Post #198913 by bigbrotiki on Sat, Nov 19, 2005 6:53 AM

OK then, here is an addition to my other post:

I think this impersonal internet writing IS dangerous, because it gets taken the wrong way quite often. This seems to be the case here. A lot of people mistakenly felt addressed by this, and also, a lot seem to have misunderstood BK.

I might be totally wrong (and if I am, shut up BK, I am talking here :wink: ), but when BK wrote about TRADITION, he meant BOTH: Ancient Polynesian art, AND midcentury Polynesian pop. Some seem to have misunderstood it as a "stick only to the pre-contact carvings" call.

In my understanding, that was never his intention, he rather suggested to look back and see how the Poly-pop masters of the 50s were inspired by these originals, and then re-did them in their own way. THAT whimsical creativity is what inspired me to collect all the great visuals and compile them into my book to define American Tiki into an pop art form in it's own right.

And that is the creativity that came through in the book's pages, and induced the Tiki revival, becoming an art form again, and again totally in it's own right. Tiki took new forms, some that some of us might not favor, but it cannot and shall not be just a copy of midcentury Tiki. (The most exciting thing to me is that is much less commercially driven, but more individual: More self made home bars than real restaurants, more self motivated carvers than hired hands.)

And I do believe that BK is just as much into this revival than any of us, yet concerned about it's quality. I think he is right to point out the fact that in the Tiki revival, a certain percentage of Tiki art copies from....the Tiki revival, and thus becomes repetitive. That is where the reminder to look at the classics comes in: Use them like the moderns used them, as inspiration, to then do it your own way.

Gone are the days (to me at least, and many TCers I am sure) when the pure appearance of the word Tiki was a rare occasion, and the sighting of a Tiki-like shape was exciting, and the basic motto was "Any Tiki is a good Tiki".

There is a lot of the same Tiki out there. There is a a lot of bad Tiki out there. There is a lot of too far out Tiki and a lot of Non-Tiki being called Tiki out there, but that is the price of popularity. And with "out there", I do not mean Tiki Central! And, by far, the good outweighs the bad (and the ugly is a matter of taste).

Yet I want to voice this to avoid that this whole discussion leads to a total loss of critical thought and writing, I think it is important to keep the focus on what Tiki is, and it is not a free for all shape shifting thing, but a style. If there is a lack of integrity in it, I reserve the right to point it out, as anybody here should feel free to do too.

Here are two recent examples (not to single anyone out!):

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=17337&forum=12&2

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=17296&forum=12&3

See what I mean?