Given the discussion of the controversial ceiling in the shop at the Musee quai Branly, see the commentary on Risky Business: the invention of Aboriginal abstraction below, and here are some more photographs.
Last time we were there, the only attribution we could find to the ceiling and the pole by Mawurndjul and Lindjuwanga was this little plaque. As you would expect in this context, the pole (painted by Mawurndjul himself) is extremely vulnerable. Pity it isn’t treated as a work of art, cared for appropriately, inside the museum…
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1 The Museum of Neoprimitivism // May 31, 2008 at 6:01 am
[...] My least favourite Museum in Paris is the Musee du quai Branly. Like many contemporary museums, it’s more front than interior (beautiful exotic garden, interesting building form) but the interior spaces are like a proctoscopic perspective into The Heart of Darkness an experience worthy of Joseph Conrad himself. Architect Jean Nouvel has constructed a biomorphic internal environment and a spiralling entry path to disorientate you and separate you from the world outside. You pass through this dark tunnel to be delivered to an exhibition environment (of conventional vitrines) which feels smaller than the old Art Deco colonial museum out on the periphery. The predominant tone is black (get it?) and it’s claustrophobic. And antique – the most contemporary images are the mediocre group of Australian Aboriginal paintings on canvas, crowded in a tiny dark room in the far distant corner of the space. Their significant collection of bark paintings (formed by Karel Kupka) is squeezed into a glazed wall. Paintings are shown on their side to fit the mosaic – as in the case of this work by Dawidi. There’s no contemporary African Art, no sense of the present, a theatre of the “primitive” past. And contemporary Australian indigenous art is decor for the bookshop. [...]
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