Male cult figure of the Baule ›blolo bian‹ / ›asie usu‹

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Sculpture male cult figure of the Baule ›blolo bian‹ / ›asie usu‹
Male cult figure of the Baule ›blolo bian‹ / ›asie usu‹
Anonymous Baule artist, 19th century
55.6 × 18 × 13 cm
Wood
Museum Folkwang , Essen

The male cult figure of the Baule ›blolo bian‹ / ›asie usu‹ is a 19th century sculpture created by an unknown artist from the Baule , a people from Ivory Coast . It is a fully plastic and natural sculpture made of wood, which is provided with detailed decorations. It had a religious meaning that can no longer be reliably reconstructed. With a blolo bian this would have been more private, with an asie usu it would have been in the context of fortune telling .

Karl Ernst Osthaus acquired the figure for his Folkwang Museum in Hagen in 1912 at the Brummer Gallery in Paris . In 1915 it was part of the illustration part in Carl Einstein's book Negerplastik . With the sale of the collection after Osthaus' death, the sculpture ended up in the newly founded Museum Folkwang in Essen . There it is listed under the inventory number K 588.

description

The sculpture is an unclothed male figure made from wood dyed brown. It is 55.6 inches high, 18 inches wide and 13 inches deep. It stands on a round base. The body and the limbs are fully sculpted and look natural. The arms are bent and carved freely, which is unusual for a Baule figure. The palms of the hands point up in a receiving gesture. Gender and navel are particularly emphasized. The shape of the face is determined by the large eyes, the narrow nose and the protruding oval mouth. The latter is open so that the teeth are visible. The hair is arranged in knots, bows and strands and reveals the high forehead. The double-headed goatee is the dignity of a chief. The face as well as the body of the figure are decorated with symmetrical patterns and decorative scars . These are traditional signs that stand for tribal membership, dignity and maturity.

The figure's fingertips are broken off. The left arm was already repaired with iron wire and raffia cords in the Ivory Coast. Originally there was a sacrificial crust on the sculpture , as the blood sacrifice was applied directly to it. However, this was removed. Therefore, the figure only has a brown primer.

  • Detail view of the upper body

  • Detail view of the foot

  • Side view of the figure

Religious meaning

If the figure is a blolo bian , then it was a figural representation of the husband from the spirit world that belonged to a woman. For the Baule, in addition to their own lifeworld, there is also the blolo , the world of spirits. This is the source of life from which the newborns come. The husband from the spirit world retained his influence on her life even after the birth of his wife. He stood by her side to help and protected her. However, if he felt neglected, he could become jealous and even cause pain. As a rule, the husband from the spirit world manifested himself in youth. A shrine in the bedroom was dedicated to him and a figure may later be acquired and offered as a place. In front of the figure, the real husband offered the blolo bian food in a bowl and gifts to reconcile him and which he shared with the woman. The woman was expected to be sexual fidelity through her husband out of blolo , which is why she had to sleep with him once a week.

If the Essen sculpture is an asie usu , then it was in the possession of a fortune teller or a seer. This was a bush spirit who corresponded to spirits of geomancy and the forest. The asie usu took possession of a person and subsequently made him a fortune teller. This relationship between the spirit and the possessed was mutual: sacrifices were made to the spirit, and in return it brought success to its owner. Aspiring fortune tellers had a sculpture made after a while, which served as a seat for the spirit, but which it also left again. The sculpture idealized the spirit, the appearance of which has been described negatively. The beauty of the figure was seen as necessary for the spirit to accept it as its seat. Sculpture did not occupy a prominent position within the cult, nor was it absolutely necessary for it.

The meaning of the sculpture is no longer clearly identifiable, as its context has been lost with the distance from its spatial and cultural context. Whether it was a blolo bian or an asie usu , in addition to formal differences, largely determined the different contexts of use. Both types of figures are formally similar, which is why they could often not be differentiated due to the lack of knowledge about the use of a specific figure. For older sculptures in particular, a distinction can be made based on sacrificial residues: While the owners applied blood to parts of the asie usu figures, especially on the foot, the surface of the blolo figures was kept clean. The literature on the Essen figure does mention this possibility of differentiation based on the removed sacrificial crust, but does not make any assignment.

Provenance

The sculpture was created in the 19th century by an artist from Baule . How it got from the Ivory Coast to Europe is not known. In 1912 it was in the inventory of the Brummer Gallery in Paris . It was opened in 1906 by the Hungarian brothers Joseph , Ernest and Imre Brummer on Boulevard Raspail. In addition to trading in medieval and modern art, they also sold non-European works of art.

Karl With , who was the assistant at the Folkwang Museum in Hagen, established contact between Joseph Brummer and Karl Ernst Osthaus , the museum's founder, in 1912 . Later that year, the two met in person in Paris. As a result, several African and ancient sculptures were acquired, including the male cult figure of the Baule ›blolo bian‹ / ›asie usu‹ from the Brummer gallery. These acquisitions were in the context of the particularly progressive presentation of the Folkwang Museum. According to Joseph Brummer, it was the first art museum to exhibit African objects . After the acquisitions at Brummer in autumn 1912, the joint presentation of modern works of art alongside non-European objects was completed by summer 1913 at the latest.

Partial view of the “Objekt Studio” exhibition in the Folkwang Museum with the male cult figure of the Baule ›blolo bian‹ / ›asie usu‹ in the rear showcase, September 2014

In 1915, Carl Einstein's program publication Negerplastik was the first German-language and one of the most powerful publications in which African works of art were linked to modern art. The book had a large illustration section in which the Essen figure was present as a photograph in illustration 57. Einstein did not give an explanatory caption and did not address the figure in his text any more than he did on any of the other works on display.

After Osthaus' death, the collection of the Folkwang Museum from Hagen was sold to Essen. This is how the sculpture ended up in the newly founded Museum Folkwang, where it continued to be presented. There it was exhibited on a Renaissance cabinet in front of paintings by Emil Nolde . After the Second World War , the non-European collection was increasingly pushed into the magazine due to a lack of space. However, this part of the collection was strengthened again in the course of the museum expansion in 2010. In the basement of the museum, the sculpture has been shown since December 2012 in an exhibition entitled Object Studio together with other objects from the non-European and ancient collection in combination with modern and contemporary works of art.

literature

  • Museum of Archeology and History, Essen-Altenessen (Hrsg.): The Africa collections of the Essen museums . Essen 1985.
  • Ulrike Kätze: Orient and Occident. World cultures in Folkwang . In: Johann Georg Prinz von Hohenzollern , Hubertus Gaßner (Ed.): Folkwang: First Museum of Modernity. Gauguin, van Gogh to Dalí . Hirmer, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-7774-2245-2 , pp. 205-233.
  • Rainer Stamm: world art and modernity. In: Museum Folkwang (ed.): “The most beautiful museum in the world”. Museum Folkwang until 1933. Essays on the history of the Museum Folkwang . Edition Folkwang, Steidl, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-86930-098-6 , pp. 27-46.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Entry on the male cult figure of the Baule ›blolo bian‹ / ›asie usu‹ on museum-folkwang.de., Accessed on 23 September 2014.
  2. ^ Museum of Archeology and History, Essen-Altenessen (ed.), The Africa Collections of the Essen Museums , Essen 1985, p. 25.
  3. ↑ a b c Museum of Archeology and History, Essen-Altenessen (ed.), The Africa Collections of the Essen Museums , Essen 1985, p. 26.
  4. ↑ Susan Mullin Vogel, Baule. African Art Western Eyes , New Haven 1997, p. 67.
  5. ↑ Susan Mullin Vogel, Baule. African Art Western Eyes , New Haven 1997, pp. 246, 253-8.
  6. ↑ Susan Mullin Vogel, Baule. African Art Western Eyes , New Haven 1997, pp. 247f and 258.
  7. ↑ Susan Mullin Vogel, People of Wood: Baule Figure Sculpture , in: Art Journal, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Autumn, 1973), pp. 23-26, 25.
  8. ↑ Suzanne Preston Blier, Words about Words about Icons: Iconologology and the Study of African Art , in: Art Journal, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Summer, 1988), pp. 75-87, 78.
  9. ↑ Susan Mullin Vogel, Baule. African Art Western Eyes , New Haven 1997, p. 224.
  10. ↑ Susan Mullin Vogel, Baule. African Art Western Eyes , New Haven 1997, pp. 100 and 230.
  11. ↑ Susan Mullin Vogel, Baule. African Art Western Eyes , New Haven 1997, p. 231.
  12. ↑ a b Ulrike Kätze, Orient and Occident. World cultures in Folkwang , in: Johann Georg Prinz von Hohenzollern & Hubertus Gaßner (eds.), Folkwang: First Museum of Modernism. Gauguin, van Gogh to Dalí , Munich 2004, pp. 205–233, 205.
  13. ↑ Susan Mullin Vogel, Baule. African Art Western Eyes , New Haven 1997, pp. 234 and 266.
  14. ↑ Ulrike Kätze, Orient and Occident. World cultures in Folkwang , in: Johann Georg Prinz von Hohenzollern & Hubertus Gaßner (eds.), Folkwang: First Museum of Modernism. Gauguin, van Gogh to Dalí , Munich 2004, pp. 205–233, 222.
  15. ^ William R. Johnston: William and Henry Walters. The Reticent Collectors. Baltimore 1999, p. 213.
  16. ^ Rainer Stamm, Weltkunst und Moderne , in: Museum Folkwang (Ed.), "The most beautiful museum in the world". Museum Folkwang until 1933. Essays on the history of the Museum Folkwang , Göttingen 2010, pp. 27–46, 31.
  17. ^ Rainer Stamm, Weltkunst und Moderne , in: Museum Folkwang (Ed.), "The most beautiful museum in the world". Museum Folkwang until 1933. Essays on the history of the Museum Folkwang , Göttingen 2010, pp. 27–46, 29f.
  18. ^ Rainer Stamm, Weltkunst und Moderne , in: Museum Folkwang (Ed.), "The most beautiful museum in the world". Museum Folkwang until 1933. Essays on the history of the Museum Folkwang , Göttingen 2010, pp. 27–46, 35f.
  19. ↑ German Neundorfer, "Critique of Anschauung". Image description in the art-critical work of Carl Einstein , Würzburg 2003, p. 28.
  20. ^ Sebastian Zeidler, Totality Against a Subject: Carl Einstein's Negerplastik, in: October, Vol. 107 (2004), pp. 14–46, 15f.
  21. ↑ Ulrike Laufer, diligent collector and foundation. 90 years of the Folkwang Museum Association - 90 years of the Folkwang Museum , Göttingen 2012, p. 97.
  22. ^ Museum Folkwang, Objekt Studio , accessed on September 30, 2014 at museum-folkwang.de.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on November 13, 2014 .