I 



ABORIGINAL DECORATIVE ART — KRIEGER 521 



closely on the invention of weapons, tools, and implenieiits serving 

 to make for chan<;e in the practical arts, as hunting;. Decadence 

 in art forms forni(>rly chisoly associated with arts of daily life fol- 

 lowed the close of the Mairdalenian culture period in Europe, as all 

 attention apparently went into the shaping: and production of the new 

 accessories of material culture durinfj the Azilian and early Neolithic, 

 before the full blossominu: of the New Stone Aire both in the Old 

 "World and in the New. 



With the invention of pottery in the Neolithic come new forms 

 and with it new styles of graphic and decorative arts. Cave life 

 had passed; the outlook upon the world had become that of the 

 sedentary tillers of the soil. As the arts of the new era were 

 mastered, new decorative designs hinged not upon geographical 

 and occupational areas, but upon inventions in tool making and new 

 forms of weapons and implements. In Europe there followed at 

 an accelerated pace after the close of the New Stone Age, an age of 

 Bronze, and later an age of Iron. In Europe, neither the Neolithic, 

 the Bronze, nor the Iron Ages paused long enough to permit full 

 flowering of crafts and arts into artistic forms. Geometrical de- 

 signs alone survived, and if we are to judge from the unhappy 

 modeling of the human figure in the Neolithic, realistic representa- 

 tions in Europe were lacking from each of the great periods fol- 

 lowing the ^Magdalenian. Save for ornaments almost all of our 

 knowledge of Bronze Age design is derived from geometrical decora- 

 tions on weapons such as knives, swords, and shields, and on imple- 

 ments. Even the pictographic art of Neolithic and post-Neolithic 

 Europe is more crudely done than that dating back to the 

 Magdalenian. 



What is 'pi'imitive art? — Primitive art as usually understood, how 

 ever, 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 diffusion of western trait 

 complexes. 



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 3-dimensional objects on 2-dimen- 

 sional surfaces. Primitive peoples solve this problem in a manner 

 different from ours. Perspective is utilized by the civilized artist 

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

 photography. The primitive artist realized that such a view must 

 exclude from vision certain features essential for its recognition, 



