Oceanic arts
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What are Oceanic arts?
Oceanic arts encompass the literary, performing, and visual arts of the Pacific Islands, including Australia, New Zealand, and Easter Island, within Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia. The vast stretches of ocean separating island clusters led to diverse artistic styles, influenced by religion and ritual.
Craftsmanship is highly valued, with art created to reinforce social ranking, propitiate gods, encourage harvests, and celebrate community events. Art forms include body painting, ornamentation, singing, dancing, and storytelling. Materials range from stone and shell to feathers, animal parts, and plant fibers.
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Which regions or islands are known for Oceanic arts?
Oceanic arts encompass the literary, performing, and visual arts of the Pacific Islands, including Australia, New Zealand, and Easter Island, within the cultural areas of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia.
Each of these regions has distinct artistic styles:
* Polynesia Monumental stone sculpture on Easter Island and the Marquesas, wooden carvings in New Zealand, the Marquesas, and Hawaii, decorated bark cloth in Samoa, Tonga, and Hawaii, fine mats in Samoa and Tonga, and feather cloaks in New Zealand and Hawaii are all examples of Polynesian artistic expression.
* Micronesia Body painting and ornamentation, singing, dancing, and oratory are prominent art forms. Micronesia has relatively little permanent sculpture or painting, but the painted bas-relief scenes on the timbers and gables of the men’s meetinghouses in Palau are well-known.
* Melanesia In much of highland New Guinea, the body itself becomes a focus for art through face and body painting, wigs and headdresses, and elaborate costumes. In lowland New Guinea, the paintings and carvings by such Sepik peoples as Iatmul and Abelam are widely known.5 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
What materials are commonly used in Oceanic art?
Oceanic art employs a diverse range of materials, reflecting the resourcefulness of its artists. Wood is a primary medium, skillfully worked with tools like stone blades, adzes, and axes.
Clay is used for sculptures and pottery, while shells, including tridacna, are fashioned into blades and ornaments.
Paintings, which are thought to animate sculptures, use ochres and vegetable-derived pigments applied with brushes made from chewed sticks or feathers.
Other materials include bamboo, bone, turtle shell, feathers, and fibres, assembled to create visually striking and culturally significant works.
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What are some common themes or subjects in Oceanic art?
Oceanic art encompasses a diverse range of themes and subjects deeply rooted in the cultures, mythologies, and environments of the Pacific Islands. Religion and ritual exert a strong influence, with religious symbolism permeating objects, dances, and speeches.
Common motifs include the human body, often adorned with decorations like scarification and tattoos, and the natural world, from marine shells to bird plumes. The bird is a recurring symbol representing virility and power. Art is often created to reinforce social ranking, propitiate gods, ensure successful harvests, and celebrate community events.
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How do Oceanic arts play a role in ceremonies and traditions?
Oceanic arts play a vital role in ceremonies and traditions by reinforcing social structures, political influence, and connections with gods, spirits, and ancestors. Craftsmanship is highly valued, serving to celebrate community events, encourage successful harvests and hunting, and propitiate deities.
Religious symbolism permeates objects, dances, speeches, materials, and tools used in rituals. In areas where religion depends more on ritual dances or oratory than on objects, expression of the visual arts may be channeled into an exquisite refinement of craftsmanship, often in the making of utilitarian objects. The quality of an object often becomes a symbolic reference to social status.
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How have Oceanic arts influenced or interacted with other cultures and modern art?
Oceanic arts have a rich history of intercultural exchange and influence. Lapita pottery, with its stylistic similarities to early ceramics found on the Moluccas, suggests Indonesian affinities with Oceania. Intercultural exchange is not unknown, but borrowed artifacts invariably gain new functions and value in their new setting.
Inspired by local culture, Paul Gauguin employed Polynesian images and spiritual themes in his work, and a number of his paintings are displayed in the Paul Gauguin Museum on Tahiti. Since the 1970s, there has been a revival of traditional art forms, especially of Melanesian designs that are produced in new media, such as silk-screen prints.
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Oceanic arts, the literary, performing, and visual arts of the Pacific Islands, including Australia, New Zealand, and Easter Island, and the general culture areas of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia. Many of the island clusters within these culture areas are separated by vast stretches of ocean, and the resultant isolation, together with the wide range of environmental conditions present, has led to the development of a rich variety of artistic styles.
Indonesian affinities with Oceania have been postulated on the basis of Lapita pottery, which is stylistically similar to early ceramics found on the Moluccas. These early people settled farther east on Tonga and Samoa, where a millennium of isolation bred a distinct Polynesian culture. (See also Melanesian culture; Micronesian culture.) When Samoan seafarers arrived on Marquesas, it became the dispersal centre for Polynesian culture. By the end of the 1st millennium ad, the culture area embraced New Zealand, but the Marquesan settlers, who had lost many plants and animals en route, were forced by an alien climate and land to abandon cultivation and take up hunting. The break was complete by ad 1400, and the warrior bands typical of New Zealand ventured inland in search of game. Australian Aborigines have retained a similar mode of life in sharp contrast to the agricultural subsistence prevalent among most Oceanic islanders. Divergent cultural developments were the inevitable by-product of centuries of demographic isolation; Oceania is little more than a name of geographic convenience. The baffling array of discrete culture groups is paralleled by great linguistic diversity. It is difficult to establish any constant Oceanic features or patterns of behaviour and belief that have a universal distribution. It is hardly surprising that the artistic traditions of Oceania should be extensively varied—even at a local level. Intercultural exchange is not unknown, but borrowed artifacts invariably gain new functions and value in their new setting. New aesthetic elements are absorbed and diffused with such rapidity that any scheme of distribution of themes and techniques would be subject to constant review. Nevertheless, some symbols do appear to have wider significance; the bird is a universal motif symbolizing virility and power. Indigenous traits are sometimes discarded and then resumed at will.
The arts of Oceania are underlain by highly complex mythological and cosmogonic systems. Religion and ritual strongly influence every aspect of Oceanic life, and their association with the arts is especially close. Religious symbolism infuses not only the objects, dances, and speeches used in ritual but also the materials and tools used to create them. The individual who creates or commissions a work is similarly esteemed, and the craftsman’s skill—whether applied to ritual or to secular, utilitarian works—is highly valued. Craftsmanship, in fact, is the main criterion by which a work is judged. Art, moreover, is produced for particular functions: reinforcing social ranking or political influence; propitiating gods, spirits, and ancestors; encouraging good harvests or successful hunting trips; and celebrating important community events.
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The arts of the traditional peoples of Oceania are treated in a number of articles; see art and architecture, Oceanic; music and dance, Oceanic; and Oceanic literature. Although these articles include the effects of Western colonization and the adaptation of traditional forms to modern technology, they do not treat the postcolonial adoption of wholly Western styles and forms. The written literatures of Australia and New Zealand, for example, are derived from and strongly influenced by the English literary tradition; they are therefore discussed separately in the articles Australian literature and New Zealand literature. Information on the geographic, economic, and historical background of Oceanic arts can be found in the article Pacific Islands, history of.