|
 |
|
Affinities of Form: Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas
9/6/1997 - 11/2/1997
An exhibition featuring an extraordinary collection of objects
from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas will be at the Norton Museum
of Art September 6 through November 2, 1997. Affinities of Form:
Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas from the Raymond and Laura Wielgus Collection includes headdresses, votive figures, masks,
musical instruments and utilitarian objects which span 3,000 years.
The exhibition is organized by Indiana University Art Museum and
circulated by the American Federation of Arts.
This kind of comparative exhibition affords visitors a rare
opportunity to see a broad range of works from many places and
times, and suggests surprising formal relationships between those
objects, in their appearance and crafting. But much more than these
surface relationships, this fine collection highlights the common
underlying concerns of various artists from around the world who, as
human beings, have struggled with issues of life, death, protection,
love, fertility, war, farming, hunting and aging. Many of these
finely realized forms become visual expressions of those struggles,
of a particular culture1s creation or origin stories, their rites of
passage, complex belief systems, spiritual, social and political
activities and concerns and associated deities.
The Oceanic section, the largest in the exhibition, presents 42
works from Polynesia and Melanesia, many of which were made prior to
extensive European contact. A Polynesian wood and clay mask,
encrusted with shells, hair and severe-looking boar tusks, made by
the Kambot peoples of Papua New Guinea, is one of the most powerful
works in the exhibition. Also of Papua New Guinea, a carved wood
ancestor figure by the Angoram peoples is one of the most
significant objects in the Wielgus' collection. The figure's body,
painted red to show its ritual importance, is enlivened by carving
representing turtle shell armlets and a decorated loincloth,
indications of a prosperous individual.
The exhibition includes 22 ritual and domestic objects from
sub-Saharan Africa, with most from West and Central Africa -- the
regions where figural art traditions are prevalent. The majority of
the objects are carved from wood, often with other materials added,
as in the case of the heavily adorned wood power figure from the
Songye people of Zaire that is encrusted with fiber, snakeskin,
hair, iron, horn and cowrie shells. A Lulua female figure of south
central Zaire is carved with intricate scarification patterns. This
elaborate figure, believed to bring good fortune to newborns and
mothers, was most likely made before the 1880s, since during that
decade Lulua leaders forbade scarification and its depiction on
sculpture.
Thirty-five objects from North, Central and South America illustrate
the diversity of artistic expression used over three millennia in
the western hemisphere. Pre-Columbian objects predominate the
Americas section and include a vessel in the form of a kneeling
skeletonized woman from Santa-Cruz which has been described as one
of the most powerful ceramic sculptures from Pre-Columbian Mexico,
and one of the oldest pieces in the exhibition
|
 |
| |
 |
|
|
The Norton Museum
of Art is a major cultural attraction in Florida.
The Museum is internationally known for its distinguished permanent
collection featuring
19th and 20th century European and American art, Chinese, contemporary art and photography.
From its founding the Norton has been famous for its masterpieces
of 19th century and 20th century painting
and sculpture by European artists such as Brancusi, Gauguin, Matisse,
Miró, Monet, Picasso
and by Americans such as Davis, Hassam, Hopper, Manship, O'Keeffe,
Pollock and Sheeler.
View special exhibitions and attend lectures and exhibition programs
for both children and adults.
THE NORTON MUSEUM OF ART
1451 S Olive Avenue, West Palm Beach FL 33401 Florida
The contents of this site, including all images and text, are for personal,
educational, noncommercial use only and may not be reproduced in any
form without the express permission of the Norton Museum of Art
site by tangled spider
|
