BISMARCK ART & THE AVANT-GARDE 106 Art from the Bismarck Archipelago has intrigued and captivated the imaginations of those sensitive to its exuberant visual language from the time of first contact to the present day. As early as 1643, Isaac Gilsemans, the merchant, cartographer, and artist on Abel Tasman’s landmark voyage of discovery to the South Seas, was intrigued by a small shark-hunting outrigger canoe that he encountered off Tabar Island in New Ireland. He drew the craft with two of its crew navigating it homeward, and a third islander standing near the prow blowing a conch shell trumpet to announce their imminent return1 (figs. 3 and 4). Although the drawing is an imper- FIG. 1: Yva, Maskenspiel der Treue (Masquerade of Faithfulness), 1927. Mounted gelatin silver print, printed c. 1927. 16.5 x 22 cm. © Estate of the artist. Image courtesy of private collection USA/ Kicken Gallery, Berlin. fect didactic rendering, what attracts the eye is not the proportional imbalance of the figures—compositionally they work within the canons of graphics as determined by Gilsemans’ near contemporary, Albrecht Dürer—but the highly exaggerated interpretation of the canoe’s prow and stern ornaments. The oversized heads are rendered as sharp-toothed sea serpents, grimacing as their open mouths waggle devilish tongues. While obviously a fantasy, the vocabulary of expression is echoed in the work of other fifteenth- and sixteenth-century artists, with Hieronymus Bosch being the leading exponent. Serpents of the sea, like other denizens of the apocalypse, were FEATURE By Kevin Conru
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