MASQUES DE L’HIMALAYA / MASKS OF THE HIMALAYAS

Description

“This book has accompanied the first exhibition of great importance on the masks of the Himalayas. Encompassing all religious influences in the region, animist and shamanic, Hindu or Buddhist, covering the entire Himalayan range starting from Ladakh in Indian Kashmir, Nepal, Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh and Tibet, this work presents a comprehensive picture masks in this part of the world. It brings together more than 200 pieces from private collections or famous institutions such as the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva and the Quai Branly Museum in Paris. Poorly represented until recently in museums, Himalayan masks kept their mysteries. Unlike African and Oceanian masks from the eighteenth century decorated the curiosity cabinets of the Century of Enlightenment scholars and the discovery by artists in the early twentieth century was going to upset some conception of art through its influence on Cubism, Himalayan masks arrived in the West until recently. This is the opening of Nepal in the 60s with the influx of curious as diverse as that revealed that part of Himalayan art that the few collections Jacques Bacot, among others, had no scratches reveal the richness and variety. An exhibition of this importance is intended not only to reveal pieces of rare quality, but through this publication and the major pieces of confrontation, also allow a significant evolution of knowledge on the subject. “