In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Samoan Art & Artists: O Measina a Samoa
  • Carol E Mayer
Samoan Art & Artists: O Measina a Samoa, by Sean Mallon. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8248-2675-2, 224 pages, maps, photographs, bibliography, index. US$29.95.

Samoan Art & Artists: O Measina a Samoa is a broad-ranging book aimed at a general audience, with the hope (as the author says) that it will also appeal to the specialist, anthropologist, historian, and art historian. It is written in an extremely accessible style. Its content is derived from three sources: existing scholarship, particularly the 1928 work by Te Rangi Hiroa (Sir Peter Buck) on Samoan material culture; photographs and objects found in the Museum of New Zealand (with a few exceptions); and new research on the practitioners of Samoan contemporary arts. Mallon's reason for writing this book is based on the dearth of available information about Samoan art, much of it being unpublished or in scholarly journals. The book is divided into seventeen chapters that provide historical background on a wide array of material objects and their relationship to cultural practice. This is augmented with archival and contemporary photographs, descriptions of manufacturing techniques, and profiles of contemporary artists. I approach this review as a museum curator who is always seeking good reference sources for material culture. Given this, I had to keep reminding myself that this is an introductory text and its limitations and spasmodic attention to detail are inevitable within such a large scope of enquiry.

Mallon examines the works of Samoans who live in Sämoa and those who have migrated elsewhere. He looks at the issue of authenticity and the stereotyping of "traditional." If it doesn't "look" Samoan or is made of manufactured material, then how real is it? Does it still have cultural significance? He argues that the meaning is what really counts, and it is not marginalized by utilizing modern material. When a woodworker was asked why he was using plywood instead of traditional material he responded that "if they had had [plywood] in those days they would have used it" (10). Throughout the book Mallon maintains the view that artists are active agents of change, not passive victims.

Sämoa, says Mallon "was not an island . . . but part of a chain of distinct communities along which ideas, objects and people flowed" (13). A similar point was made some sixty years earlier when E E Evans-Pritchard said, "Material objects are chains along which social relationships run . . . people not only create their material culture and attach themselves to it, but also build up their relationships through it and see them in terms of it" (The Nuer, 1940 , 89). It is this constant flowing that motivates and encourages sharing and exchanging of materials and ideas.At the same time, we learn that some arts have disappeared or have been re-constructed only for specific occasions (ceremonies andfestivals)and othershave survived but in different forms. For example, the silhouettes of churches and meeting houses in countries where Samoans have settled mirror that of the traditional big house. They are symbolic [End Page 255] of an enduring culture and the local community that built it. In Sämoa, however, the churches are built in European style, but the meeting houses retain the form of the traditional big house, albeit with concrete floors and corrugated iron roofs. Again, it is the meaning that is important, not the material.

Some art forms are more easily transportable than others. The author is very enthused about tattooing, tatatau. He says that "it is seen as both a treasure and a stepping stone to manhood, something that garners respect for the wearer by speaking of his inner strength and resilience. . . . but in migrant Samoan communities overseas, tatatau has also become an identity marker, a way of signifying Samoan heritage and an important link to what can sometimes seem like a distant heritage and way of life" (105). In chapter 8 he uses illustrations to explain the meanings of the different underlying structural features—an approach that would have been useful elsewhere in the book as well.

In the chapter on weaving, I would have better understood...

pdf