Carving the story: Recovering histories of Sepik art in the Jolika Collection (original) (raw)
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This lavish two-volume edition of photographs and essays on the Jolika Collection of Melanesian art, held by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), has arrived in the midst of a lively interdisciplinary conversation in which anthropologists and art historians reprise earlier discussions and critiques concerning both the relationship of art and culture and the concept of primitive art with ever greater insistence on the political and economic dimensions of the production, display, and exchange of art objects. 1 The exhibition and associated publication of the Jolika Collection of New Guinea art join the ranks of major events in the art world through which the boundaries of art in Western paradigms of knowledge are being expanded. Debates and contests of ownership, authenticity, ethics, and value swirl amongst artists, local communities, scholars, collectors, and the now global marketplace of art and artifact. These discussions urge us to rethink the bases of interpretation by raising questions that jar older categories and privileges. Born into this fertile ground, the publication itself presents multiple approaches to understanding art and culture. Each of the authors examines the collection differently, in terms of the history of collecting (Robert Welsch) and the themes of New Guinea art (Dirk Smidt), in relation to surrealism, the moment at which such art entered into Western philosophies of art (Philippe Peltier), and from a scientific perspective, using radiocarbon dating to discover the age of the wood from which the objects were made (Gregory Hodgins). John Bigelow Taylor and Dianne Dubler have produced stunning sharp photographs that reveal minute detail, while John Friede, collector and art patron, presents his personal perspective on the long-term project of collecting, a widespread but seldom studied practice.
Materiality, Making and Meaning: Building the Artist Record through Conservation in Indonesia
International Journal of Creative and Arts Studies
Ways of knowing and understanding the artistic process are not fixed, and there are multiple perceptions that rely on the experience of the viewer and sources that inform them. this paper presents a case study of a conservation residency and collaborative treatment of indonesian artist Entang wiharso’s ‘landscaping My Brain’ (2001) oil on canvas triptych painting, to examine how we understand the artistic process from a conservation perspective and how this material knowledge contributes to the artist record. an interdisciplinary methodology for the conservation treatment of wiharso’s painting relied on technical and visual examination of the artwork in partnership with artist interviews and archival research. the residency concluded with an exhibition of the painting in an ‘active state of conservation’, highlighting the conservation decisionmaking process as value based and culturally grounded, leading to questions of authority, the role of technical-conservation expertise, what a...
Fragile Traditions: Indonesian Art in Jeopardy
1994
This volume brings together a unique group of case studies about several endangered forms of Indonesian art. The essays assess the effects on this artistic heritage of certain national and international phenomena , especially the primitive art market and various kinds of private and institutional collecting. The authors, who have extensive experience in Indonesian communities, find that many vibrant art traditions in this region are threatened by these forces. Collections of indigenous art and material culture have always been recognized as sources of information about the people who produced the objects. Increasingly, collections and collecting institutions are also being analyzed as expressions of the cultural presumptions of the societies that are marketing or assembling the collections. This book, by contrast, investigates the effects of the market in collectible art on the small, indigenous communities where traditional artworks are produced. Citation: Taylor, Paul Michael (editor) 1994 Fragile Traditions: Indonesian Art in Jeopardy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Contents: Foreword / Suwati Kartiwa -- Introduction / Paul Michael Taylor -- "Without cloth we cannot marry" : the textiles of Lamaholot in transition / Ruth Barnes -- Rape of the ancestors : discovery, display, and destruction of the ancestral statuary of Tana Toraja / Eric Crystal -- The adaptation of indigenous forms to Western taste : the case of the Nias / Jerome Feldman -- The responsible and the irresponsible : observations on the destruction and preservation of Indonesian art / Jean-Paul Barbier -- The nusantara concept of culture : local traditions and national identity as expressed in Indonesia's museums / Paul Michael Taylor -- International art collecting, tourism, and a tribal region in Indonesia / Laurence A.G. Moss -- Whither Dayak art? / Michael Heppell -- Unraveling narratives / Shelly Errington.
Transcultural journeys: The disembedding and re-embedding of Sepik art
Journal de la société des océanistes, 2018
Artefacts have always been part of inter- and transcultural journeys in the Sepik. People and artefacts had been continuously moving throughout the area in pre-colonial New Guinea due to migrations, exchange and plundering. However, the scope and the quality of these journeys changed fundamentally when the process of disembedding of artefacts started with the collecting activities of explorers in the colonial area. Against the backdrop of the transmaritime journeys of textiles from India to the Southeast Asian archipelago in pre-colonial times, this article highlights the special features of the Sepik case. he dislocation of predominantly old and “authentic” Sepik artefacts to places in the western world resulted in their transformation and re-embedding in new settings. A proliferation of transformations and reinterpretations of Sepik art began with the transcultural journeys of artefacts to multiple destinations since the intensiication of globalisation, resulting in stories about the artefacts with conlicting interpretations and consequences.
Museum Collecting in Papua New Guinea
This essay contrasts early and later colonial collecting by anthropologists and museum scientists in Melanesia with the postcolonial collecting in which I participated in the 1980s under the auspices of the Australian Museum (1987). My contention is that museum collections made during early colonialism took place in a relatively hierarchical and androcentric context of moral difference. In subsequent phases of the colonial era, as well as in the ongoing postcolonial period, anthropological collecting sought, and continues to seek, egalitarian and gender inclusive dialogue with vendors; in part by drawing from local metaphors and idioms to express status inclusivity.
"Introduction" [to]: P.M. Taylor (editor), "Fragile Traditions: Indonesian Art in Jeopardy"
1994
"Introduction" (Pp. 1-12) to: P.M. Taylor (editor) "Fragile Traditions: Indonesian Art in Jeopardy" [NOTE: The entire book is available in the "Books" section below.] This volume brings together a unique group of case studies about several endangered forms of Indonesian art. The essays assess the effects on this artistic heritage of certain national and international phenomena, especially the primitive art market and various kinds of private and institutional collecting. The authors, who have extensive experience in Indonesian communities, find that many vibrant art traditions in this region are threatened by these forces. Collections of indigenous art and material culture have always been recognized as sources of information about the people who produced the objects. Increasingly, collections and collecting institutions are also being analyzed as expressions of the cultural presumptions of the societies that are marketing or assembling the collections. This book, by contrast, investigates the effects of the market in collectible art on the small, indigenous communities where traditional artworks are produced. A collection of essays, like a collection of objects, has an origin in a particular historical context and can be examined for evidence of the presumptions held by the contributors and editor. This volume originated in a panel of papers presented at an annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in San Francisco. The panel included papers by three of this volume's contributors (Barnes, Crystal, and Taylor) and comments by two others (Kartiwa, Errington). It brought together anthropologists, museum specialists, and art historians concerned particularly with those Indonesian art traditions that had been labeled "primitive art," though no panelists used that label. After the original conference, several other scholars were invited to add important new perspectives to this topic. The additional contributors included people who have significant effects on these same trends and markets, as collectors, museum directors, or "cultural resource" planners and consultants (Barbier, Moss, Heppel), as well as one art historian who brings to the discussion a much longer-term view of transformations within a single indigenous tradition (Feldman). These studies contribute to the growing recent assessment and thoughtful critique of institutions that collect, sell, exhibit, appraise, restore, fake, and study art. As such, this book of perspectives from Indonesian anthropology, art history, market development, tourism consulting, and museology probably constitutes one of the most succinct yet broad-ranging examinations available, for any single country, of the current transformations of indigenous art forms within communities where artworks are created