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Lot Essay
LEOPARDS AND FOES: A RARE BASSA HEADCREST
This awe-inspiring head, with its skull-like presence, can be considered as the apogee of Bassa art. While the facial plane of most other Bassa sculptures is conceived very flat, with just slightly raised features, this head was sculpted as a true three-dimensional work of art. Underneath raised eyebrow arches, deep-set eyes give this hitherto unknown head an intense gaze. From the abstract nose, two strong nasolabial folds descend, framing the mouth. The latter is reduced to its essence: long vertical parallel bars possibly referring to the long teeth of the leopard. This abstraction is reinforced by the absence of lips and lack of separation between the upper and lower teeth. Although such a representation is very rare, it is not entirely unknown. In his magnus opus Arts Anciens du Cameroun (1986), Pierre Harter illustrated three statues with a similar treatment of the teeth from the Banka Kingdom (pp. 256-257, fig. 287-288). Both lateral sides of the head have pierced holes that end up at the bottom and served to attached the object to a fiber structure. The whole has a deep patina reflecting a prolonged use and long ritual life. Within the limited corpus of Bassa art, this rediscovered head can be rightfully considered as a masterpiece of its genre.
The Bassa (also spelled Basa or Basaa, not to be confused with the Liberian Bassa) are a Bantu group who originally lived along the Atlantic coast of what is now Cameroon. Displaced by the Duala and early European traders they were obliged to migrate inland and settled around the trading village of Yabassi in the rainforests. Due to its scarcity, the material culture of the Bassa has remained under the radar in most publications on the art of Cameroon. Unlike the Grassfields kingdoms, the rain forest art area has yet to be studied in depth. Only through the field-work of several missionaries of the Basler Mission in the first decades of the twentieth century we have some information on their artistic production. Several objects collected by this mission were donated to the collection of the Museum für Völkerkunde in Basel, Switzerland (now Museum der Kulturen). In 1994, Bernhard Gardi organized the first and only exhibition on the art of this forgotten region: Kunst in Kamerun. Waldland und Grasland: Ausgewählte Stücke aus den Sammlungen des Museums für Völkerkunde Basel und der Basler Mission. Another group of Bassa objects is in the collection of the Museum für Völkerkunde in Leipzig. One headdress with its fiber construction still intact, formerly in the Bally Museum (Schönenwerd, Switzerland), and acquired in 1911 – in a style similar to the Leipzig group – was sold in Germany in 2007 (Zemanek-Münster, 12 May 2007, lot 332).
This headdress was most likely worn on top of a performer’s head during the dances of the Bassa’s Koso society, an ancient institution of the communal societies of the forest regions of Cameroon. Koso had several major roles in the pre-colonial era. First and foremost, it provided entertainment, through dances, music, and mask performances for its members, but also for the ancestors, who were imagined as being present and witnessing these feasts. Through the powers of Koso, the ancestors would help keep enemies and evil forces at bay, regulate the weather, and use their benevolent powers to the advantage of the community. This head seems to combine human and animal features – the elongated teeth could refer to the leopard; an animal conceived to be a symbol of strength, tenacity, agility and vitality - virtues considered necessary for any well-organized society that aspired to order, peace and stability.
This awe-inspiring head, with its skull-like presence, can be considered as the apogee of Bassa art. While the facial plane of most other Bassa sculptures is conceived very flat, with just slightly raised features, this head was sculpted as a true three-dimensional work of art. Underneath raised eyebrow arches, deep-set eyes give this hitherto unknown head an intense gaze. From the abstract nose, two strong nasolabial folds descend, framing the mouth. The latter is reduced to its essence: long vertical parallel bars possibly referring to the long teeth of the leopard. This abstraction is reinforced by the absence of lips and lack of separation between the upper and lower teeth. Although such a representation is very rare, it is not entirely unknown. In his magnus opus Arts Anciens du Cameroun (1986), Pierre Harter illustrated three statues with a similar treatment of the teeth from the Banka Kingdom (pp. 256-257, fig. 287-288). Both lateral sides of the head have pierced holes that end up at the bottom and served to attached the object to a fiber structure. The whole has a deep patina reflecting a prolonged use and long ritual life. Within the limited corpus of Bassa art, this rediscovered head can be rightfully considered as a masterpiece of its genre.
The Bassa (also spelled Basa or Basaa, not to be confused with the Liberian Bassa) are a Bantu group who originally lived along the Atlantic coast of what is now Cameroon. Displaced by the Duala and early European traders they were obliged to migrate inland and settled around the trading village of Yabassi in the rainforests. Due to its scarcity, the material culture of the Bassa has remained under the radar in most publications on the art of Cameroon. Unlike the Grassfields kingdoms, the rain forest art area has yet to be studied in depth. Only through the field-work of several missionaries of the Basler Mission in the first decades of the twentieth century we have some information on their artistic production. Several objects collected by this mission were donated to the collection of the Museum für Völkerkunde in Basel, Switzerland (now Museum der Kulturen). In 1994, Bernhard Gardi organized the first and only exhibition on the art of this forgotten region: Kunst in Kamerun. Waldland und Grasland: Ausgewählte Stücke aus den Sammlungen des Museums für Völkerkunde Basel und der Basler Mission. Another group of Bassa objects is in the collection of the Museum für Völkerkunde in Leipzig. One headdress with its fiber construction still intact, formerly in the Bally Museum (Schönenwerd, Switzerland), and acquired in 1911 – in a style similar to the Leipzig group – was sold in Germany in 2007 (Zemanek-Münster, 12 May 2007, lot 332).
This headdress was most likely worn on top of a performer’s head during the dances of the Bassa’s Koso society, an ancient institution of the communal societies of the forest regions of Cameroon. Koso had several major roles in the pre-colonial era. First and foremost, it provided entertainment, through dances, music, and mask performances for its members, but also for the ancestors, who were imagined as being present and witnessing these feasts. Through the powers of Koso, the ancestors would help keep enemies and evil forces at bay, regulate the weather, and use their benevolent powers to the advantage of the community. This head seems to combine human and animal features – the elongated teeth could refer to the leopard; an animal conceived to be a symbol of strength, tenacity, agility and vitality - virtues considered necessary for any well-organized society that aspired to order, peace and stability.