Rapa Nui | Easter Island Icons at the British Museum
Rapa Nui | Easter Island Icons at the British Museum
Curated by Steven G. Alpert
This month, we are pleased to present an introduction to the art of Easter Island with select images from the collection of the British Museum, the reintroduction of a landmark catalog on the subject, Splendid Isolation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001 (E. Kjellgren, J. Van Tilburg and A. Kaeppler), and a fascinating story of an early wood carving discovered by Sir David Attenborough.
Easter Island's story is a saga of courage, ingenuity, and achievement, as well as being exemplary of human cruelty, folly, decline, and revival. Today, the island is referred to as Rapa Nui, a Polynesian name but a sobriquet also associated with the 19th-century practice of black-birding islanders to work on faraway colonial plantations. It is hard to imagine that the closest populated island to Rapa Nui is Pitcairn Island of The Mutiny on the Bounty fame. It lies nearly 1,300 miles away. Known by such alluring titles as Te pito o te henua, 'the navel of the earth,' or Mata ki te rangi, 'eyes looking to the sky' — Easter Island is considered the most remote and isolated inhabited island on our planet.
Last settled by Polynesians a thousand years ago and discovered by Europeans in 1722 by the Dutch explorer, Roggeveen on Easter day (hence the island's name), Rapa Nui's story occupied a humble but largely romantic footnote in western literature until the Norwegian explorer, Thor Heyerdahl's publishing of Aku-Aku, the Secrets of Easter Island in 1957. The book was a bestseller. I first read it when I was twelve, went into my parent's basement where tools and a table vise were kept, and didn't come out until a facsimile of an Easter Island head had been handsomely carved, sanded, and stained. My fascination with the island's strewn stone statues has only kept growing since childhood, and they are relished today as high icons of kitsch. Ubiquitously reproduced in many forms ranging from imposing garden statues and planters to more intimate items such as Tiki tissue box covers, the use of their image in popular culture is seemingly endless.
There are roughly 900 statues or moai carved of volcanic tuff on the island, and 12 that have been removed, including the British Museum's example that was collected in 1868 and is illustrated here. On average, moai weigh around 28,000 pounds (or close to 12,700 kilos) and are slightly over 13 feet (or nearly 4 meters tall). One moai, the largest of them all, is still lying unfinished in its bay on the slopes of the extinct volcano Rana Raraku. If completed, it would have been approximately 69 feet tall (21 m) and approximately 145–165 tons (nearly 132,000 to almost 150,000 kilos). By any standards, these amazing statues reflect feats of engineering and execution that could only be realized by social cooperation within a highly organized society.
Heyerdahl demonstrated that such colossi could be moved with levers and logs. Still, the carving and transporting of these immense stones was a more organic and magical affair that took into account a high degree of experimentation to fully utilize the island's landscape and natural materials to maximum advantage. Old local songs, nursery rhymes, and legends speak of moai 'walking'. This would have been accomplished with the aid of a stout timber sledge and thickly twined ropes. Accompanied by chants and rituals dedicated to the ancestors, moai presumably enhanced and elevated the status of members of the chiefly class who erected these statues.
Ingeniously, moai were reshaped at their final destination to allow them to stand upright and be successfully lifted onto platforms or ahu. Some statues were given additional stone topknots (pukao) of red scoria. Their eyes were inlaid with bleached coral and black obsidian pupils to give them life and enhance their eternal mana.
There is no single definitive narrative, but most likely, a combination of factors triggered war, famine, and cultural collapse on Easter Island. Certainly, the islander's seeming obsession with carving moai (ca 13th-17th century) and needing large logs or hewn planks to convey them eventually, along with other factors and practices, put pressure on the environment. Even with adaptation, this would have eventually affected everything from creating ocean-going crafts, to large dwellings or any functional items crafted from wood. Half of the island's stone statues remain mysteriously unfinished and bear silent witness to what was a compounding series of disruptive disasters.
When Roggeveen arrived, Easter Island was in the last stages of deforestation, but the population was in the thousands, and moai still stood upright. By the 1770s, when the next Europeans began to arrive, the statues were already being toppled by internecine tribal warfare and social upheaval. Coupled with the stress of adapting to an ongoing ecological crisis, the subsequent introduction of European diseases and the practice of black-birding nearly led to the islander's extinction. The population fell to a mere 111 souls by 1877. That the Rapanui miraculously and triumphantly survived is a testament to their fortitude. As we are officially in a new era of human history, the Anthropocene Age, the broader story of Easter Island and the lessons it teaches us are perhaps more relevant than ever.
One constant throughout the island's formative period and tumultuous last 250 years is — art. In addition to the British Museum's moai, there are marvelous emaciated male figures, flat-bodied full-headed renditions of females, a gorget with heads on each end, charms, and clubs featuring alluring lizards and avians. The latter, therianthropic figures that are half man and half bird, are said to be items that were associated with the warrior class that replaced the chiefly preoccupation of ancestor worship and that saw the decline of crafting enormous stone moai. Lastly, there is a rongorongo wooden tablet that utilizes glyphs in a protoscript or writing system that was once read by the island's traditional priests. Only twenty-four examples of these tablets have survived for posterity in the public domain. To our knowledge, this is Polynesia's only known systemized form of writing.
Whether they are from the small number of surviving items from the island's traditional culture at its apogee, 19th-century items fashioned for sale or trade, or exemplars from the modern continuum of their creativity — the art of Rapa Nui has many tales to tell. In context with the island's history and fate, this material is destined to remain a topical area of contemplation and continuing discourse.
— Steven G. Alpert, founder of Art of the Ancestors
1
Ancestor Figure | Moai Hava
1100-1600
Basalt
Field Collection by Cdre Richard Ashmore Powell
Donated by Lords of Admiralty, 1869
Oc1869,1006.1
2
Standing Male Figure | Moai Kavakava
Late 18th century-mid 19th century
Wood, bone, red ochre
Donated by Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks, 1885
Oc,+.2595
3
Standing Male Figure | Moai Kavakava
Wood
Purchased from William Wareham, 1868
Oc.4835
4
Standing Female Figure
19th century
Wood, bone, obsidian
Donated by Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks, 1885
Oc,+.2597
5
Standing Female Figure
19th century
Wood, bone, obsidian, leather, iron
Donated by H Hottot, 1995
Previous owner/ex-collection Robert Hottot
Oc1995,02.2
6
Carved Gorget | Rei Miro
19th century before 1870
Thespesia populnea wood, bone, obsidian
Field collection by Dr. Peter Comrie
Donated by Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks, 1870
Oc.6847
7
Carved Figure Representing a Lizard
Wood, mother of pearl
Donated by Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks, 1896
Oc1896,-.1194
8
Carved Fish-Headed Man Figure | Moai Moko
18th century - early 19th century
Wood
Donated by Hugh Cuming
Collected on Easter Island by the donor in 1827
Oc,EP.28
9
Carved Figure Representing a Lizard
Wood
Associated with Sir Edward Maunde Thompson
Purchased from Ellen Higgins, 1904
Previous owner/ex-collection Turvey Abbey
Previous owner/ex-collection Charles Longuet Higgins
Oc1904,-.243
10
Bird God Figure with Female Symbols in Relief
Late 18th century - 19th century
Wood
Purchased from Dorothy Oldman, 1950
Previous owner/ex-collection William Ockelford Oldman
Oc1950,04.12
11
Dance Paddle | Rapa
Late 18th century - mid 19th century
Toromiro wood
Donated by Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks, 1885
Oc,+.2600
12
Wooden Carved Double Head with Inlaid Eyes of Obsidian
Wood, obsidian
Donated by Capt A W F Fuller, 1919
Oc1919,0614.18
13
Carved Male Figure | Moai Tangata
Wood, bone
Acquisition details unknown
Thought to have been acquired pre-1900
Oc,EP.25
14
Stone Polished Fish-Hook with Terminal Knob
Stone
Field Collection by Katherine Maria Routledge
Donated by W Scoresby Routledge, 1920
Oc1920,0506.59
15
Carved Representation of Human Left Hand
Late 18th century before 1775?
Sophora (toromiro) wood
Field Collection by Hitihiti
Associated with Captain James Cook
Donated by Johann Reinhold Forster
Oc,EP.32
All artworks and images presented above are the property of the British Museum.
© British Museum
Splendid Isolation: Art of Easter Island
Eric Kjellgren, with contributions by Jo Anne Van Tilburg and Adrienne L. Kaeppler (2001)
Few Pacific Islands hold as prominent a place in the Western imagination as Easter Island. The most remote inhabited place on earth, Easter Island (now a province of modern-day Chile) is home to the Rapa Nui, a Polynesian people who developed a unique series of artistic traditions. While the island is renowned for the colossal stone figures that adorned its temples, much of its other art remains unfamiliar to wider audiences. This book examines the island's diverse artistic heritage and discusses more than fifty works, ranging from robust stone images to refined wood sculpture, rare barkcloth figures, and examples of rongorongo, the island's unique and undeciphered script.