Wheels II

Australian Aboriginal art is almost entirely lacking the "sophistication" of modern art, being as it is essentially spiritual, as all art used to be. To some, this may seem either troglodytic or totally lacking any higher basis. I would beg to differ. "But in either case it would certainly seem that when an essentially cerebral emphasis preponderates in the schooling of the young, as it does in our highly literate society, an alarming incidence of serious failure is to be expected in the difficult passage of the critical threshold from the system of sentiments proper to infancy to that of the responsibilities of the hour-and that, consequently, any attempt to interpret the symbolism of archaic man on the basis of contemporary thought and feeling must be extremely dangerous." Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, pg. 92.

From: Crumlin, Rosemary & Anthony Knight, Aboriginal Art and Spirituality