Lizard-Man Figure, Easter Island (Rapa Nui)

Livio Scamperle Musina, Santiago
Merton D. Simpson, New York, acquired from the above
Christopher B. Hemmeter, Honolulu, acquired from the above in 1984
Kevin Conru, Brussels
Abraham Rosman and Paula Rubel, New York, acquired from the above on October 18, 2011

John Charles Edler and Terence Barrow, Art of Polynesia: Selections from the Hemmeter Collection of Polynesian Art, Honolulu, 1990, p. 73, pl. XVII

The art of Easter Island (Rapa Nui) occupies a singular position in world culture. One of the most remote inhabited locations on earth, this volcanic island was home to a culture which developed in isolation for a period of about a thousand years. Easter Island’s enigmatic civilization was already in severe decline by the time Europeans arrived in the 18^th century, but is known to the world through its enduring sculpture. While the monumental stone figures (moai) are perhaps the best-known images of all Oceanic art, the wood sculptures of Easter Island are not popularly known and until recently have been little-studied. Their portable nature, however, allowed them to find their way into European collections where they exerted a powerful influence on European artists from the 1870s to the 1930s. Recent studies have vastly enhanced our understanding of this lost people, and although its mysteries remain, the Easter Islanders’ sculptural accomplishments are today acknowledged as some of the finest in human history.

The corpus of classical wood sculptures from Easter Island falls under the general term of moai miro (figures of wood) and includes several classic types: moai kavakava, male human figures of emaciated appearance; moai papa, female human figures; moai tangata, a more naturalistic male figure depicted with flesh; tangata manu, a bird-man hybrid; and the type of the present figure, moko, which melds the attributes of a lizard, a man, and sometimes a bird. The moko is perhaps the most graceful of these figures, usually with a curving silhouette, inspired by the form of a skink, moko uri uri (Cryptoblepharus poecilopleurus paschalis), native to Easter Island, stylized in elegant abstract scrolls of relief carving, and in the present example exhibiting the same external spine and ribs as those seen in the moai kavakava figures, as well as human hands held under the chin, and human-like legs and hips which also recall the human moai miro types. The present example terminates in a smooth handle emerging between the feet of the figure, suggesting that in its original ritual context it may have been held like a sceptre or club.

In general terms, the wood sculpture of Rapa Nui contains highly complex metaphors for the relationships between humans and the natural world, as well as those between the physical world and the worlds of dreams, spirits, and ancestors. The elegant and sculpturally poetic fusion of human and animal forms suggests a highly sophisticated and imaginative pantheon of meanings, although following the complete destruction of classical Rapa Nui culture in the 19^th century, most of this body of cultural knowledge can never be recovered. Kjellgren (Splendid Isolation: Art of Easter Island, New York 2001, pp. 54-55) notes:

“Lizardman images on Easter Island appear to have been intimately associated with the built environment and were involved in the creation, defense, and destruction of dwellings and ceremonial structures. During rites associated with the completion of important houses, possibly those of chiefs, wood lizardmen were placed on either side of the entrance. The ariki mau and a high priest then entered the house and ate a ceremonial first meal These lizardman images might have protected the threshold from supernatural foes; larger examples were reputedly used as clubs to defend the entrance against human enemies.”

The European name for Rapa Nui was given for the day of its discovery by the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, on Easter Sunday, 1722. Reports from this brief visit witness a treeless island and a civilization in decline, though interestingly they note only standing moai, as did the accounts of other early visitors. By the time of Captain James Cook’s famous arrival at the island in 1774, the decline had hastened and many of the moai had been toppled in internal conflicts among the islanders. The presence of the monumental upright stone figures was particularly confounding to European observers because the inhabitants appeared to possess no means of erecting them. We now understand that at the height of the culture, trees were abundant on the island; these provided the mechanical material for the erection of the moai, as well as the medium for a sophisticated wood carving tradition. The reasons for the deforestation, like many aspects of Easter Island history, are uncertain; it was perhaps the result of hubristic overuse in construction of the moai, or the demands of overpopulation and competition on a tiny island.

Although a South American origin has been proposed, today scholars agree that the ancestors who settled Easter Island represented the easternmost reach of the Austronesian migrations, as confirmed by the resemblance of the language and culture of Easter Island to those of other Polynesian peoples, as well as comparative genetic tests on early human remains. The archeological record shows that arrival of humans at Easter Island likely occurred around 600-800 AD, making it the latest island in Polynesia to be populated. The stone moai probably date from between 1100 and the mid-1600s AD, and the population of Easter Island peaked between about 7,000 and 9,000 people around the mid-1600s. Following European contact, the island was besieged with epidemics, deportations, and slave raids. By the 1860s the tiny population that remained had been entirely converted to Christianity, signaling the complete collapse of the traditional system of belief and erasing almost all knowledge of classical Rapa Nui culture.