Evolution in Art: As Illustrated by the Life-histories of Designs

by Alfred C. Haddon

“Besides such skin-patterns,” continues Dr. Grosse, “Australian ornament makes use of representations of entire men and animals. On clubs and throwing-sticks one frequently finds the engraved outlines of kangaroos, lizards, snakes, and fish, and especially frequently the figure of a corroborree-dancer in a characteristic attitude. The delineation of these figures is mainly crude and conventional; but in spite of this their meaning is nearly always quite intelligible.”

“The Australian warrior stands in the same relation to his kobong [totem] animal as the European knight did towards his heraldic animal ... and as the European warrior paints a bear or an eagle on his shield, so the Australian ornaments his with a representation of a kangaroo or a snake’s skin. The knowledge that the ornaments on Australian weapons are to a large extent heraldic designs, clears up at the same time two points which we have already mentioned, but have not yet elucidated—the frequent employment of animal skin-patterns, and their peculiar conventional rendering. The native whose kobong [totem] is perhaps a very large animal—and in this position most find themselves—manifestly can decorate his shield with no more suitable clan-mark and no more efficacious fetich than the skin of his heraldic animal. The actual skin may or may not have been employed, and in this latter case an engraved or painted representation was substituted. These representations are scarcely ever true to nature, most of them remind one in their angular and stiff regularity more of a plait-work than of a pelt or plumage.” Dr. Grosse goes on to point out that this conventional treatment is intentional on the part of the Australian native, and is not due to lack of skill either in the delineation of animals or in wood-carving. “The fact is these skin-markings are heraldic designs; but heraldic drawing aims at truth to nature as little in Australia as in Europe. It therefore by no means happens that the actual pattern of a kangaroo or of a snake should be drawn true to nature, but it comes about that a kangaroo or snake-pattern represents a definite clan.”

Although the greater part of Australian decorative art is probably totemistic in origin, there is a residue, the elucidation of which must be sought in other directions, but these do not at present concern us.

Mr. Andrew Lang has turned his attention to many anthropological subjects, and that of “the art of savages”[157] has not been passed over by him; but he has perhaps plunged into it without due consideration. Doubtless he himself would now modify the statement that “the absence of the rude imitative art of heraldry among a race which possesses all the social conditions that produce this art is a fact worth noticing, and itself proves that the native art of one of the most backward races we know is not essentially imitative.” Instead of “the patterns on Australian shields and clubs, the scars which they raise on their own flesh,” being “very rarely imitations of any objects in nature,” we may now regard most of them as probably indicating such objects.

It is, perhaps, scarcely going too far to assert that a very considerable part of the decorative and glyptic art of many primitive peoples has been inspired by totemism; but it must be remembered that we have no positive evidence of totemism among a very considerable number of peoples. As animals are the most frequent totems, so zoomorphs and their derivatives are as constantly in evidence in the art of these people.

The artistic representations become modified as totemism itself becomes modified. I can only very briefly allude to some of the probable stages in the later evolution of totemism. The attribution of human qualities to the totem is the essence of totemism, and the tribal totem tends to pass into an anthropomorphic god. Mr. Frazer points out that there are often numerous sub-totems associated with each of the main totems, and suggests that there is a sort of life-history of totems, “as sub-totems they are growing; as clan totems they are grown; as sub-phratric and phratric totems they are in successive stages of decay.” He also puts forward the view that these subordinate totems are regarded as incarnations of the gods or god in process of evolution, and as the latter rise more and more into human form, so the former “sink from the dignity of incarnations into the humbler character of favourites and clients; until, at a later age, the links which bound them to the god having wholly faded from memory, a generation of mythologists arises who seek to patch up the broken chain by the cheap method of symbolism. But symbolism is only the decorous though transparent veil which a refined age loves to throw over its own ignorance of the past.”

So far I have mainly referred to the employment of the representation of totem animals as badges, but they are also made use of to indicate descent. Ancestor worship is an important element in the religion of many peoples, and the art which illustrates this naturally varies according to the plane of culture at which a given people have arrived. When a people are in a totemistic plane of culture their ancestors will usually be represented as animals, the same holds good for those that have but recently emerged from this phase. This we know is the explanation of some of the well-known totem-posts and animal carvings of the natives of British Columbia, and it probably holds good for many of the intricate grotesque carvings from New Ireland.

When the totem has been evolved into an anthropomorphic god, human (i.e. god) forms are represented in the genealogy, as occurs on the decorated adzes of the Hervey Islands (pp. [270]-[274]).

It is incorrect to term all worship of or attention paid to animals as “Totemism.” In a great number of cases this may have been the origin of a cult, but it is a mistake to apply the lower term when the cult is sublimated into a higher form of religion. That a considerable part of the religion of ancient Greece had its origin in Totemism is generally admitted; but the animal attributes of most of their deities would not characterise the religion of the most cultured Greeks as totemistic.[158] The ox, the bear, the mouse, wild beasts and birds, and similar associates of the Olympian hierarchy, whatever they were to the ancients, are to us milestones which marked the road traversed by Hellenic religion; the Egyptian had been petrified at an earlier phase.

In the sacred bird of Western Oceania, we can probably trace the commencement of totemistic sublimation.