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For this essay, I am going to interpret the idea of 'influence' in its widest possible sense and attempt to look at influences relating to Vanuatu art and ritual both within and without the archipelago, historically and in the present day. In the case of the island of Ambrym - which forms part of the intensely co-operative, competitive and costly graded, secret society, royalty patent and copyright systems of the northern and northern-central islands - influences are not as simple as those defined in the white man's world. Here, in the vibrant worlds of spiritual and ritual complexity, influences have to be paid for in a series of immensely subtle and often complex negotiations that can at times be extremely expensive. Expensive in tusker pigs, that is.

None of these profound rituals nor the materialised spirit forms associated with them (which white people call 'art'would be possible without the existence and use as a sacred currency of such male pigs whose upper canines have been removed to permit the unimpeded circular growth of the lower tusks. The living pig's value depends only upon its tusk curvature and every few centimetres of growth beyond a certain point has a particular linguistic term and value attached to it. Every such pig has a value and everything in such pigs is valuable. So if you are not a part of this value system involving pigs, then you may have no properly respectful reason to be interested in the traditional ritual and artistic life of this superbly complex part of the world.

Through innumerable canoe voyages carrying tusker pigs back and forth, ritually aspiring men from certain areas of western and northern Ambrym in particular judiciously tapped the cultural riches of an island to their west. Such traditional voyages - to purchase rituals and knowledge, the rights to materialised spirit forms and 'secrets'- were part of an ancient and sophisticated traditional copyright and trade network that was an integral part of numerous cultures bordering this large 'inland sea'area of northern central Vanuatu, and internally within the islands themselves...p>

Until this point, such artistic endeavour had gone largely unseen by western eyes. Not so in Paris in the early part of the nineteenth century. A hive of artistic ferment at this time, it was here in the autumn of 1906 that Matisse showed Picasso an African sculpture. Although this is a gross oversimplification, one might say 'the rest is history'...

Matisse and Picasso became selective collectors of traditional art pieces, and one of Matisse's favourites was a massive figure of the important female ogress Nevimbumbao from major ritual cycles in south-southwestern coastal Malakula, said to have been given to him early on by a friend who was a ship's captain. Greatly admired by Picasso, Nevimbumbao was given to him by Matisse's son upon his father's death in 1954. Like Matisse, Picasso kept this female effigy seated on a chair in his studio. None of these artists would have known who or what the figure represented, but those southwestern Malakulans with a knowledge of Nevimbumbao's personality and habits would have undoubtedly smiled dryly had they ever heard about Picasso and his own personality and womanising habits. Perhaps the influences of such work were not simply artistic.

The first generation of a small number of ni-Vanuatu artists trained in the western tradition of creative expression began to emerge in the late 1970s. Often with great bravery, contemporary figures such as potter Eric Natuoivi and painter Ralph Regenvanu have had to tread a cautious line between strict traditional rights and copyright systems and the modern world of new artistic media, formats and presentation. Interestingly, although they have been influenced by modern western world techniques and materials, their greatest stylistic and thematic influence have been spiritual inspiration from their own ancient and profound cultural traditions. Visitors to the National Gallery of Australia's recent exhibition of Oceanic art, 'Gods, Ghosts &Men', may have observed a pair of elaborate boar tusks sprouting proudly from Natuoivi's gourd-shaped ceramic pot.

This article appears in excerpted form. You can read the entire article in Art &Australia's Autumn 2009 issue.