Most of us have had moments of rapture before the glowing embodiment of
the inspiration of some great artist, whose gifts have been developed to
maturity by enthusiastic and patient striving for perfection. Do not
these clumsy drawings, too, reveal that which, considering their
environment, is talent--original and unacademic. Here is the sheer
beginning, the spontaneous germ of art, the labouring of a savage soul
controlled by wilful aesthetic emotions. For these pictures are not
figurative, not mere signs and symbols capable of elucidation, but the
earliest and only efforts of an illiterate race, a race in intellectual
infancy, towards the ideal--a forlorn but none the less sincere attempt
to reach the "light that quickens dreams to deeds!"
The last of the series of "Black Art" pictures is not local. It occurs
on the reverse of a shield, the spear-punctured lower edge of which
verifies its eventful history. The warrior-artist silhouetted a
sweetheart's figure, where, at supreme moments, it came before his fancy
and gave the battle to his hands.
A POISONOUS FOOD
One of the chief vegetable foods of the blacks is the fruit of
"tinda-burra" (Moreton Bay chestnut--CASTANOSPERMUM AUSTRALE).
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