13 March, 2011

SHAMANS

 
Black masks with facial expressions that are solemn, or occasionally grotesque, wild, or fantastic, but usually serene and strangely profound, incarnating the entire memory of the world yet rendered untamable by the spirit of the forests: statues both humble and haughty, their form reduced to essentials, furrowed by time, frozen in a pose of prayer and meditation:

slighter objects such as boxes, cases, and butter-churn handles whose refined decoration apparently contrasts with the coarseness of the statues and the rawness of the masks, but in fact harmonizes in the way female does with male; all of these are part of the tribal arts of the Himalayas.

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