He smiles and nods slightly, like an actor, and they simply stare at him, their faces like masks, he thinks, those tribal masks in the Metropolitan Museum that are always a little disturbing to visit, because they suggest ceremonies and superstitions that are passionate and dangerous. He has always taken care to keep such thoughts from his waking life. --
From the New York Times T Men's Fashion Spring 2009:
Samuel Fosso, Man of a Thousand Faces
by Leslie Camhi
Fosso satirized the corruption of Africa’s leaders in a color picture he created in 1997, when the Parisian department store Tati invited him to set up a photography studio (with, for the first time, a budget for makeup and costumes) in Barbès, a neighborhood popular with African immigrants. ‘‘People think it’s Mobutu,’’ he said of a comically surreal image that shows the seated artist, draped in gold jewelry and leopard skins and holding sunflowers, a symbol of traditional African medicine. (In other pictures from that series, he appears as a Japanese sailor and a ‘‘liberated’’ African-American woman.) ‘‘In fact,’’ he explained, ‘‘it’s a photograph that represents all those African chiefs who sold their continent to the whites.’’
See the whole article here.
From the most recent issue (v. 117, no. 4, December 2008) of the Journal of the Polynesian Society:
A Recently Revealed Tino Aitu Figure from Nukuoro Island, Caroline Islands, Micronesia
ROGER NEICH
A previously unknown Nukuoro figure in the private collection of Mina and Ed Smith of San Diego and on temporary display at the De Young Museum, San Francisco.
Click here to access the online version through WATSONLINE.
L'art de Kanda-Kanda / Rik Ceyssens. (Tribus, v. 57 (2008), p. 49-67)
The author recasts the Kanyok 'sub-style' of the Luba as identified by Olbrechts as chiefly the artistic production of the Kanda-Kanda region, a garrison and administrative center, and border town of the Kanyok kingdom. Much of the art collected there was made primarily for export.
Das tiermenschliche Verwandlungsgesicht einer Gottheit. Ikonografische Studie zu einem polymorphen Gefäß der altperuanischen Moche-Kultur / Bärbel Lieske. (Indiana, vol. 25 (2008), p. 95-116)
Click here to locate a copy of Indiana in WATSONLINE. The journal is not available online, but you can see abstracts of the issue contents here.
Tribal : the magazine of tribal art celebrates its 50th issue.
Contents of the Autumn/Winter 2008 (vol. 13, no. 1) issue (via Tribal Art):
ART on view :
FEATURE :
TRIBAL people :
OBJECT History :
SPOTLIGHT :
ART + Law :
PORTFOLIO :
Click here to check in WATSONLINE on availability of the print version
Click here to access the online version through WATSONLINE (not yet available as of 12/19/08)
Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art
A wall hanging from the seventh or eighth century, made of cotton and macaw feathers. It was created by the Wari, a people of Peru’s southern highlands.
via NYTimes: Art Review:
'Radiance From the Rain Forest'
Objects From a Long-Vanished Peru, Parading All Their Magnificent Plumage
By KAREN ROSENBERG
Published: July 5, 2008As Darwin wrote, brightly colored feathers give certain species of birds an evolutionary advantage. Ancient Peruvians adapted such plumage for their own purposes, adorning ritual objects and personal accessories with startling yellows, reds, greens and blues.
“Radiance From the Rain Forest: Featherwork in Ancient Peru,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is one of the few New York museum exhibitions ever to focus on this little-known art form. Organized by a senior research associate, Heidi King, it supplements the Met’s rarely displayed holdings of featherwork with examples borrowed from public and private collections, including those of the Brooklyn Museum and the American Museum of Natural History. It’s the kind of specialized yet accessible show that only the Met can pull off.
According to Ms. King, ancient Peruvians had no written language, and the symbolism is therefore somewhat arcane. Contemporary viewers can nonetheless appreciate the way feathers conveyed wealth, status and sheer animal magnetism.
Most of the works on view were made between the 7th and 16th centuries, before the Spanish conquest of Peru. They were objects for the elite, fashioned with feathers that were carried across the Andes from the Amazonian rain forests. The plumes themselves were considered luxury goods on a par with precious metals, shells and gemstones.
Well-preserved examples of featherwork are rare, because feathers are easily damaged and, like other organic materials, decompose. Among the most vivid works in the exhibition are two hangings with a simple abstract design of blue and yellow macaw feathers arranged in quadrants; they have retained their color and texture because they were stored in rolls within large ceramic urns. Made by the Wari people of Peru’s southern highlands, they are among the oldest works in the exhibition, dating from the seventh or eighth century, but they have a remarkably modern feel.
Macaws and other parrots supplied most of the plumage, but that of other species — Muscovy ducks, flamingos, egrets and the petite paradise tanager — was also prized. Some colors were produced artificially in a process known as tapirage. Birds with, say, green and blue feathers were plucked and then rubbed with frog secretions; the feathers would then grow back in an unnatural yellow-orange hue.
The Peruvians used several methods to attach feathers to a cotton or leather backing. To cover a large area, as with the Wari hangings, they often layered strings of feathers in horizontal rows. For smaller objects, individual feathers were glued on with a kind of mosaic technique.
On the large end of the scale are several richly patterned tabards, or open-sided tunics. The most spectacular of these has a blue semicircle, echoing the shape of a bird with extended wings, on a yellow background. On the smaller scale is a set of ear ornaments carved from wood and adorned with an intricate circular pattern of feathery wisps. Both examples date from the reign of the Chimu kings, who ruled the northern coast of Peru from the 13th century until the Spanish conquest in the 1500s.
The Chimu kings and other Peruvian royals favored luxurious accessories, including several different styles of headdress. Among the examples on view are conical helmets, a crown with flat plates in the front and rear, and a gladiatorlike tuft attached to waist-length earflaps.
Arguably the most beautiful object is a headdress from the late Moche or Wari periods (the 8th to the 10th century), patterned with curlicues, trapezoids and broad stripes of blue, chartreuse, red and black.
Not all Peruvian featherwork was intended for personal decoration. Peoples including the Nasca and the Inca used small feathered figures in rituals and as burial offerings. In a miniature family grouping, made by the Nasca in the first to third centuries, the figures have tiny parrot feathers tied to their wigs of braided human hair.
Other examples of ritual featherwork include a bag holding coca leaves made by Inca craftsmen within a century or so before the conquest. The covering of red and yellow parrot feathers remains intact, as do the bag’s medicinal contents.
Although the works in “Radiance” had social and religious currency in pre-Columbian Peru, their appeal transcends cultures. As the Rev. Bernabé Cobo, a Spanish missionary, noted in a chronicle of Peruvian customs, “The gloss, splendor and sheen of this feather cloth is of such exceptional beauty that it must be seen to be appreciated.”
Neue Erkenntnisse zum Tocapu-Symbolsystem am Beispiel eines Männerhemdes der Inkazeit in der Altamerika-Sammlung des Linden Museum / Christiane Clados
(A Key Checkerboard Pattern Tunic of the Linden-Museum Stuttgart: First Steps in Breaking the Tocapu Code?)
Tribus: Jahrbuch des Linden-Museums, Band 56 (2007), pp. 71-106.
Left: unku con tocapu de "llave" / Foto: Yukata Yoshii
[source]
"The tocapu symbol system of Wari and Inca cultures belongs to the most impressive aspects of material culture of prehispanic South America. Although progress has been done in the past years the meaning and function of the tocapus remains unclear. This chapter presents new results about tocapus by analyzing a fragment of an Inca key checkerboard pattern tunic of the Linden Museum Stuttgart (Linden-Museum Stuttgart, Germany, 1167.771) which up to now has never been discussed in former publications ... It is a Quompi weaving.
"Consistent with the results of the iconographic analysis the author suggests an interpretation of the Inca key checkerboard pattern tunic of the Linden Museum in relation to representations of (mythical) serpents." -- Excerpted from Abstract
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