ART ON VIEW
80
FIG. 4 (left):
Shield. Madagascar.
Before 1891.
Cowhide, wood. H: 54 cm.
Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac,
inv. 71.1891.45.195.
Photo: Claude Germain.
FIGS. 5a and b (above and
middle top):
Bed board. Madagascar.
Wood. L: 193.3 cm.
Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques
Chirac, inv. 75.14706.1.
Photo: Claude Germain.
FIG. 6 (right):
Textile, rabane.
Betsimisaraka, Madagascar.
Raffi a. L: 190 cm.
Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques
Chirac, inv. 71.1899.56.3.
Photo: Claude Germain.
that objects of Madagascan origin began to appear in
lists of items sold at public auction in France. Just as
with pieces of American Indian or African origin, the
early collections that included Madagascan pieces
were made up primarily of weapons and tools—
such objects as shields and paddles were ideal
material for the trophy walls of great rooms,
libraries, or the newly created public museums
of the period. It was in this context that
a Madagascan shield (fi g. 4) was presented in
the Musée de la Marine of the Louvre, which
opened in 1748, but until the end of the nineteenth
century, very few Madagascan objects
appear to have gained the interest of collectors,
save for a few textiles made of raffi a fi ber or silk
(fi gs. 6, 8, and 9).
France engaged in a policy of colonial conquest between
1883, the date a protectorate was established,
and 1897, the year that the island was annexed following
a pacifi cation campaign led by General Joseph
G allieni. Paradoxically, Madagascar’s young
queen, Ranavalona III, was a popular fi gure among
the French at the time. She was exiled to Algeria after
the annexation and died there in 1917. The colonial
period ended when independence was declared in
1960, but Madagascan art and history had been profoundly
marked by the French presence on the island
for more than half a century.
Until the middle of the twentieth century, encyclopedias
and dictionaries suggested that the arts
of Madagascar displayed neither the power of the
sculptures from the African continent nor the refi nement
of Asian objects. These judgments, based on
insuffi cient and incomplete evidence, ignored the fact
that the arts of Madagascar are unique because they
were created at a cultural crossroads and could not
reasonably be compared to anything that was produced
elsewhere.
In the perception of the committee in charge of
making selections for the Madagascar Pavilion at the
1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, the two funerary
posts exhibited for the event were primarily ethnographic
specimens (fi gs. 1 and 2). While the sculptures
of Cameroon and the masks of Côte d’Ivoire
were inspiring the Western artists of the early twentieth
century, Madagascan pieces were seen as little
more than decorative, though now the post with the
bovine skulls (fi g. 1) never fails to impress those who
see it. It is so emblematic that for the Ethnographie
de Madagascar exhibition at the Musée de l’Homme