Met Museum: African Art, New York, and the Avant Garde

This article was originally published on December 22, 2012

The current exhibit at the Met Museum, African Art, New York, and the Avant Garde, seems a bit lost in the huge halls of the museum's African art collection. Its theme would have been much better served by a small gallery setting, such as 291 itself once provided. 

The exhibit has many charms, especially for those interested in the history of Stieglitz' Photo Secession and 291 as well as in African art itself. It was Stieglitz, of course, who arranged for one of the first showings of African art at 291 and was largely responsible for its introduction to New York's artists, photographers and collectors.

African art had already had an enormous impact upon the development of modern art by the time examples first reached NYC. One has only to glance at Picasso's most famous painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, to realize that it was the incorporation of African tribal masks in its depiction of the models' faces that contributed to the work's revolutionary departure from previous European art and foreshadowed the development of Cubism. 

As a photographer, what I found most interesting were the photos included in the exhibit. Stieglitz himself was represented, not only by his photos of the 291 show itself, but also by gorgeous platinum prints of Georgia O'Keefe posing with African artifacts. Charles Sheeler's photographs of various art collections, particularly the Arensbergs', are notable for the strong shadows he created about the art works themselves. There is even a lovely portrait by the unjustly forgotten pictorialist Clara Sipprell of the painter Max Weber studying an African statuette. 

The true stars of the show, however, are the African masks and artifacts themselves. The masks are eerie and unsettling, and one can easily understand how magical properties were attributed to them. They represent an alternative theory of art, one that had not yet distanced itself from its shamanistic roots as had European art over the course of centuries. These are much closer to prehistoric cave paintings than to traditional Western art.

The exhibit, originally scheduled to close on April 14, 2013, continues through September 2, 2013.