The Equivocal Role of Women Artists

Examine the claim: nonliterate art is a system of communication which man- ifests the ideologies and beliefs that bring order and definition to a person’s culture. This statement seems fine, but who makes these art forms and whose view does the culture indeed reflect? have come to realize that the arts, the hieratic arts in particular, reflect male behavior and opinion, for it is men who dominate the “important” arts. Wom- en artists (and their art forms) play a more equivocal cultural role because they cannot work in certain materials or use specialized tools or technology and, in many cultures, cannot make figurative images.1 But we shall neither analyze nor interpret the role of the woman artist in nonliterate cultures un- til we have examined the role of the male artist.

Most of the documentation of nonlit- erate art assumes that only a man can be an artist. This man, depending on the cultural area, must possess talent, skill, intelligence and, on occasion. genealogical rights of privilege. Polyne- sia has a distinct class of professional artists to which one can belong only if one is born male and has the appropri- ate lineage and natural talent.? In Mel- anesia talent and competitive skill rath- er than genealogy are the requisites for the coveted position of artist, but it is still only the male who qualifies.? The men often serve an apprenticeship since the ritual meaning and knowledge of the objects they make are as important as learning the essential skills and exer- cising the necessary talent. In contrast to Oceanic cultures, in the Arctic it is generally believed that all male adults are able to make art. As Edmund Car- penter comments: “carving is a normal, essential skill (for the Eskimo), just as writing is with us.”4 In Africa the posi- tion and training of the male artist ranges between the extremes of Poly nesia and the Arctic.

Though the social status of the male artist varies in these societies, as do their artistic skill and training, the women have uniformly limited access to the art arena. Even in societies such as that of Polynesia, where they have political and economic importance, women work in “barkcloth and weav ing, but the important hard-media crafts Jare the preserve of men."5 In Melanesia, where the political and ec- onomic power lie mainly in the hands of the “Big Men, women work in pottery and weaving. In many African cul- tures, the Yoruba of Nigeria for exam ple, women can achieve political and/ or economic importance and are not en tirely excluded from ritual, yet women do the spinning, dyeing, mat- ting, and the potting; and the remaind er of the crafts are practiced by men."6

Douglas Fraser points out that primitive man, though he may not have a word for art almost always differentiates between objects produced by a slow, repetitive process, such as weaving or pottery (craf and other objects of paramount significance for his culture. He relegates craft work to inferiors (i.e., women); only men, as a rule, practiced carving and painting. Fraser’s observation is accurate, but Andrew Whiteford, in response to Fraser, raises the question of whether the crafts made by women can be con- sidered, from a Western perspective, any less an art form than the art made by men. In reference to American Indian cultures, Whiteford writes: That one type of painting is realistic, religious, and male-produced, while the other is geometric, secular—although it may have religious connotations we do not know about—and female-produced does not suffice to put them in different categories. If we insist upon separating them, we are led to the disparaging conclusion that Indian men created sacred art: women only manufactured mundane crafts.8

Our aesthetic and cognitive response to these art forms made by women is of- ten different from the response in the cultures that produced them. We may indeed designate many of the objects made by women as art.” But we must realize that we differentiate between art and craft” in terms of ideas of innovation,"“creativity” and “signif- icant form; by strict Western defini- tion most nonliterate arts would then fall into the category of craft. This dis- tinction between art and craft by West- ern standards is thus an arbitrary one when applied out of context to nonliter- ate art: women artists are neither more nor less innovative and creative within the media they use than are men artists.

The specific difference between the art- ist and non-artist seems to be one of de- gree. This is more obvious in a non-lit- erate, or so-called primitive society, than in our own. In pre-European Ha- waii, for example, nearly all women made bark cloth called kapa (tapa), decorating it with highly creative de- signs. In a broad sense most of these women were artists, some better than others, for some examples of tapa dis- play more intuitive inventiveness and mastery of technique than others."9

Many nonliterate cultures distin- guish between what might be called secular, utilitarian objects and religio- political, status objects. The latter are classified either by their use or their

ritual process of manufacture, or in some cases, by a finer quality of work-- manship. For example, in the Mar- quesas, a serving bowl not made by a male artist with deep knowledge of magic and ritual would be just a bowl because it had not been properly initi- ated into the Universe.1° Both men and women produce secular objects, but in most cultures it is the expert male artist who usually works on the culturally de termined, more important art ob- jects. (We must remember that it was the Western world—mainly via male anthropologists and art historians- that introduced the concept of “art to nonliterate cultures, and determined what would qualify as art, with until recently, little corroboration from the indigenous people themselves.) The issue here, however, is not whether we accept the objects produced by women as art, but why most women were and are traditionally denied access to the specialized role of artist as creator of religio-political objects. The relevant factor is that however art is defined, all nonliterate cultures distinguish be- tween the art produced by men and that produced by women; and this is our concern here.

The disparities of style, technique and media between men and women artists appear to be universal. In most cultures women are rarely allowed to make anthropomorphic or zoomorphic forms; these are the prerogative of men. In most cultures women are rarely per- mitted to make objects requiring the knowledge of ritual process or the skill and knowledge of manipulating certain specialized tools. And there seems to be a universal taboo against women's sculpting in hard materials such wood, bone, ivory, stone, gold and metal compounds; these materials are used exclusively by men.1 Women can work only with soft, malleable materi- als: clay, gourds, basketry, leather or weaving. We can therefore say that a distinction exists (in traditional nonlit- erate societies) between the arts made by men and women.

Franz Boas has commented that the stylistic differences he observed in an Eskimo community arose both from differences in the technical processes and (even more) from the fact that men do the realistic work and women the clothing and sewn leather work.12 Wil- liam Bascom pursues Boas’s notion that a sexual division of labor must also be considered in regard to stylistic dif- ferences:

In painting, for example, there are marked contrasts between the represen- tational designs of men and the geomet- ric patterns of women among the American Indians of the Plains and the Great Basin; and the same is true in bead-working. Among the Ashanti and the peoples of the Cameroun grass- lands, the anthropomorphic pottery pipes made by men contrast sharply with the pottery produced by women.13

He has also noted that artists divided within a society by sex and/or craft may develop distinct styles, just as iso- lated subtribes do. Both Boas and Bascom address the broad issue of dis- tinct styles within one society, and each notes that when the men and the wom- en work in the same medium their products are markedly distinguishable. Robert Rattray, working among the Ashanti of Ghana, also notes this dis- tinction: “Men do not fashion pots or pipes unless they represent anthropo- morphic or zoomorphic forms, for women are forbidden to make these.15

Such a distinction is also observed among American Indians: Whiteford found that women’s art, excluding tourist art, rarely portrayed animal and human forms.16 The media shared by men and women are also distinguished by technique or process. For example, Yoruba men and women both weave. The men use a horizontal, narrow band loom. The women, however, use a ver- tical cotton loom. Men may have adopted the horizontal loom because it can produce an endless strip of cloth, thereby relegating the more restrictive or “inferior process of the vertica loom for the women.18 Roslyn Walker, however, suggests that the women s'use of the vertical loom is a practical distinction, since the vertical loom is not placed against the abdomen and al- lows a woman to continue weaving dur- ing pregnancy.”19 Her argument is not compelling since women are only preg- nant for a few years of their working life.

Anthropomorphic and zoomorphic forms are usually reserved for the more important or sacred religio-political representations of deities, ancestors and benevolent and malèvolent spirits or divine personages. One might con- clude that women are restricted from making these forms because of their powerful association with the superna- tural. But, among the Anang of Nigeria and other societies, human and animal figurines are used as house decorations and toys.2° Since these figures are pure- ly secular, we might question why women are not allowed to make them. Women cannot make them because they are carved in wood; they would probably be allowed to make a rudi- mentary toy figure in clay. But as wom- en do not generally make these images they would not necessarily be able to make even a clay figure, so it is not surprising to discover that women do not try. In the final analysis, one must conclude that anthropomorphic and zoomorphic forms are of such para- mount importance that making them is a privilege given almost exclusively to men.21 There are exceptions to this re- striction: certamn women have extra- ordinary talents and skills not unlike a shaman, for which particular societies make allowances. 1 will return to this point later.

Certain oral traditions relate how women once made anthropomorphic images. One such story is reported by Rattray. The Ashanti people told him about a potter, Denta, who became barren because she modeled “figure pots. Thereafter, according to the Ashanti, women did not make highly ornamented pottery.22 Rattray was also told that women were forbidden to make anthropomorphic forms because they required greater skill.23 (In con- nection with the grave punishment of becoming barren, Ashanti women are forewarned that they do not have the greater skill, which implies the skill of ritual knowledge.) Little literature is available relating specifically to the prohibition against women s making anthropomorphic or zoomorphic forms, but of the accounts that 1 know, women who initiated the making of such im- ages were either killed, sworn to secrecy or made barren.2 That some women initially created figurines may relate to their innate role as natural creator of anthropomorphic forms. Adrian Ger- brands writes: .. . it is no wonder

that the woodcarver, the maker of wooden images, has a special place in the Asmat society. Just as a new human being develops in the body of a woman, so does wood come to life in his hand. His creativity, however, belongs to another sphere. From the woman comes the life of this world, whereas he creates supernatural life.”25 One might also argue that women, as creators of human beings, had no subliminal need to create anthropomorphic representa- tions. But if that were the case, men would not have thought it necessary to restrict the women’s imagery.2 One could surmise that women, with their innate powers to give birth in the real world, were already too powerful and to balance that power men took as their prerogative the right to create super natural life in the forms of anthropo- morphic and zoomorphic images.

Some women, mentioned above, are allowed to make anthropomorphic and zoomorphic forms in soft materials such as clay. A survey showing the cul- tural distribution of these women has not been compiled. Women in Melane- sia (i.e., Wusi, New Hebrides, and the Chambri lakes district of New Guinea and Africa make figurative images in terra cotta. Robert Thompson, in his article “Abatan: A Master Potter of the Egbado Yoruba, gives us an excellent portrait of a woman artist. Both Aba- tan’s mother and maternal grandmoth- er were potters. Unlike male artists, she had no formal training. She learned her technique and inspiration from the con- stant observation of her mother. Abatan is known for her figurative vessels (awo ota eyinle), a vessel for the stones of Eyinle, a Yoruba god with an amazing synthesis of powers of the hunt, herbalism, and water.

Abatan’s parents believed that she came into the world through the grace of Eyinle. Accordingly, as an invoca- tion, she received the name of the deity before his transformation, Abatan... As the senior member of the cult of Oshun and Eyinle at Oke-Odan, Abatan lives a life of prestige, balanced just short of hauteur. . .."28 Thomp- son stresses the fact that Abatan is a women artist of stature among the Eg- bado Yoruba. She is not an ordinary woman, she has religio-political and ec- onomic status. But had she not been born the daughter of a potter and not come into the world through the grace of Eyinle and not been talented, she would not have had the opportunity to make figurative pots and accrue status. This safeguards the making of figura- tive images from incursion by just any woman.

Among the Plain Longuda of Niger- ia, certain women are allowed to make anthropomorphic and zoomorphic pots for the Kwandlha cult.29 The master of Kwandlha must be an artist as well as a healer, for the spirits of diseases will not take up their abode in poorly ex- ecuted Kwandlha vessels. Dasumi, of the village of Guyuk, is respected for her knowledge and skill in making the Kwandlha pots. She is woman past child-bearing years, and unlike Abatan, she did not inherit her posi- tion. In the early 1960s Dasumi was plagued with a series of illnesses; she went to Moudo, an elderly woman liv ing nearby, to be cured. Moudo told Dasumi that the Kwandlha were wor- rying her, they were calling her to be come a member of the cult. Dasumi ap- prenticed with Moudo for about two years before she became a master of the Kwandlha.

Dasumi specializes in children’s dis- eases; when a child is sick, the mother will consult Dasumi. She examines the child and then takes one of her diagnos- tic Kwandlha pots from their own spe- cial hut (tanda Kwandlha). If the par- ticular Kwandlha stays submerged in a basin of water, then her diagnosis is correct; if not, she will take another Kwandlha and repeat this process until one stays submerged. The child is given some medicine and the mother gives Dasumi some of the special red clay re- quired to fashion a Kwandlha. Dasumi will touch the child’s body with the red clay, beseeching the spirit of the disease to leave the child and acknowledge that she will be making an abode for it. In seclusion Dasumi will create, with the coil and mold method, a Kwandlha pot that personifies that disease. Gurgu- burile, for example, is a pot given a human form: the feet are the base of the pot, the legs, arms and belly make up the body of the pot, the neck is the neck and the open mouth of the head is the mouth of the pot. Gurguburile is covered with festering sores, one arm is eaten away and the other holds a cala- bash for water. This anthropomorphic pot is used to cure leprosy.

Upon completing a pot, Dasumi gives it to the mother to sun dry for four days before firing. Once fired, Dasumi returns to begin the ritualized process of calling the spirit of the disease to leave the child and enter the Kwandl- ha; this entails a special Kwandlha language, the sacrifice of a chicken or goat and a special drink called Sinke contained in a special terra-cotta urn, Suthala. Dasumi is paid in kind or coin for her work.

Though Dasumi works within an iconographic tradition, she is allowed to introduce new elements as long as it pleases the spirits. She was, when 1 interviewed her in 1968, more famous than Moudo, her teacher. My infor- mant, Elam Robaino, attributed this to her artistic skills as a maker of Kwandl- ha pots. The spirits of the diseases are pleased with her pots; they like their abodes.

I asked Dasumi if men made Kwandlha pots; she replied that a man in Purokayo village, some four miles from Guyak, makes small ones for chil- dren. There is also an old man in Kuryi village who makes Kwandlha from wood, but it takes him much time to do it. She added that her grandson, who was three, seemed to have a calling for the Kwandlha; her daughters were not called to the profession. 30

Both Dasumi and Abatan were called to their particular cults and both proved to have the necessary artistic skills to make figurative vessels; one inherited the profession, the other ap- prenticed. Of equal importance is the fact that their own society made allow- ances for women of unusual talent to enter the male domain of the figurative arts.

Lacking sufficient data from other societies, one can only conjecture that the tradition of making figurative im- agery is open, in certain societies, only to exceptional women—women who cross the boundary between the sacred and profane.

More universal in its application is the taboo against women s working with hard materials and certain special- ized tools. Although terra-cotta in comparison with wood is a relatively permanent medium, the women work

this medium when it is soft and malle able. That it is transformed when fired into a relatively hard and durable sub stance does not appear to be an issue.

The hard materials used as a primary medium by male artists are usually rat- ed in most nonliterate cultures accord- ing to their relative importance. The scale of relative importance, power or sanctity of the medium varies from cul- ture to culture, but the culturally de- fined criterion is generally determined by the material’s durability, scarcity, the skill and/or technology necessary to work it and the medium s'innate magi- co-religious properties. As a general rule, the more important materials are reserved for the more important deities or supernatural forces. Among the Yor- uba, wood is rarely employed to repre- sent the gods because of its perishable nature. Wood is used, however, for vo- tive sculpture representing priests or devotees.32 To the Asmat, who live in an alluvial mudflat that lacks stone or metal ores, wood becomes the impor- tant medium. Wood is so important in this culture that man and tree are re- garded as interchangeable concepts: the human being is a tree and the tree is a human being.33 That wood is a mor- tal” living substance can enhance its value as a symbolic referent, as intimat ed by the Asmat man/tree equivalent. In cultures that have a variety of materials to choose from, one also finds, as with the Yoruba, that the mor- tal-decaying aspect of wood relegates its use to the more human realms asso- ciated with ancestor spirits, culture he- roes and demigods, as well as priests and devotees. Because of its accessibil ity and the varying skills of adeptness cessary to carve it, wood is a populai medium in nonliterate cultures.

Stone is valued for its durability, its magical origin and the skill necessary to carve it. Many nonliterate cultures have access to stone, but few utilize its potential (as sculpture in the round in contrast to petroglyphs)—possibly be cause they lack the tools and necessary knowledge to carve it. Polynesians knew how to work stone (volcanic tuff), but none achieved the monumental scale of the Moai on Easter Island. African artists worked in stone, but few if any today carry on the tradition of their forefathers.

Where stone is worked extensively, the stone (like wood) is graded in im portance. To the Canadian Eskimos. for example, hardness is more impor- tant than color or shininess; only the weaker and less competent Eskimos carve soft stone which is “jokingly re ferred to as ’women’s stone.

The hard, white ivory of the walrus tusk is still the Eskimos’ favorite mater- ial.35 “The desire to use ivory as an ad- junct to stone carving is powerful in nearly all areas, whatever the nature of the local stone."36 As Nelson Graburn explains, the ivory is desired for its maleness. The forward thrust of the na- tural form is associated with male as- sertion.”7 It should be noted that with the introduction of the tourist market, women have been encouraged to carve. But the women only carve occasionally and “they do not seem to have im- pressed their values on the activity.”38

Whale ivory was also valued in Poly- nesia; in Hawaii the whale ivory (lei niho pałaoa) necklace was tapu to all except the chief (alii). In Melanesia pigs tusks are highly valued as are ele- phants tusks in Africa. In former times, elephant ivory could only be pos- sessed and used by the divine chief (Oba) of Benin, Nigeria. In addition to the given, man-defining metaphor of that particular ivory-bearing animal or mammal, the form, color and density of the ivory enhances its symbolic refer ence to the male genitalia. Ivory carved or in its natural state, always signals important religio-political con cepts. Bone, human or otherwise, is al- so an intrinsic carrier of religio-political concepts.

Metals, because of their permanence and technical manufacture, are an es- teemed material. Though the cultures of Oceania did not manufacture metals, they were quick to trade with Euro- peans for this desirous material. Among the Gola of Liberia,“the skill of working with metals was considered one of the most mysterious and remark- able forms of knowledge in the tradi- tional culture.”32 The traditional bronze or brass casters and the black- smiths of Africa are often distinguished in that the former are creators of “art objects and the latter creators of secular objects, such as tools and weapons. Both can, however, create art forms; both belong to a separate caste, guild or disjunctive social group signaling that both have mysterious powers” in con- nection with the process of manufactur- ing metals. That the working of metals is a male prerogative also refers to the use of metal objects in war and hunt- ing. Precious metals such as gold and silver reflect the splendor and panoply of the conjoined realms of man and god.

The above is not an exhaustive sur- vey of hard materials, but it gives a summary view of the values and ideol- ogies men have attributed to certain materials. In short, it seems that men have come to identify their maleness with materials they have explicitly or implicitly chosen as their exclusive pre- rogative. Women work in soft materials that “best reflect their femaleness. In comparison with hard materials, these are generally less enduring, fragile, more pliable, secondary or subservient, common and secularly oriented to women s work: i.e., the home, garden. cooking and childraising. Originally there may have been little or no status differentiation between the media; that is, the men’s materials were not neces- sarily better than the women’s mater- ials, until a conscious effort was made to give certain materials qualities of status and importance. It is plausible that women initially had less leisure time than men did and therefore turned their creative talents toward the mater- ials close at hand to make the objects necessary for domestic life, without identifying with the material. But as sex roles became more defined, the art- making habits developed into political moves, and the material that the men initially worked in was given an imag- inary power to justify male seizure of power and status over women. I believe the values and ideologies attributed to certain materials were a male invention to keep women in their place because 1 find it curious that women did not choose to explore the use of different media once the society became more settled. Evidence in fact indicates that women must have tried to work in other materials, otherwise there would not be so many tapus against women achiev- ing this goal.46

In traditional cultures men have con- trolled women s'use of materials by not allowing them to use the tools necessary

to work hard materials. In many non- literate cultures the artist’s tools are somewhat animistic; they are thought to possess intelligence, given their own family names, and in some areas, such as Polynesia, their own genealogy. Tools can accrue prestige, power and sanctity, for it is the conscious, con- joined effort of tools and men that create carvings. Carving is a religious act; among the Ashanti and other Afri- can societies, sacrifices and prayers were made to the tools to ask them for their assistance and freedom from acci- dents.“ In Hawaii the artist “conse crated his tools by a sacrifice and a chant to insure that sufficient mana was contained in them, consequently insuring the efficacy of the image, ’the house of the god.””42 By ritualizing the artist’s tools, women were barred from using them because, as sources of pollu tion, women would nullify the tools’ ef- ficacy. Women were also handicapped in that they could not work in the harc materials necessary to make their own tools. By restricting women from using specialized artistry, tools or technology, men have safeguarded hard materials for their own use. Many scholars have commented on the fact that “the act of carving should exhibit those qualities central to the male hunting and sex role.”43 Tools and technology in the hands of women would cause an imbal- ance in the equipose of sexual labor.

In addition, a certain cosmology of- ten clearly ordains the privilege of carv- ing to men. In the Anang society we are told that women do not carve because the Creator God, Abassi, “wills it and has instructed the fate spirit not to as- sign the craft to a female.”4 In New Ireland there is a legend that the first woodcarver learned his craft from a ghost. The woodcarver instructed stu dents who then became famous artists Women were not only excluded from art and ritual, they could not even see the objects or use the sacred word for them, alik or uli, on threat of being choked to death by men.45

For the “important arts” men have developed an elaborate process of man- ufacture regulated by a prescribed set of rituals. The special, prescribed ac- tions, repeated over and over again, lend continuity and stability to the rit- ual. These formal actions, sanctioned by religion, are thought to have an eso- teric importance which is only fully comprehensible to the initiated male artists. Rituals have many levels of sig nificance, but it is possible that the ritualization of the art process devel- oped, in part, as a further precaution to prevent women from entering this do- main. Women have rituals of their own and in some cases are allowed to join the men’s rituals, but women do not have a prescribed set of ritualized ac- tions in the creation of their arts. Even though Abatan and Dasumi worked in the realm of the supernatural, made figurative images, and, in the case of Dasumi, used a special red clay, thein artistic processes were not ritualized This signifies that women’s artistry deals with the more profane real time and space.

The ritualized making process has many variants among nonliterate cul- tures, but the majority, if not all, share the belief that women are sources of pollution. Strict precautions must therefore be taken to exclude women from these ritualized activities. In Poly- nesia tapus of unsacredness “were as- sociated for the most part with women, to whom dangerous spirits were likel to attach themselves, and who were at times in a contaminated state psychi- cally; and with sickness and death which were the signs of the presence of fearful demons.46 This equation is present (in varying degrees) in other nonliterate cultures, and an important aspect of the ritualized artistic process is to purify and protect the male artist from malevolent forces, which include women. In all nonliterate cultures the most dangerous form of pollution is connected with menstrual blood. Men- strual blood was regarded among the Maoris of New Zealand as a human be- ing manqué.“ The Mbum and Jukun of Nigeria segregated menstruous women because the household gods found the menstrual blood abhorrent.49

An Ashanti “woman might not carve a stool—because of the ban against men- struation. A woman in this state was formerly not even allowed to approach wood-carvers while at work, on pain of death or of a heavy fine. This fine was to pay for sacrifices to be made upon the ancestral stools of dead kings, and also upon the wood-carver’s tools. Rattray believes that the abhorrence of the unclean woman “is based on the supposition that contact with her, di- rectly or indirectly, is held to negate and render useless all supernatural or magico-protective powers possessed by either persons or spirits or objects. Even by direct contact, therefore, an un-clean woman is capable of breaking down all barriers which stand between defenseless man and those evil unseen powers which beset him on every side.”5° This belief, with subtle varia- tions, is common to all nonliterate cul- tures.

Not only is there a tapu against men- strual blood, but, in addition, most male artists have to abstain from sexual intercourse because they believe it has an adverse effect on their work. In Oce- ania sexual intercourse can endanger or nullify a carver’s mana. In Africa an Anang carver will not have sexual inter- course the night before he begins an important carving because his work is impeded.5 “Too many acts of inter- course is thought to weaken him for a day or two, inhibit his desire to carve and his creative impulse, cause him to shape his pieces poorly, and lead him to cut himself."52 The carver's fear of wounding himself, of bleeding, is a prominent concern which can relate to punishment, death and menstrua. blood. Equally common is the belief that should the wife be unfaithful, without her husband’s knowledge, his

tools will cut him when he goes to carve.3

Warner Muensterberger (1951) was the first, to my knowledge, to address the issue of women’s exclusion in the arts of nonliterate cultures. His article emphasized why men felt it necessary to exclude women from the major art- making processes. In summing up he writes:

The overanxious exclusion of women discloses the regressive tendency in- volved. The artist relinquishes com- munication with an inhibiting or dis- turbing environment. Women are phobically avoided. . . . The regressive tendency for isolation is a security measure. Affect is being avoided. Ob- jective reality is denied while strength is gained from the narcissistic retreat to a level of omnipotent fantasy. .. these are the conditions under which artistic activity among primitive peo- ples is possible, then two seemingly contradictory tendencies are at work: the necessary isolation indicates that distance from the oedipal mother is sought. The menstruating woman is avoided or even dangerous. On the oth er hand, reunion with the giving mother of the preoedipal phase is wanted.

Muensterberger's Freudian interpre- tation is one viewpoint on the seemingl universal exclusion of women in the arena of “important arts. There are however, other ways to examine this phenomenon.

The paradigm for the ritualized pro cess of man’s creations may be found in the cultural behavior of women durin, their menstrual cycles, pregnancy and childbirth. When men work on import ant objects, they usually do so in seclu sion or with other men of status. And should they carve in the sanctuary of the men’s house, this interior is often referred to as the womb.55 When wom- en have their menstrual period they us ually move to a special house of se- clusion or some equivalent; and in many cultures there is also a specia childbearing area. In these situations both the men and women are, in effect particularly powerful, negatively or positively, and must be removed from the realm of the ordinary. During the process of creation, both men (creating important objects) and women (creat ing human life) are subject to specific tapus imposed upon them for their own and their creation’s protection and the implied protection of others. These re strictions vary from culture to culture, but vulnerability in creation is common to both men and women in all nonliter ate cultures. If the tapus are broken men may cut themselves with their tools, miscarve a spiritless object or even die; women may miscarry, give birth to a dead or deformed child or die in labor.

Analogous to this concept is the Poly- nesian belief that a new (art) object is comparable to a newborn child.

Like the child, the canoe, house, or oth- er object had a soul and a vital principle that required strengthening, for all ob jects were conscious and animate. .. It is evident that the new object, as a living being, needed the same kind oj rites to free and protect it against evil and to endow it with mana and othei necessary psychic qualities, as did the human infant.

In looking at other nonliterate cul- tures we can find parallels between the consecrating” of “important” objects and the consecration ceremonies for children, particularly the male infant.

A final point concerns the “creativ ity” of male artists. George Kubler writes: “Many societies have accord- ingly proscribed all recognition of in ventive behavior, preferring to reward ritual repetition, rather than to permit inventive variations.”57 Under different situations, inventive variations can and do occur, but in the main, the ritualizec art process constrains innovation and free self-expression. Hieratic art em- phasizes repetition and encourages clever and ingenious manipulation of the iconographic elements within a giv- en iconography. Because women do not have their own ritualized process of art- making and their art is not hieratic, it follows that women artists can be more innovative and more self-expressive in the arts than men. Women, however are restricted in their use of materials and lack of specialized tools, but as typ- ified by the work of Abatan and Das- umi, they have a great deal of freedom in the way they interpret the existing iconographic elements and add on new, inventive iconographic elements.s suggest that the style and technique of the arts produced by women is a better indicator of the society’s changing no- tion of aesthetics than that of the arts produced by men. The objects made by women are used by everyone: as the culture’s aesthetic norm changes, the women’s art is the first to reflect this since these arts are nonhieratic. In the hieratic arts of men, an innovation con- joined with an aesthetic change intro- duces a state of anxiety as the artist's risk factor is high. To introduce an in- novative form, the male artist risks his religio-political status. He risks offend- ing the supernatural realm and the rul- ing chiefs. Male artists who do not work within a ritualized process and are not making hieratic art are apt to be the ones with lesser ability and are therefore not as reliable as a source of aesthetic notion.

It appears, then, that women are be- lieved to have greater innate powers than men. Women have the power to create and control life. They control life through death as signified by the menses and abortion. Without children the family lineage dies, as do all the an- cestors who live in the supernatural world. The continuity between the present and the past is broken. Women are feared and respected for their cre- ative powers. Conversely, women who are barren lose status; in nonliterate cultures a barren woman is undisputed- ly grounds for divorce. To balance women’s innate powers,

men have created external powers that slowly became steeped in ritual and cer- emony and sanctioned by the authority of the supernatural realm. Women, in the main, were excluded from the rit- uals of men and more or less con- strained in their economic and political power. There are exceptions, including those women past child-bearing age who are viewed as men among women. The male artists rival the wom- en’s innate powers as both are in the position to manipulate the forces of cre- ation and continuity.

How and why women were relegated to the less important arts is a gray area of conjecture; 1 do not believe it is a question of female preference. Rather, it is likely that the dominant male group has claimed the hieratic arts for itself consistently: the men make them because they are important and they are important because the men make them. Should the less dominant group (which shall remain unspecified) do something valuable, then the men will adopt that too. It has been a zero-sum game of distribution. The hieratic arts became instruments to articulate mean- ing structures and problems; in addi- tion they were a powerful way to con- trol women. Male hieratic art has been promoted in general by males to main- tain their own importance. It is no won- der that men, particularly in nonlit- erate cultures where women have achieved prominence on political, eco- nomic and even religious levels, have rarely, if ever, allowed the women to create the “important arts. The old belief systems bound by tradition are hard to break, as witnessed by the scar- city of contemporary women artists from the third world.

*I wish to acknowledge Robert Elliott Moira Roth, Melford Spiro and especially David Antin and Zack Fisk for their critical comments on this paper.

1. In this paper I am using the terms "art" and "artist" on the most conventional ethnographic level; the artist is a maker of objects which could be considered in isolation an art form to a West- erner’s sensibility. I would also like to apologize to the anthropologists for occasionally generaliz- ing to the primitive world from one tribe or one culture area.
2. Terry Barrow, Art and Life in Polynesia (Tokyo, Japan: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1973), p. 56
3. Alfred Buhler, Terry Barrow and Charles Mountford, The Art of the South Seas (New York: Greystone Press, 1968), p. 97.
4. Edmund Carpenter, Eskimo Realities (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973), un- paged.
5. Barrow, p. 58.
6. William Bascom, “A Yoruba Master Carver: Duga of Meko, in The Traditional Artist in African Societies, ed. Warren L. d’Azevedo (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1975), p. 68.
7. Douglas Fraser, Primitive Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 1962), p. 13.
8. Andrew H. Whiteford, “Enriching Daily Life: The Artist and Artisan, in American Indian Art: Form and Tradition (New York: Dutton and Co., 1972), p. 10.
9. Halley Cox with William Davenport, Hawai- ian Sculpture (Honolulu: University Press of Ha- waii, 1974), pp. 4-5.
10. Ralph Linton, “Marquesan Culture,” in The Individual and His Society, ed. Abram Kardiner (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), p.
11. Roslyn Walker notes that women carvers have been reported in the Wakemba society of Africa. Roslyn A. Walker, African Women/Af- rican Art (New York: African-American In- stitute, 1976), p. 50.
12. Franz Boas, Primitive Art (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1955), p. 181.
13. William Bascom, “Creativity and Style in Af- rican Art, in Tradition and Creativity in Tribal Art, ed. Daniel Biebuyck (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), p.
14. Ibid., p. 110.
15. Robert S. Rattray, Religion and Art in Ashanti (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 301.
16. Whiteford, p. 13.
17. Bascom, p. 66.
18. Roy Sieber, African Textiles and Decorative Arts (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1972), p. 155.
19. Walker, p. 50.
20. John C. Messenger, “The Carver in Anang Society, in The Traditional Artist in African Societies, p. 110.
21. Of the two forms, the anthropomorphic image is usually the more important.
22. Rattray, p. 301.
23. Ibid., p. 301.
24. Lewis s translation of a myth collected by Kramer tells about the origin of the sun malang gan from New Ireland. To paraphrase: a woman, searching for her pigs, was forced to spend the night in a cave. “Her spirit went away in a dream and saw a house in which goblins were at work plaiting a sun. She saw how it was made, anc when they had finished she returned back to her home, and then showed her knowledge to the men of the village. When they had learned exact ly how to make a sun, they hanged the woman, to punish her for dealing with sacred matters. To- day the oara is sacred and women must not see it. Even a glimpse of it meant death for a woman. Philip H. Lewis, The Social Context of Art in Northern New Ireland (Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, Vol. 58, 1969), p. 107. Myths of this type are interesting; it is possible that the men did adopt new and important art forms initi- ated by women; it is equally plausible that the men invented these myths out of guilt.
25. Adrian A. Gerbrands, Wow-Ipits, trans. Inez W. Seeger (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1967), p.
26. Men, however, may deliberately make a pro- hibition against activities which women have no desire for anyway, to make it seem that women obey their law—a kind of Tom Sawyerism
27. Robert Thompson, “Abatan: A Master Pot- ter of the Egbado Yoruba, in Tradition and Cre- ativity in Tribal Art, pp. 132, 135.
28. Ibid., pp. 155, 173.
29. Kwandlha is the generic cult name for the fig- urative vessels which are the embodiments of the particular diseases they personify. In addition, each Kwandlha has its own name by which it is identified.
30. In 1967-1968 I worked for the Nigerian De- partment of Antiquities; my field research on the Longuda was carried out through their auspices in the spring of 1968.
31. The rare exception is the Wakemba tribe, cited by Walker.
32. Thompson, p. 147.
33. Gerbrands, p. 29.
34. Nelson H. Graburn, “A Preliminary Analysis of Symbolism in Eskimo Art and Culture, in Proceedings of the International Congress of Americanists, Vol. II (Geneva: Tilgher, 1972), pp. 165-166.
35. Ibid., p. 166.
36. Ibid., p. 166.
37. Ibid., p. 169.
38. Ibid., p. 169.
39. Warren L. d’Azevedo, “Sources of Gola Ar- tistry, in The Traditional Artist in African So- cieties, p. 320.
40. As a further precaution, perhaps, many of the nonliterate cultures believe that offerings must be given to the god(s) or spirits of the material that is to be used, such as trees, and these protective gods or spirits are male.
41. Rattray, p. 217.
42. Cox with Davenport, p. 34.
43. Graburn, p. 169.
44. Messenger, p. 106.
45. Warner Muensterberger, “Roots of Primitive Art, in Anthropology and Art, ed. Charlotte M. Otten (Garden City: Natural History Press, 1971), p. 125.
46. E.S. Craighill Handy, “Polynesian Relig- ion, Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin No. 7 (Honolulu: Bishop Museum, 1927; reprinted New York: Kraus Reprint, 1971), p. 47.
47. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966), p. 96.
48. C.K. Meek, Tribal Studies in Northern Nige- ria, Vol. II (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., Ltd., 1931), p. 490.
49. Rattray, p. 271.
50. Ibid., p. 75
1. Messenger, p. 109.
2. Ibid., p. 109.
53. Rattray, p. 217.
54. Muensterberger, pp. 127-128.
55. Ibid., p. 125.
56. Handy, p. 295.
57. George Kubler, The Shape of Time (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 68.
58. The Yirrkalia of Arnhem Land, Australia make string-figure art; the string figures are an example of no-status art as it is mainly a “wom- an’s pastime.” However, when the men make str- ing figures it is useful. Nevertheless, as an essen- tially women’s art the string figures reveal a number of innovative forms. “The women dream new string game designs but do not tell the men about them. One Yirrkalia woman, Narau, had a repertoire of over 170 string figures, many of ican-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land, Vol. II, (London and New York: Cam- bridge University Press, 1960), p. 424. 433-438.

Jehanne H. Teilhet is an art historian on the faculty o, the University of California at San Diego. She has done fieldwork in Africa, Oceania and Asia and was curator o) exhibitions at the La Jolla Museum and at the Fine Arts Gallery in San Diego. She is currently working on a Gau- guin exhibition with Seibu in Tokyo