Post #398293 by bigbrotiki on Fri, Aug 1, 2008 4:32 PM

Tikitees, you are right. BUT: This "kitschy", cartoony, campy form of Tiki imagery has become the prevalent one in the Tiki revival nowadays. It was all good and fun in the beginning, but if we don't want the Tiki revival to start going in circles because it is repeating the same cliche over and over again, we have to dig deeper and look for WHY mid-century Tiki art could be considered so creative and unique in the first place. That is what I tried to do with Tiki Modern:
After proving that Tiki was POP art in the Book of Tiki, now I want to remind people that it was ART, too, not Pop only. Otherwise, as I said before, Tiki will become just another 50s cliche like Marylin Monroe and pink Cadillac tail fins.

On 2008-07-31 23:36, bananabobs wrote:

On 2008-07-30 23:57, bigbrotiki wrote:
In my opinion, this is an example of too much human-like naturalism in Tiki sculpture. The essence of original Polynesian and other primitive art is abstraction in the cubist and modernist style, while maintaining a physical dynamic.

Ah...ok,
What?
great! now my brain itches.

It's not as intellectual as you think. The words say what they mean:

Naturalism = Like NATURE, for example like the natural human form

Cubist = Like CUBES: Hard edges and simple, blocky forms

Abstraction = Non-realist, non-naturalist

modernist = modern

dynamic = not still, not dead, alive, energetic

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2008-08-01 16:35 ]