Pleasure from Maori art

Press, 24 June 1978, Page 17

Pleasure from Maori art

Maori Art of New Zealand. By Terence Barrow. Reeds and Unesco. 108 pp. $5.50. (Reviewed by Ashley Spice) To find, in times of inflating book prices, a book for which one would gladly pay the price asked is a great pleasure. In this case, the pleasure is increased by the knowledge that, having been published in conjunction with Unesco, the book is giving Maori art international recognition among a wider group than experts in Polynesian or “primitive” art in museums or universities.

The text is exhaustive, without becoming exhausting in its detail. It touches on the place the arts held in the daily and religious life of the preEuropean Maori, deals with the materials and symbols used, the regional styles (too often overlooked in books intended for general readers) and assesses the artefacts and objects produced as art forms, while acknowledging that the arts and crafts discussed had a different place in Maori society from the place of the arts in modern societies.

The book is excellently illustrated, most of the pictures being not just informative when related to the text, but also attractive to look at independently. The book is for the most part undogmatic, even when the author is proposing controversial or disputed theories. The only exception is when he rather hammers the thesis that Maori art was Asian in origin — attributing perhaps too much to diffusion from elsewhere and too little to subsequent, independent developments in New Zealand. But this is a fault worth

overlooking in a book which popularises a rich part of New Zealand’s cultural heritage without any feeling either than an expert author is talking down to general readers, or that someone unqualified is giving Maori art a sperficial gloss for tourists or for New Zealanders. Too many of the latter still regard the varied, ingenious and often magnificent achievements of Maori artists and craftsmen as grotesque curiousities. This will be difficult to do after reading this book.