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Envisioning
the Pacific Islands: Indigenous, Colonial and Contemporary Arts Art History 105G
Winter Quarter 2001 Professor Margaret
Jolly Office Hours: Friday 2-4,
Porter College 205; 831-459-2085 Teaching Hours and
Locale, Monday, Wednesday, Friday 12.30-1.40, Social Sciences Two, Building
Room 75 Teaching Assistants:
Pamela Kido and Heather Waldroup (All sections in Porter 248, Pamela on Monday,
2-3.10, 3.30-4.40, Heather Friday 11-12.10, 2-3.10) This course will consider
Indigenous and European arts and their entanglement in the colonial and
contemporary visual cultures of the Pacific.
We will start by pondering
preliminary problems in conceptualizing art and visual culture in
cross-cultural and historical context. We will also ponder changing conceptions
of the place of the Pacific. We will then consider a range of indigenous arts
and their transformations – tattooing and body arts; architecture, sculpture
and masks; indigenous and introduced cloth. We will subsequently explore a
range of European arts, engravings, drawings, paintings and photography which
depict the Pacific. In looking at the mutual influence of Indigenous and
European arts we will consider the consequences of colonial power, questions of
appropriation in museum collecting and how commoditization has shaped
contemporary arts in the Pacific. But we will also explore how contemporary
Pacific arts embody cultural resistance and survival in the face of
colonialism. Evaluation (subject to discussion at the first
lecture) Attentive attendance is
required at all lectures and sections. Students who miss lectures and sections
and who do not submit papers by the deadlines below will be penalized unless
there are compelling medical or personal reasons presented in writing. First paper due week 5, Monday February 4 on topics 1-4, 6 pages 25% Second essay due week 8, Monday February 25th, on topics 5-10, 6
pages 25% Section Presentation
(5-10 minutes) 15% Final paper based on
section presentation – Friday March 15th, 10 pages 35% (or Final exam, scheduled Sunday March 17th, 4-7) Required Reading
Thomas, Nicholas 1995. Oceanic Art. London: Thames and Hudson.
Available at Literary Guillotine, 204 Locust Street, downtown Santa Cruz or Bay
Tree book store. Course readings will also be distributed in lectures. Core and Background Reading The core reading listed
for each week will form the basis of lectures and section discussions. The
background reading is complementary and should provide the basis for essay
questions. Course Outline 1. ‘Art’ and ‘Visual Culture’ in the Pacific:
Preliminary Problems, January 4, 7, 9, 11 We will focus on
conceptualizing art and visual culture in the cross-cultural context of the
Pacific. Where is the Pacific and how far are our imagined cartographies shaped
by colonialism and tourism? We will consider debates about ‘art’ and
‘aesthetics’ as cross-cultural categories and the contested category of
‘primitive art’. We will ponder different approaches to art as representation
or embodiment and efficacy. We will also explore gender and genre in
indigenous, colonial and contemporary contexts, through a case study from
Vanuatu. Finally, we will consider contexts of creation, circulation and
reception, the challenges of evanescent arts and the politics of collecting. Core Reading Hau’ofa, Epeli 1994. Our
Sea of Islands. The Contemporary Pacific 6(1):148-161. Jolly, Margaret. 1996.
European Perceptions of the Arts of Vanuatu: Engendering Colonial Interests. In
J. Bonnemaison, K. Huffman, C. Kaufmann, D. Tryon (eds) Arts of Vanuatu, Bathurst: Crawford House Press, 264, 267-77. Thomas, Nicholas. 1995. Oceanic
Art. London: Thames and Hudson.
Introduction. Background Reading
Gell, Alfred 1998. Art and Agency. An Anthropological Theory.
Clarendon Press, Oxford. Esp Chs 1, 2 and 6, esp. p. 90-95. Morphy, Howard 1996.
Aesthetics is a Cross-Cultural Category. In Tim Ingold (ed.) Key Debates in Anthropology. London and
New York: Routledge, 255-260. Price, Sally 1989. Primitive Art In Civilized Places.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stephen, Ann (ed.) 1993. Pirating the Pacific: Images of Trade,
Travel and Tourism. Sydney: Powerhouse Publishing. 2. Indigenous Arts of the Body: Tattooing and
Self-Decoration, January 14, 16, 18 Tattooing in indigenous
and European cultures. Gell’s theory of its distribution in the Pacific in
relation to rank and gender. The problem of the ‘self’ in self decoration –
Polynesia and the New Guinea Highlands compared. Tattooing and masculinity in
Europe: the art of sailors. Missionary proscriptions and cultural revivals:
ethnographic illusion in Flaherty’s film Moana. Contemporary tattooing in Aotearoa New
Zealand and Tahiti. Core Reading
Thomas, Nicholas 1995. Oceanic Art. London: Thames and Hudson,
esp p. 99-114. Thomas, Nicholas 1997.
Marked Men. Art Asia Pacific
13:66-73. Background Reading
Gell, Alfred 1996. Wrapping in Images: Tattooing in Polynesia.
Oxford: Clarendon Press. Guest, Harriet 1992.
Curiously Marked: Tattooing, Masculinity, and Nationality in Eighteenth Century
British Perceptions of the South Pacific. In John Barrell (ed.) Painting and the Politics of Culture: New
Essays on British Art, 1700-1850. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 101-134. Strathern, Andrew and
Marilyn. 1972. Self-decoration in Mount
Hagen. London: Duckworth. 3. Indigenous Arts: Houses, Masks and Men January
23, 25 Continues the focus on
indigenous art as embodied power through a study of Maori and Sepik
architecture, sculpture and masking. Secrecy and sanctity in men’s art forms,
the problem of ‘male cults’ and women’s relation to them. Core Reading
Thomas, Nicholas. 1995. Oceanic Art. Chapters One, Two, Five. Background Reading Bowden, Ross 1983. Yena: Art and Ceremony in a Sepik Society.
Oxford: Pitt-Rivers Museum. Forge, Anthony 1973.
Style and Meaning in Sepik Art. In Anthony Forge (ed.) Primitive Art and Society. New York: Oxford University Press,
169-192. Mackenzie, Maureen 1992. Androgynous Objects. Chur: Harwood
Academic Publishers. 4. Indigenous Arts: Women and Cloth, January 28,
30, February 1 Across the Pacific women
created cloth, beaten from bark (tapa)
or woven and plaited from pandanus, flax or other fibers. From this, clothes,
mats and baskets were created. We will consider the relation of the quotidian
and the sacred, of male and female in cloth production and how far this can be
seen as ‘women’s art’. We will also look at the introduction and transformation
of imported cloth promoted by Christian missions and capitalist trade. Core Reading
Thomas, Nicholas. 1995. Oceanic Art. Chapters Five, Six. Background Reading Bolton, Lissant
1996. Tahigogona’s Sisters: Women, Mats
and Landscape on Ambae. In Arts of Vanuatu, edited by Joël Bonnemaison,
Christian Kaufmann, Kirk Huffman, and Darrell Tryon. Bathurst: Crawford House
Publishing, 112–119. Hammond, Jane 1986. Tifaifai and Quilts of Polynesia.
Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Huffman, Kirk W.
1996 The “Decorated Cloth” from the
“Island of Good Yams”: Barkcloth in Vanuatu, with Special Reference to
Erromango. In Arts of Vanuatu, edited by Joël Bonnemaison,
Christian Kaufmann, Kirk Huffman and Darrell Tryon. Bathurst: Crawford House
Publishing, 129–140. Jolly,
Margaret 1992. Banana Leaf Bundles and
Skirts: A Pacific Penelope’s Web? In Tradition
and History in Melanesian Anthropology, edited by James Carrier. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 38–63. Walter,
Annie 1996. The Feminine Art of
Mat-Weaving on Pentecost. In Arts of Vanuatu, edited by Joël Bonnemaison,
Christian Kaufmann, Kirk Huffman, and Darrell Tryon. Bathurst: Crawford House
Publishing,100–109. Weiner, Annette
1980. Stability in Banana Leaves:
Colonization and Women in Kiriwina, Trobriand Islands. In Women and Colonization, edited by Mona Etienne and Eleanor Leacock.
New York: Praeger, 270–293. Weiner, Annette
1989. Why Cloth? Wealth, Gender and
Power in Oceania. In Cloth and Human Experience, edited by Annette B Weiner
and Jane Schneider. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press,
33–72. Early European voyagers
in the Pacific produced many images of Pacific peoples and places. We will
focus on the artists of the Cook voyages – especially Hodges and Webber in the
light of Bernard Smith’s arguments in European
Vision. We will consider both textual and visual
portraits of different Pacific peoples in the light of European art conventions
and emergent racial typologies in the writing of Johann Reinhold Forster and
his son Georg. Core Reading Jolly, Margaret 1992.
“Ill-natured Comparisons”: Racism and Relativism in European Representations of
ni-Vanuatu from Cook’s Second Voyage. History
and Anthropology 5:331-363. Smith, Bernard 1985
[1960]. European Vision and the South
Pacific. Revised second edition. New York: Harper and Row, esp. Chapters 2,
3, 4, and 11. Background Reading Guest, Harriet 1989. The
Great Distinction: Figures of the Exotic in the Work of William Hodges. Oxford Art Journal 12:36-58. National Library of Australia.
2001. Cook and Omai: The Cult of the
South Seas. Canberra: National Library of Australia. Forster, John Reinold 1996 {1777] Observations Made During a Voyage Round the World, on Physical Geography, Natural History and Ethic Philosophy. New Edition: Eds. Nicholas Thomas, Harriet Guest and Michael Dettelbach. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. We will look at the
paintings of early European exploratory voyagers and especially Cook’s three
voyages with a focus on landscape and landing pictures. We will ponder the
relation between representations of familiar European landscape and the exotic
places of the Pacific, and the connection between European painting and the
colonial possession of places. We will consider comparisons between Australia
and the Pacific. Core Reading Smith, Bernard 1985
[1960]. European Vision and the South
Pacific. Revised second edition. New York: Harper and Row, esp. Chapters 2,
3, 4, and 7. Background Reading Smith, Bernard 1992. Imagining
the Pacific, In the Wake of the Cook Voyages. Carlton: Melbourne University Press at the Miegunyah Press. Thomas, Nicholas 1999. Possessions:Indigenous Art/Colonial
Culture, Chapter Two. London:Thames and Hudson.
Core Reading Art Gallery of NSW 1997. Portraits of Oceania. Essays by Annear,
Croft, Cooper and Harris, Fox and Hayes and images p.37-112. Book on sale at
Bookshop Santa Cruz. Background Reading
Blanton, C. (ed.) Picturing Paradise: Colonial Photography of
Samoa, 1875-1925. Daytona Beach: Southeast Museum of Photography. Edwards, Elizabeth (eds)
1992. Anthropology and Photography,
1860-1920. New Haven: Yale University Press. Poole, Deborah 1997. Vision, Race and Modernity: A Visual Economy
of the Andean Image World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Quanchi, Max (ed.) 1997. Imaging, Representation and
Photography of the Pacific Islands. Special issue of Pacific Studies, 20(4). 8. The Art of Gauguin: Some Recent Views, February
25, 27, March 1 We will look at Gauguin’s
representations of Tahiti and the Marquesas, and especially his representations
of women in the light of recent feminist interpretations by Pollock and
Solomon-Godeau and Eisenman’s reinterpretations advanced in Gauguin’s Skirt (1997). Core Reading
Jolly, Margaret 2000.
Fraying Gauguin’s Skirt: Gender, Race and Liminality in Polynesia. In Pacific Studies 23(1-2):86-103 Solomon-Godeau, Abigail
1989. Going Native. Art in America
July, 118-128, 161. Background Reading Clifford, James 1997.
“The mahu goes native. Sexist
or subversive? Gauguin’s South Seas visions and renegade hybrid style.” Times Literary Supplement, November 7. Eisenman, Stephen F.
1997. Gauguin’s Skirt. London: Thames
and Hudson Gauguin, Paul 1957. Noa noa. Translated by O.F. Theis and
Introduction by Alfred Werner. New York: vi-xiii, 12-93. Perloff, Nancy 1995.
Gauguin’s French Baggage: Decadence and Colonialism in Tahiti. In Elazar Barkan
and Ronald Bush (eds) Prehistories of the
Future: The Primitivist Project and the Culture of Modernism. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 226-269. Pollock, Griselda
1992. Avant-Garde Gambits 1888-1893. Gender and the Color of Art History.
Walter Neurath Memorial Lecture 1992. New York: Thames and Hudson. Thomson, Belinda
1987. Gauguin. World of Art Series. London: Thames and Hudson. Waldroup, Heather 1998.
‘Without Mythological or Allegorical Excuse’: Gauguin’s Representation of
Tahitian Women in the Contact Zone. MA thesis, Department of Art History, Florida
State University. 9. Contesting Colonialism in Contemporary Pacific
Arts, March 4, 6, 8 Core Reading Thomas, Nicholas. 1995. Oceanic
Art. London: Thames and Hudson,
Chapters Eight and Nine. Thomas, Nicholas 1996.
The dream of Joseph: debates about identity in Pacific art, and From exhibit to exhibitionism: recent
Polynesian presentations of ‘otherness’.The
Contemporary Pacific 8:291-317, 319-348. Background Reading Dark, Philip J. C. and
Roger G. Rose (eds) 1993. Artistic Heritage in a Changing Pacific. University
of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu. Esp. Chapters 6, 11,19, 22, 23. Ihimaera, Witi (ed) and
Sandy Adsett and Cliff Whiting (general editors) 1996. Mataora: The Living Face, Contemporary Maori Art. Auckland: David
Bateman/Creative New Zealand. Eyley, Claudia Pond and
Robin White 1987. Twenty-Eight days in
Kiribati. Auckland: New Women’s Press. Simons, Susan and Hugh
Stevenson 1991. Luk luk gen! Look again!
Contemporary Art from Papua New Guinea. Townsville, Queensland: Perce
Tucker Regional Gallery. Thomas, Nicholas 1999. Possessions: Indigenous Art/Colonial
Culture. London:Thames and
Hudson. Core Reading Jolly, Margaret 2001. On
the Edge: Deserts, Oceans, Islands. In Vicente Diaz and J. Kehaulani Kauanui
(eds) Native Pacific Cultural Studies on
the Edge. Special Issue. The
Contemporary Pacific, Fall, 417-466. Trask, Haunani-Kay 1993.
Lovely Hula Hands. In From a Native
Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignity in Hawai’i. Monroe, Maine: Common
Courage Press, 179-197. Stevenson, Karen 1993. The Museum as a Research Tool: A
Tahitian Example. In Dark, Philip J. C. and Roger G. Rose (eds) 1993. Artistic Heritage in a Changing Pacific. University of Hawai’i Press,
Honolulu, 74-83. Background Reading Karp, Ivan and Steven D.
Levine (eds) Exhibiting Cultures: the
Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Washington and London: Smithsonian
Institution Press. Desmond, Jane C. 1999. Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from
Waikiki to Sea World. Chicago:University of Chicago Press. Uploaded: 08/22/2002
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