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Aboriginal art shows a creator snake

By Edward J. Sozanski - Inquirer Art Critic

14 January 2005 - Philadelphia Daily News (USA) - "Track of the Rainbow Serpent" at the University of Pennsylvania Museum presents Australian aboriginal art as the handmaiden of anthropology.

Most of the 27 paintings interpret an ancient creation myth about a multicolored snake that gave form to the island continent and subsequently shaped the cosmology of the native peoples who have lived there for millennia.

The paintings relate to the Wolfe Creek Crater in Western Australia, "discovered" in 1947 by American geologist Frank Reeves. Anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday, his daughter, commissioned most of the paintings on view as a way for the "traditional owners" of this sacred site to tell their stories about it.

The show reveals why aboriginal art has become popular in Europe and America in recent years. The artists, most self-taught, use color exuberantly and without inhibition, in the way that the early modern "fauves" did at the turn of the last century.

They also apply their acrylic pigments as staccato spots rather than as elongated strokes; the American painter Alma Thomas worked similarly. Combined with prominent patterning, these qualities give the paintings exceptional verve and intensity.

However, they are more than designs. They include pictographic elements that encode narrative. Best to acquaint yourself with these through one of the didactic panels before plunging into the installation.

However, it isn't necessary to master the iconography to appreciate how deft these artists are in transforming ancient oral tradition into striking contemporary visual representation. Their ability to make paintings that are both old and new simultaneously is their most impressive talent.

Source: Philadelphia Daily News

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