Two S.D. Exhibits of Tribal Art Prove a Pleasant Challenge

It is pleasure, indeed, that greets the visitor of two current shows of art from tribal cultures, but it is an aesthetic pleasure not without its intellectual challenges. Our appreciation of such work has far outpaced our understanding of it, and all too often ritual and practical objects from other cultures stand in stark white exhibition spaces as if holding their breath, suspended in a falsely still, foreign world.

A timeless beauty permeates both shows, “Blades of Beauty and Death: African Art Forged in Metal,” at the Mesa College Art Gallery and “Ancestral Voices: Indonesian Tribal Art,” at the Oneiros Gallery. The visual splendor of the work--especially in the African show--helps cut across the cultural and chronological barriers between our world and that of the tribal cultures represented, but contradictions and questions intrude upon the experience.

As anthropologist and art historian Sally Price explains in her provocative new book, “Primitive Art in Civilized Places,” work from tribal cultures is generally perceived as the product of a communal sensibility, wholly determined by tradition. Even in these two shows, however, the work’s extraordinary variety of forms and techniques testifies to its makers’ expressive intent. Why, if we regard this work as art, do we ignore the issue of individual authorship, an issue integral to our notion of artistic genius? And why do we gloss over the works’ specific time and place of origin, as if these were peripheral to our experience of it?

These questions haunt all such exhibitions of tribal art, however respectfully they are organized and installed. Their resolution depends not only on further scholarship, but on acknowledgment of the double standards and prejudices that temper our perception of tribal cultures. The western world’s patronizing superiority trickles down into even the most well-intentioned of cultural projects.

Both shows speak of an engagement with life vastly different from our own, a sense of continuity between life and death, and acute attention to the rhythms and vagaries of the earth. In visual terms, the work speaks loudly and clearly, but as the tools and tales of a people, it needs translation. Didactic panels, descriptive labels, contextual photographs, even an educational video as Mesa included in a previous African show, all help mediate the vast distance between our worlds and give such displays a sense of responsibility.

“Blades of Beauty and Death” succeeds fairly well in this respect. A straightforward essay and detailed catalogue entries by Mesa professor Barbara Blackmun, who curated the show with Jacques Hautelet, set the stage for the 70 objects on view, all of which belong to a private collector. Blades here are living things--gestural, lyrical, delicate and refined. Whether coarsely hammered or finely polished and incised, they were all meant to confer authority and status upon their owner.

The currency blades, the most austere of the four types of blades on view, have an impressive integrity of form, whether of imposing height or more modest scale. Non-functional, they were used in exchanges of value.

The straight blades and curved swords, used for functional and ceremonial purposes, are exquisitely designed and crafted. Braided lines, patterned borders and meandering calligraphic markings appear on the surface of the iron blades and echo their varied shapes. Absolute geometry is less apparent than a system of lines and shapes that concedes to the organic world, often suggesting human and animal forms. Several straight blades and curved swords assume an anthropomorphic form, with a long blade for a body, and arms uplifted in a circle around a small knob of a head. The throwing knives, made to be flung so their blades rotate in a deadly whir, seem to fly even when standing still. They embody an untrammeled energy and a fluid grace.

The continuity of tradition in tribal cultures is said to make the dating of objects very difficult. Work in both the Mesa and Oneiros shows has been dated, roughly, to the 19th and 20th Centuries.

In “Ancestral Voices,” work from the private collection of local dealer Mark A. Johnson spans a broad spectrum of Indonesian ritual and utilitarian objects, but includes no puppets used in traditional shadow plays. A carved ancestor figure, nearly life-sized, stands near the entrance to the gallery, as it would before a home, staring intensely but calmly from wide almond eyes and outstretching its arms in a gesture of welcoming and protection. Another, carved on a wooden tomb door, has a stark, spiritual power, its chest a simple slab, its arms doubling back and ending in square, unarticulated hands.

More aggressive is a Hudoq mask from Borneo, which shoots a demonic stare from large red and black eyes. Points jut forward everywhere, from the nose, teeth and ears, giving this evil spirit used in funeral rites, or perhaps also in rice-sowing ceremonies, a threatening intensity. Tiny fetishes, remarkably vital for such small, static figures, and a selection of woven textiles and decorated containers are also included in the show.

Both the Indonesian objects and the African blades derive from cultures in which the present and past, function and beauty, are seamlessly integrated. In exemplifying this union, the works feel vaguely soul-satisfying, for they introduce us to values that complement our own, values so absent from our coolly efficient society, in which a clean line is drawn between the order of life and the passion of art. Our artistic ancestors--adherents of the British and American Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th Century, and members of the Bauhaus school in Germany in the ‘20s--tried hard to erase that line, or at least to smudge it enough to allow for some overlap between objects of daily use and objects of beauty, but in the end, the products of their efforts ascended, ironically, to the status of luxury objects.

Curators and viewers alike must be on guard to prevent this distorting phenomenon from inflicting itself on objects from tribal cultures, divesting them of their human history and rendering them precious, remote objects of beauty. While their remarkable forms deserve admiration, so too do the tales, spirits and lives they represent beg for release.

“Blades of Beauty” continues at the Mesa College Art Gallery (7250 Mesa College Drive, D-104) through March 7. “Ancestral Voices,” at the Oneiros Gallery (711 Eighth Ave., Studio A), ends March 3.