Bamileke Openwork Sculpture, Cameroon

Allan Stone, New York, acquired in the 1970s or 1980s

Good condition for an object of this age and rare type. Weathered from exposure to the elements in situ. Top openwork register with a loss to the upper rim and the proper left arm of the central front figure as shown in catalogue photograph; back figure also with a loss to the proper right arm and a section of the upper rim. Surface cavities including a patch above the proper right eyebrow. Stable vertical age cracks throughout. Underside and inside of sculpture are weathered and abraded with surface erosion. Marks, nicks, scratches, abrasions, chipping and small cavities. Fine aged, varied orange-brown surface with remains of pigment.
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A Bamileke Royal Treasury Sculpture

The art of the three culture areas of the Cameroon Grassfields—Northwest Province, Bamileke, and Bamum—has in common figures, masks, and associated paraphernalia which are characterized by a certain grandeur generated by their volume and height encompassing human and animal features in a visual statement, or declaration, of an exuberant presence well recognized by its collectors in our world as well and foremost by theAfrican practitioners of its use—usually an exalted and restricted one—in the Grassfields.     

In the hierarchically structured communities of the Grasfields the negotiation of political and social authority, the governance of the realm, is vested in the relationship between the Fon (king) and the  kingdom’s regulatory societies, the Fon being the ultimate sacred and ritual authority based on his access to otherworldly supernatural phenomena, the moral authority of his royal ancestors, and a mystical-magical belief in his invincibility: as long as the Fon moves within the canon sanctioned by history and tradition he is beyond reprove and guarantor of his peoples’ well being.  Virtually all of a kingdom’s art in the form of figures and masks serves the purpose of demonstrating this function at critical events such as royal accession rituals and funerals whereby sculpted figures operate/move primarily in the palace context whereas a multiplicity of masks is shared by the regulatory societies of notables in public performances.

This rare sculpture fits within the context of only two other objects (one in the collection of Murray Frum, Toronto; the other in a private collection) approximately sharing its size, figural representations including nude male and female couples as part of the openwork superstructure, and therewith its importance.  This two-tiered sculpture with a massive head as socle for the second tier of a male and female figure flanked by two masks, all facing in opposite directions, can be seen as one of those peak ritual objects of Bamileke realism—strong limbs, shoulders, pectorals/breasts and a well fed belly—celebrating by its monumentality the strength of the kingdom.  It would have been a bravura exhibition piece at an important event in the palace context.  The nudity of the figures void of the usual status accoutrements lifts the sculpture to elemental life, freed by its ritual of presentation and thus introducing its rare quality among other figural sculptures.  The male and female figures in their stark unabashed and entirely unadorned nudity depict robust life with its promise of the ever expected fertility in the universe of humans and nature.  Their facial features echo those of the massive base head whose prominent bulging eyes and inflated cheeks pressing upon a pinched squarish mouth draw every viewer’s attention. 

Among other elements of note, the Fon’s gain from his ancestral relationship is an essential life force, a vital essence that infuses humans and animals and determines the moral order of their shared world.  This potent life essence thought of as breath, blood, saliva, and semen—reference to the exposed genitalia of the figures and evidence of a well ordered visually integrative system of representation.

This life essence acts in multiple ways from its seat in the belly of the king.  A breath is drawn and held in the inflated cheeks to be emitted as speech: the royal word, the edict; to be blown upon and fertilize fields; as saliva to generate fecundity.  In this phenomenon lodges the art’s ubiquitous characteristic of rotund cheeks and open mouths. Here the masks’ exposed teeth in a square mouth add an aura of aggression, likely symbolic of a certain anxiety of oppression experienced through the regulatory societies, and remarked upon by villagers.  Prominently inflated cheeks are a constant feature of Grassfields’ art, mostly misunderstood by outsiders as a kind of peasants’ joviality.   These features symbolize the power and potency of the king who is the vessel and transmitter of life force to his people. 

The two diminutive masks in the openwork superstructure have additional reinforcing symbols.  One is an abstracted spider, the other, hard to read, four geometrized serpents, also echoing the striations and central part of all Batcham masks hair dresses.  The spider motif is a common favourite in Grassfields’ art.  Relying on the old universal wisdom “that certain animals are good to think with” the spider is believed to be a bridge to the unknown, past and future.  This nocturnal earth spider, living underground, is linked to the ancestors as agents of moral order and is trusted to be wise and prescient in human affairs making it an appropriate icon of wisdom.

Tamara Northern
Minneapolis, September 2013