Pacific Rim Arts in the Minneapolis Institute of Art
Pacific Rim Arts in the Minneapolis Institute of Art
Curated by Steven G. Alpert
This month's foray into artistic discovery and collective storytelling takes us to the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Founded in 1883, The Minneapolis Institute of Art stewards an outstanding collection that spans a wide swath of human history. As one of America's larger museums, this institution houses nearly 100,000 items covering 5,000 years of human history and artistic achievement. The material illustrated below is from the museum's holdings of traditional Pacific Rim cultures that include sculpture, utilitarian objects, and cloth ranging from the Northwest Coast of America and those of Inuit peoples of Alaska, the Ainu of Japan, diverse Melanesian Islands, New Guinea, Polynesia, and Indonesia.
From British Columbia and Alaska, two frontlets and a mask are featured. The use of formal regalia and masking was an important cultural component in many of the indigenous rites and celebrations there. Transformational, totemic, or mythically inspired masks and clan crests were used during Potlatch feasts or other ceremonial events. These items often personify the totemic affiliation of their wearer to their subject matter, further connecting and commingling the living with the supernatural. This involved storytelling, sound, and movement as dancers invoked a living connection with the personae of the creatures being depicted, reinforcing their meaning to one's genealogy and community at large.
Masks had many uses. Among them, they formed part of a house's clan treasures and were a vital element in storytelling, ritualized entertainment, and the perpetuation of important origin myths. Additionally, they were worn by shamans as spiritual helpers to aid in influencing events and producing desired outcomes. Masks could also be protectively hung both in their cedar-planked houses and placed with the graves of the deceased. In the retelling of their origin stories, Kwakwaka'wakw people often depict the sun, which is also revealed during a Potlatch, as the bringer and sustainer of life. Potlatching involves elaborate ceremonies, feasting, and the distribution of wealth and gift-giving to reinforce existing social hierarchies while exulting in and reaffirming one's lineage. Here, the 'sun' mask has seven beaten copper rays emanating from its head. Copper, whose distribution as a symbol of wealth was enhanced with the arrival of the Europeans, became synonymous with the upper realms and the nobility.
Other outstanding Northwest Coast items include a classic example of a possibly Tsimshian shaman's rattle and a Tlingit fighting knife, both dating to the 1820-1830's. The dagger combines native-forged steel, leather bindings, abalone shell, and a finely detailed carved pommel from burl wood in the form of a bear with perfectly exposed teeth and flaring nostrils. As the museum notes state, the bear is considered to be our relative, a creature of spiritual significance that embodies strength, power, and resourcefulness. Bears are revered as teachers and healers, and their habits convey both wisdom and resilience. The Tlingit referred to this type of dagger as quoth-lar, meaning to "strike with the fist." As an aside, I can attest to its 'extension' or balance in one's hand, its life force and beauty as it proudly once overlooked my fireplace. While seemingly simple, this dagger is exemplary of when form and function are as good as they can be without artifice or without being overly embellished. (For further elucidation of these principles (see Schefold: Eyes of the Ancestors pp. 29-33 or https://www.artoftheancestors.com/blog/paired-selections-of-virtuosity-steven-g-alpert.
North America is rounded out by two Inuit items of high merit. The first is a superb 19th Yup'ik mask, most likely in the form of a woman. This mask was re-fashioned from driftwood, feathers, and natural pigments and carved by a deft hand. Inuit masks were used for entertainment and storytelling over long winter Arctic nights, replete with dramatic performances that included song and dance. Spiritual aid and guidance were sought for burnishing hunting magic and, as one can imagine, for raising the communal esprit de corps of groups surviving in one of the world's harsher climates. Humor, coupled with a keen sense of observation, permeates their finest carvings and art forms. The second item is a seemingly one-eyed maskette. One socket depicts a raised black limbus surrounding a concave iris, while the other is a sunken deep void that may have once perhaps been inlaid. The fact that the eyes are dramatically different from one another provides this maskette with a riveting visage.
Three examples of worn items from the museum's collection are also illustrated, which are composed of trade materials that enhanced the prestige of their owners while visually defining their place within rigorous social orders. These include a ca. 1890 ceremonial Kaigani Haida blanket depicting a splayed beaver created from European mother-of-pearl buttons sewn onto a ground of red and blackish-blue trade wool, an Ainu ceremonial elm fiber and cotton appliqué robe (attus - pronounced as 'attush') from the same period that is unusually festooned with bits of metal, silk tassels, shells, bird bones and sturgeon scales, and a ceremonial betel nut bag from East Sumba in Indonesia from the very late 19th century to most probably the first half of the 20th century. The latter is composed of trade beads. With raised cloven forelegs, the bag's central animal sports a ruler's crown inspired mainly by a heraldic device from the reverse of colonial-era European coinage. Bags such as this one were carried by or interred with only the highest-ranking aristocrats. A final garment is a rare late 18th-early/19th-century Tahitian barkcloth or tapa (ahu in Tahitian) fashioned from the pounded bark and the inner cambium of the paper mulberry tree. Tapa was held in high esteem throughout Polynesia as they were not only worn but were also used ceremonially to wrap or swath important religious items. It was also a symbol of status, a measure of wealth, and a medium of ritual exchange. With its delicately drawn and seemingly floating ferns, a tapa such as this one would have been decorated by women of the upper classes.
From New Guinea, two items are featured. The first is a Sawos earthenware feasting bowl incised with ancestral faces set amid floral rosettes and connected by deft geometric scrolls. The bowl was then carefully painted with pigments derived from natural ochre. While not particularly old, it represents the artistic fluidity and continuum from a group that is justly famous for its classic wooden carvings, some of which are among the finest woodwork extant from Oceania. Another item from the world's second-largest island is an immense bis pole from the Asmat people who inhabit the swamplands of the southwestern coast of New Guinea (Papua). Towering Bis poles were associated with funeral feasts and erected in front of the men's house and along the shore to commemorate the newly deceased and to remind the village (that in former times) their spirit would, in turn, have to be avenged by a successful headhunting expedition. Poles not only marked cycles of revenge but are symbolic of fertility and regeneration. They were often highly sexualized. Here, the first two females cup enormous phalluses. The pole's top figure sits beside an open-work, wing-like projection springing from its loins that represents the emergence of new life in celebration of the power of reproduction. Once retired, poles are allowed to decay naturally among the sago palms, the Asmat's primary food source. Here, the supernatural force within a pole seeped into the earth, fertilizing it for future generations.
The finest items of oceanic art in Minneapolis' collection hail from the Northeast and East of New Guinea in the Bismarck Archipelago, including the Admiralty, New Britain, and New Ireland island chains that date from the 19th to the early 20th century. From the Admiralty Islands, there is a large ceremonial bowl (purukei). Purukei, with their elegant forms and attached handles in the shape of canoe prows, were important clan treasures that are said to have been initially made by the Matankol people of the island of Lou (See: AOTA: https://www.artoftheancestors.com/blog/arts-pacific-rim-montreal). They were carried in marriage corteges as symbols of dowry payments and used in festivals ranging from ceremonial feasting to funeral rites.
As in other nearby island cultures, many of the non-utilitarian objects in museum inventories were once either utilized in funeral practices or diverse ceremonies involving initiation or rite of passage ceremonies. A particularly expressive example of a limestone funerary figure (kulap) exclusive to southern New Ireland is illustrated. There, kulap served as temporary abodes for the deceased, and they were enshrined in ceremonial constructions. It was thought that if not so housed, the restless spirits of the dead might wander and cause harm to the living. After a soul became ritually settled, a kulap lost its efficaciousness and was abandoned or destroyed.
Two other items, both from northern New Ireland, were once part of a cycle of elaborate funeral rituals known as the malanggan. Malanggan rites involved an intricate display of masks, figures, and friezes where deceased males were honored while clan rights and chiefly prerogatives were reaffirmed. Performances, feasts, and carvings were created and arrayed for such occasions. The Minneapolis Institute of Art has several outstanding works from this rich and visually fascinating tradition. The first is a prominent figure playing a multi-piped instrument. Possibly an ancestor, her peaked hat crafted from pandanus leaves is typical of those fashioned for women. As she plays the pipes, the lower half of her body is encircled by serpents, which play an important symbolic role in this region. The second is a remarkable shrine frieze that explores the complementary struggle between birds (the sky) and snakes (the earth), which are said to be in constant oppositional flux with one another. Here, the birds cooperatively hold a black snake in their mouths to limit its ability to disrupt or harm either the malangan proceedings or the family performing these rites. (See: https://www.artoftheancestors.com/blog/new-ireland-michael-gunn)
A final Oceanic item, and one that also explores themes involving snakes, can be seen in an initiation mask from the Sulka people on the east coast of the nearby island of New Britain. This particular mask is associated with initiation ceremonies such as circumcision, nose piercing, or dowry exchanges. It depicts an animal-eared female with an enormous snake coming out of her mouth that must be appeased. The literature suggests that this oral-to-serpent connection is said to represent the violent force of tornados or seaward whirlpools that can suck in or attack humans while also causing torrential rains, thunder, lightning, and general mayhem (Bateson: 1928). The creation of brightly colored masks to control such forces was considered a sacred endeavor. Among the Sulka peoples, masking could be colorful and complex, and their creations involved a great deal of secrecy and competition. This mask utilizes the inner pith of plants tied to a frame and then primarily colored red. The fugitive nature of the dye made from the Coleus plant, over time and with exposure to light, generally turns these masks into a soft pinkish watermelon to deep rose color.
In addition to the Tahitian tapa and an Easter Island figure or moai kavakava, the gem of Minneapolis' material from the Pacific Rim is undoubtedly the figure of a seminal ancestor statue whose spiritual power anchored, welcomed visitors and looked after the well-being of a Maori communal meeting house or wharenui. This figure was carved by the Ngati Kahungunu tribe from the east coast of New Zealand's North Island near Hawke's Bay. With its carved moko (facial tattoos), slightly tilted head, and perfectly proportioned body, it is an exquisite example of the genre that dates back to around 1840. This statue was once bound to the house's most central upright supporting post. Known as a poutokomanawa — these posts and the figures attached to them — are from a highly descriptive compounded term derived from the word "pou" (pole), "toko" (support), and "manawa" (heart) from the inner core or center of the wharenui that was thought to foster a seamless continuum between the iwi or tribe's connection to its past, the present, and a hopefully bountiful future.
— Steven G. Alpert, founder of Art of the Ancestors
1
Frontlet
c. 1820
Tsimshian
Wood, abalone, pigment, hessian, resin
The William Hood Dunwoody Fund and purchase through Art Quest 2002
2002.195
2
Frontlet
c. 1850
Nuxalk (Bella Coola)
Wood, pigments, abalone shell, copper, ermine pelts, cotton, plant fibers, wool, buttons, sea lion whiskers
The Robert J. Ulrich Works of Art Purchase Fund
2008.61
3
Sun Mask
c. 1860
Kwakwaka'wakw
Canada
Wood, metal, pigment, cord, cloth
The Putnam Dana McMillan Fund and purchase through Art Quest 2003
2003.189
4
Rattle
c. 1850–1910
Probably Haida artist, North America, Northwest Coast region
Cedarwood, leather, abalone, shell, pigment
The Christina N. and Swan J. Turnblad Memorial Fund
75.55
5
Fighting Dagger
c. 1825–30
Tlingit artist, North America, Northwest Coast region
Burly hardwood (probably maple), abalone, steel, leather
The Robert J. Ulrich Works of Art Purchase Fund
2007.101
6
Northwest Coast Button Blanket
c. 1900
Native American artist
Northwest Coast
Cotton, mother of pearl or shell buttons
Gift of Elissa and Paul Cahn
2017.127.24
7
Mask
19th century
Yup'ik
Wood, feathers, pigment
The John R. Van Derlip Fund
81.14
8
Maskette
500 BCE–500 CE
Inuit artist, Arctic region; or Yup'ik artist
Wood, shell or ivory
Bequest of Frank J. Sorauf
2014.97.17
9
Attush Robe with Fish Bones and Tassels
18th century
Ainu artist
Japan
Cloth: elm bark fiber, cotton appliqué and embroidery, silk, wool, sturgeon scales, shells, bird bones, silk tassels, metal, stone, lining: cotton
The Mary Griggs Burke Endowment Fund
2022.6
10
Beaded Bag
1910–30
Sumba
Indonesia
Glass beads, natural fiber
The Driscoll Art Accessions Endowment Fund
92.101
11
Bis Pole
20th century
Asmat (Bismam group), New Guinea (South Papua Province)
Wood, pigment
The Putnam Dana McMillan Fund
74.79.1
12
Bowl
c. 1980–88
Tshuosh (Sawos) artist, Papua New Guinea
Earthenware, pigment
The Christina N. and Swan J. Turnblad Memorial Fund
98.107.3
13
Prestige Bowl | Purukei
c. 1900
Admiralty Islands
Wood
The Christina N. and Swan J. Turnblad Memorial Fund
2001.130.3
14
Standing Male Figure
19th-20th century
Papua New Guinea
Limestone
Gift of funds from The Regis Foundation
97.7.2
15
Mask
20th century
Sulka
Papua New Guinea
Plant fibers, pigment, feathers, pith, wood
The Ethel Morrison Van Derlip Fund
2004.4
16
Malagan Frieze
19th century
Papua New Guinea
Wood, pigment, shell
Gift of Bruce B. Dayton
85.94
17
Malagan Figure
c. 1890
Papua New Guinea
Wood, pigment, shell
Gift of funds from Myron Kunin
85.93
18
Moai Kavakava
18th century
Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
Wood
The William Hood Dunwoody Fund and Gift of the Morse Foundation
72.3
19
Tapa Cloth
19th century
Tahiti
Society Islands
Bark, pigment
The Ethel Morrison Van Derlip Fund
98.36.1
20
Post Figure | Poutokomanawa
c. 1840
Ngāti Kahungunu Māori artist
New Zealand
Wood, paua shell
Gift of Curtis Galleries, Inc.
2001.65a,b
All artworks and images presented in this feature are the property of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
© Minneapolis Institute of Art