Weekly Blog post 4

Find an example of colonial art or design and discuss in relation to colonial art/design practices: (210 words)   

(Fig. 1) Sheriff, George. A Maori speech (Korero). ca. 1890, Colour art print Chromolithograph, Manuscripts and Pictorial collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, http://mp.natlib.govt.nz/detail/?id=39427&l=en

A description of colonial art print “A Maori speech” on the source page describes the print as "A flax bush to the left, a range of weapons and carved paddles in the foreground, an orator speaking to five seated Maori, a wharenui (meeting house) to the right, and a curving river with mountains in the background”. European colonial artists were notorious for their "lack of concern with ethnographical accuracy" (pp. 145 of cited source 1) relating back to this print as the setting makes no sense for the Māori speaker to be speaking to five people sitting on the ground holding what appears to be pieces of flax and the pile of 'weapons and carved paddles' would not be left lying out on the ground like shown. This is further proving what Bell stated (in cited source 1) that "even if the painting was a great success among Europeans, the few Maoris who ventured into the Auckland City Art Gallery to see it (this is referring to fig 2 taken from cited source 1) "viewed it," …  as the "mere creation of a Pakeha mind”." (follow-up quote from the previous). He then continues to describe "depictions of supposedly traditional activities in which figures were clad inappropriately" such as someone wearing ceremonial dress whilst digging a kumara field, further showing the lack of concern for ethnographical accuracy that European colonial artists had when depicting Maori people and culture.

(Fig 2) Steele, Louis and Goldie, Charles. "The arrival of the Maori in New Zealand". 1898, oil on canvas, Auckland City Art Gallery.

Cited Sources:

• Bell, Leonard. "Art Journal". The Representation of the Maori by European Artists in New Zealand ca. 1890-1914, Vol. 49, No. 2, Depictions of the Dispossessed, 1990, pp. 142-149