“I found myself the proud possessor of 12 fantastic artifacts,
consisting of masks and sculptures from New Guinea, the Belgian Congo, the
French Sudan, Peru, Brazil, Mexico and New Ireland”
Peggy Guggenheim
Out of this Century
Migrating Objects
Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas in
the
Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Peggy Guggenheim challenged boundaries as a patron and collector
and is celebrated for her groundbreaking European
and American modern art collection. At
Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, until June 14, Migrating Objects: Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas in the
Peggy Guggenheim Collection focuses on a lesser-known, but crucial episode
in Guggenheim’s collecting: her turn in the 1950s and ’60s to works created by
artists in Africa, Oceania, and the indigenous Americas. The exhibition represents a
remarkable occasion to view 35 rarely seen non-Western artworks Guggenheim
collected, shown at the Peggy Guggenheim
Collection as a cohesive whole for the first time. This exhibition presents
Guggenheim’s African, Oceanic, and indigenous Americas objects in groupings
privileging their original contexts or, alternately, in dialogue with European works
from her collection by avant-garde artists who appropriated ideas from cultures
beyond Europe’s borders. These
opposing modes of display enable an exploration of the flawed narratives that Western culture imposed on objects of
this kind.
Soul Canoe – wuramon –
Mid-20th century – detail
Unrecorded Asmat artists – Papua – Western New Guinea – Indonesia
The Curators
Migrating Objects, was conceived by Peggy Guggenheim Collection Director Karole P.B. Vail together with the project’s Curatorial Advisory
Committee—comprising Christa Clarke, R.
Tripp Evans, Ellen McBreen, and Fanny Wonu Vey with Vivien Greene.
Ellen McBreen, Karole P.B.Vail, Fanny Wonu Vey and Vivien Greene
Louis
Marcoussis – L’Habitue – The Regular – 1920
Headress -
Ago Egungun – probably first half of 20th
century
workshop of Oniyide Adugbologe – ca. 1875-1949; Yoruba artist Abeokuta - Nigeria
Photo Archivio Cameraphoto Epoche. The Solomon
R. Guggenheim Foundation. Gift, Cassa di Risparmio di Venezia, 2005 – courtesy Peggy Guggenheim
Collection
“I could not
afford to buy anything that I wanted, so I turned to another field…I began
buying pre-Columbian and primitive art. In the next few weeks I found myself
the proud possessor of 12 fantastic artifacts, consisting of masks and
sculptures from New Guinea, the Belgian Congo, the French Sudan, Peru, Brazil,
Mexico and New Ireland. It reminded me, in reverse, of the days when Max
[Ernst] had left our home…and removed his treasures one by one from the walls.
Now they all seemed to be returning.”
Guggenheim,
Out of This Century: Confessions of an Art Addict.
New York: Andre Deutsch, 1979
In 1959, Peggy
Guggenheim purchased a group of non-Western objects from the New
York dealer Julius Carlebach, with works ranging from a Baga
D’mba headdress from Guinea to a malangan maramarua funerary
carving from New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. Guggenheim had already shown interest in such
works thanks in particular to her brief marriage to the artist Max Ernst,
who in the 1940s obsessively collected pre-Columbian, Oceanic, and
especially Native American art. Ernst’s collection was installed
alongside works made by the couple’s artist friends in the house they shared in
New York. Later she also bought examples in Italy
from Franco Monti and Paolo Barozzi. Her dealers must have guided
Guggenheim’s selections to some extent. But she followed her own vision when
installing these objects in her Venetian palazzo, alongside paintings by
Pablo Picasso and Ernst, among others.
Venice - Peggy Guggenheim - The barchessa - Palazzo Venier dei Leoni late 1960s
Headdress - Ago
Egungun - probably first half of 20th century, workshop of Oniyide
Adugbologe - ca. 1875–1949 - Yoruba artist Abeokuta, Nigeria
Mythologizing the Dogon
Seated male figure
– probably first half 20th
century
Unrecorded Dogon
artist – N’duleri region – Mali
Lidded container - probably first half 20th century
Unrecorded Dogon
artist– Mali
Vessel – aduno
koro – possibly16th-early 20th
century
Unrecorded Dogon artist – Mali
Fanny Wonu Veys
curator - Oceania, National Museum of
World Cultures - The Netherlands
D’mba headdress and Pablo Picasso
Peggy Guggenheim began collecting African art in 1959, just prior to the “Year of Africa” —when seventeen African nations declared their
independence. But most collectors’ preferences were unrelated to the works’
contemporary African contexts. By selecting this Baga D’mba headdress from
Guinea and the Kota reliquary guardian figure from Gabon, Guggenheim followed tastes that the artistic avant-garde had
established in the early 1900s. These two African traditions were closely
associated with Pablo Picasso’s art
and likely played a role in her selection. In Half-Length Portrait of a Man in a Striped Jersey, Picasso embedded
two sharp pyramids into the oval normally used to represent a head. Once he self-servingly
insisted that the African sculptures in his studio were “more witnesses than
models,” but their formal and conceptual impact on his work is undeniable.
D’mba headdress - probably
first half 20th century
Unrecorded Baga
artist – Guinea
Pablo Picasso - Half-Length Portrait of a Man in a Striped Jersey 1939
Ellen McBreen
associate professor - History of Art -
Wheaton College - Mass.
“Primitive Art is a mine of information . . . but to understand and
appreciate it, it is more important to look at it than to learn the history of
primitive peoples, their religions and social customs.”
Henry Moore
Sepik Carving and the Sculpture of Henry Moore
When, in the 1930s, Henry Moore began to utilize a Surrealist language in his
representations of the human body, he borrowed from the extraordinary forms of Sepik works and other Oceanic sculpture he saw at London’s British Museum and in publications. He wrote that “Primitive Art is a mine of information
. . . but to understand and appreciate it, it is more important to look at it
than to learn the history of primitive peoples, their religions and social
customs.” Moore’s response was typical of many artists who thought
that ignoring the objects’ original meanings allowed for a deeper
understanding of their purely visual complexities.
Flute figure – late 19th- early 20th century
unrecorded Chambri
artist – East Sepik Province – Papua New
Guinea
Male figure – Kadibon or Kandimbog – early 20th century
Unrecorded artist – Murik Lake – East Sepik Province – Papua New Guinea
Suspension hook – early 20th century
Unrecorded Western
latmul artist - East Sepik Province
– Papua New Guinea
Henry Moore – Three Standing Figures – 1953
Bark mask – first half 20th century
Undrecorded
Cubeo artist – Rio Uaupes region
– Northern Amazon
Chimu poncho and Tancredi Parmeggiani
More than half a millennium, and
sharply differing goals, separate Italian
artist Tancredi Parmeggiani’s Transparencies of the Elements - 1957
from the Chimu feather poncho Guggenheim collected in 1959. One could
easily imagine that Guggenheim’s first encounter with the poncho summoned the equally vibrant, feather-like strokes of
Tancredi’s painting style, inspiring her to hang them together. Both
compositions, moreover, reveal or suggest the intersecting warp and weft of a
woven textile. Despite the stark contrast in the pieces’ techniques—the
painstaking construction of the feather poncho
versus the joyful spontaneity of crayon and gouache—it is this very
juxtaposition that likely appealed to Guggenheim.
Poncho with camelids – 900-1470 CE
Unrecorded Chimu
artists – Kingdom of Chimor – Northern
Peru
Tancredi Parmiggiani - Transparencies
of the Elements – 1957
Tatanua mask – malangan – early 20th century
Unrecorded
Madak artist – Northern New Ireland
– Papua New Guinea
Mask – angbai or nyanbai
– probably first half 20th century
Unredorded Toma
or Loma artist – Guinea
Female Ci Wara headdress – probably first half 20th century unrecorded
Bamana artist – Segou region – Mali
Male Ci Wara headdress – probably first half 20th
century
unrecorded
Bamana artist – Segou region – Mali
“This
exhibition represents an exceptional opportunity for the UNHCR to expand and
ameliorate the general public’s perception of refugees. They are not only
desperate people seeking protection, but above all individuals forced to flee
their homelands bringing with them a rich combination of culture, talent, and
dreams to be shared with the countries that welcome them. As these objects of
art from apparently distant places dialogue with Western works, they remind us
that ideas migrate with people and through them foster exchanges of equal
dignity and value. There is a third alternative to rejection and assimilation,
and it is the most enlightened one: that of a society in which, every day,
cultures and languages are multiple and hybrid. Even now, our ways of living
are mutually influential, provoking an invaluable wealth of viewpoints."
Carlotta
Sami
Senior Public Information Officer - UNHCR
UNHCR’s Carlotta Sami
and Barbara Molinario
Migrating Objects: Arts of Africa, Oceania,
and the Americas in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, has received the patronage of the UNHCR (United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees).
Equestrian figure – probably first half of the 20th century
unrecorded
Senufo artist – Cote d’Ivoire
Figure of a horse – syon –
probably mid-20th century
unrecorded
Senufo artist – Cote d’Ivoire
Senufo
Two-Faced Helmet Mask – wanyugo and Alberto Giacometti
Only in the mid-twentieth century
were Senufo helmet masks taken from
the Cote d’Ivoire and sold on the European market. Thus, this specific
sculpture type would not have been familiar to Alberto Giacometti when he created Woman with her Throat Cut in 1932. However, the wanyugo
exemplifies the fantastical themes that he and other Surrealists coopted for their own artistic purposes. Peggy Guggenheim likely echoed such
associations when she later combined these two sculptures in her own, often
ahistorical, installations.
Two-faced
helmet mask – wanyugo – probably mid-20th
century
Unrecorded Senufo artist – cote
d’Ivoire
Alberto
Giacometti – Woman with her Throat Cut – Donna Sgozzata 1932 – cast 1940
Luciano
Pensabene and Grazina Subelyte
Three-panel mummy mask – 900-1470 CE
Unrecorded Chimu artist
– Kingdom of Chimor – Northern Peru
Nayarit Marriage Pair with Infant and Henry
Moore - Family Group
The kinship between Henry Moore’s Family Group - ca. 1944 - and this ancient West Mexican marriage pair with infant extends well beyond the
works’ shared subjects. Beginning in the 1920s, Moore developed what would
become a lifelong fascination with ancient Mexican sculpture. The tubular
torsos, burnished surface, and conjoined bodies of the Nayarit couple display the very hallmarks that influenced Moore’s
work.
Marriage pair with infant – 300BCE-400CE
Unrecorded Nayarit
artist – Ixtlan del Rio culture –
ancient West Mexico
Hnery Moore – Family Group – 1944 – cast 1956
Imagining
the Pacific
Oceanic cultures fascinated the Surrealists, who were drawn to their art with its dreamlike
subjects and processes of transformation. Max
Ernst, for example, appropriated selected Oceanic - as well as Native American - themes in his work. Peggy Guggenheim was introduced to some
of these ideas while married to Ernst and living with his collection in their New York home. In 1942 Ernst gave
Guggenheim his painting, The Antipope
- 1941-42 - as thanks for her years of support and help in escaping Europe during World War II. She called the painting Mystic Marriage, since it dramatized their complicated relationship
in a disquieting pictorial fable. She is likely evoked by the hybrid
horse-headed warrior in red. In pursuit of imagery untethered from reality, the
Surrealists were profoundly influenced by these objects because of their
resistance to fixed states. They believed that mechanized Western society had tragically distanced itself from the
imaginative ethos present in Oceanic work. By mining the cultures of the Pacific islands, the Surrealists sought
to reconnect with longed for, nonvisible realms of experience.
Ancestor figure – miamba maira – mid 20th century
Unrecorded Wosera
artist – Southern Abelam Bibmagum or
Bogmuken – village – East Sepik Province – Papua New Guinea
Element of ceremonial house – mid-20th century
Unrecorded Abelam
or Boiken artist – Maprik – East Sepik Province – Papua New Guinea
Ancestor figure – 1900-1960
Unrecorded Sawos
artist – Yamok Village - East Sepik Province – Papua New Guinea
In 1942 Ernst gave Guggenheim
his painting, The Antipope - 1941-42
- as thanks for her years of support and help in escaping Europe during World War II.
She called the painting Mystic Marriage,
since it dramatized their complicated relationship in a disquieting pictorial
fable. She is likely evoked by the hybrid horse-headed warrior in red.
Max Ernst – The Antipope – December 1941 – March 1942
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