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77 This entry area also introduces the central subject of Marquesan art, the human body, which appears either whole or in part in nearly every art form, as well as the importance of tiki, statues in human form that generally represented deifi ed ancestors or sometimes other gods (fi gs. 2 and 3). These were made in a variety of materials including stone, wood, human bone, or ivory (usually marine mammal). The human body itself served as a medium for artistic expression: human skin as the canvas for tattoo; bone and hair to make ornaments for people of high rank. Marquesan tiki share similar distinctive style characteristics. They face frontally and have stocky bodies and fl exed knees. The arms are close to the body, with the hands usually on the swelling stomach. The head, the most sacred —or tapu—part of the body, is always disproportionately large. It can be a third, sometimes even nearly half, of the size of the body. The face has arched eyebrows, large eyes often with a prominent contour, a fl attened nose, and a large extended mouth. The fi rst section of the exhibition also introduces a second important focus of Marquesan art: genealogy and one’s place in a stratifi ed, hierarchical society. In fact, genealogy is yet another meaning for the word mata. Mata ènata/mata ènana refers to relatives or ancestors. To recite a genealogy is mata tetau, literally to read or count faces, in this case, of the ancestors. Genealogy was important in the Marquesas, as in other Polynesian cultures, because one’s place in the hierarchy was determined by one’s relationship to the ètua (gods, usually deifi ed ancestors) and with the hakaìki, or high chief, who was the direct descendant of the gods and the highest-ranking person in the tribe. Genealogies were recited at all important family celebrations and events (fi g. 16). Knowing this helps to explain the importance of the face and eyes in Marquesan art. The artist Paul Gauguin, who lived in the Marquesas between 1901 and 1903 and died there, recognized this. In describing Marquesan art, he noted, “The basis of this art is the human body and face. The face especially. You’re astonished to fi nd a face where you thought there was a strange geometrical fi gure. Always the same thing and yet never the same thing.”2 Though he was looking at late-nineteenth-century carvings such as bowls, it is in the early nineteenth-century war clubs, called úu (fi g. 6), that the representation of heads, faces, and eyes is at its most sophisticated and complex. Multiple faces and eyes appear in high and low relief, forming still more faces within, resulting in a remarkable example of complex visual punning.


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