Last Sunday I went to the deYoung Museum inGolden GateParkinSan Francisco. I recently moved here fromSanta Fe,NMand went to begin a relationship with the museum collection. Up the stairs past the El Anatsui tapestry I entered the dark and beautiful galleries of African and Oceanic art.
Art History has always held a special fascination for me, but I admit to being hopelessly ignorant about African and Oceanic art. I can talk about it abstractly, but know very little of the styles and countries where specific types of work are made. So where to begin? How to learn by studying the pieces and reading their accompanying descriptions? The museum pamphlet said there are over 80 cultural and ethnic groups from sub-SaharanAfricarepresented in the collection. And so it begins.
The female body is represented in many different ways. Puberty, childbirth, ancestral figures, cult figures, mother and child, man and woman, all are portrayed using the carved female figure. I decided to focus on female forms made of wood.
From Borneo and the Dyak people, is a small wooden figure of a woman holding a child, the child carved from the same piece of wood as the woman’s arm. It lies inert in her arms. The woman is dressed in brown cloth with a wire like rope spiraling around her. Her prominent nose protrudes from a large oval head.
FromMalia woman half human scale stands in a rigid frontal pose. She is from the Jonyeleni “Jo” society of Bamana. Her tattoos are depicted in bas relief and her breasts are large cones, much like Madonna’s outfit in one of her videos. The woman’s genetalia is carved prominently and her feet are rough hewn, seemingly unfinished. She is a magnificent creature.
The museum’s literature focuses on a female cult hook from the Sepik Valley of New Guinea and with good reason. She is a handsome figure with pendulous breasts and a parrot sitting on each of her shoulders. Her spine has fully articulated vertebrae and her fingers are finely carved, although missing some digits. The literature says she was moved from the Blackwater area of Tambanum when the village which housed her was destroyed by bombing in World War II.
A prestige staff fromSouth Africa, the Tsonga people, is displayed along with a grouping of other staffs. It is about three feet high and the figure is treated as a series of vertical shapes except for the head which is carved carefully with an individual expression of seeming perplexity. The midsection of the body appears encased in a cage, perhaps depicting a ribcage. The feeling it emits is a kind of throbbing stateliness.
That is the extent of my initial visit to the galleries. I look forward to years of visits and years of learning about these fascinating and unexplored (in my brain) cultures.
