Art Of The Day Weekly

Madagascar, a tour of an island

PARIS - The large Island, or ylang-ylang, represents vanilla and paradise-like beaches. Where great poverty also reign, with a minimum wage hardly over a dollar a day. When we draw up the portrait of Madagascar, in which we can also include recurrent political upheavals, we forget that this island-continent, larger than France, has a true artistic culture. The exhibition at the museum on quai Branly, though contested for some of its shortcomings, nevertheless fills in a void: ever since the retrospective at the Musée de l’Homme in 1946, no global panorama of Malagasy arts had been presented in France. One had better bring along a glossary to recognize objects that are exotic by nature, such as the felana, a shell hung from one’s forehead, a thousand light years from imported art, which then found its place: the island was discovered in 1500 by the Europeans, and the technique of painting spread around 1850 so the local dignitaries could be represented in Western attire, with an umbrella and a straw hat. But bodily ornaments, amulets, funerary posts continued to survive, a proof of the importance of the rites of passage we eliminated.
• Madagascar, arts de la Grande Ile at the musée du quai Branly, from 17 September 2018 to 1 January 2019.

Know more