Northwest Coast Polychromed Wood Mask, probably Heiltsuk (Bella Bella) or Haisla

of convex form, carved with a pointed chin, lips open in a chanting or speaking expression, bulbous nose with flaring nostrils and refined medial ridge, pronounced stacked cheek bones, hollowed eye sockets with large pierced pupils, close-set arching brows, and broad faceted cranium, painted with bluish-green, black and vermilion red pigments against a natural ground, with a goatee, and encircling band around the eyes and nose.

Wolfgang Paalen Collection
Acquired in June 1965 from Merton Simpson Gallery, New York City

Objects of Bright Pride (Northwest Coast Indian Art from New York Collections), The American Federation of Arts: Center for Inter-American Relations, New York, NY July 11-October 1, 1978; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH November 19-December 24; The Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO February 4-March 18, 1979; The Museum of Natural History of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles CA April 22-August 15, 1979; The Seattle Art Museum, Seattle WA September 21-November 4 1979; New Orleans Museum of Art, dates unknown.

Very good original condition with typical wear for its age. There are a series of small surface holes that indicate possible insect damage, not active. There is a stable hairline crack between the center cranium down to the eyebrows. Small chips to the periphery.
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On the back of this mask is written: "Wolgang Paalen Collection, Moon Mask." Wolgang Paalen collected a considerable number of objects during his 1939 trip to British Columbia and Alaska. In 1941 he acquired some pieces from George Heye, the founder and director of the Museum of the American Indian in New York City. This mask may have been included in the 1945 exhibition El Arte Indigena de Norteamericaat the Museo nacional de anthropologia in Mexico City, where a great number of Paalen's objects were exhibited.

For a related example identified as Haisla, fig. 3b, and a discussion of two substyles of Haisla masks by Alan Sawyer see Holm, 1984, pp. 143-146.  

For information on the early collection history of Northwest Coast masks see Holm and Reid, 1975, pp. 13-14: "Most of the fine, old pieces in this exhibition were picked up by sailors between 1778 and 1830 and taken back to England or Boston to become the delight of antiquarians and the wonder of schoolboys.

By 1820, the demand for curios had created a souvenir industry. Great quantities were turned out. The Northwest Coast people had known luxury during the height of the sea-otter trade and were reluctant to give it up. Curios were a poor substitute for sea-otter pelts, but there was little else to trade.

The first serious collector on the Northwest Coast was Captain James Cook who gathered ethnographic materials as part of his general fact-finding endeavors in 1778.”

Also see, King, 1979, pp. 23, 26 – 31: "A very large percentage of the surviving portrait masks were collected before 1879, and their carving and sale must be understood in the context of the rapid disintegration of Indian institutions at this time. Masks were collected in several different ways before 1870, and these activities determine what is known of their manufacture and significance. In the earliest period masks were traded, for instance, to Cook because the Nootka were anxious to obtain metal. With the extension of trade it seems probable that only ceremonially insignificant items were regularly traded to American and European sea captains. No doubt important sea captains were still able to obtain, or were presented with, objects considered significant by the Indians.

The Canadian artist, Paul Kane, made sketches showing masks from a number of tribes at Fort Victoria in 1847; George Catlin perhaps acquired the human face masks for his London exhibition of the 1840s from a similar trading company source. Another sailor who was able to purchase masks on the Columbia River, 100 miles west of Fort Vancouver, was Lieutenant Charles Wilkes who led the United States Exploring Expedition of 1838-42. Under those circumstances it is not surprising therefore that masks of this early period are poorly understood by anthropologists. It is this, and the sensitivity of the carving, which has given rise to the frequent claim that many of them are portraits. Franz Boas, the greatest anthropologist of the Northwest Coast, arrived in 1886 with photographs and drawings of masks whose significance he wanted to ascertain. He discovered that it was seldom possible to find the exact significance of individual masks unless he visited the village from which they came. This was partly because masks were made for the use of particular individuals who gave them their meaning, and partly because masks were traded from village to village and tribe to tribe and in this process their meaning was liable to change or become lost.

It was the masks, however, on which the greatest ingenuity, care and attention were lavished…

Another unusual aspect of these abstract designs when used on masks is that they are rarely symmetrical. This decorative scheme was formalized by the northern tribes, the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian, but its origin probably lies in a little-known earlier art style common to the whole of the Northwest Coast. During the nineteenth century the Southern Kwakiutl, and to a much lesser extent the Nootka, began to adopt the intellectualized design principles of the north.

Face painting on masks usually represented designs of crests and shamans’ spirits. Among the northern Northwest Coast Indians crests were inherited from real or mythological ancestors in the form of animals. A chief and his family would have a large number of crests, but only the chief would be entitled to wear them all. Most Tlingit human face masks are connected with shamanism rather than with crests and the painting symbolizes, in a very abstract way, an animal or other natural spirit helper. Facial painting, therefore, when transferred onto masks, is another possible way in which portraiture and representation may have been realized."

Also see Macnair, et. al., 1998, p. 60: "By far the majority of masks collected on the Northwest Coast until about 1850 represent a human face or an animal in anthropomorphic guise…"Nisga’a, Gitxsan and Tsimshian masks used in the Nanox dance series are dramatizations of spirit beings. Many of the masks represent human frailties such as conceit (figure 20), pride, stupidity, avarice, sloth and arrogance. Some categorize social groups such as old people, memeners of rival tribes, intruders or white men. Others depict an array of animals and celestial objects."

For information on the genesis of the mask carving tradition see Malin, 1978, p. 41: "The earliest European explorers have left their impressions of the masks and their usage among the Northwest Coast Indians. Since the art was well developed by then, we can assume that masks had been produced for a very long time. So when we speak of their beginnings, we are peering back into prehistory, and there are no records to help us."

pp. 13 – 14:

"The flood of trade items which reached the coast in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries gave the Indians easy access to knives, nails, chisels and axes made of iron. Other materials such as canvas, cloth, buttons, and paints also became available. Traditional, laboriously-made tools for carving were gradually discarded in favor of superior implements or novel materials. Metal tools facilitated carving to the point where demand on the artist’s productivity increased, given the competitive nature of the societies. Artists were spurred to innovate, to astonish and awe the viewers of a patron’s history at an important potlatch. Each effort pushed back horizons of the artist’s perception, and they revealed with increasing clarity and skill the nuances of their assignment. Metal tools unleashed the artist’s capacity to produce more easily, to express bold new ideas, and contrive experiments, which fueled the fires of competition between rival tribes.

More and more apprentices flocked to established carvers to take up the challenge of mask making. A veritable explosion of masks followed. Northwest Coast society crystallized into a culture of specialists: those who carved dugout canoes, others who carved totem poles, those who specialized in box making, household items, ceremonial paraphernalia, and masks and costumes."

For information on the use of masks see Wardwell, 1996, pp. 6-7: "Often, however, when faced with certain undocumented masks, human and animal sculptures, storage boxes and other objects, we can only make educated guesses as to whether they were made for use by shamans.

At times, the intended use of an object can be hypothesized with some certainty. For example, the appearance of specific motifs or animal forms often associated with shamans, such as the depiction of skeletal elements, the land or river otter, the bound witch, the devilfish, and the oystercatcher, can be a reliable indicator. Shamanic connections are also clearly suggested by some odd facial expressions on anthropomorphic masks, including those that depict a trancelike state or represent incipient death…Another clue to shamanic function is the fact that the eye-holes on many of the masks used by Tlingit shamans were not cut through. The shaman often did not actually have to see, as he relied on his assistants to guide him during some performances, while at others he danced within a small prescribed area (de Laguna, 1972, pt. 2, p. 692;Vaughanand Holm, 1982, p. 91, no. 55).”

And Malin, 1978, pp. 49 – 51: “A particularly interesting use of ritual masks is found in the secret societies associated with the Tsimshian, northern Kwakiutl, Bella Coola and southern Kwakiutl tribal divisions. Membership in such organization cut across clan or lineage lines making many people eligible to join them. Ceremonies were centered around winter activities and were strong unifying forces within the tribe. A proliferation of orders and sub-orders of these societies developed, each with masks associated with special uses and kinds of performance. There were healing societies made up of shaman, there were conjuring societies, war societies, and societies for inducting young people or adults as new members. The initiates in all secret societies were induced into trance-like states for communion with spirits, some of which were terrifying…of far greater significance were those masks that belonged to the shaman, the specialists involved in the arts of healing the sick. Shaman or Indian doctors cured illness, and maintained the equilibrium of the tribe in times of acute crisis.

Each shaman’s paraphernalia included masks which he used to cure… Each shaman had his own curing techniques, rituals, masks, even songs that helped to heal. The masks often portrayed special beings, sometimes known as helpers, in the healing arts.

No two shaman used the same masks because their powers differed. They appeared to have carved their own rather than hiring a carver specialist to create the mask for them. Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian tribal groups commonly employed the masked shaman for healing rituals."