DESIGN AEEAS IN OCEANIA 



BASED ON SPECIMENS IN THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



By Herbert W. Krieger 

 Curator of Ethnology, United, States National Museum 



INTRODUCTION 



Primitive art, as usually understood, is the product of geographic 

 areas and of peoples who have for some reason not shared in the 

 technical development centering about metallurgy in Europe. Other 

 great metallurgical centers, as southeastern Asia and central Africa, 

 developed art styles more commensurate with local developments in 

 culture generally and were not disturbed by the early organized dif- 

 fusion of western trait complexes. Each of the more generally dif- 

 fused elements of design, as the triangle and zigzag or alternate 

 spur, the spiral, the swastika, and the meandered guilloche, has a 

 distinct areal style which may never be mistaken when once one has 

 become accustomed to it in its local setting. 



There seems to be a key design peculiar to each distinctive art area 

 that unlocks the secret of the origin of other designs from the same 

 area. Frequently this key is merely the understanding of a con- 

 ventionalized form as applied either to textiles or to wood carvings, 

 such as the incised frigate bird designs of Polynesia, or the crocodile, 

 water buffalo, dog, and leaf designs in Malaysia. 



When man attempts to represent objects of nature through the 

 graphic arts of drawing, engraving, or painting, he is confronted 

 with the problem of showing three dimensional objects on a two- 

 dimensional surface. Primitive peoples solve this problem in a man- 

 ner different from ours. Perspective is utilized by the civilized artist 

 to give a visual presentation of the object as it appears to us in pho- 

 tography. The primitive artist realized that such a view must ex- 

 clude from vision certain features essential for its recognition; the 

 eye, for instance, when the individual is seen from the back. The 

 primitive artist puts into the picture what he considers most im- 

 portant. That his point of view is influenced not so much by 

 momentary impressions as by the demands of a formalized art enables 

 the student to classify and evaluate designs of primitive peoples. 



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