Tattoo sketches offer glimpses of early 19th-century Hawaiians
By Timothy Dyke
Special to The Advertiser
In August of 1819, the French vessel Uranie berthed in Hawai'i after two years at sea. Jacques Etienne Victoire Arago, the official artist from the expedition, was one of the Westerners who came ashore at this crucial period in Hawaiian history immediately following the death of Kamehameha I. According to records at the time, Arago, who was charged with documenting the voyage in the pages of his sketchbook, spent most of his time interacting with Island residents. A juggler, musician, and entertainer, Arago seemed to have been well received by the Hawaiian people, and when the Uranie pulled anchor after three weeks to return home, the European artist had accumulated a large number of illustrations and portraits of the Hawaiians whom he encountered.
Because the Uranie came to the Islands before the arrival of Christian missionaries, Arago's sketches provide an outsider's glimpse of Hawai'i prior to colonization, and selections from his collection of original drawings are on display at the Academy of Arts in a small, comprehensive exhibit titled "Tattoo Traditions of Hawai'i: Original Drawings by Jacques Arago." To view these drawings of Hawaiians in the early part of the 19th century is to consider the way in which art preserves and distorts history.
There are at least three ways to view the Arago exhibit. First, a visitor may choose to see the work from a technical point of view. Before the advent of photography, the mission of a portrait artist would have been different than it is today. Where today an artist might use a sketchpad to advance an aesthetic or reveal an impression, the sketches of someone who worked prior to the invention of the camera served to preserve things as they were seen. As such, Arago's drawings are highly intricate and detailed. Rendered on paper with graphite, pen and ink, he draws the viewer's attention to the physical proportion and facial expression of his subjects. Backgrounds are mostly insinuated with a wash of smudged ink, while the characters in the foreground are drawn to scale with precisely articulated musculature and with clothing, hair, and tattoo presented as the artist must have seen them at the time.
ORIGINALS VS. REPRINTS
To look at Arago's drawings is to see the way he saw, and this becomes another way to assess his work. Visitors to the exhibit can view the sketched items as artifacts of history. The exhibit is curated in a way that facilitates this kind of approach. In several cases the work is displayed next to reprints of the same sketches as they were published in France at the time of the Uranie's return. In the published prints, the subjects are made to look less "native" and more European. Hair, for example, in the reprinted images is redrawn to appear fashionably 1800s French. By examining the hairstyle and manner of dress in the original drawings, viewers can see Arago's best attempt to show exactly what he found when he looked at the Island men and women as they stood before him.
It's impossible not to see the hand of an interpreter when one looks at this work, and that adds another dimension to the experience of viewing the exhibit. When we look into the drawings we don't exactly see Hawaiian culture. Rather, we see a reflection of that culture. There's something akin to anthropology in all of this looking through. Careful viewers will want to compare what they see with what they know about Hawai'i during this epoch. Perhaps the drawings of Hawaiians by Arago will make some think of the descriptions of Samoans by Margaret Mead: The observer can't help but reveal something about how he or she observes.
Perhaps the most interesting way to view the exhibit is to use the sketches in order to glance inside the art of Hawaiian tattoo. Arago draws his subjects so carefully that we can see the makaloa or checkerboard patterns as they existed on the legs of Hawaiian men. We see the image of a musket on the right thigh of a warrior. We see the repeated motif of goats which mingle with more traditional tattoo iconography. Because of the way Arago delicately reproduces these designs, we learn something about the culture and practices of the people. The goat and musket were introduced to Hawai'i by foreigners, and it is fascinating to see how the indigenous elements of culture blend on the skin with elements introduced from other environs.
The Arago exhibit runs concurrent to the exhibition of Ansel Adams' photographs from Manzanar, the detention center where Japanese-Americans were interned during World War II. The two exhibits work together nicely.
Tattoo and photography both exist as art forms that have functional purposes as well as expressive ones. Both Arago and Adams focus their eyes on cultures in which they are visitors. Each artist displays a sociological aspect to art-making. The exhibit of Arago drawings is worth seeing in and of itself, but if visitors are inspired to see the Adams exhibit at the same time, such inspiration will be rewarded.
