Aboriginal Art
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Wednesday, 21 February 2007 |
 Aboriginal rock art is more than 40,000 years old, a time span five times greater than the age of the Egyptian pyramids. Was this transition to creativity due to new capacities for abstract thinking and complex speech or did greater social and economic complexity produce our first information revolution? Recent discoveries suggest that artistic ability did not evolve, but appeared explosively. Rock art gives us descriptive information about social activities, material culture, economy, environmental change, and myth and religion. One problem with obtaining such information is identifying the subject. Is that a tortoise or an echidna in the top photo? The images can also be distorted from reality due to religious beliefs. Is that a real human figure in the third photo or a mythological being?
Direct dating of rock art is notoriously difficult. In the Kimberley, Aborigines claim that the oldest art, the Bradshaw paintings, were made by the birds that pecked the rocks until their beaks bled and painted the images with their tail feathers. The ancestral creators can be found on rock walls from the huge mouthless Wandjina figures of the Kimberley east to the giant Gangi Nganang of Keep River National Park to the large creation figures of the Victoria River. In Western Arnhem, Aborigines distinguish between the oldest rock art known as Mimi Art, younger images of the ancestor beings when they entered the landscape, and more recent pictures created by their people.
Aborigines maintain that that the Mimi people inhabited the land before the Rainbow Serpent created the Aborigines. The Mimi people painted small dynamic images, taught the Aborigines how to paint, hunt, sing, dance, and talk, and then became spirit beings. Archeologists have placed the many styles in a chronological sequence delineated by environmental changes and historic events. In western Arnhem, archeologists recognize three periods: Pre-Estuarine (drier climate, extinct animals like thylacine), Estuarine (rising sea levels, marine fauna like barramundi and salt water crocodiles, Rainbow Serpent), and Freshwater (freshwater fauna like magpie geese, goose feather adornment).Labels: aboriginal, aboriginal art, art |
posted by Tabitha @ 3:00 PM  |
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