"Dot art" from the

desert is not "traditional" indigenous art. 

I had the difficult job of explaining this to someone yesterday. He very proudly showed me something he claimed was "aboriginal and done before white settlement". He paid a great deal of money for it. He has also been nicely conned.

"Aboriginal dot paintings" are now so widely believed to be traditional indigenous art it is unlikely most people will ever believe anything else. It is sold to tourists as being traditional. People are led to believe it has been tradition for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. They are also led to believe that the patterns created are of special significance, that stories are being told and much more.

None of this is true. It is not true but people are still paying thousands of dollars for the paintings in the belief that these things are true. They are paying in the belief they are getting something more than an original art work.

Yes, some of those pieces are beautiful in their own way. It takes considerable skill and patience to do them. Those things need to be recognised. It also needs to be recognised that this is not a tradition which goes back thousands of years. There are no mysterious beliefs and stories attached to these works.

Their origin goes back to 1971 when a young teacher named Geoffrey Bardon went to work in Papunya, a small indigenous community in the desert. It is about three hours by road from Alice Springs. 

Bardon was interested in the way the elders told stories. They were drawing designs in the sand with their fingers and then wiping it over again. The designs were simple but Bardon realised they were illustrating the story. He set about getting the children at the school to paint a mural on the walls of the school. It was a success and he went on encouraging the children to draw in the same simple way. The elders began to do the same but they quickly realised the more permanent nature of these things meant they could not include some information, There were things those outside their own tribal group simply should not be told. Bardon was aware of that and he  encouraged them to put dots in the picture instead. 

This is where the "art" started. Pictures which consist entirely of dots, like the one I saw yesterday, are not "traditional". They do not tell a story and, even if they did, it would not be told to a "whitey". Many of the stories now told are not traditional either. They may sound as if they are and they may have their roots in traditional stories but the traditional stories are not there for the ears of those outside the group. 

What the person showing me the picture has bought is about a hundred years old.  If you like that sort of thing then it is a fine example of it. It is not however some hundreds of years old and, at almost $10,000 he has paid too much for it.