JAVA Dec '18 issue

were retained, which eventually led them to museum
collections.”
Adam Twitchell was drawn to Alaska by the gold rush
in the 1890s. Eventually settling down, he collected
the masks between 1902 and 1912. Married to a
Yup’ik woman named Qeciq, he was able to gather
the masks and observe their use in Napaskiaq, a
village in Alaska.
Twitchell helped collect and preserve the masks,
assisting George Gordon, director of the University
of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology, on
a collecting expedition in 1907. Twitchell also
corresponded with scholars, such as anthropologist
Edward Nelson. It was from these connections that
many of the masks on display made their way to
New York and then France. “It was a very exciting
detective story,” Mooney said.
Georges Duthuit, Matisse’s son-in-law, was in
New York City when World War II erupted in 1939.
Stranded with other expatriate European artists and
intellectuals, they explored vast U.S. collections of
Native American art and acquired their own artifacts
when possible, including several pieces featured in
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the Heard show – some of which have returned to
the United States for the first time since 1945.
When Duthuit was able to go home following the
armistice, he had about a dozen Yup’ik masks with
him. Duthuit’s wife, Marguerite, asked her father
to contribute drawings to a book inspired by the
artifacts that her husband was publishing, titled
Une fête en cimmérie. Matisse used photographs
of indigenous people from northern latitudes as his
models for the drawings.
Though Matisse did not sketch or copy the masks
directly, he drew inspiration from their simple yet
elegant lines. He analyzed their visual vocabulary,
recognizing the makers as kindred spirits in the
quest to distill the essence of a person’s spirit
and personality. The influence bled into Matisse’s
subconscious and back out into his art. He began
calling his portraits “masks.”
The masks that inspired this change in nomenclature
were part of a rich tradition of dance, song and story.
Yup’ik belief held that such ceremonies ensured
balance between humans and the environment in this
harsh region. Some of the dances, particularly those
occurring in winter, were held in large ceremonial
houses called qasgis. The masks were made by the
community shaman, angalkuq, and usually represent
an animal’s yua, or spirit, as a human face in the
animal’s belly.
“They’re always represented with a human face
because it’s the personal spirit of that animal,”
Mooney said. “The yua is often represented as
residing in the belly, like an infant in the womb.”
Mooney and McIntyre carefully studied the motifs
represented on the masks, allowing them to
understand the main plot points, if not the full
stories, depicted in the masks. Outstretched hands
are meant to encourage spirits to enter through the
mask, though the lack of thumbs ensures they don’t
overstay their welcome. A series of concentric rings
surrounding a mask is called ellanquaq, which literally
translates to “pretend” or “model universe.”
“In Yup’ik cosmology, your awareness of your
universe, or your existence in that universe, is
essential to your wisdom,” Mooney said. “You have
all these beautiful concepts that would have been