Types of Māori Art
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Māori visual art has four main forms: carving (whakairo), tattooing (ta moko), weaving (raranga), and painting (peita). These are not normally just for decoration; traditional Māori art was highly spiritual and would tell stories or information about spiritual matters, ancestry, and other important topics. The creation of art was governed by the rules of tapu (sacred spiritual and cultural rules and restrictions).
Carving
Carving was done with three materials: wood, bone, and stone. Wood carvings were used to decorate houses, fence poles, containers, taiaha and other objects. The most popular type of stone used in carving was pounamu (greenstone), a form of jade, but other kinds were also used, especially in the North Island, where pounamu was not widely available. Both stone and bone were used to create jewellery such as the hei-tiki. Large scale stone face carvings were also sometimes created. The introduction of metal tools by Europeans allowed more intricacy and delicacy, and caused stone and bone fish hooks and other tools to become purely decorative.
Ta moko
Ta moko is the art of traditional Māori tattooing, done with a chisel. Men were tattooed on many parts of their bodies, including faces, buttocks and thighs. Women were usually tattooed only on the lips and chin. Moko conveyed a person's ancestry. The art declined in the 19th century following the introduction of Christianity, but in recent decades has undergone a revival. Although modern moko are in traditional styles, most are carried out using modern equipment (a tattoo pen instead of a chisel). Body parts such as the arms, legs and back are popular locations for modern moko, although some are still on the face.
Weaving
Weaving was used to create numerous things, including wall panels in meeting houses and other important buildings, as well as clothing and bags (kete). While many of these were purely to use as bags, others were true works of art, taking hundreds of hours to complete, and often given as gifts.
Cloaks in particular could be decorated with feathers and were the mark of an important chief.
The extinction and endangerment of many of New Zealand birds made the feather cloak a more difficult item to produce.
Painting
Although the oldest forms of Māori art are rock paintings, in 'classical' Māori art, painting was not an important art form. It was mainly used as a minor decoration in meeting houses, in stylised forms such as the koru. Europeans introduced Māori to their more figurative style of art, and in the 19th century less stylised depictions of people and plants began to appear on the walls of meeting houses in place of traditional carvings and woven panels.
