DECORATIVE ART.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 179, 30 July 1936, Page 7

DECORATIVE ART.

MAORI AND HIS CARVING.

ITS AESTHETIC ASPECT,

"The old Maori carver was essentially ail artist as well as a craftsman, and liis work is of considerable artistic and. aesthetic value," said Mr. Gilbert Archey, chairman of the anthropology and Maori race section of the Auckland Institute and War Memorial Museum, in the course of a lecture at the museum last night. Mr. Archey said that in dealing with Maori carving there were several questions to be considered. There was the symbolism and the evolution of the patterns in the carving, its relationship to other arts, and its aesthetic value. Three of four elements were common in all Maori patterns, he said. They were the human figure, the "manaia," commonly known to the pakeha as the "birdhe acted man," ami the double spiral. The speaker showed lantern slides to illus- | trate how the Maori treated the human | figure and eventually stylised it. Mr. Archey explained that the apparent bird's head was only the profile of an j ordinary human face. i Maori carving, Mr. Archey continued, dealing with the aesthetic aspect, was a decorative art, and should not be confused with modern representational painting. Whichever way one regarded Maori carving, it possessed the fundamentals of a decorative art, which were balance, harmony, vigour and rhythm.