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Majestic and mysterious, these masks have in them freshness and a sense of immediacy that is lacking in European art, writes B. N. Goswamy "All great things must wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity." Friedrich Nietzsche (19th century German philosopher)
One would not be surprised if most of us did not know who the Guro are — (they are a large and important group living in the western central part of the Ivory Coast in West Africa) — nor anything of how they live — subsisting on agriculture and living generally in mud houses in small, insubstantial villages —, for they are far off; do not impinge upon our daily awareness, being a part of the ‘Dark Continent’, as it was once called. But one would be disappointed if most of us have never heard of or seen a Guro mask, or fallen under its spell. For those masks — works carved in wood by virtually unlettered Guro sculptors — have been spoken of as being "some of the greatest art works of mankind". The power they possess, the uninhibited urge to abstract, or the searing imagination that one sees in them, is of the kind that is known, together with other African art, to have inspired and challenged some of the most famed artists of the last century, among them Picasso, Matisse, Kirchner, Modigliani: men who changed the very course of art and sent it hurtling along then uncharted grooves. On my part, I first saw a Guro mask a long time back in the Rietberg museum in Zurich — the riches of which never cease to surprise one. There it stood, that mask: majestic and mysterious, ‘reigning’ over an entire gallery, holding everything, and everyone, around itself in its thrall, as it were. Rough-hewn as it first seemed, it did not take me long to fathom why objects like it from Africa produced — among the kind of European artists I have spoken of — something of an aesthetic shock. For art of this kind, as someone wrote, was powerful enough, even when removed from its cultural environment, "to affect human emotions as positively as a slap across the face." Clearly, in their native context, they were not produced as works of art as such. But these objects became, decisively, part of the 20th century artists’ "migration from Mount Olympus to the Virgin forests". For there was about them, a freshness and sense of immediacy that had been lacking for long in the art of Europe. All of this, and these thoughts, started coming back to me when I held in my hand a recently published large volume titled, simply, "GURO"; the sub-title: Masks, Performances and Master Carvers in Ivory Coast, follows later — by a scholar of renown and a close personal friend, Eberhard Fischer. Even though he is now much more into India, so to speak, he started off, one remembers, as an Africanist. This volume traces, in great, authentic detail, his journey into the mind of the Guro people of Africa. From his first encounter with the Guro in 1975 — when he accompanied his distinguished father, Hans Himmelheber, into the field — onwards, one begins to see the people and their art through his eyes. He has, undoubtedly, had predecessors in the area — diligent French and Belgian scholars who wrote about the Guro early on —; and he has worked with committed colleagues — his wife, Barbara, and Lorenz Homberger, included. But, in the final analysis, it would seem as if the Guro are ‘his people’. One senses this at every step in this volume. If he took time off from his many commitments to Indian art to complete this work, it is because, almost certainly, he was moved by the need to document, with a sense of urgency, the way of life of a people that was fast changing, and to draw attention to qualities in the kind of objects that have begun to disappear. The book is dedicated, one sees, to "the Guro people of future generations that they may be proud of their forefathers’ achievements". There is an enormous amount to read, and to see, in this volume. A number of stunning masks from collections scattered all over the world one has the opportunity to see here. But before that, one gets to know about the habitat, the society, and the culture of the Guro people; to read about their religious ideas and cults which continue to be much what they used to be, without bearing marked traces either of Islam or Christianity; watch with fascination the divination methods, especially the ‘mouse oracle’ at work, among them; learn something of their apparel and bodily decoration — vertical lines next to the eyes, three lines between the eyebrows, small scars on the forehead and on the nape of the neck, bulges just below the hairline, and so on —; and try to understand some of their aesthetic terms and concepts. But then, one moves on to the main body of the work, which is devoted to masks and mask-performances. And here one enters a different world, not easy for anyone who has not been in the field to understand. There is a plethora of terms to take in, for there are masks and masks, and ‘mask-beings’ and ‘mask-beings’: dye, the sacred mask ensemble; gye, the sacred helmet mask; the mask family zamble, gu and zauli; gu, the beautiful female mask; zuhu masks with forehead figures and side attachments; the seli, sauli and flali masquerades. And so on. The photographs, all taken in the field over a period of many years, bring everything to life, for in them one sees sacrifices and expectant audiences, elders in hushed conversation, mask-beings — "a species of beings, something between human and animal" — who dance and pirouette and whirl about at dizzying speed, clad in their straw raffia or leaf skirts and colourful costumes topped by astonishingly expressive masks. It is a world of spirits they invoke, redolent of primordial forests and silvery streams, peopled by voices of those who are able to converse with the dead. There is, however, much more than description in the pages of this impressive volume. For questions, important questions are raised and attempts at penetrating the mystery of it all are made. Origins are gone into; styles are analysed; the hands of the different master carvers are identified; carving techniques are studied; the withdrawn and thoughtful mind-set of the mask-makers is explored. T.S. Eliot once wrote an essay on ‘What is a Classic?’ According to him, a classic must have "maturity of mind, maturity of manner, maturity of language, and perfection of the common style". For all the differences other scholars in the field might, just might, have with the views, and conclusions, that make this book up, it comes truly close, in my view, to being a classic of Eliot’s description.
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