Best part of Austraila was meeting Warrlimpurringa (Wal-lin-purri) Tjapiljarri and his wife.
As a member of the last family group found in the harshest part of the Gibson Desert without modern contact in 1984. He lives off of a surburban cul de sac, outside of Alice Springs not far from the 1950's houses near some hills under the open sky. He is a nomad, still, and may wander back to the region set aside for aboriginals, Papanya Tula, but he prefers his freedom. He lives on one hill, but does use another hill across the canyon from where he usually stays when family comes to visit. When it is learned he is painting and I am paying him, huge numbers gather for the evening soirees.
The people who have arranged my visit, Pastors Rodney and Christine Westbrook are my friends and amazing story tellers. They tell of helping Warrlimpurringa and his family for years in their outback clinic not realizing he is one of the most famous aboriginal artists of his time.
The Tjapiljarri brothers (Thomas, Walala and Warlimpurringa) paint the ancient mens stories that have been passed on for years. The best pieces to me are his topographical maps. He will paint these only for Rodney. The trust and relationship gets the best paintings, and the deepest stories.
They tell me how the aboriginal family broke Walala's fingers on his painting hand and his forearm for apparently not sharing according to tribal law. Albert Nampajira the famoust Aboriginal water colorist, and first Aboriginal to have a drivers license was imprisoned for running alcohol to the aboriginals. Albert would not have had a choice. Tribal law is more feared than western law.
Warlimpurringa was snatched off the street locked in to a painting shed and forced to work for a disreputable dealer at one point near my visit. The why of which is unclear, was this a repayment for a debt? Once an aboriginal walks away for a night of painting it can be months before a dealer sees him again, so often if the aboriginals are paid up front they must stay in the painting area. Sometimes to keep the family away from them, and their demands for money they are locked in. Are they locked up or protected? Depends on your point of view. The way of life here has its own outback rules.
Perhaps these were just opportunistic people with paint and canvas... no matter. Warlimpurringa laughs, in the way common to aboriginals that is pure joy and without malice to a past matter, that he never finished the piece with the dots after the linear strokes he lays in with a number 6 china brush. The dealer wont know that. Neither will the buyer.
Aboriginal art is a very complicated business. The effects of the black hole of western Australian culture devouring the galaxy of Aboriginal culture. There are no good guys or bad guys, once you scratch the surface, the problems are complex and the solutions create an effective neutral. The latest attempt to regulate the industry, a 5% royalty to the artist with every sale, effectively will destroy the art market and annihilate the industry. A lop sided solution with best intentions to be sure.
Imagine the artworld if everytime someone bought a piece a set percentage royalty went back to the artist. Auction houses would have thin margins. Trading between private collectors would increase, and dealers would decrease. Since dealers serve to introduce new artists and new product, it would reduce profit and remove motive for anything but the top sellers. How would prices rise without the profit motivated art dealer or auction house and quality consumed. And how to regulate that system? The logistics? What if Jackson Pollock was drunk on a bender or on walk-about in the deep desert for a few months as you tried to get him his due?
Rodney is fearless and comfortable among the Aboriginals. The Westbrooks are protective of me and concerned for my safety. At their insistence, I do not join the nightly parties that seem to rage like a stampede on the desert or go out after dark into the bush. My money bought the alcohol, which rages through their bodies unable to process it from aeons of evolution living off the desert, but who am I to tell them what to do with their cash. Is it different than Jackson Pollock drunk stumbling and self destructive? I am a visitor in a strange land.
The Aboriginal Art market is very interesting because the artists are not entirely assimilated into modern culture. With tribal obligations to share, individual ownership of money is not a concept. Money is spent immediately, and often on beer and junkfood. I wonder how they can survive on the diet of expensive junkfood I watch them eat. Cars trade ownership along these same tribal obligation lines to be discarded wrecks often in a few weeks. Washing would be a terrible waste of water. There is no concept of tomorrow, only the present and using what you have today. What could be farther from the Western Value system? How do you contend with hordes of poor, dirty, humans managed by internal tribal systems governance which can be both brutal and indulgent at the same time, happily living with one foot in and one foot out of the society that surrounds them. Warrlimpurringa commands prices above $30,000 at auction, but his possessions could be gathered into a shopping cart and he looks for all the world like a dreadlocked homeless man, but he struts down the street with an air of ownership you would find on most leaders. He is obviously a man of great importance, respected and a great repository of the knowledge of his ancestors and aboriginal law.
The first painting I visit him and bring the canvas to him and Rodney brings it back at night. The next day he comes over to the house to paint, he puts on shoes and a shirt. He orders me around like every artist I have ever worked for, the demands of artists are universal I am happy to learn. Get me paint, get me water, make me meat and tucker over an open fire. I am in heaven. I have prepared canvasses, bought paint, and his favorite brushes with Rod and Christine's help and I am ready to listen to the stories and watch.
I want a certain style painting, he chooses another. I still have to pay. I am greatful.
In pidgeon english he explains that we should go to the Gibson Desert and see the beauty of it there. I want to go immediately.
Later in the week I meet his Kinswoman, Flora Brown Napangardi. She knows stories similar to Dorothy Napangardi, a favorite artist of mine. There is no written language so painting acts as a record of the past. She paints me the story of the exodus in the 1970's from west to east when some of her Pintupi ancestors met with modern settlers and ranchers.
We weave through government cinderblock houses that seem to be bombed out with the use of people who are unsure of how to take care of a home, or regulate their lives when everything in the environment does not decompose. If a cousin gets wild and breaks a window, how do you stop him? Or if a relative wants to use your stove and then gets hostile and breaks it, there is no recourse for an aboriginal homeowner. Tribal law is first.
One house is different. The yard is fenced and clean. Three cars are parked next to a well kept garage. There is a satellite dish on the roof and curtains on the windows. A man sits on his front porch in a rocking chair. How is this possible? Rodney explains he was probably stolen generation, raised among Anglo-Austrailians. Rodney with his big Austrailian cowboy hat waves broadly and the gent waves back like all country gentlemen do.
The Napangardi home is contemporary aboriginal, but such outward appearance poverty. The house looks bombed out. An open fire is on the back porch which seems to be the center of family life. Beer cans are strewn about like leaf matter. Dogs and children play among the trash and beer cans and do a good impression of a third world country. While the welfare system and can does give them enought to eat, free education, houses to live in, etc they can't change the culture without destroying it.
We feed the artist and her family, as is customary while they paint. They want simple things, the white fluffy bread, the high fat meat, formula for the baby. These will last longer than the cash for the painting which will be distributed to all the family who ask.
A friend of mine and I are working on a story about the number of galleries carrying similar pieces at the fair.
What was amazing was the next day, how intense my fanbase was! Love and eternal
