15 Lake Sentani Masterworks in Global Museum Collections
15 Lake Sentani Masterworks in Global Museum Collections
Curated by Steven G. Alpert
Lake Sentani is situated not far from West Papua's capital of Jayapura. It is a large, low-lying tropical body of freshwater surrounded by verdant hills. In this magical place, the possibility of standing in the apex or the middle of double rainbows is reportedly common. There, the Sentani people traditionally lived in villages extending over this waterway. Their houses were built on stout, sometimes beautifully arrayed and carved pylons. These dwellings and the village's components were all linked to one another by a series of extended wooden platforms and walkways. Before the onset of modernity, Lake Sentani was a place of abundance where fish and sago were notably plentiful.
In this setting, colorful rituals have been performed to celebrate life's cycles since time immemorial. The Lake is considered a sacred place, both a repository and a mirror that is indivisible from the people living over its shores. Like the famous arcing rainbows, the Lake imbues the people's outlook and artistic creations. The locals also believe that the Lake teems with powerful life-affecting spirits and mythical creatures that animate (or once animated) their daily lives. This pantheon also included folkloric heroes dwelling in the depths of the water, such as Wondiwori, the keeper of shamanistic practices and fishing knowledge.
Lake Sentani marks the furthest eastward extension of Indonesian decorative sensibilities (that can be found in all its variations throughout the archipelago). In fact, it is also the most distant to the east in Indonesia, where cast bronze fragments and axes from Southeast Asia's greater Bronze Age have been discovered. This seemingly attests to an ancient flow of goods from a wider world. In Lake Sentani utilitarian carvings, space is often carefully filled with small, repeated, or meandering designs. This is a common practice in some Indonesian cultures where something of value is further framed in this way to protect and magnify the meaning of its content. In their aesthetic, both symmetry and asymmetrical forms meet in unusual ways. The area is a watershed in terms of artistic production and stylistic variations and deeply influenced the Western art movement of Surrealism.
Beginning in the early to late 19th century, Europeans began to discover Lake Sentani as they ventured further into the interior. It was then that the first items of material culture were collected and mostly deposited in European museums. By the turn of the century, many changes were already occurring in Western Papua. This can best briefly be described in the saga of the famous maro painters. In 1903, an army physician, hardy explorer, nascent ethnographer, and "excellent man to have around" named Gijsbertus van der Sande accompanied the first official Dutch Expedition to the North Coast. The trip included visits to Humboldt Bay and Lake Sentani. At Tobati Village, he gave a young man drawing materials. The lad spontaneously created a flowing, beautiful composition of abstract animals and fish-like creatures that presage those found in later maro paintings (Art of the Northwest Coast of New Guinea: pp. 130). It is unclear whether such compositions may have occurred on selected tapa types. Currently, they are considered to be of slightly later development. Carl von Rosenberg, a draftsman employed by the Dutch Topographical Service in Batavia, widely traveled throughout the archipelago. In 1858, he drew a Humboldt Bay couple. Interestingly, the female is clearly wearing a well-painted tapa cloth wrap as a waisted skirt.
Traditionally, the women of Lake Sentani and Humboldt Bay beat bark cloth into fine sheets of tapa. Skill in creating both plain and decorated tapa was central to a woman's identity, her clan affiliations, and her level of prestige. Skirts were worn in multiple layers as daily outfits and during rites of passage ceremonies (that included marriage and death). It was said that only young girls or aged widows could shun wearing tapa and go naked. A famous 1926 photograph, taken at Saboiboi by the Swiss explorer and ethnographer Paul Wirz, recorded a gorgeous example in situ of a painted tapa of traditional style with multiple layered spiraling motifs similar to those commonly seen on wood carving. The composition has eight legs and five distinct heads. In Wirz's image, this tapa is displayed beside the gravesite of a young woman.
Such designs are passed down through lineages and clans and were often reserved for chiefly families. Carved ornamentation or painted designs are referred to as being "homo" (writing), as these pictographic images illustrate a lexicon of abstract meaning and tenets of belief. However, something rather remarkable transpired with maro painting during the first several decades of the 20th century when government officials, expeditions, missionaries, and travelers began to arrive there.
A very short yet remarkably fertile period of artistry erupted. Suddenly, paintings that resembled van der Sande's earlier drawing became known to Europeans. Two important individuals stand out besides the early Dutch sources for maro. The first was Wilhelm Stüber. Stüber was a planter by profession who re-settled at Yotefa Bay in 1917, collecting everything from exotic butterflies to orchids to ethnographic specimens. A remarkable trove of maro cloth that Stüber originally collected was eventually bought in 1931 by Julius and Dorette Fleischmann. Today, their collection resides in the Cincinnati Museum of Art (CMFA). At its very best, the evocative, teeming compositions shown here from various institutions with their floating human figures, sawbills, crocodiles, fish birds, and mythical creatures verily lay claim to being among the finest figurative tapa cloths ever made by any culture.
In this world, a legendary character, Jacques Viot, a charismatic dandy, art dealer, and author, voyaged to Lake Sentani. He was a member of the entourage of the Surrealist movement headed by André Breton and the famous Parisian connoisseur and gallerist Pierre Loeb. In 1929, Viot traveled to the East Indies, seeking adventure and allegedly escaping a debt owed to Loeb. Aside from the famous double-figured statue that is sometimes referred to in French as Le Lys (The Lilly) and illustrated here, Viot also brought a number of other remarkable pieces back to Europe, including numerous fine statues and maro tapa cloths. He may have further ignited competition between various artists and villages supplying him with these works. Sometimes, events occur during prolonged periods of exchange or encounter when a culture is still relatively intact. In such a time, mutual stimulation, new technologies, and outside interest can temporarily affect or change traditional patterning and skillsets in astonishing ways. This is what happened with the maro paintings of Lake Sentani. The quality of the maro paintings associated with Viot varies greatly from exceptional artworks to lesser ledger-like drawings.
Once Loeb saw them with his friends and stable of artists, along with articles, publications, and exhibitions, maro paintings eventually became a rage in Parisian artistic circles and an inspiration for Surrealist painters of the 1920s-1930s. (See Art of the Northwest Coast of New Guinea: pp 154-175) The Surrealists were astounded by the art from Lake Sentani. They, too, felt as if they were influenced by realizing their art forms through their dreams. They were also rearranging spaces into new cosmologies, and the surrealists, in particular, felt a kinship while very much appreciating the designs on these tapa cloths. By then, André Breton had assumed leadership of the Surrealist movement. At that time, both he and Loeb were assembling impressive collections of Oceanic Art that included painted maro tapa. Artists such as Miró, Matisse, and Ernst also owned them. The ones displayed here reflect some of the finest compositions found in Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen and others stewarded by the Museum der Kulturen Basel, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the de Young Museum FAMSF.
In the realm of wood, Art of the Ancestors features two remarkable house ornaments, both from Basel and collected by Paul Wirz, the Swiss ethnographer who visited New Guinea numerous times. One of the items featured here is a gable finial from a men’s house that depicts a man holding on to a seemingly active cassowary bird, while the other is a magnanimous symbolic rendition of the sun that was fashioned to be hung from the top beam of a ceremonial or men's house. Both were collected in 1926 but derived from different villages. The other truly great statue that Viot took possession of in 1929 was formerly in the collection of Pierre Loeb. It is a haunting female figure with a quizzical tilting head that is one of the prides of the de Young Museum's formidable New Guinea material from the John and Marcia Friede Collection. Of equal virtue, we present one of the most famous of the many outstanding chief's house poles recovered from Lake Sentani. This one is from Doyo village and was collected by C.M. A. Groeneveldt in 1952 before being displayed for many years in Amsterdam's Tropenmuseum. The people of Lake Sentani also embellished their tools, betel nut paraphernalia, utensils, architectural features, etc. As examples of their keen carving skills, we highlight a ceremonial dish depicting a varan or frog expansively spreading its raised body over the base of the serving tray. It most likely represents a clan symbol. A roof's decorated slatted board, a type photographed in situ by H. F. Tillema of Borneo fame in 1924, is one of only two known examples in this style known to have survived (Art of the Northwest Coast of New Guinea: pp. 193). This piece belongs to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
When Jacques Hoogerbrugge, one of the most knowledgeable experts on the area's material culture, a field collector who was also involved in United Nations Development programs in the 1960s, went in search of maro painters in Lake Sentani in 1971, he could not find one alive. Eventually, he met a man named Nafri in Humboldt Bay who had been a painter in his youth. Maro painters were uncommon even in the old days, and old maro paintings are rare. Most of the best ones are now in museums. It has been said that these exceptional painters often sought inspiration and permission to draw the totemic imagery that appears on figurative tapa cloths when standing by the shoreline at sunset — on the edge of night and day — when spirits come out to reveal themselves briefly. While that era of painting has passed, the imagination for making maro, as well as carved goods, has been revived in recent years. New generations of artists are working with traditional and novel forms to create contemporary items of visual delight.
To further explore the unique relationship between Surrealism and Lake Sentani and its art forms, we suggest:
The Art of Lake Sentani: Kooijman: 1959
Art of Northwest New Guinea: S. Grueb: 1992
Jacques Viot, the Maro of Tobati, and Modern Painting — Paris - New Guinea 1925-1935, Philippe Peltier, pp. 154-175
"L'Oeil Sauvage": Oceanic Art and the Surrealists, Elizabeth Cowling, pp. 175-189
Ancestors of the Lake: V. Webb: 2011
— Steven G. Alpert, founder of Art of the Ancestors
1
Painted Bark Cloth | Maro
Museum der Kulturen Basel
Bark fiber, pigment
2
Painted Bark Cloth | Maro
Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen
ca. 1930
Bark fiber, pigment
RV-3600-7499
3
Painted Bark Cloth | Maro
Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen
Before 1948
Bark fiber, pigment
TM-1866-5
4
Painted Bark Cloth | Maro
de Young Museum | Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
20th century
Bark fiber, pigment
Gift of Marcia and John Friede in honor of Diane B. Wilsey and Harry S. Parker III
2007.44.41
5
Painted Bark Cloth | Maro
Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen
Before 1931
Bark fiber, pigment
TM-666-320
6
Roof Decoration from a Ceremonial House
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
19th–20th century
Wood, pigment
Bequest of William E. Teel
2014.290
7
Gable Finial
Museum der Kulturen Basel
Wood
MfVb 6665
8
Ceremonial Dish Depicting a Varan or Frog
Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen
Before 1939
Wood
TM-1302-9
9
Le Lys | Double Figure Post, Chief’s House
National Gallery of Australia
19th century or earlier
Wood
Sold by community members, Lake Sentani, Papua Province, Indonesia to Jacques Viot, Paris, France (1929) Sold by Galerie Pierre Loeb, Paris, France (c. 1933) to Jacob Epstein, London, United Kingdom. Sold by the Epstein estate to Gustave & Franyo Schindler, New York, United States of America prior to 1966 with Gaston De Havenon, New York, United States of America prior to 1974. Sold by Gaston de Havenon, New York, United States of America to the National Gallery of Australia, Australian Capital Territory, Australia in 1974.
74.214
10
House Pylon Decorated with Ancestral Chief
Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen
Before 1952
Wood
TM-2202-101
11
Sun Disc
Museum der Kulturen Basel
Wood, pigment
MfVB Vb 6657
12
Female Ancestor Figure
de Young Museum | Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
ca. 18th-19th century
Wood
Dimensions
Foundation purchase, Phyllis C. Wattis Fund for Major Accessions
2012.77.2
13
Painted Bark Cloth | Maro
Museum of Natural History & Science — Cincinnati Museum Center
Bark fiber, pigment
Previously owned by Julius Fleischmann, Jr. and Dorette Kruse Fleischmann
14
Figurative House Post
Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen
Before 1952
Wood
TM-2202-76a
15
Painted Bark Cloth | Maro
The Dallas Museum of Art (IG)
Bark fiber, pigment
All artworks and images presented in this feature are the property of the attributed museums.