Borneo 2007: three European exhibitions (1).

The year 2007 appears to have been an exceptionally good one for Borneo in Europe. Two exhibitions were held in France, and one in Switzerland, which prominently featured the big island, its forests, its peoples, its cultures and its arts. Here follows a brief review of those three events.

Borneo ... Dayak et Punan. Peuples de la foret tropicale humide, Musee d'Art et d'Archeologie, Laon, France, 25 November 2006-11 March 2007.

The beautiful city of Laon, only a short distance by train or by car from Paris, offers a large variety of first-class monuments, including its famous early-Gothic cathedral, which served as a model for the builders of the cathedrals of Reims and Chartres. The old city is perched on a narrow plateau and surrounded with fortifications and medieval gates. The Musee d'Art et d'Archeologie is housed in a Templar Knights' commanderie, next to an early-twelfth-century chapel. It displays one of France's most important collections of Greek antiquities, a large collection of Gallo-Roman jewelry, weaponry, and bronze (including superb fibulae), as well as a collection of fifteenth-to-nineteenth-century paintings, sculpture, and furniture (including the world-famous retable of L 'Annonciation).

Members of the Institute for Research on Southeast Asia (IRSEA), Antonio Guerreiro and Bernard Sellato, with the assistance of Ph.D. student Nicolas Cesard and zoologist Didier Boussarie, have guest-curated an exhibition on Borneo, focusing on both the natural history and ethnography of the island. About 160 artifacts were exhibited, including thirteen ethnographic objects on loan from the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, and a number of zoological and botanical specimens, as well as iconographic items--a large number of recent field photographs, old books, maps, engravings and drawings, stamps and postcards, and posters.

The exhibition's official opening was held on November 24, 2006, in the presence of representatives of the city's mayor and of the embassies of the Federation of Malaysia and the Republic of Indonesia. On March 3, a guided tour of the exhibition was organized by Antonio Guerreiro and Nicolas Cesard and, in the same afternoon, three films on various themes (Dayak ethnography, nature and culture conservation) were screened at the MAL (Maison des Arts et des Loisirs) movie hall, near the Museum, until 19:30. The local press (L'Union) advertised the event and reported on it the next day.

Financial assistance from the Maison Asie Pacifique, Marseilles, is gratefully acknowledged, as well as invaluable help from the museum curator, Caroline Jorrand, and her friendly staff.

Note: www.ville-laon.fr

Patong. Le grandi figure scolpite dei popoli del Borneo, Museo deile Culture & Galleria Gottardo, Lugano, Switzerland, 23 March-25 August 2007.

The Brignoni collection of primitive art, consisting of about 660 pieces, was donated in 1985 to the City of Lugano. After organizing a preliminary exhibition (1986), the city decided to host the collection at the Heleneum, a superb rico-classic villa, where it set up the Museo delle Culture Extraeuropee, inaugurated in 1989--and later renamed Museo delle Culture, now headed by Dr. Francesco Paoio Campione. Another exhibition, in 1996, was devoted to Brignoni as artist and collector, a man con passione d'arte e con l'occhio dell'artista. The 2007 exhibition, in which half of the pieces are presented for the first time to the public, was organized thanks to an agreement between the City of Lugano and the Banca del Gottardo, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the bank.

Serge Brignoni, born in 1903, studied the arts in Bern, Milano, and Berlin, then resided in Paris from 1923 until 1940. There he got acquainted with Andre Breton, Tristan Tzara, and many others in the Surrealist movement, and became part of the Italiens de Paris, with, among others, Giacometti and De Chirico. However, it was in Provence, in 1925, then in Basel, in 1931, with Paul Wirz, that Brignoni felt the call of the art of the South Seas, and in 1936 he participated with Breton in an Exposition surrealiste d'objets--particularly, Pacific art pieces--at Charles Ratton's gallery in Paris, after which he got acquainted with Picasso. Contrasting with Breton, who bought in London, Brignoni built his collection mainly from acquisitions from the German, Swiss, Belgian, or Dutch ethnic art markets. For him, collecting was a true form of art.

The Patong exhibition focuses, as its title indicates, on the wooden, mainly monumental, statuary carved by the peoples of Borneo. A thin exhibition booklet features a short text by Paolo Maiullari and his wife Junita Arneld, herself a Ngaju Dayak hailing from Central Kalimantan province of Borneo, and a number of good-quality color photographs. Antonio Guerreiro and the author of the present review, both IRSEA members, participated in the selection and identification of the pieces exhibited.

A large illustrated book, edited by F.P. Campione, was released at the time of the exhibition's opening, being the first of a two-volume opus devoted to the Brignoni collection, and subsidized by the Banca del Gottardo. It includes a long essay by Campione on the meaning and value of ethnic art; another, by isabella Lenzo, on Primitivism as the foundation of the Brignoni collection; and various sections dealing, respectively, with the Naga of Assam, Sumatra and Nias, Borneo, the Lesser Sunda Islands, and with different parts of New Guinea (South Coast, Sepik, Maprik, Washkuk, Northeast and Massim), Melanesia and Polynesia. The volume ends with a substantial bibliography (pp. 247-255).

The section devoted to Borneo, rather skimpy (pp. 84-95), focuses principally on the pantak, anthropomorphic wooden statues of the peoples of the northwestern corner of the island (J. Arneld), and on the only baby-carrier, ha', of the collection (P. Maiullari). Extra illustrations in this section include a few tuntun, carved sticks of the lban, one painted wooden shield of the Kayan, one ritual drum of the Ngaju, and a couple of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic wooden posts used in funerary rituals.

The second volume, released in August 2007, at the time the exhibition ended, is the collection catalogue proper. It includes three text sections on the museum's cataloguing system (M. Cometti); on Brignoni, the artist, as a collector (A. Borellini); and on the cultural areas and styles represented in the collection (G. Giovannoni); as well as an extensive catalogue, over 90 pages, of some 660 pieces shown in black-and-white photographs, overwhelmingly dominated by the New Guinea area (400 pieces), with Borneo relatively well represented (40 pieces)--Africa, interestingly, accounts for only thirty pieces.

The Patong exhibition is scheduled to travel to other cities and countries. However, the exhibition catalogue, in English, is still in the works, but expected soon. Among other texts and profuse full-color illustrations, it includes a brief Foreword on the art and labors of collecting, identifying, and interpreting by the present writer, and a substantial essay by A. Guerreiro on Borneo sculpture, its functions and aesthetic choices.

Note: Museo delle Culture www.mcl.lugano.ch

References

Burani Ruef, Carla 1996 Serge Brignoni. Tra arte e collezionismo, Lugano: Edizioni Citta di Lugano, exhibition catalogue.

Campione, Francesco Paolo (ed.) 2007 La Collezione Brignoni. Museo delle Culture, Citta di Lugano, Primo volume: Arte per metamorfosi; Secondo volume: Catalogo della opere, Milano: Edizioni Gabriele Mazzotta, 255 p. & 139 p.

Patong. Le grandi figure scolpite dei popoli del Borneo, 2007, Lugano: Museo delle Culture & Galleria Gottardo, illustrated exhibition booklet, 32 p.

Patong, forthcoming, illustrated exhibition catalogue (in English).

Georges Bourdelon. L'Aventure de l'objectif, Espace Van Gogh, Aries, France, 9 November--30 December 2007.

Georges Bourdelon (1924-2000) was a true free spirit. Born in Brignoles, Provence, he discovered his vocation--filming--after meeting with Marcel Pagnol and training with him at his film studio in Marseilles. His collaboration as a cameraman on a number of feature films in Paris, notably with playwright and film director Sacha Guitry, confirmed it, but he longed for spaces more open than stage sets. He then worked with Leon Poirier in southern Morocco, Henri Lhote in the Hoggar, and Francois Blasan in the Kalahari. It was in the Hoggar and the Tibesti, among the Hadad, that he shot his first personal movie, Les Forgerons du desert (1952).

In 1950 he met Louise Weiss, who later viewed him as her spiritual son. They remained close friends till the latter's demise, and in the course of the years, they made 24 short movies together in Syria, Lebanon, India, Kashmir, the Himalayas, East Africa, and Mauritius, as well as two books, La Syrie (1951) and Le Cachemire (1955). In 1955 he traveled to Iran with another friend, anthropologist NoEl Ballif, and with him shot two movies, Persepolis and Isfahan, and published a book, La Perse millenaire (1957).

The year 1957 saw him traveling to Indonesia and Malaysia, where he remained several years, shooting movies in Java, Flores, and Komodo, and participating in the famous Borneo expedition led by zoologist Pierre Pfeffer. This trip gave birth to two books authored by Pfeffer, Aux lies du dragon (1954) and Bivouacs a Borneo (1963; reprinted 1990), another by expedition member Guy Piazzini, Chez les Rescapes du Deluge (1959; English translation, The Children of Lilith, 1960), a recording of traditional music (Musique de Borneo-Kalimantan, 1957), and a long film, Les Dayaks, chasseurs de tetes, which was shown all around Europe--an English version of the film has been circulating lately. A cornerstone in Bourdelon's career, Borneo made him famous.

In 1963, he met Caroline Normandin, a collaborator of General de Gaulle in 1945, later a reporter with television pioneer Pierre Lazareff, and an explorer and photographer, soon to become his wife and closest work partner. Together they founded their company, Productions du Dragon. In the next thirty years, Bourdeion shot scores of documentary films, covering all sorts of subjects, from the private lives of Farah Pahlavi of Iran and the Negus of Ethiopia to the last days of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo; from the problems of the youth in the Middle East to those of the offshore petroleum industry in Gabon; from the setting up of a gas pipeline between Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego to the daily life of the French Garde republicaine.

Retour a Kalimantan. Forty years later, in 1994, Bourdelon returned to Borneo. Documentary film maker Gerald Duduyer convinced an already weakened old man to retrace his steps to the upper Bahau River, accompanied by a film team. After visiting me in Jakarta--we had first met in Levallois-Perret, near Paris, in the 1970s--he and his team visited the villages upriver, locating individuals Bourdelon had worked with in the 1950s, and showing around his film and old photographs. Indeed, those were highly emotional moments, meeting again with very elderly Kenyah people, who still called him Shoshi--the Kenyah rendition of Georges.

In a last baroud d'honneur, as Normandin wrote, Bourdelon visited in 1995 French polar explorer Paul-Emile Victor, his friend and peer, who was in his last days in Bora-Bora, and brought back a moving document for the French television. He retired in Aries, where he was soon to be "re-united with his Provencal ancestors."

After Bourdelon's demise, Normandin established an association, "Les Amis de Georges Bourdelon," (2) with famous feature-film director Jean-Jacques Annaud (The Name of the Rose, etc.), who considered him a great friend and a master, as its godfather. Normandin recalls that Annaud shot his very first movie with Bourdelon, a 3-minute commercial for Bastos cigarettes.

The beautiful Espace Van Gogh exhibits about 100 photographs, representative of the various stages of Bourdelon's career, and shows three films (in DVD format), including Les Dayaks. Those excellent documents, all a half century old, form a fantastic historical and ethnographic archive. Interested parties should contact the Association.

References

Bourdelon, Caroline 2007 Georges Bourdelon. L 'Avenlure de l 'objectif, Aries: Espace Van Gogh, exhibition catalogue, 30 p., 20 photographs.

Bourdelon, Georges 1957 Les Dayaks, chasseurs de tetes, film, G. Bourdelon's archives.

Duduyer, Gerald 1994 Retour a Kalimantan, Paris: Prestige Television, film, 52 mn.

Pfeffer, Pierre 1954 Aux lles du dragon, Paris: Flammarion.

1963 Bivouacs a Borneo, Paris: Flammarion; reprinted 1990, Paris: Arthaud.

Piazzini, Guy 1957 Musique de Borndo-Kalimantan, LP record, Paris: Boite-a-Musique.

1959 Chez les Rescapds du Deluge, Paris: Horay.

1960 The Children of Lilith, London: Hodder & Stoughton.

Bernard Sellato

Editor, Moussons

Universite de Provence

Marseilles', France

(1) This Brief Communication was originally published in Moussons. Social Science Research on Southeast Asia (11: 243-248, 2007) and, in a slightly edited form, is reprinted here with permission.

(2) Association "Les Amis de Georges Bourdelon", 13 rue Emile-Barrere, 13200 Aries. Ph. 33-(0)490966375. See an homage to Bourdelon in La Provence, I November 2006.