Edited by Bill Evans, Two Volumes, 518 pages, 140 Shields illustrated with additional images, eight essays and introduction. Published by William Nathaniel Evans, Woollahra, NSW, Australia, 2019. Reviewed by James Elmslie
This lavish and beautifully produced book by Bill Evans is a rich resource for anyone with an interest in the shields of the Pacific – which in this publication includes all the countries spanning the archipelagoes to the north of Australia. Volume 1 includes Taiwan and the Philippines, although the main focus is on the varied cultures of Indonesia. Volume 2 covers Melanesia: Papua New Guinea with examples from the Solomon Islands. Both volumes have scholarly essays by experts in their respective fields with an introduction by Evans himself. A major objective of the book was to showcase exceptional unpublished examples from public and private collections in Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia.
Bill Evans writes in his introduction that he sees a cultural and geographic continuity in what Alfred Wallace, the British naturalist, termed the Malay Archipelago, here encompassing Indonesia, PNG and neighboring island groups. This is a vast area with a multitude of very different cultures and peoples, who have all been transformed to a lesser or greater extent by European contact and colonization. Examining this diverse cross-section of humanity through the prism of one object – the shield – is an interesting and illuminating experience.
Shield 34 Siberut Island, Mentawai Islands, Indonesia. Private collection. Image by Laurent Wargon Shield 136 Sulka, New Britain, PNG. 19th century. Australian Museum, Sydney, inv. no. E028867 Reproduced with the permission of the Australian Museum, Sydney. Shield 120 Elema, Orokolo Bay, Papuan Gulf, PNG. 19th century. Australian Museum, Sydney, inv. no. E063411 Reproduced with the permission of the Australian Museum, Sydney.
There is perhaps no-one better equipped in the world to undertake this task than Bill Evans. A founding member of the OAS, Bill has spent a considerable portion of his life in the study and trade of Oceanic art. From his gallery in Oxford Street, Sydney, and later as a specialist in major auction houses, Bill’s interests became more focused over time on one particular genre – the shield. He has put together several major collections which have subsequently been sold to leading public institutions in Australia. Many examples in the current book are from his own collection and provide testament to his vast experience and knowledge in this field. Evans concludes quoting Jean Sibelius, “Art is the signature of civilizations”, which is indeed true, but in this book we must also recognize the distinctive mark of Bill Evans’ own signature.
Volume 1 comprises a survey of shields from Southeast Asia with particular focus on works from the Dayak people of Borneo but many fine examples from the Moluccas, Northern Luzon, Mindanao, Mentawai, as well as rare examples from Bali.
The first essay is by Andrew Tavarelli, an artist and academic. Shields: An Appreciation, looks at shields as art works, and the effect they have had on the author’s own artistic development. Tavarelli’s visual exploration of both volumes seeks to unify them as a single body of artistic expression with flowing interconnections by dint of physical form; martial and cultural function, and embodiment of religious belief and practice. This does work to some extent but for me there is quite a chasm between the Melanesian and Asian examples and the two-part format therefore works well.
The second essay, Dayak Shields: Courting and Defying Death, by author and Asian art expert, Steven G Alpert, rigorously examines the 31 Dayak shields featured in the book – the most numerous offering from any single cultural group. With so many examples to refer to, this text brings alive the colourful history of Borneo, the tribes that inhabit it and how society there has evolved since the earliest days of colonization. The shields are both artefacts from the past and windows into a traditional world that has changed enormously over time.
Shield 54 Halmahera dance shield. Moluccas, Indonesia. Private collection. Image by Max Taylor
Dance Shields of Bali: A Legacy of Majapahit, the third essay by Asian Art Curator and academic, Robyn Maxwell, also looks into the pre-European contact days of Indonesia. Bali is a predominantly Hindu society with roots back to the Majapahit empire with many distinctive features, including the rare Balinese ceremonial shields reproduced here. While such shields do not play a conspicuous role today, “a small number of superbly decorated Balinese shields survive to indicate that, in the ceremonial past, their role was sufficiently important to demand the fine workmanship required for sacred implements and royal regalia”. Five such examples grace these pages.
Volume 2 of War Art & Ritual really is a feast for Oceanic art connoisseurs: the high quality images reinforced with a series of excellent essays. The first, by retired academic and Massim expert Harry Beran, Why Paint Shields? is a scholarly and fascinating discussion of what on the surface seems a simple question. As it turns out there are multiple answers, which one could expect when investigating a genre found throughout New Guinea and its surrounding islands, encompassing many diverse cultures.
Beran surveys the literature on this question back to the earliest commentators, such as the Trobriand Islands missionary, S. B. Fellows, and pioneering anthropologist, Bronislaw Malinowski, through to the lively contemporary debate. What emerges is a discussion through the medium of the shield, and specifically the design thereon, as a form of dialogue: an internal dialogue between (variously) the shield owner and his ancestors; his clan’s supernatural spirits; his enemies, and to a lesser extent, his fellow warriors.
Beran’s starting point is Paul Sillitoe’s list of six reasons why designs are placed on shields. In the course of the wide ranging essay Beran teases these reasons apart and leavens them with reference to the wide body of work he has spent his life assessing, and his own extensive field experience, to come up with an expanded list of ten reasons:
To give shield-carriers supernatural powers
To show clan identity to reduce ‘friendly fire’
To declare the shield-carrier’s martial ability
To frighten the enemy
To insult the enemy
To make the shield-carrier a confusing target
To protect the shield-carrier
To remind warriors to avenge a comrade’s death
To make the shields beautiful
To raise the self-confidence of the shield-carrier
This delightful essay will be of interest to anyone who has pondered on the beauty, power and inherent mystery embodied in the wonderfully rich genre of Oceanic shields that this book so satisfyingly explores.
Former Senior Curator at the South Australian Museum Barry Craig’s essay, Subsistence Strategies, Settlement Patterns, and the Form and Use of War Shields in the Sepik, Madang, and Highland Regions of Papua New Guinea, divides the form of settlement into five broad categories basically corresponding to the radically different terrains found on the island of New Guinea. Coastal regions and riverine environments contrast starkly with fertile highland valleys with concomitant population and settlement densities. Some villages are close packed and highly defensible; others a loose series of hamlets. Given this there was a variation in warfare strategy and weapon usage among the groups. Thus the types of shields manufactured also varied, hewn as they were to the specific functions required.
There were three forms of conflict that could develop: “ambush, rout, and formal war”. There was also a range of weapons employed: spears, bows and arrows, stone axes/clubs, daggers, and rocks as airborne missiles. Therefore, just as in a modern army, defensive apparatus such as shields were crafted for the specific conflict that each group was likely to engage in and for the location in which it was to be conducted.
Shield 62 Mindanau, Bagogo, Philippines, 19th century. Private collection, Manila. Image by Max Taylor.
For any pre-contact PNG society war was never a tangential or minor aspect of daily life. Craig quotes anthropologist Paul Roscoe, “warfare exacted a heavy toll on New Guinea communities. Typically, between 12 and 35% of New Guineans could expect to die in war, with figures in some areas perhaps reaching 50-60%.” Tribal war was therefore a deadly serious business and the efficacy or otherwise of war shields, the only barrier between a warrior’s naked flesh and the enemy’s spear or arrow point, was of supreme importance. No wonder shields were so much more than protective wooden panels, becoming imbued with totemic, psychological and mythical powers through form and decoration. One’s life literally depended on them in pre-contact New Guinea.
Craig uses the theoretical framework he has constructed to explain the logic of shield form, a logic that developed over thousands of years in the uneasy equilibrium of eternal war (or proto-war as he terms it) in differing terrains and the societies that dwelt in them. Craig modestly admits that the limited number of examples presented in this book are “by no means sufficient to support a robust hypothesis” but for the reader it is an intellectually satisfying exercise nonetheless. The wide variety of shields presented in this book, differing in size; form; weight and function are explained, to some extent at least. From seemingly random outcomes, order descends, logic prevails, and another aspect of a shield’s intuitive appeal is exposed: they are highly sophisticated military paraphernalia overlaid with the painted designs so aptly addressed by Harry Beran. These investigations increase our knowledge and allow for a deeper understanding of the shields presented in this book as both functional items and art objects.
Shield 96 Western Highlands, Simbu Province, PNG, Early to mid 20th century. Private collection. Image by Max Taylor. Shield 102 Phantom Shield, Waghi Valley, Western Highlands, PNG. Circa 1980s. Private collection. Image by Nuran Zorlu.
Art Gallery of NSW Curator Natalie Wilson’s essay, “Ol Samting Bilong Pait Igat Ai”/”The Weapons of War Have Eyes”: Modern Shields of the Wahgi Valley, is a riveting history of the painted metal shields that were made from the mid-1980s, often displaying designs based on The Phantom comic book character. There are five superb examples in the book. They mark the transition in the prosecution of tribal warfare in the highlands from the use of purely traditional weapons such as bows and arrows, and spears, to modern firearms; firstly 12 gauge shotguns (home-made and manufactured), and finally to automatic weapons, currently in use, which have rendered war shields obsolete.
In 1973 a tok pisin version of the The Phantom was published in Wantok, the weekly newspaper produced by a group of PNG based churches. The creed of The Phantom, a devotion “to the destruction of piracy, greed, cruelty, and injustice”, his iconography and paraphernalia in the form of rings and guns, and his physical manifestation – disguised in body suit and eyewear – struck a chord with many highlanders. Metal shields made from beaten 44 gallon drums and car bonnets started to appear decorated with versions of The Phantom and local cultural embellishments.
Their appearance coincided with the use of shotguns in warfare in the mid-1980s and persisted while they were fit for purpose as protection against shotgun pellets. As the Bougainville war dragged on, pilfered military weapons filtered throughout the country and into tribal battles in the highlands. Against automatic gunfire, shields, whether wood or metal, offered no protection and they “gradually fell out of use and today are no longer part of modern fighting”. The metal shields illustrated in this book therefore represent the last iteration of shields as functional defensive implements. They are an important part of the story of war art in New Guinea.
In his essay, Eyes that Watch: Shields from Island Melanesia, author, dealer and musician Kevin Conru examines the beautiful and intricate shields from New Britain and the western Solomon Islands. The use of shields was not widespread in the islands, unlike mainland New Guinea, and they evolved distinctive forms and motifs. While some types, such as the Arawe shields of New Britain, were almost human sized, others, such as the Mengan, Sulka and Solomon Islands shields became progressive smaller. Part of the reason for this was that in salt water based societies warfare often entailed travel by canoe or boat, necessitating shields that could be easily stored.
Shields in the region were also used in dance and for ceremonial purposes which continues to this day; traditional warfare having been effectively stamped out by colonial authorities over 100 years ago. Nonetheless, old examples show the signs of battle with “spear tips, lead bullets, and stones embedded in the outer surface, indicating their true usage as objects of war and defence”. They clearly fulfilled both functions.
Thirteen shields from the islands are illustrated in the book and they greatly enrich the whole collection. It certainly is a pleasure to see such a diverse range of technical and artistic achievement in such a relatively small geographical area. It is a reflection of the incredible diversity of the region itself, the different terrains and the very different cultures that have evolved across Oceania.
The contribution of Oceanic Art Curator at the National Gallery of Australia, Crispin Howarth, Thoughts upon Elema Shields, is succinct and pithy. He analyses the form and function of the idiosyncratic laua shields of the Elema people of the Papuan Gulf: archer’s shields designed to fit under the armpit decorated with a distinctive dual imagery. The origin of this iconography lies in traditional stories of the Elema involving twins, specifically conjoined twins, and is found on other traditional artefacts such as clubs, drums and bullroarers.
The laua shields incorporate the points made by both Harry Beran and Barry Craig. The powerful designs communicate between the shield-bearer and his ancestors and mythical creation spirits, bestowing protection, while simultaneously projecting a fearsome visage to the enemy. Their physical dimensions and form reflect the particular reality of Elema warfare where opposing combatants would perform formal set-piece engagements on a cleared beach: the shields are created in the exact form required for their specific function, which is itself a function of the swampy terrain of the Papuan Gulf and the nature of Elema society.
War Art & Ritual is a fine book and guaranteed to provide much pleasure and knowledge to anyone with an interest in Oceanic and Pacific art.
Limited edition of 750 copies. A limited number of copies available to members of the OAS in Australia for AUD$250 plus postage. Contact Bill Evans directly on [email protected]