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Art Critics, Connoisseurs, and Collectors in the Southeast Asian Rain Forest: A Study in Cross-Cultural Art Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Stanley J. O'Connor
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Extract

When Joseph Conrad sailed on the Vidar from Singapore harbour tothe small coastal trading stations on the eastern coast of Borneo, the round trip took three weeks. The most difficult part of the journey occurred at the estuary of the Berau River where the Vidar would have run in, past the shifting bar and mud flats, and followed slowly up the mangrove-lined banks of the main branch to a settlement almost forty miles inland. It was here in 1887 that Conrad encountered the trader Charles Olmeyer whose existence in this remote place provided such an enduring focus for Conrad's imagination. In his first novel, Almayer's Folly, Conrad drew a portrait of Almayer (Olmeyer) as an exile, living on the banks of the Berau River in a sullen recoil both from the wilderness that gripped the settlement in its green immensity, and from the customs and values of those with whom he shared almost the entire course of his adult existence. Drawn to the outermost reaches of the earth by greed, Almayer's life, as conceived by Conrad, was the very symbol of rootlessness and alienation.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , September 1983 , pp. 400 - 408
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1983

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References

This is a revised version of a paper presented to a Social Science Research Council-sponsored Conference on Southeast Asian Aesthetics held at Cornell University on 23–25 August, 1978.

1 Geertz, Clifford, “Found in Translation: On the Social History of the Moral Imagination”, Georgia Review XXXI, 4 (Winter, 1977): 796Google Scholar.

2 Abrams, M.H., “What's the Use of Theorizing about the Arts?”, in In Search of Literary Theory, ed. Bloomfield, Morton W. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), pp. 30–33;Google Scholar“A Note on Wittgenstein and Literary Criticism”, ELH, A Journal of English Literary History 41, 4 (Winter, 1974), pp. 541–54Google Scholar.

3 MacDonald, Malcolm, Foreward to I. L. Legeza, A Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Malcolm MacDonald Collection of Chinese Ceramics (London, 1972)Google Scholar.

4 This has been put succinctly by Joseph Margolis: “It is clear that one's account of the nature of criticism and of the nature of a work of art are conceptually linked in the most intimate way. What we indicate we are talking about an d what we may justifiably say of it depend on what it is; and what it is will be conceded by considering how it may be fixed and identified and what may be said of it.”; “Works of Art as Physically Embodied Culturally Emergent Entities”, British Journal of Aesthetics 14, 3 (Summer, 1974): 187Google Scholar.

5 It would be tedious to inventory references for all of these activities. They are amply documented in ethnographic literature and archaeological reports. Ceremonies to invoke the ancestors and other ritual uses of ceramics among the Bataks of Sumatra were recorded by Bartlett, H. H., The Labors of the Datoe and OtherEssays on the Bataks of Asahan (Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia No. 5, 1973), pp. 16Google Scholar, 33, 57–58. Ceramics used in head-hunting rituals are discussed in Harrisson, T., “Ceramic Crayfish and Related Vessels in Central Borneo, the Philippines and Sweden”, Sarawak Museum Journal 15, 30–31 (July-December 1967): 1–9; andGoogle ScholarKooijman, S., Ornamented Bark Cloth in Indonesia (Leiden: Mededelingen van het Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, No. 16, 1963), pp. 35–36Google Scholar. For ceramics as status markers, see Pringle, R., Rajahs and Rebels (Ithaca, N.Y., 1970), p. 24. For jar burial seeGoogle ScholarNewington, P.C.B., “Melanau Memories”, Sarawak Museum Journal V (1949): 33. I am also indebted to Professor Marilyn Sweedler who presented a paper on the ritual uses of ceramics in Southeast Asia at a Cornell University seminar in 1972Google Scholar.

6 The implications of the loss of this traditional aura as a result of mechanical reproduction of artworks and artifacts has been explored by Benjamin, Walter, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, in Illuminations, ed. Arendt, Hannah (New York: Schocken, 1969), pp. 222–23Google Scholar.

7 Ling-Roth, H., The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo II (Kuala Lumpur: 1968), pp. 284–87;Google ScholarCole, Fay-Cooper, Chinese Pottery in the Philippines, Field Museum of Natural History, Publication 162, Anthropological Series, Vol. XII, No. 1 (07, 1912), pp. 12–19;Google ScholarSpinks, Charles Nelson, The Ceramic Wares of Siam (Bangkok, 1965), Chapter XGoogle Scholar.

8 For a helpful schema of basic critical questions see the editor's Foreward in Macksey, Richard (ed.), Velocities of Change (Baltimore, 1974)Google Scholar.

19 An English translation of the myth can be found in Campbell, J., The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology (New York, 1959), pp. 173–76. For a recent study see,Google ScholarSmith, J.Z., “A Pearl of Great Price and a Cargo of Yams”, History of Religions 16, 1 (08., 1976): 11–19Google Scholar.

10 Roxas-Lim, Aurora, “Art in Ifugao Society”, Asian Studies XI, 2 (08. 1973): 56Google Scholar.

11 , Cole, Chinese Pottery, pp. 12–13Google Scholar.

12 Bock, Carl, The Head Hunters of Borneo (London, 1881), p. 198. For similar beliefs see also,Google ScholarWilken, G. A., Het Animisme bij de Volken den Indischen Archipe1 (Leiden, 1885), pp. 131–32Google Scholar.

13 Scharer, Hans, Ngaju Religion: The Conception of God Among a South Borneo People, trans. Needham, Rodney (The Hague, 1973), pp. 166, n. 1Google Scholar.

I4 Kaboy, T. and Moore, E., “Ceramics and their uses among the coastal Melanaus”, Sarawak Museum Journal XV, 30–31 (07-12, 1967): 22Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., pp. 19–20.

16 , Ling-Roth, Natives of Sarawak, 2: 286Google Scholar.

17 , Cole, Chinese Pottery, pp. 12–13Google Scholar.

18 Ward, A.B., Rajah's Servant (Ithaca: Cornell University, Southeast Asia Program, Data Paper 61, 1966), p. 64Google Scholar.

19 Whitehouse, David, “Chinese Stoneware from Siraf: The Earliest Finds”, in South Asian Archaeology, ed. Hammond, N. (Park Ridge, N.J., 1973), pp. 244–46Google Scholar.

20 Hose, Charles and McDougall, William, The Pagan Tribes of Borneo (London, 1912; second printing 1966), 1: 50,62–63Google Scholar.

21 , Ling-Roth, Natives of Sarawak, 2: 284–87Google Scholar.

22 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Truth and Method (New York, 1975), p. XIXGoogle Scholar.

23 Leeuw, G.van der, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, trans. Turner, J. E. (London, 1963), 2: 671Google Scholar.

24 For a discussion of religious experience through which the sacred is read as appearance in both cultural and natural phenomena, see: Long, Charles H., “Prolegomena to A Religious Hermeneutic”, History of Religions 6, 1 (02., 1967): 254–64;CrossRefGoogle ScholarEliade, Mircea, “Methodological Remarks on the Study of Religious Symbolism”, in The History of Religion: Essays in Methodology, ed. Eliade, M. and Kitagawa, J. (Chicago, 1959), pp. 86–107Google Scholar.

25 Scott, Nathan A. Jr, “Criticism and the Religious Horizon”, in Humanities, Religion and the Arts Tomorrow, ed. Hunter, H. (New York, 1972), p. 54Google Scholar.

26 Anderson, B. R. O'G., “The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture”, in Culture and Politics in Indonesia, ed. Holt, Claire (Ithaca, 1972), pp. 10–15Google Scholar.

27 A convenient survey ofjar burials in Southeast Asia can be found in Bellwood, Peter, Man's Conquest of the Pacific (New York, 1979), pp. 191–221. Some other helpful sources are:Google ScholarFox, Robert, The Tabon Caves (Manila: National Museum, 1970), pp. 67–166;Google ScholarHarrisson, Tom, “Early Jar Burials in Borneo and Elsewhere”, Asian Perspectives XVII, 2 (1974): 141–44;Google ScholarSolheim, Wilhelm, “Introduction to Sa-Huynh”, Asian Perspectives 3, 2 (1959): 97–108;Google ScholarFontaine, Henri and Than, Hoang-Thi, “Nouvelle note sur le champ de jarres funeraires de Phu-Hoa, avec une remarque sur la cremation au Viet-Nam”, Bulletin de la Societe des Etudes Indochinoises L, 1 (1975): 10–50;Google ScholarSaurin, Edmond, “Le champ dejarres de Hang Gon.presXuan Loc (Sud Viet Nam)”, Bulletin de l'École Francaise d'Extrême-Orient LX (1973): 329–58;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSolheim, Wilhelm G., “Jar Burial in the Babuyan and Batanes Islands and in central Philippines, and its relation to jar burial elsewhere in the Far East,” Philippine Journal of Science 89, L (1960): 115–48Google Scholar.

28 A recent study of this intermediary period and its elaboration in death ritual is Huntington, Richard and Metcalf, Peter, Celebrations of Death (New York, 1979Google Scholar). The book is an extended development of Robert Hertz's theoretical study of secondary burial practices in Borneo and elsewhere in the Indonesian Archipelago. For an English translation of Hertz by R. and C. Needham, see Death and the Right Hand (Glencoe, Illinois, 1960). I am indebted to Professor James Boon for bringing the Huntington and Metcalf book to my attentionGoogle Scholar.

29 Professor Penny Van Esterik has traced the symbolic association between ceramic jars and death in Southeast Asia from pre-historic jar burials in Thailand to their incorporation into their function as Buddhist reliquaries: “Continuities and Transformations in Southeast Asian Symbolism”, paper presented to the 31st annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Los Angeles, 1979.