Magazines - Tribal Art Winter 2009

By Françoise Pommaret

Introduction
“… as is the case with myths, masks, too, cannot be interpreted in and by themselves as separate objects”
Claude Levi-Strauss, The Way of the Masks

This statement by the noted anthropologist, who studied the masks of the peoples of the Northwest Coast of North America, served as a catalyst for my reflections on the masks of Bhutan, which I have been studying in situ for many years.
Although known to some collectors, Himalayan masks have not developed the renown of their African or Oceanic counterparts. Only a small number of them are included in collections worldwide because, during the twentieth century, they were what could be called “collateral victims” in the rift between anthropology and art.
Recently in Europe, thanks especially to the efforts of Paris gallerist François Pannier and a number of anthropologist colleagues, Himalayan masks have emerged from obscurity and become the subject of exhibitions and publications. Attempts to formulate a typology have been made but, being in the possession of museums or collectors, these objects have been separated from their cultural and symbolic contexts, as well as from the other masks that they might once have been grouped with. As such, it is extremely difficult to truly understand or attribute meaning to them, as the only available references are other masks, which are also out of their environments and which themselves may have been incorrectly attributed.