North America | Canada
Kwakiutl Mask
Canada
Kwakiutl Mask
British Columbia, Canada
Circa 1850
Wood and pigments
Height: 20 cm – 7 ¾ in.
Provenance
Collection Merton Simpson, New York
Collection Peggy & Paul Rabut, Massachusetts acquired from the above in 1958
Private collection Montreal
Collection Paula & Abe Rosman, New York
Sotheby’s New York. 28 November 1989, lot 189
Collection Jeffrey Myers, New York
Collection Franck Marcelin, France
Kwakiutl Mask 20 cm / Galerie Flak
Price on request
For millennia, human groups have settled along the North Pacific coast in British Columbia, Canada. These far-northern civilizations developed arts and cultures centered on fascinating cosmogonies. Belief and healing systems based on shamanism gave rise to art imbued with power and poetry.
The first major Western discoverer of British Columbia art was Captain James Cook, who collected works on-site during his 1778 voyage. As noted by J. C. H. King in "Portrait Masks from the Northwest Coast of America" (Thames & Hudson, 1979), most ritual masks were collected before 1870. After this date, a period began marked by the gradual and definitive disintegration of the social structures and classical traditions within North Pacific Amerindian cultures.
Franz Boas, the great anthropologist of Northwest Coast cultures, visited the region in 1886 with photographs and drawings of masks, seeking to establish their ritual use. He soon realized that the exact role and meaning of each of these masks were, more often than not, already impossible to identify unless one visited the specific village where the mask had been carved. This is largely explained by the fact that these masks were created for a particular individual, who imbued them with personal and secret meaning and identity. Over time and distance, this knowledge was gradually lost.
The first major Western discoverer of British Columbia art was Captain James Cook, who collected works on-site during his 1778 voyage. As noted by J. C. H. King in "Portrait Masks from the Northwest Coast of America" (Thames & Hudson, 1979), most ritual masks were collected before 1870. After this date, a period began marked by the gradual and definitive disintegration of the social structures and classical traditions within North Pacific Amerindian cultures.
Franz Boas, the great anthropologist of Northwest Coast cultures, visited the region in 1886 with photographs and drawings of masks, seeking to establish their ritual use. He soon realized that the exact role and meaning of each of these masks were, more often than not, already impossible to identify unless one visited the specific village where the mask had been carved. This is largely explained by the fact that these masks were created for a particular individual, who imbued them with personal and secret meaning and identity. Over time and distance, this knowledge was gradually lost.
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