A Magnificent Punu-Lumbo Mask, Gabon

of overall graceful proportions and hollowed, oval form, with pointed chin, tender sensually parted lips, petite nose flanked by pronounced cheekbones, beneath squinting eyes and dramatically arching brows, framed by diminutive ears, with notched scarifications on the bulging forehead and temples, the whole surmounted by an upswept crested coiffure flanked by chignons with rests of fibres at each end for attachment of braids; exceptionally fine surface of brown and black pigment over a layer of kaolin.

Vicomte Bernard d'Hendecourt, Paris, before 1917-1929
Sotheby's London, May 8, 1929, lot 56 (illustrated, described as 'Congolese')
Raphael Stora, Paris and New York, 1929-1938
Acquired by the Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, from the above on January 18, 1938 (accession no. '38:3')

New York, Museum of Modern Art, African Negro Art, March 18 - May 19, 1935, Cat. No. 118 (illustrated, and in Corpus of Photographs, No. 355)
Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum, Masterpieces of African Art, October 21, 1954 - January 2, 1955, cat. 200 (illustrated)
New Orleans, Isaac Delgado Museum, Masks and Masquerades, February 5 - April 2, 1961, cat. 173 (illustrated)
New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery, Paintings and Sculpture from the Albright Art Gallery, January 15 - September 24, 1961
Elmira, Arnot Art Gallery, The Art of Black Africa, January 19 - February 10, 1965
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Perfect Documents: Walker Evans and African Art, 1935, February 1 - September 3, 2000

Paul Guillaume and Guillaume Apollinaire, Sculptures Nègres. 24 Photographies. Précédées d'un avertissement de Guillaume Apollinaire et d'un Exposé de Paul Guillaume, Paris, 1917, pl. XIII (described as 'Abyssinian')
Georges Salles, Réflection sur l'Art Nègre, Cahiers d'Art, Paris, 1927, p. 247
Virginia Ford, "Pure, Sincere Abstract Art Is Seen in African Work," Buffalo Courier-Express, April 5, 1942
Andrew C. Ritchie (ed.), Albright Art Gallery. Catalogue of the Paintings and Sculptures in the Permanent Collection, Vol. 1, Buffalo, 1949, pp. 122-123 and 199
Ladislas Ségy, Masterpieces of African Art, New York, 1954, p. 12
Steven A. Nash, with Katy Kline, Charlotta Kotik and Emese Wood, Albright-Knox Art Gallery: Painting and Sculpture from Antiquity to 1942, Buffalo, 1979, p. 126
Warren M. Robbins and Nancy Ingram Nooter, African Art in American Collections, Washington, D.C., 1989, p. 353
Virginia Lee-Webb, Perfect Documents: Walker Evans and African Art, 1935, New York, 2000, p. 84, fig. 42

The Punu-Lumbo Mask from the Collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery

At twenty-nine centimeters, this ikwar’'or ikwara black Punu mask is exceptional for its rarity, its old age and its sculptural qualities. Punu-Lumbu black masks are seldom found in private collections and museums; this one is exceptionally rare because its provenance can be traced back to the beginning of the 20^th century.

It is known that among the Punu and Lumbu from South Gabon (the Mouila-Ndendé and Tchibanga-Mayumba areas) “white” masks from the mukudj' dance (also called mukuyi or okuyi) have been abundant throughout time. On the contrary, “black” masks, always considered to be dangerous and maleficent to those who were handling them or to those who were seeing them performing, had rarely been shown to the travelers and European colonial. These masks were kept secret.

Alisa LaGamma, in her Ph.D. dissertation (LaGamma 1995), based on a year of extensive field research in South Gabon and neighboring Congo, clearly separates the functions of the two types of mask of the Punu: on one hand, the classic mukudj' white mask characterized by a female face of idealized beauty, was displayed in all events of the communitarian life and their features followed defined sculptural patterns; on the other hand, the ikwar' or ikwara mask, with the same morphology and a dark brown face, appeared only following 'judges' decisions, usually after some difficult palabre (LaGamma 1995 : 159).

Both of these dances are an integral part of mwiri rituals, the main male initiation institution in the South Gabon cultural area (Punu-Lumbu, Shira, Nzebi).  Most of the time, these masks represented a dead young woman whose spirit was evoked to provide a link between the living and the dead. The main reason for using a female entity as a medium is related to the determining role of matrilineal clans among this people. These dances still exist today in Gabon in communal identity or familial contexts and sometimes they seem to be rooted more in folklore than in ritual. Today, the circumstances surrounding the use of these masks still remain shrouded in secrecy.

In the same fashion as the mukudj'  masks with white, the ikwar' mask is intirely covered with a natural pigment of dark brown or black color. This pigment is usually applied directly upon the wood, but sometimes also upon an underlying layer of white. In 1966, I was told by several sources that in the Ndendé region from South Gabon, specific ceremonies related to the restoration of social order required the use of ikwar rituals, especially on occasions of collective misfortune such as epidemic, crime, use of witchcraft, or the violation of an important ban. In the event that no black masks were available for use, it was possible to repaint in black a mask originally white or polychrome in order to re-qualify it for the function that it was expected to perform.

Incidentally, this detail is to be observed on the mask from the Bernard d'Hendecourt collection. It has been visibly repainted atop an under-layer of kaolin that can conveniently be seen through several cracks in the superficial dark brown patina on the cheeks and forehead.

According to Paul Timmermans, the Belgian ethnographer at Tervuren Museum made a field trip to Gabon in 1964 to research these masks, their dark coating made of finely crushed seeds from the shrub muabi, and palm wine. André Raponda Walker and Roger Sillans (Rites et croyances des peuples du Gabon, 1962: 143) acknowledge that this black mask was called ikwara-mokulu, 'the mask of the night,' because of the secret and mysterious reasons for its use. It would have represented either a male spirit, as opposed to the mukudj' female mask (LaGamma 1995: 148), or an old woman, as opposed to the commonly accepted theme of the dead young woman. Also, some of Alisa LaGamma's sources declared that in some circumstances, in a contemporary period black masks may have been used as 'training' masks for neophyte dancers, the black mask announcing the dance of the more 'experienced' white mask.

The use of black color as tint of the face, rather than the usual white color that covers these masks, relates to the symbolism of colors in equatorial Africa: if white is the symbol of ethereal spirits with beneficial qualities, black conversely symbolizes occult and maleficent powers of the dead that must be feared. The color red is also important as well because it symbolizes life.

Ikwar' masks, with their ancient functions related to justice among the Punu and Lumbu (and also the Shira, the Nkomi, the Eveia, the Nzebi and the Vungu), have always been displayed at dusk or at night on stilts. These were made of wood called mugèla-muri-ditèngu, meaning 'tree of ghosts,' in reference to the malevolent character of the ritual (Walker and Sillans 1962: 143-144); they could also be made of Harungana madagascariensis wood, called musasa-muri-mambangu in Punu language, which translates  into 'tree of race' or 'of speed' to refer to the acrobatic dance of the mukudj' champions.

According to all testimonies, it is known that the stilts of the nocturnal ikwar' masks were much shorter than those used by the diurnal mukudj' dancers. No functional reasons, however, have been given to this fact. One probable explanation is that because the masks were displayed at night and lit only by the fire of grass torches, it was less perilous to perform on shorter stilts.

This mask from the old Bernard d'Hendecourt collection features a kind of handle under the chin designed from what seems to be lateral braids, much like 'cadenettes' (the sort of headdress with braids that use to be worn by Napoleonic or Austrian soldiers in the early 19^th century) or plaits of hair. This detail is rather rare on Punu masks, black or white. What appears to some specialists as being an implement used to fasten the mask against the face is probably a simple hair decoration pattern added to the coiffure. Technically, in a real dance situation the mask is held close to the face by either fabric costume or raffia cloth that covers the whole head. The mask is not held by hand, for a dancer's hands must be free to keep him balanced on the stilts and to hold the fly-whisk. It is also sometimes held with the teeth by biting a wooden stick placed horizontally inside the sculpture's cheeks. Other examples of some of the ancient known Punu-Lumbu masks presenting a surrounding braid, or 'handel,' are: a bi-colored mask from the Musée Historique, Berne, 32 cm, published by Leo Frobenius in 1898 (Musée Dapper, Masques, 1995, p. 360, fig. 43); the white mask, M'Pongwe mask, published by Paul Guillaume in Guillaume and Munro, Primitive Negro Sculpture, 1926, p. 39, fig. 71926; or the powerful mask, with open mouth and filed teeth, 31 cm, from the old Emile Chambon Collection, Musée d'Ethnographie, Geneva.

The Bernard d'Hendecourt black mask is characteristic of the Punu-Lumbu style from the Ngounié River, in south-west Gabon (Mouila, Moabi, Ndendé, Tchibanga regions). It is of “classical” form, as defined by Perrois and Grand-Dufay, 2005-2007.

This mask is one of the first known, exhibited and published in the early 20th century along with the first interest of Western artists and intellectuals for 'l'art nègre.' Its sculpture is of great subtlety and its carving is refined. The face with a broad and curved forehead can fit in a diamond-shaped oval, with a small pointed chin. Regarding the composition of the sculpted volumes, this scheme also emphasizes the big eyes and the mouth, stretched towards the front, with a slight accentuation on the cheekbones. The artist was a great master: he creates here an artwork simultaneously realist but subtly idealized, while still following the canon of the style. 

The arches, highlighted by very high eyebrows in slight relief, follow a perfect symmetry. The eyes, half-closed and incised in wide oblique, are very slit in the shape of an almond; the eyelids have a discreet volume.

The arched nose (especially when seen from profile) shows a thin bridge with small but well defined wings. The slightly open mouth is carved in a realist manner, with its lips luscious and delicately outlined. The sub-nasal groove (philtrum) is also defined. The small ears are stylized. All these details give to the face its aspect of youth.

Like many other masks of the area, the forehead is marked with a slight relief pattern in a diamond shape (partly damaged and covered with a thick patina) composed here by seven or nine lozenges. The lozenges symbolize the group's primordial clans and the 'totemic' link with the crocodile, mentioned in the Origin mythology. The pattern is asymmetrical and the scales are disordered. The same pattern, but with just four scales, is applied on the temples.

The ample central triangular crested headdress, entirely blackened and covered by a thick satiny patina, is well proportioned. The central cup, quite narrow, is curved towards the back; this central part is flanked by two smaller braided chignons, which are finely arched in order to cover the top of the head and fall onto the temples.

The fine carving of the wood evokes really thin braids of hair, through several series of perfectly parallel stripes, and is placed in oblique. 

From the top of the forehead, a band surrounds the head down to the ears, circles them and continues in two thin braids that envelop the cheeks in “cadenettes.” These “cadenettes” are delicately placed under the chin to form a sort of “handle.”

The face and the headdress are emphasized by this black-painted band which surrounds the mask completely. From a sculptural point of view, the face of the ikwar seems to crop up in high-relief, out of the background where the fiber and cloth cape were affixed, allowing the dancer to hide his eyes to the uninitiated.

We should not forget that this mask, placed high on its stilts, was always seen by the public in an oblique position, or “contre-plongee,” with the face turned toward the ground. The necessity of “mise en scene” was of course taken in consideration by the Punu artist-carvers in the voluminous composition of their wood works, especially in the detail given to the eyes and eyelids.   

Again, the patina of this mask is specific and outstanding. Indeed, it is double: the under layer made of kaolin is white while the very thick upper layer, cracked in some places, presents a dark brown or black complexion with shiny effects.

Regarding its age, this rare and magnificent masterpiece from the sculptural art of the Punu-Lumbu, dates largely from the 19th century.

 

Dr. Louis Perrois