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.

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.

C.

Art of the Sepik River Basin

Across the central ranges of New Guinea lies the basin of the Sepik River and its tributaries, bordered on the north by coastal mountains and the littoral. The area is justly famous as the home of a profusion of art styles that cannot easily be formulated in a brief account. Major stylistic areas are the west, including the upper Sepik River; the area south of the Sepik; the middle and lower course of the river; and the area between it and the coast. In the west, a variety of bark and bark-cloth masks with painted designs are made, ranging in size from little more than caps to cones 6 m (20 ft) high. Otherwise, the main works are shields. Their carved or painted designs are simple and geometric, with only a few crude representational elements. A great number of local styles are found along the river and coast, as well as in the intermediate area; almost every object made, whether secular or religious, is carved and painted. Figure sculpture (often over-life-size), hanging hooks, slit gongs, shields, drums, and ceremonial seats are some of the more important works. In general, human and animal forms are seminaturalistic; the most notable variants are the famous masks with greatly lengthened noses. Architecture is on a grand scale. For example, the men's ceremonial houses of the Iatmul have towering steeples at either end and are also repositories of architectural sculpture; those of the Abelam have single huge gables entirely covered in vivid bark paintings.

On the east coast, Astrolabe Bay is a center of some large figure sculpture and some particularly massive and imposing wooden masks. Masks in bark cloth or wood are made in the Huon Gulf area farther to the south, where the inhabitants of the Tami Islands also carve exquisite bowls for export.

Off the extreme southeast tip of New Guinea are the archipelagoes collectively known as the Massim area. A highly curvilinear style is practiced here, especially for several types of elaborate canoe prow decorations.

III.

Melanesia

The art of the Admiralty Islands is almost entirely secular, being the work of specialists among the Manus people and intended for trade to other groups. The items include beds, slit gongs, bowls, weapons, and house ladders, all of which often incorporate human and crocodile figures. These articles are predominantly red, with small geometric patterning in black and white.

New Ireland has three main stylistic areas: The northwest is the home of the malanggan style; in a central plateau the main works are the uli figures; the southwest is mainly notable for small chalk figures similar to those of northern New Britain. Malanggan is a collective name for both a series of mortuary rites and the carving and masks made for them. These carvings are among the most fantastic of all Oceania, usually consisting of a central figure or figures around which a virtual cage of bars and struts incorporates yet other human, bird, and fish images. Uli, by contrast, are massive, single hermaphroditic figures, also commemorative in purpose.

Southwest New Ireland figures and some crescentic carved canoe prows are akin to those made across the strait between New Ireland and northern New Britain by the Tolai people. The stone figures made in this area are associated with the Iniet society, as are large openwork wooden figures and dance wands. Another powerful society, the Dukduk, use conical masks with stylized faces in black and white.

Masks in bark cloth and other impermanent materials figure largely in the art of other New Britain tribes, notably the mountain-dwelling Baining, whose works include figures in bark cloth up to 12 m (40 ft) high. The masks of the Sulka are constructed of pith strips, often capped with brilliantly polychromed umbrellalike disks. Wooden masks, as well as those of the conical bark-cloth form, are found only in the small Witu Islands off the west coast and among the Kilenge of the southeast end of the island. In the carvings from Buka and Bougainville, the most northerly of the Solomon Islands, a standard conventionalized human figure in low relief is used consistently. The only masks from the area, in bark cloth, are also made here. The art of the central Solomons is highly distinctive because of the predominance of black coloration and the use of shell, especially mother-of-pearl inlay. The most famous carvings of the area are the small figures of protective spirits (nguzu nguzu) that were originally attached to the towering prows of war canoes. In the southeast islands, a prominent theme is the grouping of birds and fish, as on the bowls used in ceremonials of communion with the gods thought to control these creatures. Houses used to shelter the canoes have posts carved with large figures of divinities.

Much of the art of Vanuatu is associated with grade societies, by ascent through which many men gain prestige. Masks and commemorative figures accompany the Rituals of each grade. Figures are often of wood, but less permanent materials are also used, especially the fibrous core of the tree fern, and compounds of spider web and vegetable matter on bamboo armatures.

The fernwood figures of the Banks Islands are attenuated and unpainted, but in the rest of the island group a vivid range of colors is lavishly applied. A dramatic range of gestures characterizes the figures and masks of the Mbotgote of southern Malakula, where a certain grotesque approach to naturalism is found in body proportions. Figures from northern Malakula and the offshore islands have exaggerated heads with enormous noses and disk-shaped eyes.

In New Caledonia the visual arts are limited to a narrow range of sculpture; figures and masks are made only at the northwest end of the island. The masks are particularly impressive, with exposed teeth and disproportionately large hooked noses; the wooden carvings are crowned with bulbous wigs of human hair and further decked with black feather costumes. Elsewhere on the island, sculpture is used for architectural decoration; elaborate finials are made for the conical ceremonial houses, which also have massive lintels and doorjambs carved with human faces and geometric patterns.

IV.

Micronesia

The Micronesian area, lying north of New Guinea, consists of a number of archipelagoes of tiny islands. Sculpture is relatively scarce. In the Carolines group of the western part of Micronesia, the large men's houses of the Palau Islands are decorated with painted gables and female figures. In the Mortlock Islands similar houses have large gable masks. Small rain charms, prow ornaments, and shell-inlaid bowls are among the few other Micronesian carved objects extant. Notable crafts are pottery and weaving on simple looms (also found in the Santa Cruz Islands). Eastern Micronesian sculpture includes figures from Nukuoro, a few of which are over-life-size, and from the Gilbert Islands. All of these show considerable influence from Polynesian sources.

V.

Polynesia

The art of Polynesia, with some justice, is often said to be more homogeneous than that of the rest of Oceania. Throughout much of this island group, human representations are simplified and have smooth unornamented integuments. Surface decoration largely consists of small-scale geometric patterns, some of them based on radical stylization of the human body. The most significant architectural form is the marae, a sacred enclosure and platform constructed of stone. Artistry is of a high order, a finely wrought degree of finish being sought and prized. This is a function of the social order, which throughout Polynesia is rigidly hierarchical, consisting of hereditary classes of rulers, priestly experts, workers, and, in the past, slaves.

Only small numbers of figure sculptures appear to have been produced by the western Polynesian island groups of Samoa, the Fijis, and the Tongas. A number of small ivory figures from Tonga show a mastery of both compact and massive form. Weapons and headrests from all three groups are varied and extremely elegant and are often inlaid with small ivory elements. Bowls in human and animal form are frequently used as oil containers in Fijian ritual. Basketry, a notably Polynesian craft, reached an extremely high level in Tonga, as did matting in Samoa Islands. Bark cloth is made in enormous quantities for ceremonial occasions and is painted or stamped with designs.

Central Polynesia, including the Cook, Austral, Society, and Gambier island groups, is rich in sculpture, especially figures of deities. The most naturalistic are several from Mangareva in the Gambier Islands. Elsewhere figures tend to be squat with hypertrophied heads, as on Aitutaki and Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, in the Society Islands, and in the Austral Islands. Certain divine symbols are unexpectedly bizarre: The Rarotonga staff gods are poles with large stylized heads at one end and a row of almost abstract figures along the shaft, which terminates in a phallus. On Mangaia, Mitiaro, and other islands the staff gods are clublike objects with longitudinal ridges consisting of great numbers of abstract figures. Perhaps the most spectacular achievements of this Polynesian tendency to abstraction are the tall standing drums from the Austral Islands, with their many registers of reduced figures.

In the Marquesas Islands, figures are covered with geometric patterns. This convention is an extension of the Marquesan custom of tattooing the entire body. The figure sculpture is similar to that of central Polynesia, except that the eyes are depicted as large circles. Such figures also occur on ivory earplugs and the remarkable shell and tortoiseshell diadems. As in the Austral Islands, some large figures are carved in stone.

The most important stone sculpture of Oceania, however, was carried out on Easter Island, where a large number of colossi were carved from the soft rock of the island's central volcanic crater. Wood carving was limited to small figures and other objects. The male figures are well known for their curious state of emaciation; effigies of lizard- and bird-headed men also were made. Dance staffs of exceptionally graceful form are abstractions of human heads and torsos.

The largest surviving wooden sculptures of Oceania are huge temple images produced in the Hawaiian Islands. While displaying many of the Polynesian conventions, the Hawaiian sculptures have an especially dynamic aggressiveness, partly achieved by distorting the human face. Smaller works, such as bowls, spear rests, and drums, also incorporate human images. The magnificence and ambition that pervade Hawaiian art are seen in the lavish use of brilliant feathers. These were applied in bold designs to netting, forming the huge crescentic cloaks and capes of nobles. Feathers were also used on basketry helmets and large images of the gods.

The Maori, living in New Zealand, are perhaps the best known of the Polynesian artists. Theirs is a rich, multilayered art in which frequently distorted human figures are shown covered with a web of curvilinear designs, placed (in the case of relief sculptures) against a background of additional designs. Communal meetinghouses, rectangular structures with pitched roofs, and food-storage buildings were provided with a wealth of carved lintels, posts, beams, wall panels, and facades. The great war canoes have carvings at prow and stern. Boxes for prized feather ornaments are completely decorated, as are weapons and many domestic objects. Nephrite was used for certain types of clubs, adze blades, and the famous pendants called hei tiki.

See also Clothing; Mask; Tattooing; Woodcarving. For additional information on the geography and languages of islands and nations mentioned, see individual articles.