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by Christina HellmichHawaiian figurative carvings of the 18th and 19th centuries are some of the most visually compelling yet mysterious works created in Polynesia. Often, knowledge about their original creators, owners, and use is lost, and many exist today as singular examples. An unattributed figurative pendant on a necklace in the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, appears to be a good example of this situation. What began as an attempt to briefly resolve the provenance of the necklace for inventory purposes grew into a substantial research project.
The Micronesian squatting figure is a true tribal art mystery. For the last 100 years this interesting sculpture has been a popular genre figure in the western Caroline Islands, but does it represent the last vestiges of a disappearing religious tradition, or is it simply a tourist motif, perhaps introduced from another cultural area by a capricious colonial power?
The emphasis on the head (Ori) in Yoruba figure sculpture goes beyond its biological importance as the seat of the brain that controls the body. It reveals the anthropocentric nature of Yoruba cosmology, which identifies the Supreme Being, Olodumare, as the head of a pantheon of deities called òrìsà, who act as the agents of its enabling power (àse). This Supreme Being is sometimes called Oba Orun, the King of Heaven, and Olu Iwa, Lord/Head of Existence (Idowu 1995:37-38; and Euba 1985:3).
A fascinating lithic culture, almost unknown today, flourished in the Sierra Madre del Sur of Western Mexico in early pre-Hispanic times. Developing parallel to the equally arcane stone-working tradition of the Mezcala, the Chontal people created a vast array of figurative sculpture apparently intended to accompany the dead in afterlife. Their innovative art prefigures the great Mesoamerican civilizations and is compelling evidence for a reappraisal of the role played by the Guerrero region in the history of ancient Mexico.
by Louis PerroisA Kwele mask, seen by chance in an exhibition of African art, is readily identifiable. Looking at the subtly refined forms, the mild concave shapes, and especially the graceful heart-shaped face, one might be tempted to assume it to be a classic form of African sculpture, as iconic as Dogon or Fang works. Strangely, this is not so, although art enthusiasts and specialists have admired these works for decades.
"They're not spears-they're arrows." I cannot count the number of times I have said that at auction viewings, galleries, and junk shops in my nearly forty years of collecting Melanesian arrows. It is easy to think that a pointed object that can be as tall as a man or longer is a spear, especially when the pointed object lacks the feathers we expect to find on arrows. Yet these tall, reed-shafted, and often elaborately headed, pointed objects are indeed arrows meant to be shot from bows.
by Éric Chazot and Jean-Pierre GirolamiOver the centuries, the steep slopes of the Himalayas, from the great mountains to the plains, have been populated by a variety of ethnic groups of Mongoloid or Indo-Aryan descent. Despite their diversity, these groups reflect a unique geographical environment that has shaped their way of life and thought.
A major exhibition of 300 examples of Oceanic jewelry titled Adorned: Traditional Jewellery and Body Decoration from Australia and the Pacific can be seen at the Macleay Museum in Sydney, Australia, through January 2001.
It is quite unusual to find sculptures from the southern part of Sudan in early collections, whether public or private. This war-torn region has been inaccessible for many years, and, until very recently, southern Sudan was one of the few regions unscathed by African traders scouting for works of art. Sculpture from this remote region has only recently begun to appear in greater numbers on the art market, but despite their lack of pedigree they are worthy of detailed examination. In this article, we will describe the funerary sculptures of the Bongo and Belanda tribes. In a second article, to be published in a future issue of Tribal Arts, we will address the sculptural traditions of other ethnic groups in the region as well as other forms of artistic production by the Bongo.
The history of the Northwest Coast objects housed in Madrid's Museo de América is a checkered one. Their path has been circuitous from the time they were collected until their formal presentation in today's museum. The background of this collection, like so many others preserved in Spanish museums, is closely tied to the royal and noble collections formed in centuries past.
Lying off the coast of Southeast Asia, Borneo is the largest island of the great Malay archipelago that stretches eastward from Southeast Asia to the western tip of New Guinea. Covered by dense tropical rainforest, this enormous island, roughly twice the size of the British Isles, is divided between the modern nations of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the oil-rich sultanate of Brunei. Europeans first encountered this land in 1521, when members of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition made a brief stop at Brunei, but the island remained largely unexplored by Europeans until the latter half of the nineteenth century. Today, the cities of the coast are predominantly Islamic, and the indigenous peoples live deep in the interior.
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