File:New Zealand war mask.jpg

Identifier: historyofar02faur (find matches)
Title: History of art
Year: 1921 (1920s)
Authors: Faure, Elie, 1873-1937 Pach, Walter, 1883-1958
Subjects: Art
Publisher: New York and London : Harper & brothers
Contributing Library: PIMS - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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n approximation, but the flatspot is vibrant, and the silhouettes, looking like shadowson a wall, march with a single movement—oxen thatare pursued, antelopes climbing a slope, great graybirds crossing the sky. II It is the most interesting effort, doubtless, that hasbeen attempted by primitive men since the days of thecave men of Vézère. But this elementary paintingseems condemned to have no evolution, to disappearbrutally. The warm waters that ended the glacialperiod obliged the reindeer hunters to flee from westernEurope; the Bushmen dispersed on the arrival of theKafirs, the Boers, and the English; and from day today the colonization of Australia reduces the numberof the aborigines who covered the rocks of the greatisland with black, sulphurous, red, and blue frescoeswhich testify to a generalizing spirit whose rudimentsare perhaps less visible among the inhabitants of Africathan among certain peoples of Oceanica. Polynesianart, like Oriental art in general, would seem to tend
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New Zealand. War mask. (British Museum.) 178 MEDIEVAL ART more especially toward decoration, whereas the charac-ter of the art of Africa, like European art, shows itselfin a more marked tendency to isolate form in order toexamine the activity it possesses within its own limitsand within its individual characteristics. It is true that the climate and landscape of Oceanicaoffer to the sensibility of the Polynesians resources thatare not found in Africa. The dispersal of the raceamong the thousands of large and small islands,separated by vast expanses of sea, is perhaps the onlything which, preventing the necessary cohesion amongthe peoples, prevented also a great civilization frombeing born in the Pacific and from spreading roundabout. And now it is too late; the conquest of theseregions by Europe, the diseases, the alcohol, the mo-rality, and the religion that it brought them havemade the Polynesians ansemic, have decimated themand overcome them. The time has already arrivedwhen they a

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