Translated
from German http://www.deutschlandradiokultur.de/maori-portraits-mehr-als-nur-kunst.2156.de.html?dram:article_id=303584
Never
before the "Maori portraits" by Gottfried Lindauer had been seen outside
of New Zealand. Now they are for the first time on tour and can be seen in
Berlin. However, this was linked to a condition.
Maori - Gospel singing
A procession of singing and dancing women and men, the men almost naked, some with some feathers in their hair and tattooed on their whole body, the women adorned with colorful robes. So it goes through the halls of the Old National Gallery, past the paintings of German Romanticism and Classicism, over the paintings of Gottfried Lindauer, all portraits of the ancestors of those Maori who here are now provided with a blessing image after image and producing therefore a connection between the place of the ancestors, New Zealand and the place of the creator of these images, Central Europe, produce.
Maori - blessing song
These pictures are more than images, says then a visibly moved Udo Kittelmann, the director of the National Gallery, they are like living beings who have made the trip.
"I freely admit that with the ceremony I just even got the idea of wanting to no longer hold the press conference at all, because it is very moving since it also makes it very clear that we are in just such in a different atmosphere, in an alien atmosphere. "
Maori - Gospel singing
A procession of singing and dancing women and men, the men almost naked, some with some feathers in their hair and tattooed on their whole body, the women adorned with colorful robes. So it goes through the halls of the Old National Gallery, past the paintings of German Romanticism and Classicism, over the paintings of Gottfried Lindauer, all portraits of the ancestors of those Maori who here are now provided with a blessing image after image and producing therefore a connection between the place of the ancestors, New Zealand and the place of the creator of these images, Central Europe, produce.
Maori - blessing song
These pictures are more than images, says then a visibly moved Udo Kittelmann, the director of the National Gallery, they are like living beings who have made the trip.
"I freely admit that with the ceremony I just even got the idea of wanting to no longer hold the press conference at all, because it is very moving since it also makes it very clear that we are in just such in a different atmosphere, in an alien atmosphere. "
Living tradition
Such a spectacle has probably the Old National Gallery really never seen, and although the Maori at their blessing ceremony are accompanied readily by a whole horde of media representatives, you can feel but that this is not about a folkloric event, but a living tradition , And just this in turn makes the Maori Portraits Gottfried Lindauer. So extraordinary.
The oil painting "Mrs Paramena" (1885) by Gottfried Lindauer - the picture is part of the exhibition "The Maori Portraits". (picture alliance / dpa / Auckland Art Gallery)
For the painter born in 1839 in the Czech Pilsen and educated in Vienna maintains in his paintings a recognizable European style of his time, a representative realism, as we know from monarch’s portraits. However afterwards Lindauer emigrated to New Zealand in 1874, made a career in the new environment as a portraitist. Curator Britta Schmitz:
"The
professional portraits in the style of a courtly portrait type of court
representation showed the rare and sacred feathers, the precious necklaces,
traditional and new, modern weapons. The assimilation into the new clothes of
the colonialists as well as achievements, as Maori could enter parliament and
become politicians. "
The Maori long time oppressed by the white colonial discovered gradually ways and means to adapt to the conditions of colonial rule. These included not only careers in the institutions, but also images, which showed the leading Maori-style portraits of European domination. In this way Gottfried Lindauer was with his commissioned by the Maori self-portraits a part of their tradition.
The Maori long time oppressed by the white colonial discovered gradually ways and means to adapt to the conditions of colonial rule. These included not only careers in the institutions, but also images, which showed the leading Maori-style portraits of European domination. In this way Gottfried Lindauer was with his commissioned by the Maori self-portraits a part of their tradition.
Guardian of treasure
And Rhana Devenport, Director of the Auckland Art Gallery, which houses these pictures treasure, know that every museum that displays these images, is itself a part of this tradition.
"The works of Gottfried Lindauer does not belong to us. The whole Maori resources of our collection does not belong to us. We are the guardians of this treasure, and this connection to the works is crucial. It concerns the entire holdings of the Auckland Art Gallery, and this is in the world of museums a unique concept. "
It’s also unique the Gottfried Lindauer's work in the apparent ease with which joins the European art history with the tribal traditions Oceania. It removes itself from the usual categories of reception; it does not live by the admiration of exotic beauty, as later the South Pacific Pictures Gauguin or Emil Nolde.
There is also no ethnological work that aims only about the tradition of a dying culture. For the Maori, it is still part of their present and as such relevant and actually more than just art, as art, at least in the traditional European sense.
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