life that words only hide

Paintings tell a story of Islands life that words only hide

What’s wrong with Goaribari?

Why, Kurt Pfund, in Islands of Love, pick on the Trobriands? You know that the people who inhabit Goaribari have the same physical attachments as the people who live on the Trob riand Islands and use them for the same purpose. But Malinowski is easier to read than F. E. Williams, the Trobriand Islanders more used to giving glib answers to many questions, and the accommodation in the Trob riands is preferable to that on Goari bari.

Other than this, jex, (or as Rigbys call it, love) is no different there from anywhere else. The rise of Kurt Pfund and the rise of Rigbys as pub lishers has been concurrent, but Kurt knows more about New Guinea than Rigbys, and it is they, I am told, who chose the title. A pity. A bad title for a nicely-produced book. The originality of Kurt’s paintings are worthy of a more original title.

The excellent reproductions of Kurts paintings should sell the book to those who want it for this purpose and if the publishers think the title will sell the book to the prurient it is doubtful that it will.

I am sure that Kurt Pfund is well aware, even if his publisher is not, that women who “do not use any known contraceptive methods, have intercourse with many lovers, but do not conceive until they marry” are found, not only in the Trobriands, but in many parts of Melanesia, and in vestigators from Malinowski onwards have given some very simple ex planations for this fact.

The quoted statement is contained in Rigby’s blurb on the dust-jacket, so it seems to be a book in which we should separate the author’s intentions from the publisher’s interference.

To carp a little more, I’m sorry the book has a text at all: Kurt’s paint ings and their most excellent repro duction are themselves enough to make the book worth having in your collection. If a text had to be added, it might have been done by someone recognised as knowing something of the Trobriand people; Elliott Elijah could have done it, Charles Julius’s government reports might have been quoted (Charles wrote most read ably), or even Randolph Stow might have been induced to write something from his stay in the Trobriands.

This brings us to the crux of the matter. Is this a book about the Trobriand people illustrated by Kurt Pfund, or is it a book of Kurt’s paint ings with an accompanying text?

I have watched Kurt’s development as a painter from the day I first met him when he was poised on the top of a ladder doing some lettering on the front of a shop (to buy bread to enable him to keep up more serious painting), through the helpful period of Inga Burton-Bradley’s influence, up to the time of his secluding himself in his lovely retreat on the banks of the Laloki River off the Rouna Road.

His development has been rapid, and his later paintings show the result of his hard work. Kurt’s use of im pcisto sometimes gives the impression that he has used it heavily so as to cover structural defects underneath, and at one stage his use of contrap posio gave a sense of uneasiness. The photographing of his paintings has eliminated these nervous features.

Well now, having occupied most of this space writing what seems to be an adverse criticism of the book, let me say it is a beautiful book. How can anyone produce a book like this, nowadays, for the low price of $6.50? I have bought the book for myself and recommend that you do too. I think it is the best collection of reproductions of paintings to come out of New Guinea. If you want to find out about the way the Trobriand islanders live, there are other books which might satisfy you more, but buy it to enjoy Kurt’s paintings. From the heavy impasto of the past, he has. achieved a lightness and perception which has recorded in paint the life

of real people.

Peter Livingston.

(ISLANDS OF LOVE. By Kurt Pfund Rigby Ltd. $6.50).

Lasimai, one of Pfund's attractive black and white illustrations.