Dance Mask, Eastern Highlands

Chris Boylan Oceanic Art

DANCE MASK, Eastern Highlands, Papua New Guinea

36 x 22 x 6 cm

Ex-early Melbourne private collection; ex-Alex Philips, Melbourne.

Masks of this quality were mainly collected in the early colonial period, 1950-1960s. Highland masks were ephemeral, often made to be used in only one ceremony, then discarded; hence they were made of gourds or soft wood. In the 1960s Stan Moriarty, the most important collector of Highland material cultures, assembled a considerable collection of Highland art that eventually was donated to the Art Gallery of NSW.

This wood mask is from the Eastern Highlands and was certainly collected in this early period; Moriarty has photographs of them being danced in the 1960s, But by the 1970s with the strong developments brought on by the colonial administration they had all but disappeared.

This Eastern Highland wood  mask is a particularlyfine example. It demonstrates strong abstract qualities, with large cut-out eyes and mouth, beneath a heavy overhanging brow. Holes around the edges of the mask would have once supported beard-like attachments of fibre or cassowary feathers while the forehead likely carried a fibre and nassa shell headband, surmounted by a headdress of plumes Large paired pig tusks adorn the nose, inserted through the septum, reinforcing the mask’s striking presence..

The mask itself, with added adornments removed retains a formidable power.

$3,500.00

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