The Making of Asmat Art: Indigenous Art in a World Perspective by Nick Stanley

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Making of Asmat Art: Indigenous Art in a World Perspective by Nick Stanley Maggie Wander The Making of Asmat Art: Indigenous Art in a World Perspective, by Nick Stanley. Canon Pyon, uk: Sean Kingston Publishing, 2012. isbn 978-1-907774-20-1, xiv + 249 pages, illustrations, map, notes, references, index. Cloth, us$110.00. In his latest book, Nick Stanley explores interactions between artists working in south Papua and international audiences. Rather than a study of the art itself, this book explores the notion of Asmat visual culture in European imaginations. The title, The Making of Asmat Art, does not refer to the technical process by which Asmat artists carve their famous sculptures but instead suggests how the international art market creates what we know as “Asmat art.” With this perspective, Stanley situates Asmat visual culture within a larger, international context while at the same time rooting these practices and interactions in a longer history. It is no surprise that Stanley is interested in the notion of Asmat art given his previous work that engages with collecting, display, and depictions of Asmat culture (Being Ourselves for You: The Global Display of Cultures [1998]; The Future of Indigenous Museums: Perspectives from the Southwest Pacific [2007]). This type of engagement with Indigenous visual culture and the role it plays in international markets is significant because it moves away from notions that Indigenous art is static and somehow represents a “tradition” operating in spite of, or in opposition to, “modernity.” Instead, Stanley demonstrates how Asmat visual culture actively participates in dynamic processes of negotiation, trade, and power. The book is organized chronologically, tracing interactions between Asmat and Europeans from the days of James Cook’s eighteenth-century voyages to contemporary artists’ renderings of the famous carved shields from the region. The first four chapters explore missionary and anthropological interactions with the Asmat, as well as the region’s role in the international art market. Using journals and photographs from those early explorations, Stanley begins his study by asking how Asmat people have historically been depicted by Europeans. He is specifically interested in the process [End Page 220] of collecting Asmat carvings and other works for ethnographic displays in Europe, such as the British Museum’s collection from Lord Moyne’s explorations in the late 1930s. In chapter 3, “Museum Scholars and Collectors,” Stanley provides a brief historical overview of colonial authority in the region in order to contextualize the growing interest in Oceanic “ethnographica.” He discusses Simon Kooijman, a curator and scholar whose “collecting was always undertaken with a view to the creation of museum displays” (59), while Adrian Gerbrands was a curator whose aim was “not only to apprehend the cultural background of this art but also to gain an insight into the place and function of the individual artist in the community” (Gerbrands quoted in Stanley, 60). Stanley also highlights the design and structural changes in the art itself due to these market demands, such as new, filigree-esque designs which allowed the carvings to be more easily shipped overseas (50–51). In the late 1960s, the United Nations established a Fund for the Development of West Irian (fundwi). The money was intended to help stimulate a source of revenue for the region, and that source turned out to be Asmat carving. The primary audiences for this new market were museums and other cultural institutions, and artists began to work with those specific audiences in mind. This raised questions of quality and demanded that Asmat artists work according to international standards. Stanley states, “This desire to sustain standards and retain continuity with earlier traditional production was premised on the belief that not only would this sustain Asmat culture and self-confidence, but that it would commend the art to specialist purchasers” (102). In chapter 6, Stanley turns away from an international perspective and returns to museum practices in the Asmat region itself. He discusses the creation and management of the Asmat Museum of Culture and Progress in Agats, explaining that its aim is to encourage dialogue between different communities as well as to foster a sense of pride in local visual culture (116–117). In chapter 7, “Consolidating...