Mort Golub: From Mahakala to Outsider Art

Of late, I’ve been contemplating a few of Life’s Big Questions. Among them is what can turn an ordinary mortal into an artist? In this, I think of my good friend Mort Golub and a memorable Sunday afternoon back in 1984. It started off like any other Sunday in those days, where we would “come on down and pay our respects to the Church of the Holy Flea” (better known to most as the Sausalito Flea Market). This was held north of San Francis- co, just across the Golden Gate Bridge. There was always a rich mixture of treasures, junk, ephemera, and ethnic art from Afghanistan, Bolivia, or Cambodia right on to Xhosa, Ye- men, or Zambia and everywhere in between. It shut down in 1995 due to real estate develop- ment, and its loss is still acutely felt by many.

I arrived a little late that day, and Mort came over with a mask in his hand, his morn- ing score: “What did I think?” In an instant, I recognized the folly of my tardiness. It was one of the finest Himalayan masks I had ever seen—a black Mahakala (fig. 3). It had come fresh from Nepal, brought down out of the mountains by a Sherpa to be sold to pay the expenses of a Tibetan New Year’s pilgrimage to circumambulate the sacred Boudhanath Stu- pa in Kathmandu. Now it was halfway around the world, and Mort had astutely bought it for $600.

Mort understood the mask to be a serious work of art, a blessing, and a sign. Why not use it as the founding piece of a collection of Himalayan masks that he and I would collab- orate on? In that moment, there were great ex- amples coming out of Nepal with an aesthetic that was not widely understood. What consti- tuted a masterpiece had not yet been codified, and beauty was truly in the eye of the behold- er. Sometimes this permitted a great acquisi- tion opportunity for an overlooked piece at a very attractive price. Mort agreed to fund the effort, and I would draw upon my connections in Kathmandu, Paris, New York, Los Ange- les, and San Francisco, where important piec- es were bubbling to the surface. We handled many masks, thinking deeply about each, and the collection grew to be what was one of the most important of its kind. More significantly, it proved to be a partnership that would be enriched by each of our visions and aesthetic sensibilities. The more masks we acquired, the more we learned from them as they spoke to us and revealed their magic.

We felt a responsibility to advance under- standing of this important yet relatively un- known art tradition, and, to that end, in 1995 I published the article “Demons and Deities” in that year’s Hali Annual. There had been very little academic literature on Himalayan masks, so I proposed three primary style designations: monastic, village, and primi- tive-shamanic. The history of religion, from Siberian shamanism to early Buddhism, was considered in relation to mask rituals, which served to convey spiritual messages to an often preliterate people.