AET.30 DESIGN AEEAS IN OCEANIA KBIEGER 25 



Australians, among whom the art of painting is developed but plastic 

 efforts are crude or entirely lacking, or whether one considers Malay 

 groups among whom the weaver's art and plastic efforts generally 

 reach a high stage but who can not paint. On the basis of such com- 

 parisons it is impossible to determine which art is the older. It is 

 rather true that they are mutually exclusive in principle. We need 

 but refer to the crude pictographic efforts of Polynesia, where a cor- 

 responding pictographic art — that of tattooing— is highly developed. 

 The modeling of human or animal figures is almost absent in Aus- 

 tralia, while the churingas of stone are so carved in the round as to 

 be work of pleasing artistic merit. These highly conventionalized 

 devices, representative of their god or totem, are intimately associ- 

 ated with mythological religious lore and represent imaginary per- 

 sonalities showing a well-understood conventional art. Churingas 

 are usually oval or flat pieces of stone or wood and are provided with 

 incised and painted decorative designs. It is said that the peculiar 

 lengthwise corrugations are first cut into the surfaces of a wood 

 churinga or shield piece to better hold the applied red ochre paint. 

 Patterns are mostly wavy lines or broken circles and spirals usually 

 in connected series. Originally these figures, like conventionalized 

 devices on California Indian basketry, had a symbolical meaning and 

 were not to be considered as purely decorative. Concentric circles 

 are designated as rest places, while diverging lines are trails taking 

 on forms of the maze. 



Among the Australians, who are hunters primarily, animal souls 

 must either be appeased or intimidated. Thus arise scenic art por- 

 traying the methods whereby this is effected in a conventional man- 

 ner. From another angle this highly stylized art might be viewed 

 as a form of pictographic writing in the form of a primitive map or 

 plat as viewed from above. An opossum churinga, for instance, on 

 which incised and painted lines appear, represent, as mentioned, 

 trails and hiding places, while star forms represent trees about which 

 the game animal moves. The whole thus appears as a hunter's 

 charm accessory. 



At times a wavy line appears to represent a trail, again a snake, 

 a grub or worm, a vine, however the technical ability to realistically 

 portray is lacking. When a useful article, as a churinga of a shield, 

 has etched or painted devices not much more intelligible than 

 childish efforts it must not be understood that they are therefore 

 meaningless. The primitive artist feels that decoration enhances 

 the value and effectiveness of the object. The dance, the battle, and 

 the hunt are primary activities in the life of the primitive Austra- 

 lian, but nowhere do the Australians approach the excellent drawings 

 of the bushmen of South Africa. 



