Mask with Encircling HornsWood and kaolin, L: 62.5 cm. H: 42 cm
Collected by Aristide Courtois, Ex-coll. Josef Müller
© Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva
Inv. BMG 1019-15
Photo P.-A.Ferrazzini
Well, I'll try to give you an idea. Today, after waking up and deciding what to wear, a somewhat involved process as I am one of the world's most indecisive dressers and I seem only to own uncomfortable shoes these days, I will go to [my grad school]. There I will have lunch with other students in our lovely marble lunch room before sitting in on a class on classicism/anti-classicism in European art between the wars--a friend of mine is giving a presentation on Nazi architecture, and I remain interested in pretty much anything German and potentially dealing with Berlin from about 1900-present. [I lived in Berlin for a few sweet months in the spring and summer of 2004. It's a truly amazing place.]
After the presentation (during which I will hopefully NOT fall asleep), I will go to [redacted world-famous museum], where I will look at the Kwele mask they have in storage. What do I mean by "look at"? Basically, I will try to do with a physical object what literary folks do with a book: analyze the crap out of it.
After the presentation (during which I will hopefully NOT fall asleep), I will go to [redacted world-famous museum], where I will look at the Kwele mask they have in storage. What do I mean by "look at"? Basically, I will try to do with a physical object what literary folks do with a book: analyze the crap out of it.
Pipibudze MaskWood and kaolin, H: 25.4 cm
Ex-coll. Tristan Tzara
© Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva; Inv. BMG 1019-80
Photo P.-A.Ferrazzini
What does the mask look like in person? How are the paints applied? What does the object tell me about the people who made it? How does it inform what I already know about the type of object it is? Does it fit neatly into the corpus, or is it a problematic inclusion? More importantly, what does it look like?
Gong MaskWood and pigment, H: 55 cm
© Musée Dapper, Paris.
Photo M.Carrieri
What can we say about the masks I've posted here? Well, they all exhibit bi-lateral symmetry and polychromy. Several of the masks have protruding elements like horns (on the first and last masks), teeth (on the gorilla, third), or trunks (on the elephant, fourth); despite this, they generally remain two-dimensional--what does it mean that this is not exactly true for the elephant? There is a strong preference for heart-shaped faces--are there similarities to other masking traditions in the area? I'll probably spend a few hours trying to find the answer to this question--and it's this sort of inquiry, my friends, that keeps me in the library until the long hours of the night.
It's not that art historians simply look at an object and then write about it, no no no: you have to figure out WHY it looks like it does. This is always a crazy big question, because it means that you have to think about what else looks like your object, why does that other thing look like that... How do all aspects of your object inform what it looks like--and how does what it looks like inform what you know about the artist, the patron, the society, the religion, the artistic practice in the region, etc. etc. ad nauseam. And then you have to go back and look at the object again before you forget what it looks like. It's like a great big three-dimensional web in a dark room, and you've got a dinky little flashlight.
It's not that art historians simply look at an object and then write about it, no no no: you have to figure out WHY it looks like it does. This is always a crazy big question, because it means that you have to think about what else looks like your object, why does that other thing look like that... How do all aspects of your object inform what it looks like--and how does what it looks like inform what you know about the artist, the patron, the society, the religion, the artistic practice in the region, etc. etc. ad nauseam. And then you have to go back and look at the object again before you forget what it looks like. It's like a great big three-dimensional web in a dark room, and you've got a dinky little flashlight.
Mask with Trunk (Elephant)Wood and pigment, H: 76.2 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Michael C.Rockefeller Memorial Collection,
Gift of Nelson A.Rockefeller, New York, 1964. 1978.412.292
© 1989 The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Anyway, these masks are quite striking, aren't they? Seeing them in person is so great--but then, art is always better in person.
After looking at the mask and taking as many notes as I can about as many different aspects of it as I can, I'll spend a few hours at the museum's library, taking yet more notes on a PhD dissertation about the BaKwele ("Ba" = people). [This is why I developed tendonitis in my thumb, people. It sucks.] Then I'll go home and prepare to tutor SAT tomorrow. Excellent!
After looking at the mask and taking as many notes as I can about as many different aspects of it as I can, I'll spend a few hours at the museum's library, taking yet more notes on a PhD dissertation about the BaKwele ("Ba" = people). [This is why I developed tendonitis in my thumb, people. It sucks.] Then I'll go home and prepare to tutor SAT tomorrow. Excellent!
Antelope MaskWood and kaolin, H: 38cm
© Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva.Inv. BMG 1019-49.
Photo P.-A.Ferrazzini
An important note: the masks I've posted here represent a selection of all the Kwele masks out there, not that there are a lot. I tend to prefer the ones with protruding elements and high contrast values, so those are the ones that I've chosen to post on my blog--but they are NOT really that representative of the corpus of Kwele masks. For that--or if you're just interested in the masks I've posted--you should look at Louis Perrois's article on Kwele masks at Tribal Arts, "Art of the Kwele of Equatorial Africa: Ancestor masks, bush spirit masks." It's where I got the images for this post.
A caveat about the article: though Perrois is a well-respected scholar of other African art forms, he has not done very well on incorporating accurate ethnographic information into his formal analysis of these masks. Though his article is not very scholarly and rather informal, it does, however, provide a much more rounded selection of images than this blog post does.
A caveat about the article: though Perrois is a well-respected scholar of other African art forms, he has not done very well on incorporating accurate ethnographic information into his formal analysis of these masks. Though his article is not very scholarly and rather informal, it does, however, provide a much more rounded selection of images than this blog post does.
Originally posted April 23, 2008.
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