CANNIBAL ARTISTS

Evening Star, Issue 19618, 26 July 1927, Page 3

CANNIBAL ARTISTS

SAVAGES WHO PAINT. ■Whatever art may mean to the ordinary man in eivilsation, to savages it is frequently a most vital mailer. Sonic, indeed, are completely carried away by it, as, for example, a New Guinea cannibal of my acquaintance who built a fishing canoe for himself, and then so covered it with drawings and inlaid it with pcarlshell and tortoiseshell that finally he built a house lor it and kept it as a piece of decoration. Another New Guinea, savage has Hie walls of In's thatched lint covered with pictures, the “canvasses” of which arc fighting shields as high as a man. The paints are colored earths. Most arc crude portraits, hub some arc quite successful attempts at design and symbolism. The artist spends all bis time painting, and the tribe appears quite content to feed and look after him (writes Jack M’Larcn, in an English paper). Again, Nararkad, the North Australian chief from whom I carried a message of greeting to King George, is an accomplished wood-carver, and takes his art quite as seriously ns he takes his chieftainship. One of his most cherished possessions is a “ woomcra,” or throwing tick, which he has covered with tiny carvings of events .such as the hunting of a kangaroo or a battle. It took him three years to complete it.

Tho most impressive display of primitive art that 1 know of, however, is in a remote part of Arnheim’s Land, North Australia, It is a kind of primitive royal academy. In a large threesided cave the walls for a height ot ten or twelve feet are covered with rock carvings and charcoal drawings ot all sizes. The range of subjects include birds, fish, kangaroos, and fulllength human figures. The drawings are without perspective, and the carvings curiously lacking in relief, but there is a. “something” to them nevertheless.

Shortly before my visit a number of new pictures had just, been completed, and their various artists stood around proudly as T examined them. H they had been able to speak my language, or I theirs, I think 1 should have been involved in a very spirited discussion on art in those savage wilds.