Can we learn anything from Aborigines ?

Landscape of Western Australia seen from a plane.

In the 19^th century explorers riding camels travelled to the Gibson Desert in Western Australia. These explorers suffered extreme hardships and decided that the land is inhabitable. There were places in that land where trees grew but those trees were just desert eucalypti, a downpour once a year is enough for them. It rains there only when cyclones roar over the Pacific, clouds brought by those cyclones break through the coastal mountain ranges and then the deserts are flooded. Water gathers in temporary lakes which dry out quickly and there is no rain for the rest of the year. How can one live in a climate like that? You can't even keep sheep in such a place. The land was declared uninhabitable and left in peace.

That peace was disturbed in the 20^th century when Great Britain constructed its first nuclear bomb and needed an uninhabited place to test it out. Gibson Desert was supposed to be such a place but reconnaissance planes that flew over it noticed that somebody actually lived there after all. Can one just drop a bomb over the head of that somebody? One has to do something to make sure the land is really uninhabited. Expeditions were organised again with the aim of finding those mysterious inhabitants and resettling them somewhere. As it turned out these people lived there illegally. They had no documents proving they had the right to be on Australian territory. No birth certificates, no passports, no visas. They even couldn't speak English, the official language of the country. And they walked around naked even though in Australia it is illegal to appear naked in public places.

It was a sensational discovery. Apparently these were stone age people who not only had no knowledge of the existence of white Australians, but seemed to have no knowledge at all, they just wandered in the desert eating lizards. On the other hand some people admired their ability not only to survive but even raise a family in an environment where a person from Sydney, if left alone, wouldn't be able to survive even a week. There was also consternation – how is it possible that in a modern country in the middle of the 20^th century some people walk naked in the desert and eat lizards as their staple food? This couldn't go on, settlements had to be created where these people could eat civilised food sitting by a table. They had to be given some clothing, they couldn't just walk naked there. Children had to be sent to school, in a civilised country like Australia not sending children to school was also illegal.

Aborigines who have enough food.

A few settlements were created. The biggest and most famous of them was Papunya, located about 240 km west of Alice Springs. The desert nomads – when contacted and if a language of communication could be found – were told that Papunya is a place flowing with milk and honey, or at least they could have enough food every day, which was not always the case in the desert. Despite the official good will, however, there was no mutual understanding. The white people who came to Papunya from big cities preferred to restrict any contact with those who came from the desert to official working hours. The desert people didn't really look for more contact either. For them it was obvious that the white people not only knew nothing about the desert, they did not know things a man should know and seemed not to realise there were things a man should know. Anyway there was no point trying to teach them.

Children are supposed to go to school, but how to teach them if they can't speak English? Among themselves they chatter in some incomprehensible speech and are disobedient, but how can they be obedient if they don't understand what is being said? You can't talk to parents to correct their children because the parents don't understand English either. Are the teachers supposed to learn Pintupi or Pitjantjatjara languages? Or both of them and some others in addition, because inPapunya people from various distant regions were gathered, they spoke several mutually unintelligible languages. With Arrente people, who came from regions around Alice Springs, one could communicate because they came in touch with white people earlier, some even worked as stockmen at white people's farms, but Pintupi have been brought straight from the desert and the world of white people was completely abstract to them. Can one wander why teachers treated work in Papunya as a kind of punishment?

A picture by Kaapa Tjampitjimpa in a museum in Brisbane.

In 1971 came to Papunya a man who actually seemed to want to learn something. This was Geoffrey Bardon who came to teach art in the school for black kids. He was one of the few for whom work with natives was not a kind of punishment, he actually wanted to work with them and even learned a little of their language. He was a teacher fresh from university and full of new ideas about what art can do in education. According to modern ideas art is supposed to show the personality of its creator, not his ability to copy anything. In the school of Papunya Bardon noticed that in the classroom children tried to draw human figures but when they played outdoors that drew some interesting patterns on the ground. He told the children that in the classroom they should also create this kind of art. The children went home and in the morning they came with their fathers, who said that the children can't do it but they - the adult men – can and will. They said that Papunya stands on he spot of Honey And Dreaming so they will paint this dreaming on the school wall. And they did, they painted something that according to western standards would be seen as abstract painting. For them it wasn't abstract at all, it was Honey And Dreaming.

It turned out that the black inhabitants of Papunya were experienced artists who painted according to age-old traditions, only the medium was new to them. Illustrations of dreamings had been created for generations in places where dances were to be performed. They were made of sand of various colours, often the design was very elaborate and it took a long time to create it. Then the dance was performed on it and at the end of the ceremony nothing remained. A picture of a dreaming was a bit like a musical composition, which is performed at a certain moment but when it is not performed it still exists. Honey Ant Dreaming on the school wall wasn't danced upon and remained in place a little longer.

Neither Bardon nor the painters wanted to stop at this point. Bardon suggested they paint something on movable boards that could be like western pictures. He provided the boards and acrylic paints and the space necessary in a shed behind the school building. When a few of those pictures were created Bardon took them in his car to Alice Springs, where he found a gallery willing to exhibit and possibly sell them. During the school year 1971-72 Bardon went to Alice Springs several times, each time with a new load of pictures. Tourists visiting the town bought these pictures for less than a hundred dollars. For the artists, who only a few years earlier came from the desert where they didn't earn anything – these were substantial sums. Or were they? When they roamed the desert they not only didn't need any money, they actually didn't know that such thing existed. Did they understand at all what a “substantial sum” is?

A picture by Clifford Possum in a museum in Sydney.

Whatever the case, these pictures weren't bought as ethnographic curiosities, they were treated as works of modern art. In 1971 there was an official competition for a modern picture in Alice Springs, most of the participants were white Australians but the first prize was given to Kaapa Tjampitjimpa, a Native from Papunya. In 1972 a museum in Darwin organised an exhibition of the works by Papunya artists. It was a travelling exhibition, it was shown in Sydney and Melbourne and other cities on the coast. In 1974 it was also shown in Alice Springs. There it turned out to be explosive stuff, it caused a riot, stones and spears were thrown at it by Natives from other settlements and it had to be closed after a few days. White organisers could not understand what was wrong. Isn't it good that Aboriginal art is appreciated? It never occurred to them that the Native community could have a different opinion about it, which was (as it later transpired) that these things should not be shown publicly in a place where women and children could see them! The pictures were the property of Darwin Museum, whose decision makers decided to lock them up in a cellar and never show them again.

However, galleries in the cities on the coast still exhibited works by Papunya artists and their prices rose gradually. One can guess that the notoriety helped in that price rise. Art dealers smelling money sent their agents to Alice Springs, provided paints and canvas and bought ready pictures, selling them later on the coast with substantial profits. Prices rose steadily, legend grew around the artists. In the 1990s an agent of Sotheby auction house had an idea – find those earliest Papunya pictures that were bought for a hundred bucks and auction them. The result exceeded any expectations, the pictures were fetching several thousands dollars each. At first the leader of the pack was Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, whose picture “Love Story” sold for 60$ in 1972 and was resold in 1995 for almost sixty thousand. Five years later he was trumped by Johnny Warrankula Tjupurula, whose picture “Water dreaming at Kalipinypa”, painted in 1972, was resold for over $400 000. It was purchased by an American multimillionaire.

A picture by Johnny Warrankula in a museum in Brisbane

Some white Australians started asking themselves a question: why the best art works have to leave the country? In a free market it is likely to happen because where the purchasing power is concerned the Americans are the leaders of the pack. In European countries there are laws banning export of certain works of art, these are usually works of old masters, but Papunya masters created their earlies works were less than 40 years old! Some of those artists may even be still alive. Somebody had an idea – ask the artists themselves what they think about it. Two ladies travelled to Alice Springs – one a representative of the Government, the other an expert, an Art Historian who wrote biographies of Papunya artists and knew them personally. The ladies met one of the painters in an Alice Springs coffee shop. The lady expert opened the laptop to discuss particular pictures that were to be auctioned. As soon as the thumbnails appeared on the screen, her interlocutor sad sharply: “Shut it. We won't talk about them. Didn't you have a man to come with you?”

It turned out (when a man was found at last) that the pictures the lady expert had in her computer could only be seen by men. These were pictures normally created in sand of various colours during initiation of young men. Women and children should never see them.

But if this is the case – then why did they paint it in the first place? Why did they hang them in galleries? Why did they sell them?

It was one great misunderstanding. The artists who only a few years earlier saw a white man for the first time in their lives had no idea what a gallery was, they had no idea what a white man would do with their pictures. Very likely they took for granted that what men did would remain among men, that it won't be shown where women or children could see it. Ever since the riot in Alice Springs Papunya artists changed their subjects and tabu themes wouldn't appear in their pictures any more, but those earliest pictures had been sold already and their creators had no influence on what happened to them later.

A picture whose subject was 'tabu' – which means 'holy' – became a commodity that could be bought and sold. However many thousands it may cost, it is still a commodity, nothing more. Is this the way our new brave world is going to be?Everything just a commodity? Is it inevitable? Or perhaps the riots in Alice Springs may have meaning for us? Maybe we can learn something from the Aborigines after all? Or perhaps we never will and a time will come when even the Black Madonna of Czestochowa (a beautiful portrait of a beautiful woman and one of the oldest icons in existence) will be sold if somebody pays enough money?

Our Lady of Czestochowa

You will find this article, and many others, in my book "ART ETHNO".