Pacific Island arts entail visual arts, music, dance, and oral literature closely-related and manifestations of aesthetic, social, and religious themes important to their respective cultural systems. Jacoulet depicted his vision of Pacific Island art through islanders’ traditional clothes, tattoos, ornamentation, and occasionally objects. With the increase of tourism in the Pacific, Pacific artists began to utilize Westerner’s fascination with their culture as a profitable source of income as they entered the international economy.

How do you compare Jacoulet’s interpretation of Pacific Islander tourist art to the Palau storyboard carving and Micronesian flute? Do you think Pacific Islander’s active involvement in the tourist economy contrasts Jacoulet’s worldview of a disappearing community?

Japan, c. 1934
Woodblock print
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard W. Child
1991.93.36

Utilizing several pigments Jacoulet depicts a Tokobuei sculptor working on a crude tourist artwork with a vibrant blue sea that looks very different from his other work; contrasting this blue sea with a blazing yellow sky and pink clouds as if this portrait depicts another world.


STORYBOARD
Palau
Carved wood
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Bennett
1988.41.20

Storyboard carvings began in Palau in the 1930s as an attempt to revive traditional painted woodcarving. The storyboards evolved from carved and painted stories on interior house beams of large traditional men’s meeting houses known as bai. The stories depicted important historic and moral events for Palau communities. They were transferred to portable boards and became a profitable tourist export.

FLUTE
Micronesia
Gourd decorated with cowry shell
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Bennett
1988.41.26