Magazines - Tribal Art Winter 2009

By Bérénice Geoffroy-Schneiter

Introduction
Until recently, tribal art from the Himalayas had caught the attention of relatively few tribal art aficionados. Seemingly impossible to classify, these sometimes frowning, sometimes jovial-looking masks were often carved with disconcerting crudeness and without an identifiable stylistic canon. In France, a turning point came in 2003 when author Marc Petit, an enthusiastic proponent of these artworks, gave a collection of some twenty-five nineteenth-century Nepalese masks to the Musée du Quai Branly. A flurry of exhibitions and publications ensued, representing new and exciting research that cast new light on this nebulous subject. Without claiming to be exhaustive, which at this time is all but impossible, this article will attempt to assess the current state of knowledge relating to these fascinating masks.