Post #88842 by bigbrotiki on Thu, Apr 29, 2004 2:18 AM

You guys are quite right, it's a tourist Tiki from the Phillipines, and even though it is a nicer one, I like to call those wares, quoting Paul Theroux, "nameless pieces of hacked wood".
Which brings out an interesting question, which has been bugging me since Trader Vic's has, because of cost, begun having the Tikis for their new restaurants manufactured in Bali and the Phillipines, and others have made a business selling Tikis carved in Asia on e-bay.

This is a totally subjective judgement, but although these Asian artisans are masterful craftsman and can whip up a carving like nobody else, AND they have fine wood over there, I can't warm up to these kind of Tikis.

So if my concept of Polynesian Pop is based on the definition of Tikis being non-authentic, modern, carved by non-Polynesians, why would I seperate the Asian carvings from the American ones?

There is something about the look that strikes me as not quite right. Actually, thanks to his years of experience, Trader Vic's CEO Hans Richter has been sensitive enough to this issue and called them "too feminine", and is trying to change that.

Here is my take on it. It might strike some people as absurd that I am asking for authenticity in non-authenticity, but it is not so in my view:
It has nothing to do with nationality (I am not American), but to me the American Tikis, vintage and revival, are conscious, artistic attempts to interpret and play with the concept of the Polynesian paradise and it's iconography. They are interpretations of man's eternal fascination with an earthly Garden of Eden, they pursue the dream.

The Asian Tikis are contract carvings copied from photos mostly, and the makers have no connection with the why and how the orignals came about. In this way, the mistakes that creep into some of the carvings are not really funny, they just prove the total lack of connection to the source. To me, there has to be that spark of inspiration taken from Polynesian culture (or nowadays, Polynesian Pop culture) that defines a piece, however removed and weird, to become good Polynesian Pop. Mere copies have no mana.