Baga Male Figure, Guinea

Daniel Hourdé, Paris
Private Collection, Connecticut
Pace Primitive, New York
Myron Kunin, Minneapolis, acquired from the above on April 24, 2012

Pace Primitive (adv.), Tribal Art, Vol. XIII-2, No. 51, Spring 2009, p. 7

Good condition for an object of this type and age. Open age crack where proper right hand meets chin. Other age cracks including to proper right shoulder, proper right hip, front of chest, to proper left side of head, and a wedge-shaped age crack to the back of the integrally-carved plinth. Area of abrasion to navel. Abrasions and cut marks to fronts of legs and to proper right side of torso. Some areas of shallow erosion including under proper right shoulder on reverse. Marks, nicks, scratches, abrasions, small cracks and chips consistent with age and ritual use. Exceptionally fine dark brown glossy patina. Fixed permanently to modern wood base.
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Nimba sculpture (as it is known in the more frequently used Susu language; also known as D'mba in Baga language) created by the Baga people of Guinea, is amongst the rarest yet most emblematic forms of African art. The singularity of its visual language, especially the striking outline of the archetypal "Nimba head" - perceptible in the imposing shoulder masks and in the smaller statues, which, as in this piece, are modeled after the human body, became a staple of modern artists' inspiration from the beginning of the 20th century, especially so in the case of Pablo Picasso, who owned a pair of standing D'mba figures which he acquired through Gertrude Stein.

According to oral tradition, the Baga originally came from the mountainous region of Fouta Djallon, in the centre of Guinea, whence they were ousted for good by the Fula people who had converted to Islam in the 18th century. Their migration and their gradual resettlement in successive waves, since the 15th century, in the coastal lagoons of southern Guinea Bissau and of western Guinea, are, according to Frederick Lamp, what caused a "reinvention of themselves as a people and a culture" (Lamp 1996: 155). That is how they came to create "a new and revolutionary art form" (ibid.) whose most spectacular expression were the shoulder masks, referred to, at the time of their discovery, as "Nimba goddesses". See Sweeney (1935: pl. 40) for the mask held in the Georges Salles collection (Paris) displayed in the landmark exhibition African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1935, and RMN (2000: 71) for another collected by Henri Labouret in 1932, now on display at the Pavillon des Sessions in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.

The lack of information gathered by early collectors, along with the ban on ancestral ceremonies and the destruction of ritual objects in the 1950s by the Sékou Touré government, kept this major art form of the African continent concealed for a long time. Aside from a short study published by Denise Paulme in 1956, it was not until 1985, and the field research conducted by Frederick Lamp, that the meaning of the D'mba (or Nimba) was fully understood: this term refers both to the shoulder mask and the statues, and its sculptural form features massive prognathic heads whose profile are framed in a set of taut curves. The D'mba, which was long interpreted as the "fertility goddess", is in fact, according to Lamp (1996: 155, 158-159, 163), neither a deity, nor an ancestor, nor even a spirit, but rather an "idea", which combines "beauty, comportment, righteousness, dignity, and social duty". Although the shoulder masks are exclusively female - their nourishing breasts linking them to representations of fertility - the statues represent both male and female figures, and originally existed in couples. According to Lamp (1996: 181, fig. 171), this double gender within the statuary suggests that the D'mba "represented the unattainable. The beauty,  goodness, and high comportment that were epitomized was beyond what any woman - or man - could be."

Nimba statues came to Europe long before nimba shoulder masks: as early as 1867 in the case of the statues held at the Nationalmuseet of Copenhagen, before 1883 for the ones at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, and 1885 for the ones collected by Coffinières de Nordeck and now held at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. None, however, were brought back with any collection information, which leads Lamp (1996: 163) to believe that "they held a more sacred and prohibited role than the D'mba headdress, and that perhaps the figural tradition, especially, is of even greater antiquity."

The arrival of Baga art in Europe profoundly influenced the development of modernist art in the early twentieth century, particularly through its effect on the art of Pablo Picasso. Regarding Picasso’s drawings of 1907, his earliest work with a clear relationship to African art, William Rubin (1984: 275-279) states: "none are more revealing of Picasso's way of thinking and working than those related to Nimba, assumed at the time to be the Baga people's goddess of fertility.  In Baga art, the Nimba-type head is associated with huge dance masks, and with smaller figure sculptures that have human bodies [like the present figure]. There is no question that Picasso saw [the dance mask today in the Musée de l’Homme]… during his visits to the Trocadéro; in 1907 it was the only such object in the Musee d’Ethnographie. […] While the Nimba mask was used exclusively for dances and thus was seen in movement, the smaller, integral 'Nimba-headed' figures were stationary objects whose purpose is not known; in 1907, the Trocadéro owned one of these as well.”

Picasso's drawing Head in Profile of 1907 (fig. 2), today at the Musée du Picasso in Paris, is probably his first interpretation of the classic Nimba form, variations of which would appear frequently in his drawings, paintings, and sculpture of the next several decades.  Among Picasso’s acquisitions of African art for his own collection were a pair of male and female Baga figures which he acquired through Gertrude Stein (see Stephan 2006: 50, cat. nos. 10-11).  In a letter (fig. 1, Stepan 2006: 98) sent to Picasso in Montrouge dated February 23, 1918, Stein writes from Nîmes: “Here, I have found you some Negroes. They are a couple – a Mr. and a Mrs. – but separated. […] The heads are a little like birds, but I will make you a drawing. The feet are somewhat in relief of the base/plinth. They are made of ironwood and colored black.  Here is the sketch / this is the lady.”  Stein arranged to purchase the pair on Picasso’s behalf, and in a letter of April 26 (ibid.), Picasso replied: “…I am sending the hundred francs I owe you for the Negroes (with this letter).  I am pleased with them and if you find any others, and it’s not too great an effort, buy them for me, you will make me extremely happy.”

Elements derived from his study of Baga Nimba sculptures make a particularly strong appearance in his sensual portraits of his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, with whom he became involved in 1925.  Rubin (1984: 326-327) notes: “Marie-Thérèse was for Picasso the incarnation of sensuality and, by extension, of fertility.  The full shapes, salient nose, and large prominent breasts of classic Nimbas would have certainly remined Picasso of Marie-Thérèse even if he was not aware – as indeed, he was – the mask’s cult associations of fertility.  It is not by chance that Picasso’s Nimba [= Picasso’s Nimba mask, acquired in the late 1920s] stood like a clan totem in the entrance of the château at Boisgeloup where he executed the large plaster busts and heads of Marie-Thérèse.”

The Nimba sculptures in Picasso’s collection and others visible in European collections did not fail to capture the attention of other great twentieth century modern artists.  A study of a Nimba mask by Alberto Giacometti shows the continuation of Baga influence in the post-war period.  A Baga female figure formerly in the collection of the British sculptor Jacob Epstein is today in the British Museum (see Bassani and McLeod 1989: 27, fig. 31).