Thursday, February 20, 2020

Venice: Peggy Guggenheim Collection – Migrating Objects



“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 Canoewuramon – 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 horsesyon – 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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