Hiller - The Myth of Primitivism. Perspectives on Art - Esoteric Online

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Aboriginal representation and kitsch 283 author’s identity as a caring individual and his authority as the voice <strong>of</strong> conscience. <strong>The</strong> sympathy is a combination <strong>of</strong> self-concern and confusion. <strong>The</strong> guilt we are invited to share (if it is not simply a way <strong>of</strong> putting down the previous generation and disowning western civilization) is a refinement <strong>of</strong> generalized, bourgeois bad faith. 12 <strong>The</strong> tendency to recruit Aboriginal culture into breast-beating exercises in schlockmysticism is a hallmark <strong>of</strong> recent Australian cinema, Peter Weir’s <strong>The</strong> Last Wave being the most spectacular example. Again, in Storm Boy, David Gulpilil is called upon to exhibit a lot <strong>of</strong> ‘eternal mystical vigilance’, in the role <strong>of</strong> Fingerbone. Even James Lawrenson, who plays the role <strong>of</strong> Boney in the police drama serial on TV, is a part-time plainclothes noble savage. It may take another twenty years before the makers and consumers <strong>of</strong> mass media entertainment come to terms with post-contact history sufficiently for an indigenous version <strong>of</strong> F Troop to be produced. Despite obvious differences <strong>of</strong> quality, there is a kind <strong>of</strong> continuum between Drysdale’s and Wright’s work, Shane Howard’s song and Peter Weir’s movie. What links them is a highly romantic conception <strong>of</strong> the role <strong>of</strong> ‘the Artist’, particularly the notions <strong>of</strong> assuming vicarious suffering and the guilt <strong>of</strong> others on one’s own shoulders and attempting to articulate the national conscience. While they exhibit differing degrees <strong>of</strong> sophistication in doing so, it remains a common stumbling-block. Such notions are prone to blunt sensibility and subvert reason. I suspect that all four <strong>of</strong> them, like many Australian contemporary artists and writers, would subscribe to George Steiner’s classic dictum that ‘men are accomplices to that which leaves them indifferent’. It is a logically indefensible proposition, no matter how high-sounding. <strong>The</strong> most extreme form <strong>of</strong> this romantic conception <strong>of</strong> the role <strong>of</strong> the artist can be seen in the work <strong>of</strong> William Ricketts. Inspired by Blake’s example and by Blake’s <strong>The</strong> Spiritual Form <strong>of</strong> Nelson especially, he has created a number <strong>of</strong> sculptures exposing what he calls ‘the spiritual form <strong>of</strong> William Ricketts’ (that is, sculptures <strong>of</strong> himself). In one group, he and an allegorical Aborigine are being crucified side by side, the crosses decorated with tjuringa motifs, while the spirit <strong>of</strong> white conquest presides above them, gun in hand. In another, an Aboriginal spirit elder with angel’s wings confides to him the secrets <strong>of</strong> the Dream time. All this would be merely laughable if it weren’t for the fact that his sanctuary in the Dandenongs is a place <strong>of</strong> pilgrimage for some Aboriginal people and for the counter-culture. What the hippies see there is a reassuring western mediation that has turned the once-exotic into ‘pale and tawdry reflections <strong>of</strong> itself. What Aboriginal people find in it. I don’t know, and nor perhaps do they, but I think they have reason to resent it. Because kitsch is omnipresent, it is <strong>of</strong>ten assumed to be harmless, particularly since its effects are <strong>of</strong>ten difficult to judge. <strong>The</strong> carved blackboys <strong>of</strong> the 1830s may seem merely picturesque now, but consider a more recent analogue. In the 1940s, etched glass mirrors depicting a lone Aborigine with a spear enjoyed a vogue in suburban living-rooms and front bars. <strong>The</strong> clouded figure interrupts reflection in a small degree to remind us <strong>of</strong> a splendid, irrelevant warrior whom we superseded in an empty land. Cosy surroundings and our own faces fill the remaining vacuum. <strong>The</strong> wooden blackboys, in their Regency costumes, were there to serve, in a suitably humble capacity, in imitation <strong>of</strong> their betters. <strong>The</strong> opaque, white figure in the mirror serves to underpin a comparable world-view. <strong>The</strong> mirror is a stylized map <strong>of</strong> the
<strong>The</strong> myth <strong>of</strong> primitivism 284 continent, it represents a reassuring lie and, again, it is a pale and tawdry reflection <strong>of</strong> ourselves. Protracted exposure to a dominant culture’s images <strong>of</strong> Aborigines has inevitably prompted many <strong>of</strong> them to internalize the roles and act accordingly. ‘Coon songs’ borrowed from negro tradition and taught to Aborigines on reserves and missions in the 1920s remained popular at sing-alongs well into the 1960s. A representative verse suggests the dimensions <strong>of</strong> the process: Oh! the monkey and the nigger Were sitting on a rail <strong>The</strong> only difference I could see— <strong>The</strong> old black nigger ’ad no tail. Gary Killington, describing an ethnic music session at which the song was sung and then discussed, says ‘there was absolute silence until one person commented in a quavering voice, showing-obvious emotional distress, ‘“Is that what we have been singing all these years?”’ 13 Pernicious in its effects as this sort <strong>of</strong> rubbish is, I do not see that it is much worse than the Arcadian fantasy versions that have replaced it. Both deny Aborigines the range and diversity <strong>of</strong> fully human beings. Western representations <strong>of</strong> Aborigines by Aboriginal artists are remarkably rare. <strong>The</strong> illustration to the front page <strong>of</strong> the Kimberley Land Council Newsletter (see Figure 16.3b) suggests the extent to which Pr<strong>of</strong>essor Tatz’s stereotype has been internalized. To gauge the impact <strong>of</strong> white kitsch on Aboriginal artists’ self-images, it would be necessary to dwell at length on 16.3a ‘Welcome to Diarama Village’.
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The MYTH o
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The MYTH o
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PART I Contents List of</st
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Illustrations Display case, Berlin
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10.2 A blend of sa
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Display case, Berlin Ethnographical
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little pictures inserted me neatly
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10 Christian Metz (Fall 1985) ‘Ph
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assumptions of the
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PART I
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The myth o
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Outsiders or insiders 19 Th
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Outsiders or insiders 21 content it
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Outsiders or insiders 23 honoured i
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Outsiders or insiders 25 If the con
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Outsiders or insiders 27 of
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Outsiders or insiders 29 free-range
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‘Remember, you are the stranger.
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Editor’s introduction The
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5 Emil Nolde’s ‘ethnographic’
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Unofficial version
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The resurgence <st
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From primitivism to ethnic arts 133
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PART III
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Ethnography and the formation <stro
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10 Art and meaning SIGNE HOWELL In
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Art and meaning 181 which the sculp
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Art and meaning 183 overall social
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Art and meaning 185 woven into syst
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Art and meaning 187 anthropologists
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Art and meaning 189 and visited Mus
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Art and meaning 191 ultimate ‘oth
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Art and meaning 193 10.5 Jah Hut me
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Art and meaning 195 The</st
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Art and meaning 197 without models
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11 Dark continents explored by wome
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Dark continents explored by women 2
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Leonardo’s ‘Last Supper’ in F
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Page 315 and 316: Notes on contributors 294 P.S.122.
Page 317 and 318: Index aboriginality, as Australian
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