ABSTRACT
This paper concentrates on one small aspect of the socialization process among the Abelam of the Sepik District, New Guinea. It suggests that through their early experiences, particularly in the context of the tambaran cult, 1 boys and young men acquire a set of fixed expectations about what they will see in two dimensions, that is on the flat; and hence that polychrome two-dimensional paintings become a closed system, unrelated to natural objects, or to carvings and other three-dimensional art objects, or, indeed, to anything outside the paintings. These expectations act to prevent them ‘seeing’, that is making sense of, anything in two dimensions that is not part of the closed system; they also enable Abelam flat painting to act directly on the fully initiated adult as a system of communication and not as a representation of any other communication system such as myth. I shall not here be concerned with the problem of what is communicated, nor, indeed, with the fundamental problem of whether anthropologists have the techniques to discover what is communicated by such systems, but only with showing that such a system exists and operates.
