- 9
Sulka Helmet Mask, New Britain, Bismarck Archipelago, Papua New Guinea
Description
- Fibers (plant), Wood, Dwarf cassowary feathers
- Height: 31 in (78.7 cm)
Label inscribed:
Slg. Hch. Lahmann
Aug. 1932
No. 8
Label printed:
Tanzmaske ( Dukduk ) Südküste Neu Pommern, halbe Höhe
Inscribed:
S. Neu Pom[m]ern. and 47658
Provenance
Dr Heinrich Lahmann (1860 - 1905), Dresden
Museum für Völkerkunde, Dresden, August 1932 (No. 47658)
Everett Rassiga, New York, acquired from the above by exchange
Sotheby’s, New York, November 20, 1991, lot 21, consigned by the above
Private Collection, Germany
Literature
Catalogue Note
Sulka art possesses an ethereal beauty which in many respects seems the embodiment of André Breton's description of Oceanic art as "the sky, the bird and the dream." Made almost entirely of ephemeral plant matter, very few Sulka masks of the age, quality, and preservation of the present lot survive in either institutional or private collections. A similar mask to the present lot was once in the collection which André Breton formed with Paul Eluard; the two surrealist poets were compelled to sell the collection in July 1931 at the Hotel Drouot, Paris. That mask, which appears in Breton’s Nadja, is now in the ‘Witnesses to a Surrealist Vision’ installation at the Menil Collection, Houston (X 0073). Another, from the collection of the legendary Modern art dealer Ernst Beyeler, is in the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen (Inv. O.97.1).