Shaping Power: Luba Masterworks from the Royal Museum for Central Africa

A new exhibition on Congolese tribal art opened this week at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Shaping Power: Luba Masterworks from the Royal Museum for Central Africa brings together twenty-six transfixing pieces of Luba art on loan from RMCA in Belgium, including masks, figural works, and a range of ritual and court art. 

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Memory board, lukasa

Mask  -  19th century

Caryatid stool  -  19th century

Figurative pipe  -  19th century

Bowl-bearer  -  19th century

Images courtesy of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Kastom: Art of Vanuatu

Vanuatu is very different from other Pacific nations. Traditional practices known as Kastom remain strong even after a century of dual colonial religious influences. Kastom: Art of Vanuatu presents for the first time the unique collection of arts from this area held by the National Gallery of Australia. In the early 1970s the Gallery contracted an agent to field collect in Vanuatu resulting in the acquisition of nearly two hundred works, a selection of which will be accompanied by other important works from the NGA's Vanuatu collection. 

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Information and images courtesy of the National Gallery of Australia

Les maîtres du désordre

A new exhibition at the Musée du Quai Branly presents the figures of disorder, both mythic and mortal.  Shamans and other intercessors are here dubbed "masters of disorder," responsible for negotiations with the forces of chaos.  In a constant compromise between turbulence and reason, rituals are the preferred mode of propitiation toward the powers that govern human societies.  Les maîtres du désordre presents objects, costumes and representations from major anthropological collections alongside contemporary works by Annette Messager, Jean-Michel Alberola, Thomas Hirschhorn, and others.

Visit the official website.

Ndungu mask with costume  -  Kongo, DR Congo  -  19th century

Mask depicting Chinasupay  -  Bolivia  -  Early 20th century

Mask depicting a shaman in trance with auxiliary spirits  -  Northwest Coast  -  1840–1860

Magical figure  -  Loango  -  19th century

Sourvaskar costume  -  Bulgaria  -  20th century

Information and images courtesy of the Musée du Quai Branly

Bundu: Sowei Headpieces at the QCC Art Gallery

The Bundu or Sande Society is a pan-African association of women found among several West African groups in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.  It educates and initiates young girls so as to enable them to assume their place in an adult society as wives and mothers and as social and political leaders.  Entry into this society confers not only political power, but also introduces members to the association’s role in promoting wellness and treating disease.  As a result, it is also a medicine society that employs both spiritual and physical therapies to help those in need, especially women and children.

Bundu masks, which are the focus of a current exhibition at the QCC Art Gallery in New York, are unique in sub-Sahara Africa in that they are the only ones worn by women in public masquerades.  These sowei helmet masks, which are diverse in form, are worn by female masqueraders draped in black raffia who embody the society’s spirit and serve as intermediaries with the ancestors.

This exhibition presents sixty sculptures that display the wonderful stylistic diversity of these masks among the Bassa, Gola, Mende, and Vai peoples of Africa.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Information and images courtesy of the QCC Art Gallery

Tribal Art Auction - Dorotheum, April 2

Vienna auction house Dorotheum will present a sale of fine tribal antiquities on April 2. Primarily highlighting masks and statuary from West and Central Africa, the lots will also include a range of Indonesian and Pacific works, as well as a handful of Eskimo stone sculptures.

View the official website.

Mask  -  Boa, D R Congo  -  Late nineteenth/early twentieth century

Feather currency roll  -  Santa Cruz Is., Solomon Islands

Head depicting a nobleman  -  Benin, Nigeria  -  Eighteenth or nineteenth century

Avian grave markers  -  Sakalava, Madagascar  -  Nineteenth or early twentieth century

Kifwebe mask  -  Songye, D R Congo

Bwami society mask  -  Lega, D R Congo

Cihongo mask  -  Chokwe, Southeastern Congo  -  Early twentieth century

Information and images courtesy of Dorotheum

The Coe Collection of American Indian Art at the Met

Currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Coe Collection of American Indian Art features works given and bequeathed to the Museum during the past decade by Ralph T. Coe of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Comprised of some forty objects made in natural materials from stone to animal hide, the installation presents a wide range of Native American objects that come from different times and places, and from numerous distinct peoples.

For more information, visit the exhibition's official website.

Leadership shirt  -  Plains Indian  -  19th century

Basket with feathers  -  Pomo, California  -  Early 20th century

Mosquito mask  - Tlingit, Alaska  -  19th century

Mask depicting a noblewoman  -  Richard Davidson (Haida, b. 1946), British Columbia

Information and images courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Embodying the Sacred in Yoruba Art at Kean University

Embodying the Sacred in Yoruba Art, on view through April 18 at Kean University’s Karl and Helen Burger Gallery, comprises twenty-eight Yoruba masterpieces from Nigeria, Benin, and Togo, all sourced from the collection of the Newark Museum. The pieces in the show, which were produced from the late nineteenth through the twentieth century, highlight the relationship between art and the spiritual world.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Staff of authority, ipawo ase  -  Nigeria

Crown, ade abetiaja  -  Nigeria, 1970s

Twin figure, ere ibeji  -  Nigeria, 20th century

Sword of authority, ida ase  -  Nigeria, 19th–20th century

Dance vest with Esu figures  -  Nigeria, 19th–20th century

Divination tray, opon ifa  -  Nigeria, first half of 20th century  -  Attributed to Areogun or atelier

Egungun mask  -  Nigeria, 20th century

Information and images courtesy of Kean University and the Newark Museum.

Reconfiguring an African Icon: Odes to the Mask by Modern and Contemporary Artists from Three Continents

A new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art examines the influence of the African mask on modern and contemporary art.

Works featured in this installation are highly creative imaginings of the iconic form of the African mask. The installation is a collaboration between the Museum's departments of Nineteenth Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art and Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.

In many world cultures masks allow performers to adopt a wide range of characters and emotions. They can take on an endless variety of forms: human or animal; sacred or profane; dramatic or comedic. They are not meant to be experienced in isolation but rather as an integral component of celebrations, from the epic cultures to Dogon elders in Mali to popular holidays such as Halloween or Day of the Dead and numerous Mardi Gras carnivals held throughout Europe and Latin America.

It is well known that African art forms, most notably the mask, were a source of inspiration for modern artists such as Pablo Picasso, Andre Derain, and Henri Matisse in the early 20th century. The aesthetic of the African mask thus contributed to a redefinition of the Western visual lexicon. Considered especially alluring were its accessible reimagining of the human face and its aura of inscrutability.

This selection of works from Africa, Europe and the United States attests to the enduring relevance of the African mask in modern and contemporary art. The five artists represented here - Lynda Benglis, Willie Cole, Calixte Dakpogan, Romuald Hazoume, and Man Ray - have all used the African mask as a catalyst for creative exploration. Their works reflect on a century of viewing the mask as a disembodied form - that is, as an object in a museum removed from its original performative context.

African masks are often thought of as carved wooden artifacts, but they are an inherently complex and dynamic art form: to fully appreciate them, one must view them in motion, animated by costumes, dance and music; the various media added to their surfaces are thought to imbue them with mystical powers; and the influence of foreign materials and techniques have led to a continuous redefinition of the genre.

Responding to the sheer physicality of the mask while alluding to its spiritual quality, each of the works in this exhibition pays tribute to the powerful legacy of the African mask and its infinite potential for reinvention.

The exhibition opened on March 8th and will be on display on the 1st floor gallery between the Michael C. Rockefeller and Lila Acheson Wallace wings of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art website
Image: Portait Mask (Gba gba), Cote d'Ivoire, Baule peoples, before 1913. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Adrienne Minassian, 1997

Man Ray, "Noire et Blanche" 1926
Gelatin silver print, 8.75 x 10.75 inches
Private Collection, New York

Romald Hazoume, "Ibedji (Nos. 1 and 2) Twins" 1992
plastic can, raffia, cowries and acrylic, 16.5 x 11.75 x 3.875 inches
courtesy CAAC - The Pigozzi Collection, Geneva

African 'Magic' Influences Western Art in VU Exhibit

Gregg Hertzlieb, director of Valparaiso University's Brauer Museum of Art, can see the influence of the pieces in his "The Art and Magic of Africa" exhibit on some of the 20th Century's most acclaimed artists.

"Both Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse were very influenced by African tribal art," he said. "To look at the exhibit from the perspective of influencing modern artists can be a pretty neat way of looking at it."

Celebrating the opening of the exhibit with a reception at 7 p.m. Friday at Brauer Museum, "Africa" is made up of pottery, weapons, metal works, masks and carved figures created by African tribes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The artifacts that make up the exhibit are part of the collection of Beverly Shored-based dealer and collector Lawrence P. Kolton.

Kolton has spent more than four decades traveling the globe in search of tribal art. In 2005, he lent the Brauer Museum approximately 150 pieces of New Guinea tribal art for an acclaimed exhibit, "Art and the Spirit World of New Guinea."

Hertzlieb estimated that more than 300 artifacts from Kolton's collection will be on display in "Africa."

"I don't think there are a lot of people nowadays that could achieve what these tribes people were able to achieve, not only with the materials and technique, but in terms of imagination and possibilities," Hertzlieb said. "If you look at the patterns and abstractions, it's just endlessly inventive."

Kolton is slated to be in attendance at Friday's reception to give a brief lecture. Hertzlieb is scheduled to host a gallery talk in relation to "Africa" at Brauer Museum at 7 p.m. July 21.

"(Kolton is) really excited about this African show, because it shows some of his best stuff," Hertzlieb said.

The Brauer Museum of Art is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday and 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso University, 1709 Chapel Drive, Valparaiso

By TIM SHELLBERG - Times Correspondent

Bonham's Lot No: 4259

A Pende deformation mask, mbangu, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Height 14 inches.

Estimate: $3,000 - 5,000

For a discussion of this type of mask, see Stother, Z.S., "Pende (Visions of Africa)", 1998, pp. 139-53: "Mbangu, the bewitched is one of the most widespread of the masks among the Central Pende. Several interpretations have been recorded about this mask; that his half black half white face addresses a human response to the infirmed thereby reaffirming strength and compassion."