Putting Pots in Their Place
Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley
The National Museum of African Art Smithsonian Institution
Spirit Vessel, Bəna People
This season has been particularly rich for anyone interested in African art. Four remarkable exhibitions; Heroic Africa: Legendary Leaders, Iconic Sculptures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Weaving Abstraction: Kuba Textiles and the Woven Art of Central Africa, The Textile Museum, Washington, D.C., Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria, Indianapolis Museum of Art, and lastly, Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
All four exhibitions were noteworthy in several respects. Each, in its own way, presented material in a superbly aesthetic manner. This may seem to some an odd critique. One presumes that art exhibitions will naturally attempt to present work in the most aesthetically pleasing manner possible. However, this is often not the case when showing ethnographic art. Sadly, ethnographic art bears a heavy political burden that often results in intense pressure to display the material with varying degrees of reference to original cultural context. This political agenda has resulted in some abominable museum installations with walls painted to look like kente cloths, thatch huts constructed over artworks, or even, in the case of the Musee Quai Branly in Paris, faux mud huts into which the viewer must bend and crawl in order to see certain ritual objects.
Not so with any of these exhibitions. All were beautifully installed with sensitive lighting, well-designed and substantive labels, and excellent, respectful display of sacred and ritual artworks. And, happily, an absence of distractive interactive gadgets.
For the past two decades this gallery has been promoting African ceramics as a fundamental aspect of African art. The exhibition, Central Africa Unmasked: Arts of the Benue Valley, masterfully organized by the Fowler Museum at UCLA and curated by Marla Berns, Richard Fardon and Sidney Kasfir, places ceramics firmly in the constellation of African ritual arts and ratifies their role as a fundamental, potent and indispensable aspect of the same.
The Benue River is a major tributary of the famous Niger River that loops from its tropical headwaters northwards to touch Timboctou and finally terminate in the oil-sodden delta of southern Nigeria. The Benue River stretches eastward from its confluence with the Niger towards the border with Cameroon. The exhibition, next on view at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, explores the vast Benue River valley, a little-known region of bewildering ethnic composition, diverse ecology and a history of extraordinarily rich traditional ritual life.
Spirit Vessel, Bəna People
Much of the exhibition deals with material and themes familiar to aficionados of African art; masks, wooden figures, masquerade and placation of the spirit world. What distinguishes this exhibition is the prominent focus on the ceramics of several cultural groups living in the Upper Benue valley. Part 3 of the lavishly illustrated catalog is a series of essays by Marla Berns, director of the Fowler, on the function of ceramics in the ritual arts. Her excellent field photos taken during her research in the Benue valley in the 1980s’ illustrate traditions and rituals now largely abandoned. Many of the vessels she saw in situ are today in various museum and private collections in the West – including Chicago.
The ceramics, while never abandoning the potent metaphor of the vessel, become, through often wild manipulation of the surface, surrogates for actual individuals or spirits. Some are grotesque, fantastic creatures, others finely potted vessels reflecting a sophisticated understanding of form and surface. The vessels were placed in sacred enclosures – often miniature thatch and basketry ‘huts’ where they were tended and consulted. Some were ceremonially broken, others maintained for generations. The sculpted vessels become requisite vehicles for addressing the spiritual and metaphysical needs of the community.
Ceramics in the West suffer a certain prejudice peculiar to the West unlike Asia, ancient America and Africa where ceramics existed within the highest realm of art and complimented, on equal terms, all other art mediums. This exhibition should clearly put to rest the notion that ceramics are the step child of the ritual arts. They are the ritual arts.
This exhibition continues at the National Museum of African Art Smithsonian Institution until March 4, 2012.
Japan underwent profound social change at the beginning of the 20th century. Western-style industrialization transformed the ancient country from an agrarian village society to an increasingly urban one. Thousands of rural inhabitants flocked to the city and embraced the modern era. Textiles reflect this remarkable change.
This exhibition of approximately 70 textiles consists of two principle types; the traditional indigo-dyed cotton textiles of feudal Japan and the flamboyant, modern kimono of the newly urban young female factory workers freshly arrived from the farm.
During the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1867) commoners were subject to various sumptuary laws that regulated what they could wear. Indigo-dyed cotton and bast fiber textiles were the common option. The laws did not, however, restrict the astonishing creativity of the Japanese peasant. Various tie dying, stenciling, and resist dying techniques reached their technical apogee in this period. Frugality and innate good taste directed the hand of weavers and dyers.
As Japan began its rush towards industrialization in the early 20th century rural girls were recruited to work the new factories. Suddenly they found themselves unfettered from the social and material restrictions of their ancestral villages. Bright, often gaudy, low quality silk kimono were designed to appeal to this new, unsophisticated audience. Young Japanese designers living in Europe imported new fashionable motifs, often derivative of Arte Deco and Arte Modern popular in Europe. It was a good mix. The traditional kimono was an excellent format for extravagant and highly imaginative design.
The majority of the pieces in this exhibition were assembled over many years by Fifi White and Elizabeth Wilson, co-founders of Asiatica, located in Kansas City. Renowned for their impeccable taste and deep knowledge of Japan this collection reflects myriad collecting trip to Japan and consummate connoisseurship.
The exhibition opens Wednesday, July 20, 5:30-8:00PM and will remain on display until August 19.
www.douglasdawson.com
Earth of the Amazon: Shipibo-Conibo Ceramics
The upper Amazonian basin is a place of myth and mystery. For most it is a vast terra incognita, perceived as disconnected from the better-known ancient cultures of the Peruvian Andes and coastal deserts. For the Shipibo-Conibo Indians, this riverine world, the headwaters of the Amazon, has been home for at least 1000 years and perhaps much longer. Here, amid the constantly shifting rivers and streams, the rich alluvial soils and abundant natural resources they developed a complex culture and an artistic style unique in the Americas. This exhibition explores the remarkable ceramics they produced which mirrored their cosmology and sense of themselves.
The Shipibo-Conibo concept of surface designs corresponds to the Western concept of horror vacui. Every surface was a format for the presentation of encoded motifs that linked the Shipibo and Conibo Indians to their ancient culture. The enormous beer fermentation vessels, the focus of this exhibition, are covered with labyrinthine designs; complex, unpredictable, interwoven, geometric patterns that suggest, to the 21st century eye, computer chip circuitry. The designs on the robust shoulders of the pots are a maze of interplay between line, negative space, light and dark – dazzling in their complexity and craft.
As with many pre-industrial societies, pottery making was the domain of woman. During the seasonal dry season they made gigantic, thin-walled earthenware vessels – the mining and preparation of clay itself a prodigious achievement – for the brewing of beer to be consumed at communal festivals. Before firing, the massive jars were painstakingly painted with the characteristic complex designs unique to the Shipibo-Conibo. They are, arguably, the most impressive historic aboriginal ceramics of the Western Hemisphere.
This exhibition of approximately twenty traditional vessels, dating from the 1940’s through the 1970’s, represents the twilight of this aspect of Shipibo-Conibo culture. Increased exposure to mainstream Peruvian culture, emigration of men to salary-based work outside the Shipibo-Conibo area, and the activities of Christian missionaries have eroded the traditions and ceremonies that once ratified the production and use of the great vessels. Pottery production continues among the Shipibo-Coniba Indians but increasingly is directed to the production of urban and tourist wares.
The exhibition will be on view at the Douglas Dawson Gallery from March 25 to April 23, 2001, with an opening reception on Friday, March 25 at 6:00 PM.
Pre-Columbian Art in Argentina: A Recent Visit
I just returned from a month in Argentina and Buenos Aires, a remarkable city well-worth visiting. The ancient art and sites of Mexico, Guatemala and Peru are of course well known to many, but I suspect few could name a pre-Columbian culture or identify pre-Columbian art from the area that today comprises Argentina.
Unfortunately, despite its wealth and sophistication, Argentina does not have a museum dedicated solely to its rich pre-Columbian past. (this is the case with most Latin American countries, Mexico being the exception with its superb Museum of Anthropology and numerous regional museums of the highest standards.) However, there are several museums in Argentina well-worth visiting to see superb pre-Columbian art.
The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (MNBA) in Buenos Aires has one small but excellent gallery dedicated to pre-Columbian art. The stone sculptures of the Aguada culture are sensational and very accessible to 21st century Western eyes. The Aguada culture existed in NW Argentina from approximately 700 AD- 1000 AD. Also in the same gallery are the amazing bronze bells and plaques of the Belen/Santa Marla culture,(1000 AD – 1450AD) also of NW Argentina on the eastern slope of the Andes. These bronze objects represent a significant technological advance in metallurgy and like the Aguada stone sculptures are remarkable for their aesthetic affinity with a contemporary art vocabulary. I also recommend viewing the series of panels depicting the conquest of Mexico by Hernan Cortez. They were executed in the 18th century by two Mexican brothers and are both beautiful and important.
The colonial city of Salta, in far northwest Argentina at the confluence of Bolivia, Chile and Paraguay, has, arguably, the most sophisticated museum dedicated to pre-Columbian art in Argentina, specifically the Inca child sacrifices discovered on the peaks of several of the highest mountains in the Andes. The museum, Museo de Arqueologia de Alta Montana (MAAM), is beautifully designed, climate and light controlled and with excellent labels, albeit only in Spanish. In the 15th century the Inca, in supplication of their principle deities, sacrificed very young children and placed them in burials complimented by remarkably preserved artifacts, mostly exquisite miniatures. There is also an excellent section of the museum dedicated to the Inca road system that extended into Argentina. The Museo de Antropologia, also in Salta, just above the Sheraton Hotel, is also worth a visit. Despite needing a face life and good cleaning it has an excellent display of Santa Maria urns (described below) and reproductions of several of the important cave art sites in the area.
South of Salta, via the sensational Quebrada de Cafayate, is the attractive town of Cafayate. While most visit this beautiful area to sample the superb wines there is a small private museum worth visiting. It is indicated on most maps of the village but is just down the street from a charming hotel, Hotel Killi. The Museo Arqueologico Rodolfo Bravo is in a ramshackle old house and run by a bit over-the-hill and rather rude widow of the amateur archaeologist who assembled everything. Despite this, the collection is astonishing if horribly displayed and cared for. The Santa Maria culture, which flourished in the Salta/Tucuman region during the 14th century, buried their dead in large, elaborately decorated urns, which are quite spectacular. This strange museum has hundreds of them, precariously perched on a long flimsy wooden shelf that runs the entire circumference of the building. If there is ever an earthquake all will be lost.
Lastly, and my favorite of all the museums I visited in Argentina, is the Museo de La Plata, in La Plata, the capital of the province of Buenos Aires, about an hour’s drive south of Buenos Aires. This museum is the oldest museum in Latin America and happily, for those of us who lament the changes in many American museums of natural history (The Field in Chicago for example) has not changed much at all since it opened in 1899. It is one huge cabinet of curiosities, dusty Victorian cases of dark oak and faded labels, wonderful halls of stuffed animals, denizens of exotic Patagonia, glorious public spaces of iron tracery, romantic murals, beautiful tiles floors, and a spectacular gallery of skeletons – hundreds and hundreds staring out of glass cabinets. Wonderful. Highlights, for me; the pre-Columbian hall dedicated to Argentine material, the ethnographic gallery (recently updated and very good), the ‘bone room’, and the fragment of skin from the prehistoric giant sloth that featured as a central element in Bruce Chatwin’s masterpiece In Patagonia. It’s there.
“Kiff Slemmons: Paper” Extended
Kiff Slemmons’ Paper exhibition, currently on display at the Douglas Dawson Gallery, will be extended for two additional weeks. Now through January 22.
Masterworks of North Carolina Earthenware
For those who heard curator Luke Beckerdite lecture at the Gallery on “Masterworks of North Carolina Earthenware” … a reminder that the “ART IN CLAY” exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum closes on January 17, 2011. We saw the exhibition again this Sunday and highly recommend it.
An Interview with Rowland Ricketts
The Ashes & Milk Blog hosts Nikko Moy’s nterview with Rowland Ricketts, as well as spectacular images from the INDIGO exhibition currently at the Douglas Dawson Gallery. One should see these beautiful noren in person. Through December 4, 2010.
Speed Art Museum Masterpieces
The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, focuses on five new acquisitions in “Pursuing the Masterpiece: Five Recent Acquisitions” through Dec 31. See article in Louisville’s Courier-Journal, “New collection blazes path for Speed Museum” by Elizabeth Kramer. Among these is the beaded tunic and crown from a Yoruba royal family in Nigeria purchased from the Douglas Dawson Gallery.
Oyewusi II in his beaded coronation tunic, which the Speed Art Museum recently purchased from the Douglas Dawson Gallery.
Yoruba Beaded Crowns: Sacred Regalia of the Olokuku and the Okuku, Ulli Beier (1982): Cover Detail
The Speed
Art Museum, Louisville, KY, focuses on five new acquisitions in “Pursuing the Masterpiece: Five Recent Acquisitions” through Dec 31. See article on courier-journal.com, “New collection blazes path for Speed Museum” by Elizabeth Kramer. Among these is the beaded tunic and crown from a Yoruba royal family in Nigeria purchased from the Douglas Dawson Gallery.
