peeter laurits: australian aboriginal art

Today I am going to speak about the oldest living art tradition in the world, Australian aboriginal art. The oldest cave paintings in Australia are evaluated to be older than 50 000 years. This exceeds the age of Altamira and Lascaux cave paintings by far. The aboriginal tradition has floated through this time ocean virtually without stylistic or ideological changes, but what is most important – the still existing tradition, that has no equal among the generation in our progress and change-oriented world. Therefore it seems to be quite relevant to speak about this ancient tradition exactly here - at the conference of “Mutatng image”.
To start with, most of the aboriginal art has been ephemeral by its nature. Sand paintings, body paintings or sacral images on the tree-bark do not last long. Very often after making the images and performing necessary rituals connected with it, the paintings were destroyed in order not to leave the magic into hands of evil powers. As we see later, keeping of secrecy and different levels of coding have played a major role in aboriginal art. In the ritual sand painting mostly black, white, red and yellowish colours were applied. The used pigments were accordingly coal, feathers, blood and different ochres. Often the sand-paintings and body paintings were performed simultaneously, during the same ritual, also the same images were painted on the desert sand and on the human bodies. The Australian art wasn’t object- oriented but rather process-oriented. For ritual purposes the drawings are almost always executed in conjunction with dance and song. In European culture dance or theatre is closer to this practice than art.
Although more than 200 native languages have been spoken in Australia, their mythology and artistic tradition is surprisingly homogenous. It shares many mythological elements that recur with many tribes of different cultural past. All of them share the ritual and totemistic nature of the art that is often connected to a certain geographic area and the story of its creation.
Most of Australian art is cartographic and ceremonial. With the help of dots, circles, lines and zigzags Australians encode the topography of a territory, natural powers and the story of creation. It depicts a certain area, mountains, ceremonial grounds, paths, campfires, water holes and episodes of its creation from above as a bird’s-eye view in a celestial or mythological perspective. When painting, the artist was turning the piece of wood or tree-bark in front of him. Therefore the entire Australian art is lacking the horizon or a fixed point of viewing. You can view these works freely from all four sides.
What is even more important – there is no time horizon either.
The episodes of creation are depicted synchronously and there is no border between creation time and the present. To understand this we should make a brief stop at the Australian notion of time, where past, present and future intermingle with each other freely.
The central concept of virtually all Australian mythologies is “Dreaming” or “Dreamtime” - Altjiranga in Aranda language. Dreamtime means the mythological past when totemic ancestors created the world and when the tradition started. At the same time it means the tradition itself, memories that are passed from generation to generation. Also it can be a trance-like condition, when the mythological past, Dreamtime awakes, the ancient tradition becomes present and it is possible to continue creating the world. Ritual art in Australia is nothing less than an entrance into Dreamtime, a vibrant participation with the creation of the world. The artist identifies with his totemic ancestor and recreates the creation story of the given territory or episode. There is no sense in distinguishing the past and present, because in Dreamtime, in mythological time-axis, all the events are simultaneous, intertwined with each other. For the same reason we cannot say that these pictures depict the creation. It would have been as absurd as to say that creation depicts these pictures. Creation and the pictures of creation are almost one and the same, they are interchangeable parts of the magical process.
Here we come close to something that makes Australian ritual art a little bit similar to the graphic arts today — the reproducibility. The same episodes of creation and sacred patterns have been repeated uncountable times during these 50 000 years, they are not identical as graphic prints can be, sometimes they are not even similar, but still they are basically the same, as they are imprints of Dreamtime, the matrix of the whole Australian world.
Mick Namarari Tapaltjarri´s painting "The Bandicoot Dream". The central pattern is the round burrow, the sleeping hole of the desert bandicoot Tjakalpa at the Dreaming-site of Putja. The round burrow is surrounded by dots to show the scratch-marks of the bandicoot digging its hole. The multicoloured stripes surrounding the sleeping-hole are paths of the bandicoot Tjakalpa. It is not wrong to say that this image depicts the burrow of the mythical bandicoot, just as we might say that this image IS the burrow of the mythical bandicoot. The image of this episode has been drawn and redrawn by an enormous number of artists related to the Dreaming-site of putja, and we can take this image as one of countless prints of the same mind-pattern.
Jagamarra Nelson´s country near Vaughan Springs lies at the intersection of several major Dreaming paths and consequently his paintings integrate a number of these. In "Five Dreamings" the central horizon represents the dreaming path of the flying-ant, Pamapardu; the circles at the bottom left and top right are Possums at Jangankurlandu and Mawurji, while tracks at the lower right are those of the two Kangaroo ancestors at Yintarramurru. The circles at the lower right represent Mirrawarri, a Rain Dreaming, a site near Mount Doreen. The snake is Warnayarra the Rainbow serpent at Yilkirdi near mount Singleton. The concentration of several Dreamings in one painting reflects the seniority of the artist in the religious life of the region and also his individual status.
Aboriginal paintings usually consist of a limited number of simple elements: dots, circles, concentric circles, stripes, arcs, arrows, U-shaped curves, footprints. Footprints mark mostly paths and directions of movement. U-shaped curves stand for humans or ancestors showing the imprints of legs and buttocks when seated, but also the boomerangs or seeds. Curved stripes are rain or lightning or the rainbow-snakes who shaped the earth. In different contexts the same elements can symbolize very different objects. Concentric circles, for example, can stand for stones, water holes, campfires, breasts or fruits.
Anatari Tjampitjimpa “Kulkuta ceremonial grounds” depicts a Tingari initiation ceremony. The larger sets of concentric circles represent the body designs of the older men who are painting the bodies of young initiates, shown as smaller circles. The background stipple represents the cleared ceremonial ground, while around the perimeter of the painting the dots indicate a body of water surrounding the camp.
The Australian art is usually syncretistic. Images are connected with certain songs, dances, stories and dreams. Only the story connected with the image gives us a key to read and interpret the image. We should not forget that these traditional patterns have many layers of interpretation. According to the level of initiation a person has knowledge and right to understand more deep and detailed aspects of the traditional secret. For uninitiates and white gallerists or art collectors, only the most elemental profane layers are revealed. The hierarchic set of interpretation levels also differentiates Australians themselves according to their ritual status and inherited rights.
Ada Bird Petyarre "Sacred grasses".
Some of the paintings can be totally masked. Clusters of dense dots sometimes serve only for camouflaging the lower layers of painting that depict absolutely secret and sacred patterns. These are known only for the most initiate members of the aboriginal society. It is clear that we can deal only with the most profane and descriptive level of reading these images. None of us has been initiated into Aboriginal creation secrets, besides, for native Australians the white people are nothing more than scary ghosts.
The right to represent creation myths of a certain territory is received by ancestral inheritance, just as the ownership of land. Individuals inherit through their parents both direct and indirect rights and responsibilities to land, ceremonies and Dreamings, as well as their connections to the ancestral and supernatural beings. Inheritance has two parallel sources, patrilineal and matrilineal, which are interwoven in a very complicated manner. Actually the Dreams are inherited, episodes of Dreamtime are inherited, they are the basis of rights to land and sacred designs. It is by the acquisition of knowledge, not material possessions, that one attains status in Aboriginal culture. Art is an expression of knowledge, and hence a statement of authority. Through the use of ancestrally inherited designs, artists assert their identity, and their rights and responsibilities. The deeper the knowledge is, the deeper are both rights and responsibilities connected with certain territory, designs and ceremonies.
The painting “Water Dreaming” by Abie Jangala depicts the ancestral flood. The waters washed through the country and continued northwards until they reached the sea, linking the innermost regions of the Tanami desert with the coast.
Among the most restricted Dreamings painted by men are water, rain, clouds and thunder, and Jangala has ritual custodianship of many of these Dreamings. As a statement of authority, the aesthetic in art is often articulated in terms of ritual knowledge. Only those of the highest rank of initiation acquire the knowledge and rights for performing ceremonies and designs connected with primal elements, lighting, rainbow-serpents, evening and morning or other cosmic powers. We can view Aboriginal art as an encoded secret cartography of sacred matters.
2.
In the 1970s a significant paradigmatic change took place in Aboriginal arts. The Papunya painting movement was born. Papunya is situated in central Australia, at a site of the Honey Ant Ancestor. It was established under the assimilation policy when a number of villages were resettled for a sedentary life to be centred around a new village school for educating these people. A catalyst for a change was an art teacher, Geoffrey Bardon, who arrived to teach children in the Papunya school in 1971.
After a while he encouraged the school yardmen and other local elders to join in painting a mural in the traditional mode on the walls of the school. Such designs had previously only been painted on rock walls, objects and participants’ bodies in ceremony, and in related ground paintings. The successful completion of the murals encouraged other local artists to paint. Sympathetic to their aspirations, Bardon provided the new materials of synthetic acrylic paints and canvases. Thanks to boards and canvases, Aboriginal art suddenly became portable and soon attracted the interest of Western galleries, soon gaining huge popularity on the art market.
You can imagine that this caused a lot of paradigmatic changes that are still being disputed among western art theorists and the Aborigines themselves.
The first and probably the most boring discussion issue was the question of interpretation and the reading direction of this art. Western art-world first greeted aboriginal art as primitive modernism. They tried to read it as non-figurative expressionism more or less in the key of Malevich or Pollock. This is the most primitive reading direction one can imagine.
Aboriginal art is not only figurative but also epic cartography of the mythic world that involves both spatial and temporal scales. In later times western art theory has started to move closer towards the aboriginal intentions and reading direction of this art. Nevertheless, we can only approach, not reach the deeper secrets of this art, because for aboriginal people, as it was said, we are but hostile ghosts, from whom the secrets have to be covered.
Secondly. The Australian art has never been meant for public display but for secret ceremonies. That raises the question of authenticity. Till recently, aboriginal and primitive arts were not studied by art critics, but by anthropologists. They considered acrylic paintings non-aboriginal and fake. Not art was under inspection but ethnic craft. At the same time many aboriginal leaders felt that making paintings for public display is profaning the sacred tradition. Serious charges. It still feels that different layers of interpretation and encrypting of most sacred designs protects this kind of art pretty well from the eyes of the uninitiated. Works sold to museums and galleries are sold with most plain and common stories, that tell nothing about the deeper meaning of the myth. The uninitiated still stare at sacred images like exotic patterns.
Thirdly. The use of synthetic and long-lasting materials. The ephemeral and ceremonial nature of aboriginal arts got lost. One could store these pieces and display them in galleries or bedrooms. Meyer Rubinstein suggests in his article "Outstations of the Postmodern" ("Arts Magazine" March 1989) that if the western art market would lose interest towards aboriginal art, then aboriginal acrylic painting would die out soon. The portable artwork would lose its function, they couldn´t be sold and Aboriginals themselves wouldn´t need them either for ceremonies or for decorating their walls. Rubinstein is certain that aboriginal art transforms into art only through the mediation of western art market.
This suggestion is simply not true. The new media are gaining popularity in native Australian societies. Most tribes are now using acrylic paintings to teach and initiate their youngsters the same way they previously used ground paintings. Long-lasting materials make the educating process more simple and widespread. Portability and long-lastingness make it more probable that the tradition will really survive, even in the situation of the ongoing genocide.
Fourthly and lastly. The colour system underwent serious changes. In addition to ritual black, white, red and yellowish colours also blue, green and pink tones came forth. The tones gained much saturation. Here and there recognisable figurative elements emerged. Geoff Bardon tried to convince students and elders of the Papunya school to keep the ritual colour tradition, but this was of no help. Given new media Australian artists started experimenting at once.
Trying to criticize these phenomena, we once again find ourselves up against the question: are we facing art or ethnographic crafts. The suggestions of Geoff Bardon carry a patronizing and conservative tune. I would doubt if he would suggest his students of New York art school to keep to tradition and avoid experimenting.
Figurative elements and unconventional colours, by the way, emerged in Australian arts here and there much before, even in the most ancient cave paintings.
We can say that the static Dreamtime can manifest itself in many dynamic ways.
Here we come finally to the question of today’s conference. Can the new media and technologies threat old traditions? My answer is no. So far as the tradition is vital, its images are not threatened but just mutating.
Ecstatic dreamtime can manifest itself in an infinite number of dynamic ways.