Behind the scenes of the exhibition "Jean Dubuffet, a barbarian in Europe"

Some conservation treatments

Lucie Monot and Isabel Garcia Gomez

By confining artworks in museums, we prevent them from being received in the living city; we give them an untouchable, forbidden character, which diverts the public from using them.

Jean Dubuffet (Dubuffet 1995 : 23-24)

Introduction

After a premiere at the Mucem in Marseille and a presentation at the IVAM in Valencia, the exhibition Jean Dubuffet: a barbarian in Europe ends its tour at the Museum of Ethnography in Geneva. This exhibition presents the work of Jean Dubuffet in all its diversity, following the path of his thoughts and the variety of works and individuals that inspired him. It is also an opportunity to show several objects from the MEG’s collections that Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985) might have seen during his trip to Switzerland in 1945, during which he met Eugène Pittard (1867-1962) and Marguerite Loebsiger-Dellenbach (1905-1993), the then director and assistant to the Museum of Ethnography. For the MEG conservation studio, it was an opportunity to see on his workbenches a variety of colours, shapes and materials marked by the vagaries of time and to take an active part in the ‘deconfining’ of some objects, allowing them to get in contact with the museum's public once again.

Beyond the written exchanges that indicate which objects were seen and left their mark on Jean Dubuffet during his visit, old photographs tell us which pieces were then exhibited in the museum's rooms. Rare testimonies of that period, these photographs allow us to partially retrace the history of these objects and the evolution of their state of preservation, and to see how museum life left its marks on materials already weakened by their journey to Geneva across land and sea.

46 objects from the MEG came out of their storage rooms in which they had been waiting for many years to share their memories. They come from Papua New Guinea, the islands of New Ireland and New Britain, Greenland, sub-Saharan Africa and the Loetschenthal Valley in Switzerland. The authors of the painted works, Albert Lubaki and Bähaylu Gäbrä Maryam, both active in the first half of the 20th century, are well known. We do not know the names of the artists and craftsmen who made the funerary poles or the masks. In some of these, there are still holes and sometimes remnants of fibres, traces of missing parts. These are signs of a glorious past when these masks were adorned with skins, textiles and fibres, all intended to hide the wearer in order to give body to other beings during a ritual or a procession.

Conservation of a Malagan sculpture from New Ireland

Isabel Garcia Gomez

The statue had been repaired in the past and several old cracks were already pasted. Some had reopened, while other gluings were still strong enough to support the structure. These were preserved, even when they showed a slight shift, as a removal operation would have involved the use of solvents that would have damaged the paint, which was very sensitive. After a careful observation and survey of all the cracks and gluings, it became evident that the movements of the wood, which had been modifying the structure for over a century, did not allow the cracks to be closed without creating new tensions. However, it was essential to intervene, because if the cracks were left open, any pressure on an element connected to the structure by a single point of attachment could cause a fracture.

A choice was therefore made to fill in the cracks whose edges could not be joined without exerting tension on the structure, with small balsa wood wedges, carved to fit the shape of the cracks. As this wood is extremely light and soft, it allows structural cohesion to be restored to the framework while allowing the fibres to continue to adapt to climate change without creating new tensions.

Conservation of a Tatanua mask from New Ireland

Isabel Garcia Gomez

The intervention proposed took into account conservation needs, such as general dust removal and consolidation of elements that could be lost with the next vibrations received by the mask. Reed stems that were detached from the headdress were repositioned and linked to the structure with fine silk thread ties.

As this treatment was intended for exhibition and, therefore, for presentation to the public, it was also necessary to consider what it was important to restore so that the mask would be perceived not in the state of its creation, but in such a way as to convey the expressive intentions of its face and its ornaments. It was therefore decided to straighten the spikes that could be straightened, in order to give back to the mask a powerful aspect that had been lost. At the same time, the lime which was cracked, was very slightly dusted off and refixed when necessary.

Flakes on the painted surface of the face, which were in danger of separating soon, were fixed again with a soft, light adhesive. These were the only interventions that were made on the paint, so as not to risk a general impregnation of the surface by an adhesive which, in the long term, could create more tension than provide long-term support, and would denature the composition of the paint. The lacks of this paint layer were then attenuated by a slight coloring, which can be clearly identified as not being the original painting, but allows the eye to no longer be attracted at first sight.

For this kind of composite objects, with elements dependent on a weakened structure, the essential conservation gesture consists in avoiding future manipulations that would bring pressure on the areas most at risk. A box has therefore been made, equipped with a window, so that the mask will no longer be handled, except in situations of research or exhibition that would absolutely require it.

The (much relative) conservation of a Mengen mask from New Britainm : this mask is not a Duk-duk

Lucie Monot

Contrary to the identification made by Marguerite Loebsiger-Dellenbach in an article published in 1944 and presented in the exhibition Jean Dubuffet, a barbarian in Europe, this mask is not a Duk-Duk of the Tolai of northern New Britain. It is a Mengen mask, from a population of the south of the island. This type of mask has been more widely studied among their Sulka neighbours. Its generic name is hemlout, which means 'old man’, and refers to the male ancestor. It was donated to the Museum of Ethnography in Geneva in 1940 by the ethnologist Felix Speiser (1880-1949), director of the Museum of Ethnography in Basel from 1942 to 1949 and who probably collected it between 1929 and 1930 during his trip to Papua New Guinea and to New Britain in particular.

Consisting of a cone topped with an umbrella, this mask ends in its lower part with a collar of leaves. A basketry made of rattan and wood forms the supporting structure on which vegetable pith is woven using a very fine and resistant thread which was extracted from the banana leaf. The central cone is separated into two halves by a bark hoop painted with wavy red, black and yellow lines. The umbrella is covered with a wickerwork of rattan painted with black and white geometric patterns on the outside, and its lower part is divided into four quarters. Two quarters are covered with a weave of thin strips of wood similar to balsa and painted with undulating black and green shapes and the other two with a weave of undecorated plant pith. The lower part of the mask is decorated with a fringe running around the base of the mask and made up of two types of leaves: a row of yellow leaves attached to their stems and another row of darker coloured leaves folded in half in a weave of fibres. When the mask was worn, a much longer coat of leaves covered the wearer who remained hidden and secret. The materials cited here are identified by comparison with data found in the literature (Hill 2011 ; Jeudy-Ballini 2001 ; Peltier et al. 2006). Further study will be required to validate these identifications.

All these materials have largely suffered from the hazards of time. While the load-bearing structure has remained very stable, the other materials have suffered major damage. A generalised layer of dust was absorbed over time and contributed to the alteration of the colours. All plant materials have dried out to become brittle and crumbly, especially the leaves of the collar which are therefore very fragile and unstable. Small insects have left traces and holes in the plant pith and the leaves. Finally, some fragments of balsa wood cut into triangle shapes and found with the mask seem to have once formed a garland above and below the painted bark hoop. This conclusion is reached based on the photograph of the above-mentioned article and on remnant fragments of fine broken threads still in places where they must have been used as fasteners. After extensive dusting of all accessible surfaces, the fractured elements that could be re-attached were joined back together or consolidated using wheat starch paste. This was the case for some of the leaves of the collar and for the balsa triangle garland that was then reattached using silk threads.

Made by men away from the villages, this type of mask should only be seen when freshly made. It is worn only once at an initiation ceremony, wedding or other festive occasion, after months of manufacture. It is then destroyed or burnt. Beyond its mediating role with the world of the ancestors and spirits, the mask is made to impress by its beauty, by the quality of its workmanship and by the visual effect it produces when it is danced. Thus, as Monique Jeudy-Ballini explains, the beauty of a mask plays a part “in its destiny as an ephemeral object” (Jeudy-Ballini, 1999: 10). While it is supposed to impress with its bright colours, these fade with time, as the vegetable matter degrades and becomes brittle. And one may ask "how, for those who have never seen them dance, can one imagine what these appearances were like before they petrified into museographic things?" (ibid.: 11). Any conservation attempt on an object of this type has a relative side to it. Not only have the materials suffered from the hazards of time and it is no longer possible to restore them to their former glory, but also the magnificence of such a mask combined with its dazzling effect when danced can never be restored.

Conservation of an Apouéma or mourning mask from New Caledonia

Lucie Monot

This mask was selected for the MEG permanent exhibition The Archives of Human Diversity. It was very dusty and showed a lot of damage when it was taken out of storage in 2013. Both the feathers that make up its coat and the hair that forms the headdress had been attacked in the past by the clothes moth Tineola bisselliella which feeds on the keratin of animal fibres. There were also indications of hasty repairs for immediate needs and precarious hanging methods using materials at hands which indicated that this object had already been on display in the past.

Originally from New Caledonia, this apouéma is complete. The carved wooden figure is enhanced with a basketwork structure that covers the nape of the neck and is similar to the tidi, the headdress that used to be worn by Kanak men. Overhead is an internal structure made of rods and topped with human hair. A beard also made of human hair is hanging at the bottom of the mask, together with a net on which are fixed feathers, presumably feathers of notou, a bird also known as the imperial pigeon of New Caledonia.

This type of mask was made to be worn during the mourning ceremony of a Kanak chief. The human hair with which it is made of is the hair of the mourners who had let it grow for the entire period between the death of the chief and the closing mourning ceremony that could take place years later. During the ceremony, the identity of the wearer of the mask remained a secret. He could see through the teeth of the mask’s mouth as the eyes were not hollowed out, and there were free spaces in the net of the feather coat for him to pass his arms through.

Both for conservation and for exhibition purposes, an intervention was necessary. A general dusting of all the elements removed not only deposited dust but also residues of moth infestations present on the feathers and the hair. Then, the conservation of the feather coat required the most attention as the feathers were not only damaged but also very tangled in the net. Many of the feathers had to be put back in place and then cleaned with a mixture of distilled water and ethanol to remove ingrained dust. The barbs, which were very messy, could be partially realigned by adding moisture and light finger pressure. The rachis, gnawed and weakened by moths, were consolidated by adhesion of new rachis of cleaned feathers and by small fillings dyed to match the colour. Finally, the elements of the beard and hair that were partially detached were secured back in place with cotton thread and fractures in the basketry were consolidated with small wooden sticks. Previous restorations were removed and replaced by more durable materials compatible with the ones of the mask.

Bibliography

• DUBUFFET Jean, 1995, «Dubuffet au musée», (1967) in Jean Dubuffet, Prospectus et tous écrits suivants, Paris : Gallimard, t. IV, p.23-24.
• HILL Rowena Catherine, 2011, Colour and Ceremony: the role of paints among the Mendi and Sulka peoples of Papua New Guinea, Travail de MA, Durham University. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/3562/
• JEUDY-BALLINI Monique, 1999. «Dédommager le désir», Terrain. Anthropologie & sciences humaines, 32, p. 5-20. http://journals.openedition.org/terrain/2718
• JEUDY-BALLINI Monique, 2001, «The ritual aesthetics of the Sulka, in Heerman Ingrid (dir.), Form Colour Inspiration: Oceanic Art from New Britain, Stuttgart: Arnoldsche, p. 106-115.
• LOEBSIGER-DELLENBACH Marguerite, 1944, «Les masques dans le monde. III Le masque en Nouvelle-Guinée» in Bulletin mensuel des musées et collections de la Ville de Genève, 5, p. 3.
• PELTIER Philippe, C. Binet, & I. Rousseau, 2006 «Les masques sulka de Nouvelle-Bretagne», Technè : la science au service de l'histoire de l'art et des civilisations, 23, p. 111-114.