Tellem Figure, Mali, circa 11th – 15th Century

This exceptionally fine Tellem figure was acquired from the legendary French art dealer Charles Ratton in 1967 by Dr. Austin Newton, while he was conducting research in molecular biology with Nobel Laureate Jacques Monod at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. It has remained in the Newton collection since then, and has most recently been exhibited in the landmark 2020 exhibition Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and published in the catalogue of that exhibition.

The Bandiagara Escarpment is a majestic run of sandstone cliffs that slices across present-day central Mali between the Niger River and the Burkina Faso border. Rising over 1,500 feet in sections, the Bandiagara is one of the most dramatic land formations of sub-Saharan Africa and provides a natural protective barrier against foreign incursions and natural shelters for wood sculptures produced by successive interrelated cultures. The Dogon people arrived in the region circa the 15th century and since then, have thrived by constructing their villages on the steep cliff face along the escarpment.

Dogon oral traditions relate the story of their arrival to the Bandiagara after an exodus from their original homeland in Mande at the heart of the Mali empire. They referred to the inhabitants they encountered as tellem, or "we found them", and this term has come to describe the pre-Dogon culture and sculptural style of the region. Some Tellem are thought to have fled upon the arrival of the outsiders, while some were integrated into the Dogon population. According to Alisa Lagamma: "Later Dogon residents of the Bandiagara removed the creations of their Tellem precursors from the necropolises, for example, and harnessed the potency of these works by positioning them on their own altars and integrating them into their own spiritual practices." (Alisa LaGamma, ed.,  Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara, New York, 2020, p. 169).

Scholars have suggested that a period of cultural overlap between the Tellem and the Dogon followed the arrival of the latter to the Bandiagara, and the sculptural styles of each are undoubtedly interrelated, making it sometimes difficult to discern one from the other. The group of sculptures traditionally attributed to the Tellem share certain attributes including a tall, narrow overall form, with short bent legs, columnar torso, and large columnar head. The figure is frequently depicted with both arms raised straight above and formed continuously with the sides of the head, often with the hands meeting at the apex of the sculpture. These figures are frequently entirely encased in applied organic material, which forms a hardened crusty craquelure, concealing the detail of the sculpture's surface but enhancing the appearance of age and ritual power.

The Newton Tellem figure is particularly distinguished by its subtle contrapposto; the hermaphroditic figure stands in a slightly asymmetrical pose suggesting movement and lively, energetic potential. Beneath the thickly-encrusted sacrificial surface, we can still discern eyes, nose, mouth and a plank-shaped beard jutting from the chin; beneath is a rhythmically stacked arrangement of breasts, belly, umbilicus, and pubis. Little is known of the specific iconography in Tellem artwork, but the sculptor of the present figure has quite deliberately included both male and female characteristics related to procreation, fecundity, and continuity of a family lineage. The gesture of raised arms is an archetype of art from the Bandiagara region. As Hélène Leloup has noted: "The statues with raised arms form part of a group of statuettes of different styles found all along the cliffs: Djennenke, classical Tellem, Niongom, Komakan, to which we can add the ones mentioned by Leiris, the 'raised arm' statuettes in the caves of Yougo [...]. These figures played a role in rainmaking rites performed by all the different inhabitants of the cliffs: a cultural adaptation by osmosis responding to the chronic lack of rain along the dry cliffs" (Hélène Leloup, Dogon, Paris, 2009, p. 127).