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Art in Papua New Guinea

In his article in the Art & culture section of the Creative cowboy website, ROSS BOWDEN discusses the importance of the art of Papua New Guinea to the development of contemporary western art in the last hundred years. ROSS also discusses the transition of art practice from community and group ownership of ‘art’ to the transition of attribution to the individual artist.

PETER HYLANDS asked ROSS about terminology and classification and how we describe Oceanic art and its relationship with Australian Aboriginal art. His response was as follows;

“The terms Oceanic art and Pacific art are interchangeable. I use them both for variation more than anything. A newspaper editor once changed all my ‘Oceanic’ arts into ‘Oceanian’ arts. There might be an etymological justification for that, but ‘Oceanic’ today is standard. ‘Oceanian’ is never used.

‘Oceanic’ excludes Aboriginal and this is generally understood as such. ‘Indigenous’ is the term I use instead of ‘tribal’ as a blanket term for non-Western/tribal art. Some people refer to ‘small-scale’ societies, but I find that forced and unattractive.

 Avant-garde artists were primarily influenced by Oceanic and African (and to a lesser extent Eskimo/Inuit), but some were much more interested in the former than the latter, especially the Surrealists and Dadaists — hence the relative emphases in their map. In my article I tried very hard to use these different terms (Oceanic, African, indigenous etc.) very carefully to cover the different situations I refer to.

Whenever I refer to Aboriginal art I refer to it in that way. ‘Aboriginal’. 
Aboriginal art does not include the Torres Straits, since Torres Straits 
people are Melanesian culturally, not Aboriginal. But I make no reference to Torres Strait art in this article so the point is not relevant”.

ROSS BOWDEN, also shares creative cowboy’s passion about the development of the major gallery of Oceanic and Aboriginal Art on the Australian continent, where significant collections of art by the peoples of the region, continue to languish in storage facilities.  Nations such as France, with the development of Musee du Quai Branly and the great displays of Indigenous art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and in the de Young Museum in San Francisco have seized the initiative by demonstrating the great artistic power of Oceanic and Aboriginal art to the global community.

Musee du Quai Branly

The collection of Musée du Quai Branly collection numbers some 268,000 items, 236,509 were transferred from the ethnology laboratory of the Musée de l’Homme, and a further 22,740 from the Musée national des arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie. Quai Branly has acquired a further 8,168 artefacts since 1998. From this collection around 3,600 items are exhibited in the public gallery spaces of the museum at any given time.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Oceanic and Aboriginal collection from the Metropolitan Museum includes works from Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, Australia and the indigenous peoples of South East Asia. The Metropolitan’s collection is particularly strong in terms of its collection from Papua New Guinea.  Nearly 1600 items of indigenous art from Oceania, Australia, Africa and the Americas are on display at any one time.

de Young Museum, San Francisco

The collection of New Guinea art assembled by MARCIA and JOHN FREIDE called the Jolika collection and named in dedication of their children is remarkable.

PETER HYLANDS says of the Jolika collection:

“If you truly wish to understand the genius of Oceanic art the de Young Jolika collection is not a bad place to start. It is not hard to see why some of the greatest western artists were inspired by the work of the peoples of New Guinea. I can spend hours in the exhibition and never tire of it, each moment is stimulating. Some of the works in the collection are around one thousand years old, connecting us to the New Guinea peoples of so long ago, it sends a shiver down my spine”.

HARRY S PARKER III Director of Museums said of the Jolika collection:

“In assembling this spectacular collection, JOHN and MARCIA FREIDE, have preserved for the world a fragile part of humanity that might have otherwise vanished. Objects from New Guinea are made from diverse natural materials – shells and parts of sea mammals, animal parts, fur and skin, feathers, palm fiber, bamboo, seeds, nuts, mangrove root, mud and wax, and natural pigments of all kinds. These fragile configurations were never made to endure permanently – they were made to glorify and draw together audiences both human and supernatural in a particular time and place”.

The faces of New Guinea in this blog are from the collection of ANDREA and PETER HYLANDS