Himalayan Primitive Art: Masks and Hidden Forms

Description

Petit, Marc À masque découvert. Regards sur l'art primitif de l'Himalaya. Paris: Stock/Aldines, 1995. 286 pp. Cloth binding under illustrated dust jacket, housed in cardboard slipcase. Fine copy. Forms preserve memory more deeply than human beings. The silent, grave, or hilarious faces that emerge here trace the contours of a submerged continent: ancient Asia of shamans and possession cults. Confronting the codified formulas of Indian and Tibetan classicism, the primitive art of the Himalaya asserts its singularity, inventive power, humor, poetic sensibility, and expressive force. For the first time, a book renders visible and legible these unknown forms through a dialogue between image and word, mask and its double: essay, travel narrative, and aesthetic treatise, a work of both passion and reflection.