AET.30 DESIGN AEEAS IN OCEANIA KRIEGER 3 



superb. The Polynesian art complex employs similar designs but 

 the media of bark cloth sets this apart from Melanesian patterns. 

 Tattooing is characteristic likewise of both Melanesian and Poly- 

 nesian areas. Cultural habits complicate the explanation of styles 

 in art still further. Squatting tribes, for example, naturally do not 

 develop artistically embellished stools or seats. A development of 

 art in hair coiffures naturally leads to the invention and ultimate 

 artistic embellishment of a neck rest, as in Polynesia and Japan. 



The wood carving of the Maori of New Zealand, with its repeated 

 use of the incised surface spiral, may never be mistaken for totemic 

 carvings in the round of the Haida Indians of southeastern Alaska 

 and British Columbia. The same may be said of the peculiar style of 

 wood carvings of the Marquesan islanders, or the Fijians. The 

 specimens of the wood carver's art of the various peoples of the 

 Pacific show an appreciation of form and line. It will be seen, 

 however, that incised surface decoration is in the style of tapa- 

 oloth ornamentation to a remarkable extent. Ceremonial adzes, 

 clubs, paddles, stilts, etc., were treated thus with the most minute 

 and patient work, employing the teeth of the shark as etching tools. 



Figures carved in the round, although produced by the Maori, the 

 Melanesian, the Fijian, the Hawaiian, and the Filipino, yet are 

 sufficiently distinctive to become a key or index to the art of their 

 respective geographic design areas. In carving in the round, certain 

 subsidiary principles arbitrary in their nature lead up to differences 

 in their execution. The element of grotesqueness, frequently mis- 

 understood, enters into the designs of each of the areas just men- 

 tioned so far as carvings in the round are considered. The omis- 

 sion of parts, the repetition of others, the misplacement to fit the 

 media on which the design is applied, all these principles are well 

 understood by the primitive wood carver; yet for each there is a 

 difference in style. 



Of all areas of decorative design, the island world of Oceania is 

 the most extensive. Its most easterly projection is Easter Island, 

 situated near the American coast. In the west its most extreme pro- 

 jection is Madagascar, near the African coast, while in the north 

 Hawaii lies in comparative proximity to the Aleutian Islands of 

 Alaska. The customary explanation of Japanese culture derives it 

 from the Asiatic mainland. 



This mighty island world, Oceania, then, taken as an area together 

 with its seas and oceans, includes approximately as large a space 

 as Asia. It is naturally divided into eastern and western parts, 

 the line of cleavage corresponding roughly to the one hundred and 

 thirtieth parallel. To the west of this lie the islands of Indonesia, 

 together with Madagascar, the western half of which may be classed 

 as belonging culturally to Africa. Oceania has been privileged to 



