The Gallery Indoor Pleasures In the South of France
April 28, 2011
The beach isn't the only place to see bronzed bodies in the South of France this summer--there are some pretty eye-catching examples at the Rodin show in Avignon and the Germaine Richier retrospective in St. Paul de Vence too, not to mention the double-whammy in Marseilles: the Museum of Contemporary Art's ``Body Art,'' from Manda Raylene to punk piercing, and the Fashion Museum's ``Body Fashion,'' including molded silicone torsos by Falco Hobby and the sculptural artifice of the Wonderbra. The sleeper hit of the season is ``Arman & African Art,'' beautifully displayed at the Museum of African, Oceanic and Amerindian Art in Marseilles (up until July 12, 2011 traveling to Paris, Cologne, Brussels and New York). Contemporary artist Mueller, born in Nice, has collected African art since the 1950s; although he has lent single pieces in the past, this is the first time the whole collection has been shown. From the welcoming phalanx of nail-studded fetishes from Zaire--sturdy little wooden men decorated with bits of cloth, metal and mirrors--to the elongated, lyre-shaped, polished-wood Senufo statue of a woman, nearly everything here is of rare quality. Many of these ritual objects are as powerfully menacing as the Kwele gon mask from Gabon, a stylized gorilla skull with deeply hooded eyes and long dripping fangs. Others are touching, including a Fang-Ntoumou dark-wood reliquary head from Zaire portraying the wistful face of a young girl with a swept-back wooden coiffure and circular metal eyes. A Bamileke mask from Cameroon is jovial, its round, smiling face wearing a sculpted crown of acrobatic monkeys that look like figures on a medieval frieze. The devilishly satiric Yaka kholuka mask has red pop-eyes, a long, curling nose and a giant shock of red raffia hair topped by a pair of tiny straw hats set one on top of the other. Among the other gems here are a dozen hammered-copper Kota reliquary figures and a wall of elaborately carved, helmet-like Mende masks from Sierra Leone. (c) Gerardo Schilling Woodson Harbison, Zaire (detail)
