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Lot Essay
TO LISTEN AND TO SPEAK: AN IMPORTANT AND HIGHLY RARE MFUMTE FIGURE
By Bruno Claessens
A fantastic stylization of the human figure, this highly abstract and dynamically conceived Mfumte statue presents a splendid example of why the art of Cameroon has always been denoted as the most expressionistic of the African continent. The salient features of this figure were emphasized to the extreme of distortion. Without knowledge of its function, it is clear that the essential tasks of this statue were to listen and speak – hence the large C-shaped ears and big projecting open mouth. Other identifying features of this rare sculptural style are the projecting oval cauri-shaped eyes and the small triangular nose. The two tresses of hair coming together at the back show a braided hairstyle that must have been locally in fashion. The strong shoulders and hands on the torso express authority. The upper arms are carved free from the narrowed torso and the strongly flexed lower arms lie on the hips. Both the shoulders and hips protrude to the back; connected through the slender tube-shaped arms and the projecting back, the whole creates an extraordinary combination of forms which forces the viewer to look at the sculpture from all angles. Below, the protruding genital area is a clear reference to male fertility. While exaggerating certain features, the sculptor of this statue also was aware of the architectural principle that less is more; the legs being only rendered schematically. The soft wood in which this statue was carved would require careful storage to keep the statue in good condition. As shown in a field-photo by Paul Gebauer these figures often stood in an open-air shrine where they were exposed to the elements. Hence, the worn surface and eroded feet of the present figure are no surprise.
Including this figure, only 8 Mfumte statues still exist. Paul Gebauer collected a male statue that bears strong resemblance to our example.1 It spots a different coiffure but has identical facial features. The upper lip features a circular lip-plug. The torso is even slimmer and the lower abdomen is triangular-shaped. The hands are less well-defined but the overall composition is the same. Gebauer also photographed a male-female pair made by the same sculptor as the statue he collected.2 The field-photo of this open-air shrine in the Mburi Valley is evidence these statues occurred in male-female pairs. Another couple was acquired by Jay T. Last from the Los Angeles dealer Barry Kitnick in 1971.3 It could therefore be argued that the female figure in the Yale University Art Gallery (#2006.51.169), formerly in the Charles B. Benenson collection, perhaps once formed a pair with our statue. The stylized bosom of the latter is diagonally placed in the middle of the torso and framed by the asymmetrically positioned arms. The sex, again, is prominently rendered. Around the waist, we find a stylized belt. As with the female statue, Gebauer photographed in situ, there’s a small ridge below the nose to hold a nose ornament, in all likelihood reflecting local customs. The Benenson statue is the best-known Mfumte statue and was exhibited numerous times before being donated to Yale University in 2006. Benenson said about this statue: “Here’s a good piece that I think is miraculous… The Mambila (sic) are crazy! That’s my opinion, not necessarily theirs; and that type inspired Picasso”.4 While none of the known Mfumte statues had left Africa at the time of Picasso’s ‘African’ period, William Rubin indeed would include it in the 1984 exhibition Primitivism in 20th Century Art.
Affinities of the Tribal and the Modern at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (illustrated full page in the catalogue on p. 40). A few years later, Rubin wrote about this statue in the catalogue of the highly acclaimed exhibition Perspectives: Angles on African Art: “This is quite unusual in its almost caricaturizing silhouetting of the body’s extremities. …I find the conception fresh and inventive. In some ways, it’s almost a preposterous piece. But when naturalism is pushed to extremes of a certain sort, you almost get a caricature. Caricature has played a very invigorating part in the work of some Western artists. Not that this African artist had any notion of caricature. Except that all caricature does something which tribal artists do: they accentuate what is most important and characteristic and individual about a given situation. This piece differs from a great deal of African art in the degree to which the sense of manipulation has been applied as much if not more to the body than the head.”5 Yale University holds another Mfumte statue formerly in the Benenson collection (#2006.51.168). Susan Vogel wrote about it: “Awe and horror are inspired by this voracious, brainless figure because its forms seems chaotic … The lumbering, boxy projections are all vaguely threatening.”6 Vogel published another figure from the same sculptor in African Sculpture: The Shape of Surprise (New York, 1980: p. 21, #102), bringing the total of known surviving Mfumte sculptures to only eight.
The Mfumte live in a small region in the northern grasslands of Cameroon south of the Donga River. This river rushes through the palm-studded valley and provides an outlet into Mbembe territory to the West and towards the Benue Valley of Southwestern Nigeria to the North. In the middle of the twentieth century a census counted about 6,000 people in thirteen autonomous little villages. Each village had its own social structure, its own chief, priest, diviner, and court. The American missionary Paul Gebauer traveled extensively in the Mfumte region between 1936 and 1940, he noted that among the Mfumte craftsmen, he met exceptional artists.7 About the Mfumte statue he collected he wrote: “Called Ngimfe by local residents, this figure was said to personify the messenger for an oracle figure named Sanko. It once stood to the left of the large oracle, to accept messages for the cult members. From information collected, it appears this was always the messenger of good news, of good luck. Visitors to the grove received the needed psychological lift and went away in peace.”8 In all likelihood, the present statue served a similar function for another oracle in one of the few Mfumte villages. Notwithstanding its exceptional sculptural qualities, this figure thus should be considered to be more than art for art’s sake; the renowned African art scholar Roy Sieber has rightfully called the art of Cameroon “art for life’s sake; in which the essential sense of well-being and the collective security of the people is symbolized in their art objects.”9 Endowed with force, this statue turned into an animated being and gained meaning. As a sculpture, it shows a strong understanding of form, line and essentials and is a token of the timeless aesthetic awareness that only the most-talented artist can reach.
1. Currently in the collection of the Portland Museum of Art (#70.10.31). The Gebauer Collection, assembled by Paul and Clara Gebauer during their residence in Cameroon between 1930 and 1975 was split between the Portland Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and documented in Art of Cameroon (Portland, 1979).
2. Published in Gebauer P., Art of Cameroon, Portland, 1979: p. 22; unfortunately no additional information is provided. The male figure, which seems to be holding a stylized beard, eventually made it to Europe (its lower legs now missing) and was published in the exhibition catalogue Arts Ancestraux du Cameroun (La Fleche, 1995:p. 30, #46).
3. Kitnick collected the pair in Foumban, then the central point for dealers to acquire Cameroon art. They are published in Last J.T., African Art and Silicon Chips, Los Angeles, 2015: p. 97, fig. 4.23. Last comments that this striking couple, which has a prominent place in his living room, is usually the first African object that a visitor to his house will comment on (op.cit., pp. 96-98).
4. Quoted in Lamp F., Accumulating Histories. African Art from the Charles B. Benenson Collection at the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, 2012: p. 158.
5. Vogel S., Perspectives: Angles on African Art, New York: The Center for African Art, 1987: p. 64.
6. Vogel S. and Thompson J., Closeup. Lessons in the art of seeing African sculpture from an American collection and the Horstmann collection, New York: The Center for African Art, 1990: pp. 158-159, #89.
7. The geographic isolation of the Cameroon grasslands protected traditional ways into the years of the First World War. Only then did the part administered by the French witness the impact of plantation development and European settlement. The British part, including the Mfumte region, continued isolated to the end of World War II.
8. Gebauer, op. cit., p. 187.
9. Quoted from a lecture given at the Portland Art Museum by Beth Fagain in The Oregonian, September 22, 1970.
By Bruno Claessens
A fantastic stylization of the human figure, this highly abstract and dynamically conceived Mfumte statue presents a splendid example of why the art of Cameroon has always been denoted as the most expressionistic of the African continent. The salient features of this figure were emphasized to the extreme of distortion. Without knowledge of its function, it is clear that the essential tasks of this statue were to listen and speak – hence the large C-shaped ears and big projecting open mouth. Other identifying features of this rare sculptural style are the projecting oval cauri-shaped eyes and the small triangular nose. The two tresses of hair coming together at the back show a braided hairstyle that must have been locally in fashion. The strong shoulders and hands on the torso express authority. The upper arms are carved free from the narrowed torso and the strongly flexed lower arms lie on the hips. Both the shoulders and hips protrude to the back; connected through the slender tube-shaped arms and the projecting back, the whole creates an extraordinary combination of forms which forces the viewer to look at the sculpture from all angles. Below, the protruding genital area is a clear reference to male fertility. While exaggerating certain features, the sculptor of this statue also was aware of the architectural principle that less is more; the legs being only rendered schematically. The soft wood in which this statue was carved would require careful storage to keep the statue in good condition. As shown in a field-photo by Paul Gebauer these figures often stood in an open-air shrine where they were exposed to the elements. Hence, the worn surface and eroded feet of the present figure are no surprise.
Including this figure, only 8 Mfumte statues still exist. Paul Gebauer collected a male statue that bears strong resemblance to our example.1 It spots a different coiffure but has identical facial features. The upper lip features a circular lip-plug. The torso is even slimmer and the lower abdomen is triangular-shaped. The hands are less well-defined but the overall composition is the same. Gebauer also photographed a male-female pair made by the same sculptor as the statue he collected.2 The field-photo of this open-air shrine in the Mburi Valley is evidence these statues occurred in male-female pairs. Another couple was acquired by Jay T. Last from the Los Angeles dealer Barry Kitnick in 1971.3 It could therefore be argued that the female figure in the Yale University Art Gallery (#2006.51.169), formerly in the Charles B. Benenson collection, perhaps once formed a pair with our statue. The stylized bosom of the latter is diagonally placed in the middle of the torso and framed by the asymmetrically positioned arms. The sex, again, is prominently rendered. Around the waist, we find a stylized belt. As with the female statue, Gebauer photographed in situ, there’s a small ridge below the nose to hold a nose ornament, in all likelihood reflecting local customs. The Benenson statue is the best-known Mfumte statue and was exhibited numerous times before being donated to Yale University in 2006. Benenson said about this statue: “Here’s a good piece that I think is miraculous… The Mambila (sic) are crazy! That’s my opinion, not necessarily theirs; and that type inspired Picasso”.4 While none of the known Mfumte statues had left Africa at the time of Picasso’s ‘African’ period, William Rubin indeed would include it in the 1984 exhibition Primitivism in 20th Century Art.
Affinities of the Tribal and the Modern at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (illustrated full page in the catalogue on p. 40). A few years later, Rubin wrote about this statue in the catalogue of the highly acclaimed exhibition Perspectives: Angles on African Art: “This is quite unusual in its almost caricaturizing silhouetting of the body’s extremities. …I find the conception fresh and inventive. In some ways, it’s almost a preposterous piece. But when naturalism is pushed to extremes of a certain sort, you almost get a caricature. Caricature has played a very invigorating part in the work of some Western artists. Not that this African artist had any notion of caricature. Except that all caricature does something which tribal artists do: they accentuate what is most important and characteristic and individual about a given situation. This piece differs from a great deal of African art in the degree to which the sense of manipulation has been applied as much if not more to the body than the head.”5 Yale University holds another Mfumte statue formerly in the Benenson collection (#2006.51.168). Susan Vogel wrote about it: “Awe and horror are inspired by this voracious, brainless figure because its forms seems chaotic … The lumbering, boxy projections are all vaguely threatening.”6 Vogel published another figure from the same sculptor in African Sculpture: The Shape of Surprise (New York, 1980: p. 21, #102), bringing the total of known surviving Mfumte sculptures to only eight.
The Mfumte live in a small region in the northern grasslands of Cameroon south of the Donga River. This river rushes through the palm-studded valley and provides an outlet into Mbembe territory to the West and towards the Benue Valley of Southwestern Nigeria to the North. In the middle of the twentieth century a census counted about 6,000 people in thirteen autonomous little villages. Each village had its own social structure, its own chief, priest, diviner, and court. The American missionary Paul Gebauer traveled extensively in the Mfumte region between 1936 and 1940, he noted that among the Mfumte craftsmen, he met exceptional artists.7 About the Mfumte statue he collected he wrote: “Called Ngimfe by local residents, this figure was said to personify the messenger for an oracle figure named Sanko. It once stood to the left of the large oracle, to accept messages for the cult members. From information collected, it appears this was always the messenger of good news, of good luck. Visitors to the grove received the needed psychological lift and went away in peace.”8 In all likelihood, the present statue served a similar function for another oracle in one of the few Mfumte villages. Notwithstanding its exceptional sculptural qualities, this figure thus should be considered to be more than art for art’s sake; the renowned African art scholar Roy Sieber has rightfully called the art of Cameroon “art for life’s sake; in which the essential sense of well-being and the collective security of the people is symbolized in their art objects.”9 Endowed with force, this statue turned into an animated being and gained meaning. As a sculpture, it shows a strong understanding of form, line and essentials and is a token of the timeless aesthetic awareness that only the most-talented artist can reach.
1. Currently in the collection of the Portland Museum of Art (#70.10.31). The Gebauer Collection, assembled by Paul and Clara Gebauer during their residence in Cameroon between 1930 and 1975 was split between the Portland Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and documented in Art of Cameroon (Portland, 1979).
2. Published in Gebauer P., Art of Cameroon, Portland, 1979: p. 22; unfortunately no additional information is provided. The male figure, which seems to be holding a stylized beard, eventually made it to Europe (its lower legs now missing) and was published in the exhibition catalogue Arts Ancestraux du Cameroun (La Fleche, 1995:p. 30, #46).
3. Kitnick collected the pair in Foumban, then the central point for dealers to acquire Cameroon art. They are published in Last J.T., African Art and Silicon Chips, Los Angeles, 2015: p. 97, fig. 4.23. Last comments that this striking couple, which has a prominent place in his living room, is usually the first African object that a visitor to his house will comment on (op.cit., pp. 96-98).
4. Quoted in Lamp F., Accumulating Histories. African Art from the Charles B. Benenson Collection at the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, 2012: p. 158.
5. Vogel S., Perspectives: Angles on African Art, New York: The Center for African Art, 1987: p. 64.
6. Vogel S. and Thompson J., Closeup. Lessons in the art of seeing African sculpture from an American collection and the Horstmann collection, New York: The Center for African Art, 1990: pp. 158-159, #89.
7. The geographic isolation of the Cameroon grasslands protected traditional ways into the years of the First World War. Only then did the part administered by the French witness the impact of plantation development and European settlement. The British part, including the Mfumte region, continued isolated to the end of World War II.
8. Gebauer, op. cit., p. 187.
9. Quoted from a lecture given at the Portland Art Museum by Beth Fagain in The Oregonian, September 22, 1970.