Ancestors of the Lake

Menil coup: Tiny treasures of the Pacific come to Houston for their onlyAmerican appearance

"Loin Cloth" (kain kaioo), painted bark cloth (tapa), The Menil Collection,Houston
Photo by Paul Hester/© 2010 Hester + Hardaway
"Double Figure from a Housepost, Le Lys," Kabiterau village, Lake Sentani,Papua, Indonesia, wood, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Paul Wirz, "Chief's House with Roof Ornaments in Tobati," copy print 1921 or1926, gelatin silver print, © 2011 Dadi Wirz and Museum der Kulturen Basel,courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Photographic Study Collection,Department of the Arts and Africa, Oceania and the Americas
Paul Wirz, "Woman’s Grave with Maro on Display," gelatin silver print, © 2011Dadi Wirz and Museum der Kulturen Basel, courtesy The Metropolitan Museum ofArt, The Photographic Study Collection, Department of the Arts and Africa,Oceania and the Americas
Jacques Viot , "Man (Viot’s Cook) with Figure," 1929, gelatin silver print, ©2011 Musée du quai Branly
Photo by Thierry Ollivier/Michel Urtado/Scala, Florence
"Hook," collected in a Humboldt Bay village, Lake Sentani, Papua, Indonesia,wood, © 2011 Tomkins Collection
Photo by Paul Mutino
"Figure from Post of a Chief's House," Ifar village, Lake Sentani, Papua,Indonesia, wood, © Völkerkundemuseum der Universität Zürich
Photo by Kathrin Leuenberger, Ethnographic Museum of Zurich

Surrealist vanguardists André Breton, Joan Miró and Max Ernst were just mad about maro — decorative barkcloths from New Guinea's Lake Sentani and Humboldt Bay. Houston audiences can join the ranks of 20th-century art stalwarts as these rare objects, along with a group of highly stylized, abstracted wooden sculptures, are revealed in an exhibition at the Menil Collection that opened this week.

Not surprisingly, these significant indigenous objects were among the first works snatched up in the 1920s by the nascent art collectors, John and Dominique de Menil.

But let's backtrack a little. It's important to note that these objects weren't recently brought to Western museums by contemporary anthropologists.

In fact, this genre was nearly lost to the waters of the modern-day Indonesian province of Papua, located on the western portion of New Guinea. That near-catastrophe was performed by puritanical missionaries who stopped by the island's shores in the 1500s. Centuries later, the Dutch Etna Expedition retrieved a few stray works. Still, it wasn't until the 1920s that interest in the region began to build steam.

Enter two 20th-century Renaissance men: Swiss explorer, ethnologist, photographer and collector Paul Wirz and French adventurer, art dealer, photographer and author Jacques Viot. Both figures can be credited for bringing the art of Lake Sentani and Humboldt Bay to the masses — and to the attention of active Surrealist circles in 1930s Paris.

Viewers of the Menil exhibition can connect the dots between the imagery and patterns present in the New Guinean art and the canvases and sculptures by Ernst and Breton on display in the museum's permanent galleries of Surrealist art. Notes curator Virginia-Lee Webb in the exhibition's catalogue, it was Ernst who introduced Viot to John and Dominique de Menil.

When Parisian gallery owner Pierre Loeb commissioned Viot to journey to New Guinea to purchase sculptures and maro from local artists, the adventurer returned with a slew of pieces that would soon populate galleries in Paris and New York. Collectors went mad — the de Menils purchased three maro and three Sentani sculptures. Several of Viot's finds arrived at New York's Museum of Primitive Art in a monumental 1953 exhibition.

Since then, public discourse on the art of the region had all but gone silent — until now. Ancestors of the Lake unites for the first time remarkable works from Lake Sentani and Humboldt Bay alongside photographs by Viot and Wirz and newly discovered stills by Man Ray.

The Menil Collection is the exhibition's only stop on American soil before it heads to the University of East Anglia. Dadi Wirz — the son of Swiss explorer Paul Wirz — spoke at the Menil Friday night. D.W. recounted his journeys to Lake Sentani as part a rare glimpse upon classic East meets West exploration.

Ancestors of the Lake is on View through Aug. 28.

unspecified

Movie Review

Heartfelt animal adventure Hoppers is another Pixar classic

Photo courtesy of Disney/Pixar

Mabel (Piper Kurda) and King George (Bobby Moynihan) in Hoppers.

For the first 15 years of their history, animation studio Pixar delivered one classic film after another, an astonishing streak that included their first 11 movies. Things got bumpy starting with Cars 2 in 2011, and even though the majority of their output has been good-to-great ever since, their releases are no longer considered slam dunks like they once were.

They’re back with an original film, Hoppers, trying to return to form by going back to the animal world. The film centers on Mabel (Piper Kurda), a 19-year-old environmentalist who’s trying to stop a new highway being built by Mayor Jerry (Jon Hamm) in the fictional city of Beaverton. Her activism has as much to do with helping displaced local animals as it does with being nostalgic for her youth, in which she spent years observing nature with her Grandma Tanaka (Karen Huie).

She finds an unlikely possible solution when she discovers that her college professors have created a system that allows them to transfer — or hop — their consciousness into animal-like robots. Hijacking a beaver robot, Mabel joins up with the local wildlife, including beaver King George (Bobby Moynihan) to try to convince them to help her execute her plan. But with the highway almost complete and Mayor Jerry willing to do anything to make it happen, Mabel might be too late.

Directed by Daniel Chong and written by Jesse Andrews from a story by Chong, the film cycles through a variety of genres in its 105-minute running time, including comedy, drama, thriller, and even a touch of Pixar-style horror. When Pixar has been at its best, it seamlessly goes back and forth between genres, trusting that audiences will go along with them for the ride, and Hoppers feels like a return to form in that respect.

Humor rules the day as Mabel adjusts to being part of the animal world while her professors desperately try to get her and their robot back. Mabel encounters not only wildly confusing things like “pond rules” (if a predator catches you, you don’t fight it), but also the existence of a hierarchy within the world that involves kings or queens from various animal classes like reptiles, birds, amphibians, fish, and insects. Her one-track mind and the way of the world she is invading clash in a variety of funny ways.

As the film goes along, Chong, Andrews, and the rest of the filmmaking team also find a way to burrow into the audience’s heart. There are many elements that threaten to tip into eye-rolling territory, but the filmmakers consistently pull back before that happens. The number of fun characters on both the human and animal side helps in that regard, as does the simple yet profound message they’re trying to convey.

Pixar has assembled one of the best voice casts in recent memory for this film, including such big names as Meryl Streep, Dave Franco, Melissa Villaseñor, Vanessa Bayer, and the late Isiah Whitlock, Jr. However, due to the sheer number of characters, only Kurda, Moynihan, and Hamm truly stand out. Still, they all fit together well and give the always-stellar animation even more life.

Since the pandemic, Pixar has only released one truly great film (Inside Out 2), but with Hoppers and the seemingly bulletproof Toy Story 5 coming within a few months of each other, they might go back-to-back on that front. Like the classic films from the studio, it has goofy, heartfelt, and exciting parts, mixing together for an enthralling time at the theater.

---

Hoppers opens in theaters on March 6.

movies film