Indonesian Art in the Musée du quai Branly — Jacques Chirac

Ancestor Figure | *Adu Sihara Salawa*
© Musée du quai Branly — Jacques Chirac
Man Ray, *La lune se lève sur l'île de Nias (The moon rises over the island of Nias)*
© Man Ray Trust

Indonesian Art in the Musée du quai Branly — Jacques Chirac

Curated by Steven G. Alpert

One of the premier places to view a permanent exhibition of the arts of the traditional peoples of Indonesia is the Musée du quai Branly in Paris. The museum's Indonesia collection is punctuated with masterpieces ranging from Sumatra to the west coast of Papua.

A case in point is one of the greatest Nias statues (siraha salawa) extant, representing an important chiefly ancestor. This statue has a well-documented history in Europe, as it once belonged to the cosmetics magnate Helena Rubinstein. She was dubbed "the empress of beauty" by Jean Cocteau, as much for her outstanding collection of art as for her business acumen. This statue was the subject of a famous 1926 photograph taken by the famed Dadaist and conceptual artist Man Ray. "The Moon Rises over the Island of Nias" appeared on the cover of an inaugural exhibition at the Galerie Surréaliste entitled Tableaux de Man Ray et objects des îles. On that occasion, Man Ray's photographs were displayed alongside more than sixty sculptures from Indonesia and the Pacific Islands that had been loaned from the legendary collection of André Breton.

André Breton in his studio, 42, rue Fontaine, June 1955; Sabine Weiss

No less a distinguished piece, the pangulubalang from nearby Sumatra is one of the finest large and free-standing Batak figures in existence. While the Batak are renowned for their ability to carve in minutiae, this imposing statue once belonged to the well-known collector and connoisseur Count Baudouin de Grunne. This remarkable figure was initially showcased in the 1982 catalog Art of the Archaic Indonesians before gaining prominence as an iconic standard-bearer in Musée du quai Branly's Indonesia collection. It's an emotionally fraught yet enigmatic figure that conveys a powerful appearance and a beatific mien in equal measure. Such a seamless dual presence reminds us that in Indonesia, the balance of binary or complementary qualities or forces (to augur for a desired outcome) is an essential tenet and tension within Indonesian ceremonial life that is sometimes reflected in outstanding works of art. Transiting from the far West of Indonesia to its most Eastern province, the quai Branly stewards a compelling memento mori in the form of an ancestor image or korwar from Cenderawasih Bay (formerly Geelvinck Bay), which is located on the Northwest coast of Papua. This statue is one of the finest known examples from a subset of korwar that combines an important ancestor's skull with a finely articulated wooden body. The figure's riveting gaze, staring back from the abyss, is magnified by one remaining eye inlaid with a prominent blue trade bead. The departed's hands comfortably rest on a frontal shield or barrier of interlocking foliate designs.

The Musée du quai Branly's Indonesian holdings grew exponentially in 2001 when the late Jean Paul Barbier situated nearly five hundred items, the majority of his published Indonesian pieces, within their purview. Based on a path inspired by the collecting passion of his father-in-law, Josef Mueller, Barbier and his wife, Monique, became phenomenal collectors with far-ranging interests that spanned from paintings to antiquities, the arts of traditional peoples, and so much more. In the realm of Indonesian art, Mr. Barbier was special. He popularized, evangelized, and described the virtues of traditional Indonesian art through his many exhibitions and diverse publications. Beginning with the compact but iconic standard Art of the Archaic Indonesians (1982), the publications he sponsored set the bar for rediscovering and exposing quality material and ideas that dealt with this subject matter. After World War II, and until Barbier's involvement, Island Southeast Asia was only seldomly showcased and largely overlooked by international audiences. Aficionados of Indonesia are indebted to him for his endeavors and his many published works that brought increased interest and further illumination to the field.

Illustrated here are a few of the many highlights from the former Barbier-Mueller collection. Geographically, starting from the Eastern tip of Nusa Tenggara Timur, there are two marvelous pieces from the island of Timor. The first is a figurative female door from Belu, followed by a finely incised figure from an Atoni-speaking group in Western Timor. Many of us have a favorite Jean Paul story as he had a great deal of energy and a larger-than-life persona. The first time he ever knocked on our door, he entered wearing a full-length fur coat in the heart of winter. My wife, Rebecca, looked at him coyly and said in her Texas accent, "Mr. Barbier, you are the first man to ever break my heart before I ever laid eyes on you!" He was clearly a bit taken aback by such an unusual greeting. Still, he smiled widely when it was made clear that the object of discussion was a particular door from Timor, the one which is now proudly displayed in the quai Branly. Doors representing female figures with such elan and raised full proportions from the traditional houses (uma) of the Belu elite are rare survivors. This door was from the rear of one of those houses near the kitchen and used exclusively by females. The only time a man could walk through this portal was when presenting a child to the outside world for the first time.

Among the many ex-Barbier objects in the quai Branly collection, we present several items from the large gathering of gold jewelry and related metallic objects originally published in a ground-breaking book by Susan Rodgers entitled Power and Gold: Jewelry from Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Standouts from that publication are many, and they include the finest example extant of a gold disk or bulan emas (literally 'golden moon’) from Luang. Such circular disks were worn as chest pendants from Timor to the southeastern Moluccas, where they adorned vaunted warriors (and were symbolic of trophy heads) or used by both females and males to affirm their social standing. Said pendants were exposed and arrayed by the wealthiest families during rituals, dances, and rite of passage ceremonies. Whether finely cast or beaten, golden items were also part of an ancient system of exchange and commerce, ranging from earrings, disks, chains, plates, trays, necklaces, or masks. Symbolic of the aristocracy and utilized in status-raising events, gold, and fashioned items are sometimes transferred during dowry negotiations and the furthering of social alliances. Stylistically, this old and uniquely designed ex-Barbier bulan emas depicts two armed males sporting topknots or headgear while facing one another in an enigmatic conversation. In Indonesia, gold is considered hot, noble, and radiantly close to the sun, reflecting 'male' and largely aristocratic prerogatives. An exquisite frontal crown or lado wea from the Nage people of central Flores is the epitome of such an object. The base can alternatively be considered as representing two conjoined mythical animals, a ship's prows or even the crescent moon, which, as a celestial body and among its many assignations, was associated with fertility in conjunction with headhunting. The five rising vertical shoots or 'leaves' (daun) may be said to reflect both the world tree and its celestial connections. Susan Rodgers wrote that one function of these crowns was that they were worn by aristocrats when they went into the forest in search of a tree from which to carve a new ritual post or peo. Peo are tall twin-forked edifices that are often mounted on stone platforms near the center of a village. One can think of these posts as the connective symbolic 'tree' that links or anchors an earthbound community to the heavens and the ancestors. It is here where animals are sacrificed, ritual culture often emanates, and generational continuity is reaffirmed. (See Power and Gold: 326).

From the same catalog and deriving from the nearby island of Sumba is a small gem that depicts a warrior astride his horse with a typical round war shield strapped to the rider's back. This statuette is from East Sumba, and though its exact function is unknown, it is thought to be a charm associated with marapu (a term for the island's former traditional practices and also for the items kept within a lineage or great house). Visitors to Sumba can see many examples of a late megalithic culture that endures to this day. Here, important villages erected various forms of stone monuments to honor their ancestors and invoke when performing specific ritual functions or attending to personal needs. Statements in stone became more richly ornamented as Sumba began to accrue wealth, especially from supplying horses and cattle to traders in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. An unusual upright stone figure from this period, a rarity in the Sumbanese lexicon, sports a marangga, a large gold pectoral. These beaten gold ornaments were associated with important houses. This particular figure, which may or may not represent a clan founder, is from West Sumba and, as such, would have been centrally placed in an ancestral village where it was associated with periodic rites of renewal, sacrifice, fecundity, and agricultural cycles.

Among the Kenyah and Kayan groups of Borneo, items of personal use and community ritual life were often beautifully decorated with intelligible designs of interlocking protective designs. Frequently, these might include mythical animals bound by foliate or abstract designs, which, in turn, were thought to frame or increase their efficacy. A personal favorite, a chef-d'œuvre of the genre, is a platter or offering dish with large figurative grips and an expansive shallow shape that tends to indicate that it was most likely used for a specific ritual or ceremonial occasion. While its exact functional history is now lost, its collection date (prior to 1914) and being once privately owned by the early antiquarian Herbert Reiser in London may tantalizingly suggest that it is, in fact, a singular survivor from a Kayanic sub-group, perhaps in Sarawak, either from above Belaga, or from the lower Tinjar river area near from what is today the border with Indonesia.

From Sumatra and Nias, many ex-Barbier items of particular virtue are on exhibit and in the museum's storage depot. Half of a pair of stout-standing protective house figures (pagar) or a small choice container for magical substances (guri-guri) are both superb examples of early, singular pieces that share rich surfaces, distinct personalities, and artistic intelligence. The guri-guri is a small container. Its base is a ceramic jarlet from China that may date back to the late Sung dynasty. It was then bound with split cane and sealed with a delicately carved wooden stopper. This marriage of imported trade ceramics with locally carved stoppers is typical of the genre, but the subject matter and quality of this one are most uncommon. As a receptacle for magical substances employed by a ritual specialist (datu or guru), the imagery on a stopper for a guri-guri such as this one would have referred to a very specific story or purpose and one that could be further researched. Batak mythology is complex and richly embroidered with stories. Here, a female figure rides, sitting sideways on the back of a mythical animal. They share the same patterning, so whoever the protagonists are, they are deeply bound to one another, just as the dragon of the Underworld and the quaker of the earth, Naga Padoha, is bound to the goddess, Sideak Parujar, who overcomes him. From nearby Nias island, the Barbier's most important wooden statue is another superior siraha salawa from the northern carving tradition. It's an iconic piece formerly in the old Blok collection from the Hague.

There is just so much to explore there. Nowhere are the arts and cultures of Oceania, the Americas, Africa and Asia so well-premiered. The quai Branly's current Indonesian exhibition is prodigious and extensive. Here, we are only providing a brief sampling from this wide-ranging collection and suggest that our readers navigate through the museum's revamped website to discover traditional Indonesian art within the public domain in France, or better yet, pay this impressive Parisian museum a call. A visit to the Musée du quai Branly continually makes for an enchanting and expansive journey.

— Steven G. Alpert, founder of Art of the Ancestors