1. Unit 6B Oceanic Art

2. Oceanic Islands: Micronesia (small islands), Melanesia (islands of black people), and Polynesia (many islands). Set within a triangle formed by New Zealand in the south, Hawaii to the north and Easter Island in the east. Though small and separated by thousands of miles, they share similar environments and were settled by people with a common cultural heritage. The western Polynesian islands of Fiji and Tonga were settled approximately 3,000 years ago, whilst New Zealand was settled as recently as 1200 C.E. These people were exceptional boat builders and sailed across the Pacific navigating by currents, stars and cloud formations. They were skilled fisherman and farmers, growing fruit trees and vegetables and raising pigs, chickens and dogs. Islanders were also accomplished craftspeople and worked in wood, fibre and feathers to create objects of power and beauty.
They were poets, musicians, dancers and story tellers. Eleven closely-linked languages were spoken across the region. They were so similar that Tupaia, a Tahitian who joined Captain Cook on his first voyage, was able to converse with islanders more than two thousand miles away in New Zealand.
Their societies were hierarchical, with the highest ranking people tracing their descent directly from the gods.  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. 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.

3. Tapa or bark cloth, freehand painting
Hiapo (tapa)
Ntue
c CE
Tapa or bark cloth, freehand painting
The most important traditional uses for tapa were for clothing, bedding and wall hangings. Textiles were often specially prepared and decorated for people of rank. Tapa was ceremonially displayed on special occasions, such as birthdays and weddings. In sacred contexts, tapa was used to wrap images of deities. Even today, at times of death, bark cloth may be integral part of funeral and burial rites. Generally, to make bark cloth, a woman would harvest the inner bark of the paper mulberry (a flowering tree). The inner bark is then pounded flat, with a wooden beater or ike, on an anvil, usually made of wood. In Eastern Polynesia (Hawai’i), bark cloth was created with a felting technique and designs were pounded into the cloth with a carved beater. 
Used for clothing, bedding and wall hangings.
Created for people of rank.
Put on display for ceremonies.

4. Marshall Islands, Micronesia 19th to early 20th century CE
Navigation chart
Marshall Islands, Micronesia
19th to early 20th century CE
Wood and fiber
Horizontal and Vertical sticks create a support grid.
Diagonal and Curved lines indicate swells and wave patterns
Shells indicate the islands
This chart is a REBBELIB- which covers a large section or all of the Marshall Islands
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 maneuverable. 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 that 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 (above) 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. 

5. Basalt boulders and prismatic columns
Nan Madol
Pohnpei, Micronesia
Saudeleur Dynasty
c CE
Basalt boulders and prismatic columns
Our destination is Nan Madol, near the southern side of the island, the only ancient city ever built atop of a coral reef. Its imposing yet graceful ruins are made of stones and columns so heavy that no one has figured out how it was built. Nan Madol is composed of 92 artificial islands spread over 200 acres abutting Pohnpei’s mangrove-covered shore. Most of it was built from the 13th to the 17th centuries by the Saudeleurs, descendants of two brothers of unknown provenance who founded a religious community in the sixth century focused on the adoration of the sea. On their third attempt to build their political, religious and residential center, they settled on this patch of coral flats. They and their successors brought from the other side of the island columns of black lava rock up to 20 feet long that are naturally pentagonal or hexagonal and straight. They used them in a log cabin formation to build outer walls as well as foundations filled in with lumps of coral to create elevated platforms where traditional thatched structures were used as lodgings. Even with all the sunshine in the world washing over the thick green jungle and aquamarine water beyond, the unadorned black architecture is intimidating.
Nan Madol housed the ruling elite caste of Saudeleur dynasty and was used as a political and ceremonial seat of power. As a means of control of their subjects, Saudeleur rulers forced local chieftains to leave their home villages and move to the city where their activities could be more closely observed.
Besides the elegance of the walls and platforms, there is no carving, no art – nothing except legend to remember the people, called the Saudeleur, who ruled the island for more than a millennium. They were deeply religious and sometimes cruel, and modern Pohnpeians view the ruins as a sacred and scary place where spirits own the night.
Only ancient city to be built atop coral reefs
How it was built remains a mystery
This culture has no art
Log Cabin formation

6. “Ahu ‘ula (feather cape) Hawaiian Late 18th century CE
Tamati Waka Nene
Gottfried Lindauer
1890 CE
Oil on Canvas
“Ahu ‘ula (feather cape)
Hawaiian
Late 18th century CE
Feathers and fiber
Ahu’ula: A coat made of thousands of bird feathers; could be worn only by men. Has 500,000 feathers; these birds had sometimes as few as 7 useable feathers.
Red was considered a royal color in Polynesia.
Coconut fiber is used as the base and the feathers were tied to it.
This cloak was created by artists who chanted the wearer’s ancestors to imbue their power upon it. It protects the wearer from harm.
Waka Nene:
Gottfried Lindauer was a New Zealand artist, famous for his portraits of Maori Chieftains. Waka Nene is a Moari Chief and convert to the Wesleyan faith, a branch of Christianity. The painting was completed post humously, about 100 years after his death based on a historical photograph. Emphasis is placed on symbols of rank: elaborate tattooing, staff with one eye in the center, and feathers dangling from it.

7. Presentation of Fijian mats and tapa cloths to Queen Elizabeth II
Fiji, Polynesia
1953 CE
Multimedia performance (costume; cosmetics, including scent; chant; movement; and pandanus fiber/hibiscus fiber mats), photographic documentation
This is an enormous tapa cloth made for the visit of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 in honor of her coronation. This is “performance art”. They traced on the tapa cloth images of royalty like royal crowns, geometric patterns, and a floral motif. Men oversee the growing of the mulberry trees that produce the tapa, women turn the bark into cloth.

8. Rapa Nui (Easter Island) c. 1100-1600 CE
Moai on platform (ahu)
Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
c CE
Volcanic tuff figures on basalt base
About 900 statues in all, mostly of males. They face inland, and each one weighs 50 tons. They are erected on large platforms of stone mixed with ashes from cremations; the platforms are as sacred as the statues themselves. The images represent people deified after death, commemorated as the first settler-kings. They all have prominent foreheads, large broad noses, thin pouting lips, and ears that reach the top of their heads. They are not just heads, but entire bodies with thin arms falling straight down, and their hands across their lower abdomen. Top knot hairstyles added to some statues. White coral is placed into the eyes to “open” them.

9. Female deity Nukuoro, Micronesia c. 18th to 19th century CE Wood
These were kept in religious buildings belonging to the community. They represent individual deities. Sometimes they are dressed in garments, and decorated with flowers. They use simple geometric forms. Long arms, broad chests, standing very erect. No facial features. Simple horizontal lines indicate knee caps, navel, and waistline.
Intricate masks and figures made from plates of turtle-shell are unique to the peoples of the Torres Strait, which lies between Australia and New Guinea. Used primarily during male initiation and at funerary rituals, the masks represent mythical culture heroes and their associated totemic species. Some masks represent human forms, others depict birds, fish, or reptiles, and masks such as this one combine the features of both humans and animals. Ceremonies would include fire, drum beats, and chanting. Recreating mythical ancestral beings and their impact on everyday life. KHAN VIDEO
Buk (mask)
Torres Strait
Mid-late 19th century CE
Turtle shell, wood, fiber, feathers, and shell

10. Malagan display and mask New Ireland province, Papua New Guinea
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. Malanggan masks are commonly used at funeral rites, which both bid farewell to the dead and celebrate the vibrancy of the living. 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. Malanggan ceremonies became extremely expensive affairs, taking into account the costs of the accompanying feasting. As a result, the funeral rites could take place months after a person had died. In some circumstances the ceremony would have been held for several people simultaneously.
Malagan display and mask
New Ireland province, Papua New Guinea
c. 20th century CE
Wood, pigment, fiber, and shell

11. Rarotonga, Cook Islands, central Polynesia
Staff god
Rarotonga, Cook Islands, central Polynesia
Late 18th to early 19th century CE
Wood, tapa, fiber, and feathers
The Cook Islands are situated in the middle of the South Pacific. The wood carvers of the island of Rarotonga, one of the Cook Islands, have a distinctive style.The Cook Islands were settled around the period C.E.. 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. 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. 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. What is clear is that in their materials they combine the results of the skilled labor of men and women. They also have an explicit sexual aspect, thus embodying male and female productive and reproductive qualities.
KHAN PICTURES

12. MUST be submitted on Google Classroom
Choose a performative work of Oceanic art that has NOT been discussed. The performance could be an exchange, ceremony, or act of creation or destruction. Explain how the work is performed, including an explanation of the roles of performers, materials, and audience.
Answer the question: How does the art object support the intent of the performance from a visual and contextual perspective?
Compare your selected work with any work from the image set. The comparison should provide evidence of performance as a long-standing tradition of art-making and explain similarities and differences in how each elicits a response from its audience.
2 FULL pages. Typed
Using your textbook as one source.
MUST be submitted on Google Classroom