Hastings Romilly, Deputy Commissioner for the Western Pacific while he was on a tour of New Ireland in 1882-83. - It was one a group of carvings made to be displayed at a particular malangan ritual. - It is made of wood, vegetable fiber, pigment and shell (turbo petholatus opercula). - They were originally standing in a carved canoe, which unfortunately Romilly did not collect. - The whole group was presented to the British Museum by the Duke of Bedford in 1884, after Romilly had sent it to him. - Malanggan masks are commonly used at funeral rites, which both bid farewell to the dead and celebrate the vibrancy of the living. - The masks can represent a number of things: Dead ancestors, ges (the spiritual double of an individual), or the various bush spirits associated with the area. - The ownership of Malanggan objects is similar to the modern notion of copyright; when a piece is bought, the seller surrenders the right to use that particular Malanggan style, the form in which it is made, and even the accompanying rites. - This stimulates production, as more elaborate variations are made to replace the ones that have been sold. - Used a funeral sites and may represent the dead ancestors of their people.

Malagan display and mask New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea 20th century C.E. Wood pigment, fiber, and shell

- Some of the earliest datable artworks in Oceana are also the largest. This is especially true of the colossal sculptures of Rapanui. The Moai of Rapanui are monumental sculptures as much as 50 feet tall and weighing up to 100 tons. - They stand as silent sentinels on stone platforms (ahu) marking burial or sacred sites used for religious ceremonies. - Most of the moai consist of huge, blocky figures with fairly planar facial features - large staring eyes, strong jaws, straight noses with carefully articulated nostrils, and elongated earlobes. A number of the moai have pukao on the top of their heads. - Made from a local volcanic stone, these are small red scoria cylinders that serve as a sort of topknot or hat. - Although debate continues, many scholars believe lineage chiefs or their sons erected the moai and the sculptures depict ancestral Chiefs. - The statues, however, are not individual portraits but generic images the Easter Islanders believed had the ability to accommodate spirits or gods. - The statues thus mediate between chiefs and God's, and between the natural and cosmic worlds. - Archaeological surveys have documented nearly 1000 Moai erected on some 250 ahu. Most of the stones are soft volcanic tuff and came from the same quarry at Ranu Raraku. (RAN-oo RARE-ah-koo). - Some of the sculptures are red scoria, basalt, or trachyte (TRACK-ite). After quarrying, the Easter Islanders dragged the moai to the ahu site, and then positioned them vertically. - Given the extraordinary size of these monoliths, their production and placement serve as testaments to the achievements of this Polynesian culture. - According to one scholar, it would have taken 30 men one year to carve a moai, 90 men two months to transport it from the quarry to the ahu site (often several miles away), and 90 men three months to position it vertically on the platform. (Gardner)

Moai on Platform (ahu) Rapa Nui (Easter Island) 1100-1600 C.E. Volcanic tuff figures on basalt base

- The megalithic city of Nan Madol lies on the eastern shore of the island of Pohnpei in Micronesia, and was the ritual and ceremonial center for the ruling chiefs of the Saudeleur dynasty. - Consisting of a series of artificial islets(small islands) linked by a network of canals. - Nan Madol is often called the "Venice of the Pacific." - The islets were constructed by placing large rocks and fill atop submerged coral reefs to form raised platformswhich supported elaborate residential and ceremonial complexes. - The complexes were built primarily from columnar basalt, a volcanic rock that breaks naturally to form massive rodlike blocks that make an ideal building material. - Encompassing more than ninety islets, at its peak Nan Madol may have been home to a thousand people. - Although many of the residents were chiefs, the majority were commoners. - Nan Madol served, in part, as a means by which the ruling Sayudeleur chiefs both organized and controlled potential rivals by requiring them to live in the city rather than in their home districts, where their activities were difficult to monitor. - The highly stratified social system at Nan Madol is the earliest known example of such centralized political power in the western Pacific. - Within the city, social hierarchy was reflected in the size of the residences built within the compounds, the largest being the homes of the chiefly elite. - Excavations of these elite residences have revealed the presence of beads and other ornaments, which may have marked their owner's social status. - An intriguing aspect of Nan Madol is the close correlation between the oral history of the site, passed down through the centuries, and evidence unearthed during archaeological excavations. - For example, oral traditions make references to small canals cut into the islets, allowing sacred eels to enter from the sea so that they could be honored through the sacrifice of captured sea turtles. - Subsequent excavations have revealed traces of both the small canals and the sacrificial turtles. - Recently, archaeologists have begun creating computerized reconstructions of the city in order to gain insights into its original appearance

Nan Madol Pohnpei, Micronesia Saudeleur Dynasty 700-1600 C.E. Basalt boulders and prismatic columns

- The Marshall Islands in eastern Micronesia consist of thirty-four coral atolls consisting of more than one thousand islands and islets spread out across an area of several hundred miles. - In order to maintain links between the islands, the Marshall Islanders built seafaring canoes. - These vessels were both quick and manoeuvrable. - The islanders developed a reputation for navigation between the islands—not a simple matter, since they are all so low that none can be seen from more than a few miles away. - In order to determine a system of piloting and navigation the islanders devised charts marked not only the locations of the islands, but their knowledge of the swell and wave patterns as well. - The charts were composed of wooden sticks; the horizontal and vertical sticks act as supports, while diagonal and curved ones represent wave swells. - Cowrie or other small shells represent the position of the islands. - The information was memorized and the charts would not be carried on voyages. - This chart is of a type known as a rebbelib, which cover either a large section or all of the Marshall Islands. - Other types of chart more commonly show a smaller area. - This example represents the two chains of islands which form the Marshall Islands. - It was collected by Admiral E.H.M. Davis during the cruise of HMS Royalist from 1890 to 1893

Navigation chart Marshall Islands, Micronesia 19th to early 20th century C.E. Wood and fiber

- On December 17, 1953, a newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, arrived on the island of Fiji, then an English colony, and stayed for three days before continuing on their first tour of the commonwealth nations of England in the Pacific Islands The Commonwealth of Nations, today commonly known as the Commonwealth, but formerly the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organization of 53 member states that were mostly territories of the former British Empire. - While the precise date of the photograph depicted above is unknown, there is still much that can be learned both about Fijian art and culture and the Queen's historic visit. - The first thing you might notice in the photograph is the procession of Fijian women making their way through a group of seated Fijian men and women. - Several of the processing women are wearing skirts made of barkcloth painted with geometric patterns. - Barkcloth, or masi, as it is referred to in Fiji, is made by stripping the inner bark of mulberry trees, soaking the bark, then beating it into strips of cloth that are glued together, often by a paste made of arrowroot. - Bold and intricate geometric patterns in red, white, and black are often painted onto the masi. - The practice of making masi continues in Fiji, where the cloth is often presented as gifts in important ceremonies such as weddings and funerals, or to commemorate significant events, such as a visit by the Queen of England. - While in this photograph, the masi is only worn by the women and not carried, as far as can be ascertained in this picture; it is very likely that the women also presented the cloth to the Queen to celebrate the occasion of her visit. - What is definitely evident from the photograph are the rolls of woven mats that each woman in the procession carries. - Like masi, Fijian mats served and continue to serve an important purpose in Fijian society as a type of ritual exchange and tribute. - Made by women, Fijian mats are begun by stripping, boiling, drying, blackening, and then softening leaves from the Pandanus plant. - The dried leaves are then woven into tight, often diagonal patterns that culminate in frayed or fringed edges. - While the mats that the women in this photograph are carrying may seem too plain to present to the Queen of England, their simplicity is an indication of their importance. -. In Fiji, the more simple the design, the more meaningful its function. - Fijian artists continue to create mats and it is a practice that is growing, with many mats beings sold at market, often to tourists. With the advent of processed pandanus, they are more widely available than masi, and used heavily in wedding and funeral rituals. - In addition to masi and mats, Fijian art also includes elaborately carvings made of wood or ivory, as well as small woven god houses called bure kalou (left), which provided a pathway for the god to descend to the priest.

Presentation of Fijian mats and tapa cloths to Queen Elizabeth II Fiji, Polynesia 1953 C.E. Multimedia performance, photographic documentation

- The Cook Islands were settled around the period 800-1000 C.E.. - Captain Cook made the first official European sighting of the islands in 1773, but spent little time in the area during his voyages. - In 1821 the London Missionary Society set up a mission station on the island of Aitutaki, followed by one on Rarotonga in 1827. - The Cook Islands became a British Protectorate in 1888, and were annexed in 1901. - Since then they have been administered by New Zealand. - The wood carvers of the island of Rarotonga, one of the Cook Islands, have a distinctive style. Representations of the deities worshipped by Cook Islanders before their conversion to Christianity included wooden images in human form, slab carvings and staffs such as this, known as "god sticks." - They varied in size from about 73 cm to nearly four metres, like this rare example. - It is made of ironwood wrapped with lengths of barkcloth. - The upper part of the staff consists of a carved head above smaller carved figures. - The lower end is a carved phallus. - Some missionaries removed and destroyed phalluses from carvings, considering them obscene. Reverend John Williams observed of this image that the barkcloth contained red feathers and pieces of pearl shell, known as the manava or spirit of the god. - He also recorded seeing the islanders carrying the image upright on a litter. - This image was among fourteen presented to Reverend John Williams at Rarotonga in May 1827. - The only surviving wrapped example of a large staff god, this impressive image is composed of a central wood shaft wrapped in an enormous roll of decorated barkcloth. - There are no other surviving large staff-gods from the Cook Islands that retain their barkcloth wrapping as this one does. - This was probably one of the most sacred of Rarotonga's objects. - This impressive image is composed of a central wood shaft wrapped in an enormous roll of decorated barkcloth. - The shaft is in the form of an elongated body, with a head and small figures at one end. - The other end, composed of small figures and a naturalistic penis, is missing. - A feathered pendant is bound in one ear. - Little is known of the function or identity of these images. - The ethnologist Roger Duff speculated that they represent Tangaroa the creator god, but without evidence.

Staff God Rarotonga, Cook Islands Late 18th to early 19th century C.E. Wood, tapa, fiber, and feathers

- In Te Ao Māori, the Māori world, a portrait can be an ancestor. Paintings like this one—and even photographs—do two important things. - They record likenesses and bring ancestral presence into the world of the living. - In other words, this portrait is not merely a representation of Tamati Waka Nene, it can be an embodiment of him. - Portraits and other taonga tuku iho (treasures passed down from the ancestors) are treated with great care and reverence. - After a person has died their portrait may be hung on the walls of family homes and in the wharenui (the central building of a community center), to be spoken to, wept over, and cherished by people with genealogical connections to them. - Even when portraits like this one, kept in the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery, are absent from their families, the stories woven around them Tamati Waka Nene - Māori are the indigenous people of New Zealand. - The subject of this portrait, Tamati Waka Nene, was a Rangatira or chief of the Ngāti Hao people, and an important war leader. - He was probably born in the 1780s, and died in 1871. - He lived through a time of rapid change in New Zealand, when the first British missionaries and settlers were arriving and changing the Māori world forever. - Nene exemplified the types of changes that were occurring when he converted to the Wesleyan faith and was baptised in 1839, choosing to be named Tamati Waka after Thomas Walker, who was an English merchant patron of the Church Missionary Society.

Tamati Wak a Nene Gottfried Lindauer 1890 C.E. Oil on canvas