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key indigenous australian issues
| home | news lThe Case of IsabelleDr Vivien Johnson 2002 - The case of a German school teacher and would-be artist called Isabelle Isabelle who believes that her “artistic freedom” entitles her to paint pale imitations of Aboriginal art and sell them on Ebay is not important in itself. But the issues it raises go to the heart of the misunderstandings that prevail, especially in Europe, about Australian Aboriginal art. The appeal to “artistic freedom” may strike a sympathetic chord for those raised in the traditions of European art. Isabelle is certainly not alone in her fascination with Aboriginal art, nor in her assumption that she has the right to copy the art of other cultures, irrespective of whether they subscribe to the appropriationist appetites of the West. Just before Christmas last year, an urgent report came into the House of Aboriginality from Brit Hanstein about an item she had discovered on the German Ebay site: Still searching for an exquisite and unusual Christmas present? Here it is: an acrylic painting in the style of the Aborigines from Central Australia called ‘dot painting’. It was painted by Isabelle Isabelle herself. The title of this extraordinary work is ‘Corroboree in the Valley”. It was painted in 1999 on canvas 24 x 32 cm and is presented in a wooden frame. Each of Isabelle’s paintings tells a story, which the artist uses as source and inspiration for her works. The stories of her paintings tell of the traditional dancing get together or corroboree of the Aborigines. The members of the different skin groups meet each other at sacred sites (“wongars”) to prepare marriages or exchange rituals with different clans. In this particular painting there is a meeting between four men at part of a sacred site. Two additional men are staying in the background at a songline. If you are interested in this or other paintings by the artist please take part in the auction. Have fun! Keep this brilliant acrylic painting for yourself or give it away as a present. “Corroboree in the Valley” was one of four paintings which Isabelle had put up on Ebay in December 2002 - and promptly sold. Hanstein had written an impassioned email to Isabelle criticising her, not only for using the dotting technique and iconography of the world-renowned Western Desert school of Aboriginal artists, but also for inventing her own “Dreamtime” stories to give her artworks a false air of ‘authenticity’. Hanstein’s message ended with a personal plea to Isabelle to stop reproducing her works and offering them for sale. Isabelle’s response was interesting. She professed to be “shocked” by the strength of Hanstein’s negative reaction: “I did not know that it is forbidden to create your own artistic inspirations which are influenced by Aboriginal art”, she protests. “I do not imitate works of art, I do not copy an artist. I only use the symbolic language of the speech of Aborigines to realise my artistic visions. Isn’t that my artistic freedom?”. She cited a recent exhibition by a German artist who had copied African art to illustrate the acceptability of art which is ”inspired by foreign cultures” in German art circles. She could also have given the example of the Artis Australis [URL http://www.artis-australis.de/] website, which solicits indiscriminant buyers for its “Aboriginal style” paintings. Artis Australis goes further than Isabelle, in that authorship of the paintings is ascribed to artists with names like "Eunice Knagapangardi", "Clifford Purulayarre", "Old Mike Tjakagurri", "Long Jack Anatarra”, which sound suspiciously like some of the leading names in contemporary Aboriginal art: Eunice Napangardi, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, the late Old Mick Tjakamarra and Long Jack Tjakamarra. They have been altered just enough to entrap the unwary and escape charges of "passing off". Not that the paintings shown on the Artis Australis site look anything like these artists' work. Despite the liberal borrowings from the ‘dot' style and iconography of desert Aboriginal art, they are, like Isabelle’s sad caricatures of Aboriginal originals, dead, mechanical and above all meaningless. At the end of her reply, Isabelle asks why she should not “have the pleasure of my work any more” and challenges Hanstein to “Please explain” what is so wrong with what she is doing. Hanstein forwarded the Ebay item and her exchanges with Isabelle to the House of Aboriginality and asked for our advice and help in sorting Isabelle out on this question. She had already referred her to the House of Aboriginality site on the subject of copyright, but Isabelle could not find in this “a direct connection to my artistic work”. She is quite right about that. There is no law in Germany - or Australia - against being “inspired” by Aboriginal art. Not even if the results are superficially indistinguishable from it. So long as you do not directly copy Aboriginal artists’ originals (which would be copyright infringement) or try to pass the results off as Aboriginal art (which Isabelle is not doing) you are not breaking any law. But why would someone who claims to admire the art of Aboriginal people want to persist in doing something so deeply disrespectful of everything it stands for? A few years ago, Justice von Doussa of the Federal Court of Australia handed down a landmark decision in the case of Bulun Bulun and Milpurruru v R&T Textiles P/L. The R&T Textiles judgement is the closest thing yet in Australian legal history to the historic Mabo decision of June 1992 which ended the 200 year old fiction that Australia was “terra nullius” (no man’s land) when the British colonised it in 1788. Just as Mabo recognised Indigenous laws of land ownership, the R&T Textiles judgement recognised that the Aboriginal artists whom Isabelle freely copies for her own amusement and profit, are themselves subject to strict laws governing what they may depict in their paintings. R&T Textiles started out as a routine case of copyright infringement, but was transformed into one which tested the boundaries of Western copyright law by the application of George Milpurruru, in his capacity as senior traditional owner of the Dreaming depicted in Bulun Bulun’s painting, to petition alongside the artist. He would appear on behalf of all the Ganalbingu traditional owners, without whose permission Bulun Bulun could not have produced the work whose copyright had been infringed. Justice von Doussa ruled that in a case where the artist was unable or unwilling to pursue a breach of copyright, the traditional owners would have the right under existing Australian copyright law, to do so. As this case illustrates, the responsibilities of Aboriginal artists to the guardians of their own Law do not end with the sale of their works. These laws require that they pass on to the next generations the Dreaming designs entrusted to their care with their spiritual intensity undiminished. Aboriginal artists paint to teach the world about their culture and to gain its respect - not only for their humanity, but also for their right to defend the integrity of that culture. They can portray only what is theirs to reveal: the Dreamings in which they have specific rights and responsibilities. They must tell the truth about those things (although on pain of severe punishment for revealing tribal secrets they may not speak the whole truth). They do not copy from somewhere or someone else. They are the proud bearers of the most ancient culture on earth. Why should Isabelle and others like her be able to demand the right to toy with what they hold sacred just because they live in a world where nothing is sacred and everything can be sacrificed to the pursuit of profit? Don’t forget that Isabelle’s artistic expressions came to light because she was selling them on the Internet. Isn’t it immoral to try to gain a share of the income which rightly belongs to Aboriginal people by producing bad imitations of their work? It would be different if Isabelle indulged her fantasy of being an Aboriginal artist in the privacy of her own home, or even in her classroom, so long as she took care to explain to her young pupils the difference between the game they were playing and the conditions under which real Aboriginal art is produced. Her copying might then be a useful lesson in cultural sensitivity instead of an exercise in cultural insensitivity. But it would be better if she refrained from giving them Aboriginal sounding titles like “Corroboree in the valley” and inventing make-believe “Dreamtime stories” to go with them. Just as Aboriginal artists must paint their own designs and noone else’s, the stories they tell with their paintings must be the true stories. How else do we imagine that their culture has endured for so long? Isabelle’s story-telling efforts may or may not undermine the emerging German market for Aboriginal art, but they do undermine Aboriginal art’s capacity to bear witness to those truths. It is possible that none of this will cut much ice with Isabelle, spoken as it is from within her own “liberated” culture. Perhaps it would mean more coming from an Aboriginal artist, reacting to the work of another copyist. In the words of Gawirrin Gumana, painter and elder stateman of the Dhalwangu clan: “You didn’t ask me for this one. That mean you kill [i.e. hurt] me, that mean you broke my backbone, cut my story. If you come and ask me, I can say yes or no. But when you not come and ask me, that mean you are stealing and robbing me. I said already, Please world, stop stealing, stop robbing other people - artists. I’m not talking to one person now. No. No way. I’m talking to everyone - anyone - before I die so you can understand this picture and see this story what I am doing. Rights for people!” Gawirrin may not be aware of the activities of people like Isabelle Isabelle and the tricksters at Artis Australis - but he has travelled widely enough in the service of his art and his people to know that his message must be directed to the entire world. relative links:
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