20. Art? What Art?

by George Weber

Artistic expression, it is claimed, is almost as fundamental to humanity as language. This may be so, but among traditional Andamanese decorative art is found only in a number of remarkably restricted forms - the most restricted of all known human groups.

It is not that the Andamanese lack a sense of beauty. There is a deep sense of elegance and beauty way beyond that required by mere utility in the way traditional canoes, paddles, baskets and some types of bows and pots were decorated. Much of the women's basketry work is not only elegant in form but very beautiful with their interweaved brown, black and yellow strands of fibre. Some types of bows made by the men also highly elegant.

The Andamanese are in no way deficient in the ability to visualize things. As one early observer noted:

... the intelligence they display in recognising any familiar form depicted in a sketch; and while no such method for indicating the situation of any place is known or employed among themselves, some of them are quick in understanding a chart of their own country, and are able to point out the sites of their various encampments

This is not the place to discuss the eternal question "what is art." Whatever it is, among Andamanese it is represented by a limited number of standardized abstract pattern. Each of the pattern had its own name. There is no figurative art at all, no recognizable outline of the human form, of animals or even of objects. The patterns may once have originated in figurative representation but if so, that development would have been a very ancient one. The pattern are of very considerable age and do not represent a recent "degeneration." They are similar among all Andamanese groups which fact would seem to speak for a common ancestry, before the various groups split up and lost touch with each other. More concrete is the archaeological evidence of decorations that have survived on shards of pottery - some more than 2000 years old - that are strikingly similar to the standard patterns known from a variety of recent objects and from Andamanese body painting.

Standardized decorative patterns (Great Andamanese).

1. jobo-tartanga or chevron (painted with ochre and white clay, on canoes, paddles, buckets, etc)

2. ig-yitinga or cross lines (painted with white clay, on sounding boards; cut with a sea shell, on waist belts and other items of decorative clothing)

3. ig-barnga or cross lines (two colours, vertical lines painted in ochre and the oblique lines in white clay, on baskets)

4. ig-oinga or parallel lines ( painted with ochre or white clay across the handle of paddles)

5. jobo tartanga or mixed lines (painted with white clay, on belts and head dresses)

6. to-nanga or zig-zag lines (painted with white clay, on belts and head dresses)

7. ige-unga (painted with brown or white clay, on belts and head dresses, nautilus shells used as drinking vessels and wooden trays used for meals)

8. jobo-tartanga or lozenge lines (painted with brown or white clay, on belts and head dresses, nautilus shells used as drinking vessels and wooden trays used for meals)

9. polior-nga or plait lines (painted with white clay on bows and eating trays)

10. bamga or fish bone lines (painted in various colours on the sling used to carry infants)

11. ige-unga, ig-yitinga or cross incisions (cut with sea shell on bows and the handles of adzes)

12. otenga or loop pattern (painted with white clay on seashells used as food trays)

 

A few applications of the patterns listed above. While the Onge did not decorate their pottery, their body painting pattern are far more elaborate than those of the Great Andamanese, as the Onge boy on the left demonstrates.

It is not at all clear how far individual preferences decided on what pattern was used in what circumstances. An informal survey by the author in a number of collections seems to indicate that most patterns are applied to all sorts of objects as well as in body painting and that individual variations are minimal. In view of their ancient origins and their astonishing stability over time, it is likely that these have a religious meaning, long since forgotten. This impression is reinforced by the fact that many items, canoes and bows especially, were painted only once before being used for the first time and the paint was never renewed but allowed to fade away.

Another set of standardized decorative pattern.

A number of authors have casually reported certain patterns of body painting in certain circumstances such as specific ceremonies, rejoicing or mourning, etc. No systematic survey of these reported patterns has ever been made and it is not clear how far they applied within the different groups and what the pattern themselves meant to the Andamanese.

The Andamanese painted only with clay and did not use colours provided by plants or animals. This meant that they were essentially limited to ochre, white and gray/olive, the three types of clay available in the Andamans.

As mentioned earlier, pottery provides us with the only evidence of Andamanese art going back longer a few hundred years. It occupies a curiously detached and somehow "unconnected" place in Andamanese society that we have discussed in chapter 17. What we are concerned with here is the decoration that a minority of pots have received. Excavation of kitchen-midden have brought to light pot shards dating back more than 2000 years. Apart from a steady decline in the potters' skills, there is no stylistic development at all. Throughout the long time, a few pots were decorated, always with the same familiar pattern, while a majority remained plain. Why this should be so we do not know. The only living population accessible for questioning are the Onge and they have stopped making pottery in the 1950s when ready-made metal and plastic pots became available to them. They have now lost all memory of ever having made pots, let alone decorated them.

Decorative pattern on pottery shards found in archaeological excavations in kitchen midden. Such decoration on pottery are known only from the areas populated by Great Andamanese

An exceptionally complex combination of painted patterns from a Great Andamanese Nautilus shell used as a drinking vessel.

Very limited though the Andamanese means of artistic expression have been, for at least 2000 years they seem to have been perfectly happy with it and certainly for the last 200 years they have shown no ambition to find new or different ways of artistic expressions.

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Last change 1 September 2000