522 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 30 



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

 Primitive art puts the eye in the picture regardless of its misplaced 

 position and a pictograph gives way among the uncivilized to an 

 ideographic presentation of essential features regardless of relative 

 position. Profile views with both eyes showing or distortion of 

 features to bring them into the picture are thus characteristic of 

 primitive design. 



Art styles, while products of cultural change, are in the main 

 geographic. With many characteristics in common, areas in primi- 

 tive art are recognizable. Thus South American and West Indian 

 Arawak delineation of the human body is in the form of a triangle 

 with the point downward, or in the form of a rectangle, the two 

 descending lines of the triangle or rectangle being continued as legs, 

 while the horizontal line at the top represents the shoulder line and 

 is continued outward to represent the arms. In other areas the hu- 

 man body is often represented by a curved line which is open below 

 and terminates in the legs and feet. The Eskimo silhouette shows 

 only the outline of the figure depicted, but a realistic impression is 

 conveyed nevertheless. The Indian artist of the American Pacific 

 coast filled in details of a realistic nature in a distinctly modern 

 manner. 



Symmetry. — Body decoration in the form of tattooing, painting, 

 and cicatrization takes on a peculiar local style which may be dis- 

 tinguished when analyzed according to the principles of form in art. 

 The symmetrical arrangement of lines whether etched, tattooed, or 

 painted is frequently the key. The Andaman Islanders and other 

 Oceanic peoples decorate their bodies with symmetrical patterns; 

 Australian boomerangs, churingas, and message sticks have sym- 

 metrically incised or painted designs. Symmetry in beadwork in 

 America and Malaysia may also be noted. Even the Fuegians of 

 South America understand symmetry in body decoration. 



It is strange that among primitive peoples the lower forms of deco- 

 rative art follow certain principles or elements in art design which 

 are violated wlien once this primitive people has reached the stage of 

 pottery manufacture. Symmetry in pottery design is not obtainable 

 without the aid of a potter's wheel, which was never invented in any 

 of the pottery-making areas of America or Oceania. The corrugated 

 effect produced by the pueblo potter by means of thumbprints on the 

 yet plastic coils of clay represents one type of pueblo design that is 

 symmetrical. Bilaterally applied zoomorphic figurine heads on 

 earthenware bowls of the eastern United States and the West Indies 

 are other examples of the balancing of unsymmetrical pottery vessels 

 through decorative embellishment. Bannerstones of the Indians of 

 Pennsylvania have symmetrical bird or wing shapes. Vertical 



