Lot 229A
** A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this lot will benefit The Fowler Museum at UCLA **
Latin America, Bolivia, ca. mid 20th century CE. A lively papier mache mask featuring three faces depicting diablo (devil) or clown/buffoon characters used in masked morality plays whose task it was to remind the people of what is sacred and basically good in society by behaving in the exact opposite manner. The central visage depicts a face with a Caucasian complexion, bulging yellow and red eyes with long lashes and eye slits for the wearer, a long, hooked nose, ruddy cheeks, an open mouth with mirror teeth, and a huge black wart and blush hues marking his enormous forehead. To each side are smaller black faces also possessing long, hooked noses and bulging eyes as well as yellow brows that seem to extend over the bridges of the noses, and red-lipped, eerily toothy grins. Wiry, ashe blonde hair adorns the back of the mask. According to Marion Oettinger Jr's "The Folk Art of Latin America: Visiones del Pueblo," "These buffoons, often ugly by local standards, insult local officials, make normally inappropriate sexual gestures to women, and act out scandalous acts in front of the church and saints. Masks provide the wearer tremendous license to stretch or break local convention, and such behavior serves as a release for accumulated community tensions." (New York: Museum of American Folk Art, 1992, p. 50). A striking folk art mask indeed! Size: 15.75" L x 10.75" W (40 cm x 27.3 cm)
Provenance: Ex-private Morgan collection, Santa Monica, CA
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#114501
- Condition: Surface cracks as shown. Nose missing from one of black-faced devils. Losses to other black face as shown. Some eyelashes missing. Tip of central face's nose reattached.
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