Moroccan Life

African Arts, Winter, 2004 by Frederick Quinn

Moroccan Life Niloo Imami Paydar and Ivo Grammet, general editors. Statement by His Majesty Mohammed VI, King of Morocco.

Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2002. 304 pp.; over 150 color and b/w illustrations, plus maps. $45.00 hardcover.

Admiral Albert Niblack, commander of US Naval Forces in Europe from 1921 to his death in 1929, was a collector. While based in Gibraltar in 1917 in some of the most perilous times during World War I, this Indiana native amassed a major collection of Moroccan fabrics. Niblack was a rare specimen, a military officer with a keen eye for the art, artifacts, and ethnography of the regions in which he served, which included the Orient and the Pacific Northwest. His sister Eliza, a museum textile curator, inherited his collection and tastefully added to it, with the help of Prosper Ricard, a French government official assigned to Morocco to encourage the manufacture and sale of the protectorate's arts and crafts. After the death of Eliza in 1930, and of her sister, Sarah, in 1933, the more than 4,500 objects Niblack had amassed were bequeathed to what eventually became the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The contents were rarely displayed and were known to only a handful of specialists.

Niloo Imami Paydor, curator of textiles and costumes at the Indianapolis Museum of Arts, and Ivo Grammet, an art historian living in Morocco, worked several years to produce a dazzling exhibit, displayed first in 2002 in Indianapolis, then at the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, DC. A catalogue of unparalleled scope and exquisite taste accompanied the exhibit. It contains a series of carefully focused essays on Moroccan history by Ahmed Skounti, an anthropologist; "Embroideries" by Marie-France Vivier of the Musee National des Arts d'Afrique et d'Oceane, Paris; and articles on Rabat and Sale rugs by Zineb Lehmam, a Morocco-based professor, and Marcel Korolnik, a Swiss independent scholar; plus works on weavings of the Central Middle Atlas and Plains of Marrakesh by Korolnik and Gerard Boely, a classics professor from Aix-en-Provence. Well-drawn maps and a technical analysis of the collection by Katherine Dolk-Ellis round out this impressive work, which will serve as the point in media res for the study of Moroccan fabrics for scholars and art lovers. The work is enhanced by a collection of early twentieth century black-and-white French photographs of artisans and other persons wearing Moroccan fabrics, and by more than 150 color photographs of individual works in the exhibit.

It is easy to see why Henri Matisse and a generation of French artists found inspiration in the colors of Morocco. Land and sea trade routes brought an abundance of designs in earlier times, suggesting Ottoman Turkish, Andalusian, Balkan, and Algerian influences, plus the starkly beautiful black-and-white asymmetrical Berber designs of the Middle Atlas Mountains. The internal variations are no less amazing: Fez pomegranates and figured fabrics, intricate variations of abstract designs in mountainous Chechaoun, and the riotous colors of Rabat checkerboard or floral compositions are but a few of the most evident possibilities. The vegetable dyes of various regions range from brilliant to muted reds and the weaving techniques of a wide range of women and a few men can only be called remarkable. This is true as well of the embroidery, often based on a remarkable series of geometric or flowing designs, which craftspersons today would find difficult to duplicate with far more advanced technologies.

The book includes examples of the significant contribution of Jewish artisans throughout the centuries, such as elaborately detailed, meticulously embroidered wedding garments. The passing note that "The last large group of Jewish families left Morocco in 1967" speaks volumes, yet is difficult to square with King Mohammed's opening statement that Morocco has refused to share in an "outlook of spiritual and philosophical divisiveness."

Numerous superlatives can be employed to celebrate this major contribution to Moroccan artistic achievement. In a poignant passage, Marie-France Vivier sees in their handiwork the only traces of a generation of women living and working in the secluded harems. "Today, these fine, delicate, and often fragmentary embroideries are the only traces that these women of the past have left us; they are the memory of a language that is all but lost and a time gone by" (p. 43). It is the usual comment of a reviewer to say "My favorite work was ..." but that would be misplaced in speaking of this excellent work, which showcases the achievements of hundreds of unknown artists over at least two centuries. From crowded Rabat to the High Atlas, from busy Fez to the edge of the Sahara, these skilled, mostly women workers strained their eyesight and numbed their fingers turning out the exquisite wedding garments, burial shrouds, rugs, belts, and robes that gave beauty to life and enhanced its meaning. They died in obscurity, but left a priceless treasure. That it survives today and is now easily accessible to a new generation of viewers is directly due to the contribution of the Niblack family and the determined effort of Niloo Imami Paydor, Ivo Grammet, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art.