A FINE BAULE MONKEY FIGURE

Details

A FINE BAULE MONKEY FIGURE

Standing on a low cylindrical base with thick muscular flexed legs, heavy thighs and buttocks overlaid with a cotton cloth covered with sacrificial materials, large cylindrical torso, arms bent with cupped long fingered hands held in front of face of stylized monkey head with open mouth showing teeth, round ears and eyes, head surmounted with smaller standing figure of a monkey with long tail, thick encrusted patina overall.
37 3/8in. high (94.9cm.)

Provenance

Gaston de Havenon, New York

Literature

Museum of African Art, 1971, no. 115
Baldwin, et al, 1987, p. 88

Exhibited

Washington, D.C., Museum of African Art, The de Havonon Collection, 1971
New York, The Center for African Art, Perspectives. Angles of African Art, 1987. This exhibition travelled to Richmond, The Virginia Museum of Art and Birmingham, The Birmingham Museum.

Lot Essay

Among the unusual aspects of this figure is the inclusion of the sculpture of a small animal on the head of the monkey, and the fact that the legs are not carved on the same plane as they so often are in African sculpture. The figure seems to be striding forward.

When he chose this piece to be included in the Perspectives exhibition, Ivan Karp, Curator of African Ethnology at the National Museum of Natural History, Washington, wrote in part, "I like it because it combines a number of elements. First of all, it represents animal symbolism in African art. There's a lot of anthropomorphizing of animals in folklore. This certainly has an anthropomorphic quality-the use of cloth-and so on. The other thing I like about it is the gesture of the hands and that inhuman head. It's got a very nice tension about it which I really like (Baldwin et al, p. 88)."