Sacred Treasures of the Maoris

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Besides decorating utilitarian objects of all kinds with the characteristic Maori spiral, the master sculptors devoted themselves to carving monumental male figures that represented their ancestors. These wooden sculptures, often colored in red ocher, topped the gables and lintels of Maori houses. Others served as posts in palisades or as rods holding up the ridge-poles of roofs. The most impressive figures straddled the narrow gateways leading to storage houses or fortified villages.

Even for the uninitiated viewer, the ancestral figures truly project the qualities the Maoris attribute to them: ihi (power), wehi (fear) and wana (authority). Often as grotesque as gargoyles, the heads are covered with the distinctive Maori designs used as tattoos. The slanty, abalone-shell eyes are as impenetrable as mirrors. Sometimes a broad-based tongue juts out in the Maori gesture of raging self-assertion. The broad, lumpy body may be scrunched down in the warrior's crouch, or, ready to spring, the fighter may hold a paddle-shaped club designed to strike a blow at an enemy's temple and then to lift off the top of his skull.

Dominating the show by its size (16 ft. 5½ in.) and superabundance of ihi, wehi and wana is the figure that once served as the gateway of Pukeroa pa, a fortified village. Though it is difficult to date most Maori sculpture precisely, this piece was made in the mid-19th century. Less fierce than similar gateway figures, the figure still casts a gaze threatening enough to intimidate any potential thief prowling through the Maori show.

Sadly, however, the proud masculine presence of the figure from Pukeroa pa has been diminished by the intervention of 19th century missionaries. The clerics wanted the genitalia removed from Maori sculptures. Many ancestral figures remained demonstrably unscathed, but others were particularly hard hit, like the celebrated Kahungunu, who was known throughout his tribe for the size of his sexual equipment. At the Metropolitan, he may be seen pointing pridefully to the tip of his long-vanished penis.

The most aggressive figures were carved on waka tupapaku, or wooden burial chests that Maori mourners upended in caves to scare off intruders. As cannily lit by the Metropolitan, the waka tupapaku from North Island glowers in the shadows with unearthly menace. But terror is not the only emotion the piece is intended to convey. The figure's stylized arms calmly repose upon its protuberant belly, as if to reassure the person whose bones are contained within.

The Maori master carvers did not always create objects of massive size or religious significance. They could show a unique touch with such humble household necessities as the fishhook. The curve of the shank was obtained by training a branch of a living tree. When the hook was to be used by a man of high rank, it was topped with a dainty head. The deadliest of the Maori weapons, the sharp-sided club used in hand-to-hand fighting, is of similarly graceful design. Both categories of artwork bear an eerie resemblance to the 3000 B.C. figurines from the Cycladic Islands in the Aegean.

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