Austral Islands Fly Whisk Handle Dream Piece #33Austral Islands Fly Whisk HandleSotheby’s Paris16 September 2014, Lot 37sold for $437,163 I’m always curious about what factors affect our sense of beauty. Obviously, what is considered beautiful or attractive is context dependent and changes over time and space. Within Oceanic art I know all my years as a field collector in Papua New Guinea skewed my taste towards the old and unusual—as these were the most elusive qualities. As such, I am less attracted to the classic compared to my peers. Under my specific history and circumstances the iconic and traditional gets slightly demoted due to its prevalence—the very nature that makes an object “classic.” This is what I call my field collecting bias and consider it an aesthetic blind spot that I must not ignore. Austral Island Fly Whisk Handle, Sotheby’s Paris 16 September 2014 I bring this up because I’m absolutely enthralled by this Austral Islands fly whisk and I am trying to understand what about this particular aesthetic is so pleasing to my eye. Its sculptural finesse and bravado are unmistakable. There is a structure to the form that evokes modern architecture and its extreme stylization borders on abstraction. I can’t help but wonder how much of my appreciation for this late 18th/early 19th century Polynesian object is tied to the original art form and cultural practice and how much might stem from my decades of exposure to 20th century Modernism? The thought is somehow disturbing and ironic considering how early modern art was nurtured on the spiritual juice and aesthetic freedom of African and Oceanic art. But what if this is not irony? What if all the subsequent generations of modern art carry traces of tribal art DNA that still spark mutual recognition a century later? Might this faint whiff of familiarity be a comforting aspect to an otherwise alien art form? Nonetheless, what’s not to love about this fly whisk? The angular arms float above the body likes eaves of a house. The haunches are flattened like an elegant bench with tapered legs curving inward to perch confidently onto a small, notched platform. The figures share a bulbous teardrop shaped body and the two heads that seem more insectoid than human. While the individual parts appear somewhat disparate; they are combined, shared and layered in a head-scratchingly ingenious and sophisticated way. Three types of Austral Island janiform fly whisks as described by Roger Rose. The best information on these Austral Islands fly whisks comes from Roger Rose, curator at the Bishop Museum from 1971 to 1999 whose 1979 article “On the Origins and Diversity of ‘Tahitian’ Fly Whisks” analyzes 38 known examples and breaks them down stylistically into three categories. The present Sotheby’s Paris example is clearly Roses’ Type A that accounts for 19 out of the 38 in existence. Type B and C have Janus figures with more naturalistic proportions and are differentiated further by the carved section below the figures being either stacked spools (Type B) or an intricately carved fluted column (Type C). As beautiful as the other two types are there is a significant aesthetic leap to the highly stylized Type A. Is this dramatic difference cultural or geographic, coming from different islands in the Austral group—Rurutu versus Tubuai? It was a massive task for Roger Rose to scour the available documentation to determine these were from the Austral Islands not Tahitian as was generally assumed. Making a more definitive attribution within the island group was a leap too far. But then, is one of the three types just earlier than the others? A precursor to what came later? We do know that none of the Type A fly whisks were collected before 1821—a full fifty years after Western contact. Both Rose and the Polynesian art expert David Shaw King who have physically handled many of these have suggested this style might be a post-contact invention. Did the imported metal tools give already ingenious carvers a new level of dexterity? Or was Type A created from the bold artistic choices of one master carver 250 years ago? We just don’t know but this possibility intrigues me the most--how a single individual might have changed the direction of a particular Oceanic art style. Where many objects had supernatural origins and were the conduit of gods and spirits how much room is there for a crafty carver so masterful his creations just come out different? This is what keeps me up late at night--the absolute certainty that artistic equivalents of Rembrandt and Van Gogh lived and died in these South Pacific islands over the centuries. With most of their works lost forever to history and the few that remain siting side by side in museum storeroom drawers undifferentiated from their more mundane neighbors. Seen by the rare person who bothers to look as maybe just a substyle, an outlier, of later manufacture or other reason for its obvious difference. Maybe a spark of curiosity in the researcher’s mind before the museum drawer quietly slides shut—a drawer that might not be opened again for years. We need to think differently about these objects. Michael Hamson 24 March 24, 2026
