Designed as an invitation to travel and explore, symbols of the life and work of the writer Jack London, this exhibition at the Centre de la Vieille Charité in Marseille brings to life one of his most audacious challenges: the sailing journey made on the Snark, through the South Pacific Islands between 1907 and 1909.
Created by the African, Oceanic & Native American Art Museum (Musée d’Arts Africains, Océaniens, Amérindiens, or MAAOA), and in coproduction with the East India Company, the exhibition Jack London dans les mers du sud (Jack London in the South Seas) explores the diversity of cultures from this region of the world at the dawn of the 20th century. It evokes the voyage that the American writer took aboard the Snark as closely as possible to what its characters lived. The accuracy is given by a set design, centered on major chronologic and geographic sections, corresponding to the archipelagos they visited (Hawaii, the Marquesas Islands, Tahiti, Fiji, Samoa, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands).
About one hundred works coming from the collections of MAAOA and major museums specialized in indigenous art (Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris; Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva; Musée d’Aquitaine, Bordeaux) define the exhibition: sculptures, finery, musical instruments, masks, objects, ceremonial posts, weapons… They are testimony of the daily life, habitat, beliefs, know-how, refinement, and diversity of the populations encountered.
Collected throughout the voyage by Jack London himself, some of these works, currently conserved in California, are being shown to the public for the first time. Some of the writer’s personal belongings which accompanied him during the trip, models of outrigger canoes as well as one of the Snark, specially conceived for the occasion, complete the exhibition.
There are, of course, a pleiad of photos. In fact, Jack London, a photography enthusiast, did not deprive himself of documenting the voyage. The numerous photos being shown are a testimony to observed rituals, crossed countrysides, encountered populations, and life aboard the Snark. “Through his stories and photographs which he made in great numbers,” explains Marianne Pourtal Sourrieu, curator at MAAOA and co-curator of the exhibition, “Jack London knew how to describe the places and people he encountered in the South Seas with justice and humanity. He goes on comparing his idealized vision of the Pacific Islands, fed by his literary memories, to the reality which was sometimes quite different, during the beginning of the 20th century with colonization, profit, and illness leading to the decline of the Oceanic population and their culture.”
Comprehensive excerpts from films by the American musician Martin Johnson (who was on the voyage) are also projected. Becoming a filmmaker, he returned to the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides to produce the first films on these populations. Throughout the exhibition one can find, Jack London quotations as well as excerpts taken from The Cruise of the Snark , Charmian London’s The Log of the Snark, and Martin Johnson’s Through the South Seas with Jack London they bring to life this adventure, which was a moment of discovery, astonishment, joy, and inspiration for the author. It is an adventure whose photographs are stunning historical documents for Jack London enthusiasts.
Jack London dans les mers du sud
September 8 through January 7, 2018
Musée d’Arts Africains, Océaniens, Amérindiens
La Vieille Charité – galleries and chapel
2, rue de la Charité
13002 Marseille
France
