Day 132 - New Caledonian mask
March 6, 2019
Gallery 354 is an enormous space largely devoted to the art of New Guinea. It houses many very large objects, the most notable of which, suspended from the gallery's high ceiling, is a huge canoe with an elaborately carved keel. There are also any number of 15-foot-high poles, which, rather like totem poles, depict the lineage of deceased ancestors through the stacking of human figures (all nude, all male) one on top of another; many masks used in dance and other ceremonies; carved house posts; and many other kinds of objects.
They are beautifully displayed, with lengthy ethnographic explanations, and I wonder, not for the first time, whether, if Nelson Rockefeller hadn't donated this collection to the Met, it would find a better home in the Museum of Natural History. The gallery raises for me some basic questions: How much does treating these objects as works of art depend on wresting them out of their cultural context? What is art, what is craft? How important is the concept of originality in the creation of art? It is interesting that I never thought to ask myself these questions when I was exploring the Egyptian galleries, with their innumerable, highly formulaic depictions of rituals and traditions (pharaoh makes offering to god, e.g.). It's the unfamiliarity of the objects in this gallery -- their strangeness, their lack of conformity to the Eurocentric norms with which I'm far better acquainted -- that brings such questions to the fore.
Today's object is a wooden mask, perhaps 28 inches high, that was carved in the mid to late 19th century in New Caledonia. Its most distinctive features are the man's enormous bulbous nose (which I couldn't resist photographing from the side as well as frontally) and his mouthful of individually carved teeth. I originally read the latter as scary, but the caption describes the face as "grinning," and I suppose that, in conjunction with the nose, the whole does have a comic appearance. The mask's eyes are solid almond-shaped forms topped by heavy brow ridges; the wearer looked out through the toothy mouth. The caption further explains that masks were worn by chiefs at important gatherings as part of an elaborate costume that concealed the wearer's identity. Did the chief who wore this mask see its bulbous nose as faintly ridiculous and potentially undercutting his authority, or is this just my 21st century reaction?
They are beautifully displayed, with lengthy ethnographic explanations, and I wonder, not for the first time, whether, if Nelson Rockefeller hadn't donated this collection to the Met, it would find a better home in the Museum of Natural History. The gallery raises for me some basic questions: How much does treating these objects as works of art depend on wresting them out of their cultural context? What is art, what is craft? How important is the concept of originality in the creation of art? It is interesting that I never thought to ask myself these questions when I was exploring the Egyptian galleries, with their innumerable, highly formulaic depictions of rituals and traditions (pharaoh makes offering to god, e.g.). It's the unfamiliarity of the objects in this gallery -- their strangeness, their lack of conformity to the Eurocentric norms with which I'm far better acquainted -- that brings such questions to the fore.
Today's object is a wooden mask, perhaps 28 inches high, that was carved in the mid to late 19th century in New Caledonia. Its most distinctive features are the man's enormous bulbous nose (which I couldn't resist photographing from the side as well as frontally) and his mouthful of individually carved teeth. I originally read the latter as scary, but the caption describes the face as "grinning," and I suppose that, in conjunction with the nose, the whole does have a comic appearance. The mask's eyes are solid almond-shaped forms topped by heavy brow ridges; the wearer looked out through the toothy mouth. The caption further explains that masks were worn by chiefs at important gatherings as part of an elaborate costume that concealed the wearer's identity. Did the chief who wore this mask see its bulbous nose as faintly ridiculous and potentially undercutting his authority, or is this just my 21st century reaction?
I was originally going to write instead about an immense carved bowl used to serve food at ceremonial gatherings. But I wanted to resist the inclination I have felt in these galleries to write about objects whose functions I can understand, rather than about objects more clearly vested with a spiritual significance that I don't understand and can barely imagine. One thing does seem clear: that, in all cultures and in all eras, humans have chosen to adorn even everyday objects with forms and designs that have pleased or excited or moved them, whether their responses have been purely aesthetic or have been overlaid with cultural or religious or spiritual meaning.
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