Japanese tiki? Korean tiki! Is it really tiki? - General Tiki

B bigbrotiki Tiki Socialite Tiki Island, above the Silverlake Joined: Mar 25, 2002 Posts: 11621	B bigbrotiki Posted posted on Wed, Apr 30, 2008 10:18 PM Not "Japanese Tiki", nor Korean Tiki, because really not Tiki in my book. Stylistically, these do not move me because I would categorize them more as "naive" art and as Folk art. If you include these carvings in Tiki style, you might as well ad German carnival masks, lumber jack wood spirits, and all kinds of folk art creatures of all kinds of cultures. The rounded-off features of these characters are too human-like to me, the genius of cubist abstraction that pervades and Polynesian, Oceanic and African primitive art is missing. These guys are not Tiki the same way that some of the Tiki revival carvings from Florida we have seen here on TC recently are not Tikis: When wood carvings are merely exaggerated caricatures of the human face (big eyes, grinning mouths, big teeth) and show no stylistic connection to any Polynesian or Oceanic culture group, why would you label them with a Polynesian name? They might fit into a Tiki bar as "Exotica" perhaps, but then so would Japanese Kabuki masks and Chinese dragons...stretching the theme too far for my taste.

Not "Japanese Tiki", nor Korean Tiki, because really not Tiki in my book. Stylistically, these do not move me because I would categorize them more as "naive" art and as Folk art. If you include these carvings in Tiki style, you might as well ad German carnival masks, lumber jack wood spirits, and all kinds of folk art creatures of all kinds of cultures. The rounded-off features of these characters are too human-like to me, the genius of cubist abstraction that pervades and Polynesian, Oceanic and African primitive art is missing.

These guys are not Tiki the same way that some of the Tiki revival carvings from Florida we have seen here on TC recently are not Tikis:
When wood carvings are merely exaggerated caricatures of the human face (big eyes, grinning mouths, big teeth) and show no stylistic connection to any Polynesian or Oceanic culture group, why would you label them with a Polynesian name?

They might fit into a Tiki bar as "Exotica" perhaps, but then so would Japanese Kabuki masks and Chinese dragons...stretching the theme too far for my taste.

Post #377370 by bigbrotiki on Wed, Apr 30, 2008 10:18 PM