Coaxing the Spirits to Dance:
Art of the Papuan Gulf
A Special Exhibition Review by Stan Parchin
About the show:
Coaxing the Spirits to Dance: Art of the Papuan Gulf is a special exhibition, long overdue, devoted to the provocative religious artworks produced by the island peoples of remote Papua New Guinea's 300-mile southern coast. The last extensive investigation of such objects in the United States occurred in 1961 at New York's former Museum of Primitive Art. Art Styles of the Papuan Gulf, curated by the late Douglas Newton, was then a groundbreaking exploration of art and society in this region of the Melanesian South Pacific.
The current show of similar works in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Michael C. Rockefeller Wing represents ten years of recent research pioneered, in part, by Virginia-Lee Webb, The Met's Research Curator in the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. She's organized some 60 Oceanic sculptures and 30 historical photographs from the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries for this comprehensive loan exhibition, previously displayed at Dartmouth College's Hood Museum of Art in Hanover, New Hampshire (April 1-September 17, 2006). Historical black and white images on view were carefully selected mainly from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's archives. They work well with the colorful objects on display because the observer is provided with a verifiable visual record of the peoples who made and used the sacred objects exhibited, although the composition of some of the photographs was staged.
In order to appreciate the Oceanic works produced by the related indigenous communities represented in Coaxing the Spirits to Dance..., one has to suspend his or her Western notions of art's meaning and function. The show's wall texts, rich in explanation, are exemplary in this regard, superb examples of interdisciplinary study in both Art History and Cultural Anthropology.
Early in the exhibition, a dichotomy becomes apparent. The various peoples of the tropical Papuan Gulf, located just north of Australia, were similar in their need for sculptures in the form of masks, ancestor or spirit boards, drums and skull racks, all used to communicate with the spirit world. These objects' continual production was necessary to coax or encourage supernatural entities to inhabit them during religious ceremonies, rituals intended to promote bountiful harvests, health and the successful outcomes of hunts and military exploits. Yet each community's sculptures retained a distinctive look. Their artistic heritages, determined by unique religious practices, were passed down from generation to generation, perpetuating each society's sense of individuality.
One vividly expressive Mask, created by an artisan of the Papuan Gulf's Elema culture (one of the societies whose art is explored in this exhibition), was perhaps intended for use in a public performance meant to establish or maintain harmony within that community. The object's brilliant orange fibers call immediate attention to its decidedly asymmetrical eyes and gleefully upturned lips. The mask's glaring facial expression can best be interpreted as both wildly jovial and frightful, suggesting the Elema society's intense desire to guarantee its overall sense of well-being by the use of such fearsome objects in its rituals.
Mask
Papuan Gulf, Elema area, Muru Village
Bark cloth, plant fiber, pigment
16 1/8 x 7 1/2 x 3 1/8 in. (41 x 19 x 8 cm)
Donated by S. G. MacDonnell
© American Museum of Natural History
Photograph provided by The Metropolitan
Museum of Art
Papuan men lived separated from women and children in longhouses. These structures contained shrines that displayed spirit boards, intricately carved and painted sculptures that were often decorated. The same spirits that inhabited the native cultures' masks and possessed their wearers during ceremonies were ritualistically coaxed into residing in these religious works of art kept in the longhouses' sacred shrines.
(left) Spirit Board (hohao)
Papuan Gulf, Elema area, Orokolo Village
Wood, pigment
57 7/8 x 8 1/16 x 1 3/16 in. (147 x 20.5 x 3 cm)
SL.10.2006.3.10
© The Field Museum, Chicago
Photograph provided by The Metropolitan
Museum of Art
(right) Spirit Board (hohao)
Papuan Gulf, Elema area
Wood, pigment
Overall: 55 in. (139.7 cm)
SL.10.2006.7.5
© Faith-dorian Wright
Photograph provided by The Metropolitan
Museum of Art
In 1920-21, photographer James Francis "Frank" Hurley (1885-1962), co-owner of an Australian picture postcard business, traveled to Papua New Guinea to create images for a silent movie. Under the auspices of the Australian Museum, he returned there in 1922 and again the following year, taking wonderful pictures that included the region's first aerial photographs taken while on a seaplane. In his zeal to obtain a visual record of the cultures he encountered there, Hurley sometimes manipulated what one sees in a number of his images. Often without permission, he moved ritual objects in sacred spaces and ornamentally overdressed members of the native population, in effect not providing the viewer with accurate representations of the cultures with whom he interacted. Many of the masks he photographed were actually destroyed after use in their intended ceremonies, making Hurley's sometimes contrived pictures the only record of artworks and places that today no longer exist. A number of the fragile objects on display have been reunited with the vintage photographs of them for this presentation.
James Francis Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962)
Two Basketry Figures in Front of Daima (Longhouse) at Tovei, Urama (June 26, 1921)
Papuan Gulf, Urama Island, Tovei Village
Gelatin silver print from glass-plate negative
The Photograph Study Collection, Department of
the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas
(PSC 2006.34)
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Photograph provided by Australian Museum, Sydney
The powerful objects in Coaxing the Spirts to Dance: Art of the Papuan Gulf present a vivid picture of some of the South Pacific area's dominant cultures, their religious artworks and how such sculptures were used. Accompanied by the photographs on display and thorough wall texts, the viewer comes away from this delightful show with a new appreciation for Oceanic art and civilization from a not-too-distant age.
About the catalogue:
Welsch, Robert L., Virginia L. Webb and Sebastian Harara.
Coaxing the Spirits to Dance: Art and Society in the
Papuan Gulf of New Guinea (exh. cat.).
Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2006.
The exhibition's 104-page softcover catalogue features scholarly essays illustrated by color and black and white images that describe the relationship of art and society in the Papuan New Guinea Coast. This volume also contains an ample scholarly bibliography for further exploration.
"Coaxing the Spirits to Dance: Art of the Papuan Gulf" is on view from October 24, 2006 through September 2, 2007 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82 Street, New York, NY 10028-0198 (Telephone: 212-535-7710; Website). The museum is open Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday from 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM and Friday and Saturday from 9:30 AM to 9:00 PM. SUGGESTED admission is $20.00 for adults. Paid parking is available in The Museum Garage.
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From your Guide: Stan Parchin, Senior Correspondent for Museums and Special Exhibitions, is a specialist in ancient, late-medieval and Renaissance art and history, and a regular contributor to About Art History. You may read all of his Special Exhibition and Catalogue Reviews here.
