Masken: Gesichter aus anderen Welten.

Masken: Gesichter aus anderen Welten

Museum Rietberg, Zurich December 7, 2003-March 28, 2004.

The Museum Rietberg in Zurich is to be congratulated on mounting one of the most refreshing exhibitions on masquerading in many years: "Masken: Gesichter aus anderen Welten" ("Masks: Faces from Other Worlds"), from December 7, 2003, to March 28, 2004. On the eve of a major building campaign, the institution and its whole curatorial staff took advantage of a temporary exhibition to test out more than fifteen display styles. Born of necessity, the juxtaposition of different techniques emerged as a powerful method able to convey significant intellectual content.

The exhibition opened with a classic fine arts treatment for a series of Yup'ik masks from Alaska, collected by J.A. Jacobsen in 1882 83, now housed in the Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. These white face masks were dramatically silhouetted against a dark blue background with skilful spotlighting enhancing the visitors' appreciation of the works' formal qualities. The text was minimal. In several of these works, a single large face morphs into separate faces or creatures. As masterpieces of transformation, the works introduced the central puzzle of masquerading while valorizing Western interest in sculptural form. From this point forward, the exhibition sought means to integrate context into the displays without diminishing the visual power of the masks as works of art.

In the gallery devoted to the Guro (Cote d'Ivoire), curator Eberhard Fischer stressed that both dancers and carvers were figures of renown. In two facing vitrines, Fischer grouped together works attributed to each of four different hands, clearly demonstrating the existence of individual style. Although text along the bottoms of the windows provided the criteria for attribution, most viewers could take in the argument visually without difficulty, as the hands were quite distinct. A video projection reinforced Fischer's argument about the fame of the masked dancers. It offered a narrative of the dressing of a mask, the competition among performers, and the departure of the masks. (1) The dance footage was dazzling. I particularly appreciated how the cameraman caught the excited response of the crowd in their cries and gestures. One man gapes open-mouthed while others surge forward. It is a wonderful sequence demonstrating the close rapport between audience and performer in many African masquerading traditions.

The neighboring gallery, devoted to the Dan of Liberia, was structured in a similar fashion, but this time curator Fischer grouped the masks in the vitrines by genre. Increasingly, African art displays are moving beyond what I call the "bird-watcher" method of mounting one exemplar per "species." In this case, the viewer could explore how different artists interpreted masks within eight different genres. Clearly, the form of certain masked figures permitted more invention than others. It was fascinating to see how much variety could exist within a recognizable group, e.g., the Gagon beak masks belonging to the northern Dan. Fischer was also able to include performance footage for most of the genres, some quite remarkable. (2) Instead of hiding their video footage for fear that it might distract the viewer from the sculptures, the curators suspended unusually large screens in the galleries. (3) They proved that strong sculptures only take on extra complexity by being shown in different contexts, so long as the viewer is introduced to indigenous criteria for form.

Several installations struggled with the problem of dress. Some art museums are now incorporating a few costumes into exhibitions in order to evoke by synechdoche the mask as masquerader. This strategy seeks to acknowledge cultural difference while preserving an "object" for quiet contemplation. However, according to Lorenz Homberger, who added a costumed figure to the Guro display curated by Fischer, if the curator is not careful, the display can become "clownish." Dissatisfied with the impact of mannequins, Homberger experimented with mounting works in front of a photomural depicting a crowd of jostling masqueraders from the Cameroon Grasslands. In the Guro display, he deployed a light screen in front of three mannequins to introduce some mystery into their manifestation. A perhaps more successful strategy was used by the curator for the gallery devoted to Tibet, where a silk brocade costume was treated as its own autonomous object, rather than reincorporated into a recreation of a masquerade character.

Nobel Prize-winning dramatist Dario Fo observed that "the whole body acts as a frame for the mask and transforms its inertness" (1991:29). Ironically, by conjuring the missing body, a costume display can have the ghoulish effect of underscoring the inability of the figure to move. Inanimate and stripped of its aura, the mask becomes vaguely comedic, like the mannequins in store windows. It is probably for this reason that curators are turning increasingly to the incorporation of video in order to introduce a performance context into their installations, but how should that video be displayed?

In the section devoted to masks from Sri Lanka and Java, the chamber was designed like a miniature amphitheater, with the viewer taking the position of an orchestra conductor facing a semicircular display of eleven masks represented in miniature on the computer monitor. A large screen hung from the ceiling. This design seemed to envision one viewer at a time, who could manipulate the computer display. The viewer could press an icon pictured on a map to retrieve a short performance video or an icon of the works before him in order to activate a narrative on the object. Drawing on familiarity with computers, this mode of display might prove popular with visitors, but its website-influenced design grants the viewer a level of control that is in fact inimical to most masquerades, where experiences of fear or awe or comedy are orchestrated through the psychological powerlessness of the viewer, who cannot determine what will happen next.

The display of Japanese Noh was brilliant in transcending some of the problems of negotiating form, costume, and performance. Against one wall, curator Katharina Epprecht projected a twenty-minute loop of a performance recorded at the Rietberg in 2003 using eighteenth century masks from the museum's collection. The film played in real time and conveyed the highly stylized and stately rhythm of Noh. This large screen faced a line of five masks alternating with small televisions. Each television played exquisite, high-resolution footage of the face mask next to it.

To my mind, this footage was reminiscent of the work of Bill Viola, yet surpassed it in its eerie evocativeness. Because the immobile camera remains squarely focused on the face mask, it takes a few seconds for the viewer to recognize that there is a person behind the mask. With a start, one recognizes living eyes within. Although the actors remain as still as humanly possible, one senses a slight vibration. The camera indulges our desire to stare for a long period, then the actor rotates as if an automaton turning on a pedestal.

At one point, the actor unexpectedly interrupts our reverie by drawing his uncovered hand across the mask or covering it with his hands. This moment is shocking, the denouement of the performance. Fo wrote that "the mask imposes a particular obligation: it cannot be touched. Once you lay a hand on that thing drawn over your face, it vanishes, or appears contaminated or nauseating. Seeing hands on a mask is damaging and unbearable. You cannot permit it" (1991:27). This is so even though (as in Fo's own Commedia dell'Arte tradition) some of the Noh masks deliberately leave bare part of the performer's face and call attention to their own artifice. After the intrusion of the hand, as Fo might predict, the actor's subsequent removal of the mask to reveal his face is anticlimactic. The Noh installation demonstrates that naturalism may not always serve as the best medium of cross-cultural translation. In this case, an artistic interpretation of Noh better conveys some of the dynamics of masquerade reception than any documentary footage alone could ever achieve.

In the Rietberg exhibition, ambitious installations like that devoted to Noh alternated with smaller displays where individual techniques were essayed to educate the viewer's eye. As a specialist, I appreciated that Pende masks were presented with controlled views drawing attention to the works' profiles, since this is the perspective celebrated in performance. In another example, masks from different Swiss traditions were displayed in a line of three vitrines. Translucent screens on the outside vitrines would alternate in rising and descending roughly every eighty seconds so that one group of masks was always blocked from vision. Although many fine arts museum curators will cringe at the thought of these "bells and whistles," the exhibition technique did point to an important truth of masquerading. In his actor's handbook, John Rudlin advises that a "real mask should never be hung on a wall, unless its working days are over, since its gaze will be diminished by unanimated familiarity" (1994:40). Long periods of absence condition audience response in many masquerade traditions. Rudlin suggests that, in particular, the gaze of the mask is neutralized by too much visibility.

The exhibition closed by displaying two Dogon masks, Kanaga and Gomintogo, both collected ca. 1930, both showing repairs, in an entirely black gallery. There was a small closet on the side where a 2 minute, 45 second selection from Jean Rouch's Le Dama d'Ambara played on continuous loop. Once the door shut on the tiny room, entirely filled by the 8 foot square (2.5m) screen, the viewer was engulfed by sound and color. It was a fitting crescendo to a remarkable exhibition.

While no one will approve of each and every experiment, the creative clash of different exhibition methodologies yielded a metacritical richness. Instead of reducing masquerade to a simple formula, the multiple translation strategies communicated how complicated and varied masquerade can be as an artistic phenomena. Rather than confusing the audience, as some might fear, the exhibition proved extremely popular with the public. And how not? It was as exciting and full of surprises for the eye and the mind as a first-rate masquerade. (4)

(1.) The video was converted from 16mm film shot by Lorenz Homberger during joint fieldwork with Fischer in the Northern Guro region in 1984-85 and edited by Christian Noetzli into the described narrative.

(2.) The footage was shot by Martin Himmelheber during field research conducted by Hans Himmelheber and Eberhard Fischen For the exhibition, selections were edited by Barbara Fischer and arranged by Christian Noetzli. In addition, two other fills associated with the Dan display ran on continuous loop at the entry to a lower suite of galleries. The first (28 min.) documented an important festival where many masks performed during a commemoration feast. The second, in a vitrine devoted to the "Mask Carver and his Model," depicted the Dan sculptor Tompieme at work.

(3.) The screen in the Dan gallery measured 1m x 80cm (391/2" x 31 1/2"). The flat plastic surface received projection from behind so that no equipment was visible.

(4.) The entire staff of curators at the Rietberg worked collaboratively on the exhibition and the catalogue, entitled Masken: Gesichter aus anderen Welten (Zurich: Museum Rietberg, 112 pages, 95 photos, 2003). The catalogue offers a selection of the objects displayed; it does not address the display strategies discussed in this review. The contributors include: Albert Lutz, Daniel Vasella, Robert E. Zullig, Eberhard Fischer, Katharina Epprecht, Lorenz Homberger, Judith Rickenbach, Johannes Beltz, Alexandra von Przychowski, and Axel Langer.

References cited

Fo, Dario. 1991. The Tricks of the Trade. N.Y.: Routledge. Work originally published 1987.

Rudlin, John. 1994. Commedia dell'Arte: An Actor's Handbook. N.Y.: Routledge.