Oceanian Art and Architecture

I

Introduction

Oceanian Art and Architecture, the arts, artifacts, and buildings of Oceania, which consists of a major island, New Guinea (comprising the Indonesian province of Papua and the independent state of Papua New Guinea), and three large groups of smaller islands. East of New Guinea is Melanesia, which includes the Admiralty Islands, New Britain, New Ireland, the Solomon Islands, the New Hebrides, and New Caledonia; northward are the islands known collectively as Micronesia; and eastward again, spread across the central Pacific Ocean, are the Polynesian groups of islands.

The visual arts are known to have been practiced with great vigor by all the indigenous peoples of Oceania during the 200 years in which the Western world has been in contact with them. Presumably the same was true before this and throughout prehistory, but little evidence has survived, as the materials used—wood, ochres, shell, feathers, and clay—are short-lived in tropical conditions. Before contact was made with the West, the Oceanic cultures were Neolithic; metalworking techniques were never discovered, and the universal material for tools was stone, supplemented by bone and shell. Nevertheless, Oceania is enormously rich in the arts of sculpture, painting, and architecture, as well as in such highly refined crafts as pottery, weaving, and matting and in the ephemeral art of self-adornment.

II

New Guinea

New Guinea, with one-third the land area of Oceania and the largest population of all the Oceanian islands, presents an impressive number of art styles. A broad distinction may be drawn between the styles of the highlands in the central cordillera of mountains and those of the lowlands to the south and north, along with the northern coastal range of mountains.

A

Art of the Highlands

The central highlands in Papua New Guinea is the home of perhaps the most colorful self-decoration in the world, in the form of feather headdresses and face paint. In the eastern highlands, self-decoration diminishes, but painted bark-cloth constructions are attached to dancers' backs and carried in ceremonies. Masking traditions are slight, and architecture is unambitious.

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B

Art of the Lowlands

Of the lowlands areas, only that around the Cenderawasih (Geelvink) Bay in north Papua Province shows any direct influence from Indonesia: Canoe prows and many domestic objects are decorated with relief or openwork designs of scrolls. Scrolls are also incorporated in the small wood figures (korwar), which are thought to be containers of supernatural power.

Eastward of Cenderawasih Bay, the Jos Sudarso Bay-Lake Sentani area is notable for figure sculpture of monumental simplicity. Human images also form part of large-scale architectural sculpture, for the huge pyramidal ceremonial houses, and as elements of jetties. Bark-cloth paintings show both disciplined arrangements of scrolls and free groupings of animals, fish, birds, and plants.

On the south coast of New Guinea, two major style areas are that of the related Mimika and Asmat tribal groups and that of the Marind-anim west of them. The Mimika and Asmat carve canoes with elaborate prows, large poles surmounted with groups of figures and openwork flanges at the upper end, and larger-than-life-size figures carved in the round. Marind-anim art is of a completely different order, carvings being merely components of great constructed costumes symbolizing the creator spirits and used in pageants celebrating them. Totally transitory in nature, these costumes are amalgamations of colored seeds, plants, feathers, and carvings made into brilliant theatrical properties. Architecture has reached no level of great interest.

Farther east, around the vast Gulf of Papua in southern Papua New Guinea, mask-making and wood carving are major activities. The Kerewa make long-snouted masks of basketry, and the Purari and Elema make huge constructions of bark cloth on cane frames, based on two forms, a flat ellipse and a cone. A unique type of mask is produced in the small Torres Strait islands, in the form of animal and human representations constructed from plates of turtle shell.

Wood sculpture is produced in great quantities and varying styles. Three-dimensional sculpture is of greater importance in the west and includes notable human figures from the Kiwai Islanders and the Gogodala. Carvings of the Kerewa, Purari, and Elema are generally two-dimensional reliefs of humans or spirits on ovate boards.

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