[caption id="attachment_2721" align="alignnone" width="560" caption="From Vacheron Constantin's Les Masques Collection."]
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Tomorrow, June 2, "African and Oceanic Art from the Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva: A Legacy of Collecting" will open at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The exhibition will feature a selection of masks from central, eastern, and western Africa as well as from Polynesia, New Guinea, Indonesia, and the Solomon Islands. The exhibition is sponsored by Geneva watch-maker, Vacheron Constantin.
The partnership between the Barbier-Mueller Museum and Vacheron Constantin not only resulted in an exhibition of historic and aesthetically important masks, it resulted in a limited edition series of watches entitled, Métiers d’Art: “Les Masques.” At the opening of the exhibition tomorrow evening, Vacheron Constantin will reveal the last installment of the limited edition collection that incorporates 12 different masks from the Barbier-Mueller collection.
Whitewall's summer issue, on stands this month, features an interview between Vacheron Constantin's Christian Selmoni and the Barbier-Mueller Museum's Laurence Mattet. I spoke with the two over the phone in early spring. I found out that the collaboration is a unique one. The museum has been approached several times for similar design collaborations, but usually declines. It was a meeting of minds for the two iconic Geneva institutions. Read here a part of the interview and be sure to check out the Met exhibit on view through September 27, 2009.
WHITEWALL: Masks have their place in art history. They were a big inspiration for Picasso and the Cubist movement. Do you see this collection as a reinterpretation of the mask?
LAURENCE MATTET: I think that now people are sensitive to the work done by craftsmen. People from all social or cultural backgrounds are very curious. I think people appreciate the work done by human hand. I can say also that the artist of European modernity, Picasso, Braque, Cubists followed by Expressionists and Surrealists, recognized the aesthetics of sculptures and masks and, in fact, they were fascinated by the formal dynamism of African objects. It corresponded to their own search for form, simplified forms, and directness of expression. They discovered in these kinds of works the aesthetic solution they were looking for.
CHRISTIAN SELMONI: Why did we choose to work with primitive arts? We were looking for a creation that would be impactful in terms of aesthetics, and we think that the masks are a symbol. It’s a serious subject. It brings us back to our roots. It questions where we come from. So I think it’s important what you say about 20th-century artists being impressed by this form. So when we talked about creating this collection we were impressed by the power of the masks. Behind the masks is a lot of humanity.
Photo by studio Ferrazzini Bouchet. Courtesy of Musée Barbier-Mueller.
