Exhibition Review Entrance to the Museum with the Majestic “Hermaphrodite Figure with Arms Raised” As Its Central Feature

1 The exhibition as introduced at the exhibition review entrance to the museum with the majestic “Hermaphrodite Figure with Arms Raised” as its central feature. 2 A vitrine displaying sculptures in the “Nyongom” style. ALL PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR Dogon Paris: musée du quai Branly april 15–July 24, 2011 Bonn: Kunst und Ausstellung- some thirty luminous vitrines positioned so that one can walk around them, the first gal- shalle der Bundesrepublik lery confirms the preeminent importance of Deutschland figural sculpture according to Hèlène Leloup, october 14, 2011–January 22, as realized through aesthetic groupings by 2012 style—Djennenké, Nyongom (Fig. 2), Bom- Milan: Palazzo Reale bou-Toro, and the like. This typology, estab- lished by Leloup in 1994, has been one of her February 21–June 3, 2012 major contributions to African art history, and the first part of the exhibition has the incon- reviewed by Éric Jolly testable merit of bringing attention to the translation by Allen F. Roberts diversity of Dogon styles and communities. In the second gallery, dedicated to masks In late spring and early summer 2011, the musée opened with prehistoric objects and closed and paintings from the rock shelter at Songo, du quai Branly of Paris presented its first tem- with the oldest sculpture of the exhibition. the change of perspective is radical, for porary exhibition of Dogon art (Fig. 1) under Even if it is implicit and erroneous, the mes- Leloup’s stylistic and historical approach sud- the direction of Hèlène Leloup, the former sage delivered to visitors is therefore lacking denly cedes to the mythical interpretations galeriste whose book Statuaire dogon (1994) in any ambiguity: Here are vestiges of a world of Marcel Griaule. Whereas in the preceding remains an important reference concerning that has disappeared and is irreducibly differ- space, richly diverse Dogon figural arts are the styles of Dogon sculpture. Judging from ent, as understood through “real” Dogon art explained through population movements, its attendance and media coverage, the event from “authentic” Dogon culture belonging to here these same arts are inversely understood was an undeniable success, with some 200,000 a distant past that the museum explores even through the homogeneity of a unified cos- visitors and praise from most French report- as it conceals the present. In this way, the exhi- mology as confirmed in panel texts: “Dogon ers. Such a reception is explained by the beauty, bition keeps one from interrogating stylistic cosmology and the creation myth … underlie ancient age, diversity, and number of objects evolutions and innovations of the twentieth all Dogon customs and art,” visitors are told. shown, with more than 330 works chosen from century, the reasons for such transformations, Conforming to this simplistic vision, masks public and private collections. The exhibition’s the history of global circulation of Dogon are attached to giant panels to form an immo- success is also due to the ever-growing noto- objects through their acquisition by persons bile pantheon of mythical witness above the riety of Dogon culture in Western and even from the West and their conversion into art heads of visitors. global imaginaries. Through their image as the objects in collections, and the emergence on heritors of a millenary tradition, the Dogon are international art scenes of Dogon painters and more and more subject to others’ fantasies, and sculptors. Similarly lost are the fascination of as a consequence, presentation of Dogon arts a number of European, African, and African encourages sales—as long as it corresponds to American artists with Dogon art and myth, stereotypes of Dogon as a relict people. whether expressed through their own works, In imposing upon visitors the points of view their travels, or their personal collections. In of art dealers and collectors of “art premier,” this regard, inclusion of several objects from however, this exhibition corroborated the cli- the former collection of Tristan Tzara insti- ché at least in part, in contrast to a number gates no particular commentary, for example. of recent museum projects and research on the Dogon (see, for example, Richards 2005).1 Walk-through and Scenography: Reduced to a collection of ancient objects, Has Dogon Art Been Fashioned by Dogon art as it was presented at the quai History or by Myth? Branly seems to stop at the end of the nine- “Dogon” is divided into three successive teenth century or, perhaps, with ethnographic spaces: an immense gallery for sculpture, a collecting from 1900 to 1930. Such a posi- more modest second room for masks and tion, never justified or explained, is deduced paintings, and finally a long corridor for fur- from three museological choices: the absence ther works in wood, iron, and bronze. The of any object later than this period, refusal three are organized according to scenogra- of any comparison or dialog with contem- phies and points of view that not only differ, porary arts and, finally, a walk-through that but may even contradict each other. Through 82 | african arts AUTUMN 2013 VOL. 46, NO. 3 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_r_00090 by guest on 01 October 2021 African463_82-96_CS6.indd 82 5/16/13 3:22 AM 3 Three long iron hooks, probably incom- plete as presented here, for which usage is unknown. 4 A display case arbitrarily compares Dogon ritual objects of iron with an Egyptian funerary figure. For the third part of the exhibition, com- Is Dogon Art Derived from a Saharan posed of less significant pieces, it is the décor Knapped Flint? that changes while stools, pulleys, door locks, Of the 330 objects exhibited, only 4 are and ornaments remain tied to Dogon mythol- foreign to Dogon country. None serves to by multiplying such rash and superficial com- ogy. In discovering objects displayed at several establish links to the present, nor even com- parisons (Leloup 2011: 17–21). levels in wooden-paneled wall cases, the visi- pares Dogon styles with regional aesthetics tor has the impression of having penetrated as reflected in Bamana figures, Mossi masks, Dogon Sculpture: An Art of the Past into an old-fashioned museum or a cabinet or ceramic works of Djenne-Djeno, and this Without Ties to the Present? of curiosities. Indeed, certain objects shown despite evident points in common as evoked Rather than transforming the museum into here are “curiosities” once used by Dogon for in the catalog or on the “Djennenké” didactic a conservatory of the past and a window onto mysterious purposes and without aesthetic panel, although without corresponding ico- irreducible alterity, it would have been easy to value, such as three iron “hooks” that look as nography. Unexpectedly, these four pieces are present recent Dogon art and contemporary out of context as picked fruit, presented in an only meant to anchor Dogon art ever more works whose forms are liberally based upon isolated vitrine without further explanation firmly in the past by associating it with deepest or resemble Dogon sculpture (Fig. 5). The (Fig. 3). prehistory or to antiquity, and particularly that span of possible choices is very broad, with Rendering the walk-through even more of the Sahara and Pharaonic Egypt, thus con- many artists influenced by Dogon sculpture confusing, the rooms already described open forming to the cultural diffusionism espoused and graphic design: African Americans Willie into a somber corridor with a last wall panel in the catalog. Cole, George Smith, Lois Mailou Jones, Vusu- suggesting what the visitor has not and will Without further explanation, the exhibition’s muzi Maduna, Hale Woodruff, and Tyrone never see—that is, the evolution of Dogon two first cases hold a flaked stone point from Mitchell, for example; or Africans Ouattara, sculpture through the effects of tourism and Saharan Azawagh, a grindstone, and a “Neo- Mamadou Diané, and Sokey Edorh; surrealists social change. Even as it seems to conclude the lithic idol” dating to the second millennium of the Cobra groupe (and especially Corneille exhibition with an occluded evocation of the bce, for which provenance is not mentioned. and Ernest Mancoba); or Europeans Alain dynamic present, this panel is followed by dis- Display of these objects is meant to suggest Kirili, Yves Bergeret, Giancarlo Sangregario, play of two objects bringing one back to death that Dogon art is the heir of Paleolithic Saha- Arcangelo, Miquel Barceló, Arman, Robert and a most distant past: a mortuary cover- ran material culture. One is left to presume that Filliou, Xavier Chilini, and Alain Volut. Need- ing and the famous hermaphrodite figure with visitors will appreciate the pertinence of this less to say, works by contemporary Dogon raised arms. The piece dates to the tenth cen- hypothesis. The fourth and last object foreign artists could have found a place in this exhibi- tury and was purchased by the AXA enterprise to Dogon country is an ushabti funerary figure tion as well, for their creators continue to be from Hélène Leloup and then offered to the from ancient Egypt with its arms crossed and a inspired by their culture of origin, no matter Quai Branly, where it has become the museum’s hoe and a whip in its hands. The work appears what their personal styles or external influ- logo. At the end of their tour, then, visitors have in a case holding two Dogon ritual iron objects ences may be. The gnarled sculptures of Ama- never escaped visions of an unchanging “tra- ending in bells (grelots) so as to demonstrate higuere Dolo, for instance, share numerous ditional” culture whose exhibited objects are supposed resemblance with the things held in formal traits with angular or twisted “Nyon- last witnesses for non-Dogon museum visitors.

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