Baule - Côte d'Ivoire (No Reserve Price)

A female Baule Mblo Face Mask, Ivory Coast, collected in the region Didieville, with delicate features, small pouted mouth with a little sphere in the center, small nose, eyes opened in a slit, small ears, a large rectangular shape with geometric shapes carved out in the centre and with four tentacle looking structures protruding from the top in a straight line on its head; the beard connects in a pointed, two triangles that form a quadrant goatee; angled eyebrows; the face ornamented with small dots lined up around the circumference of the face and two more between the eyebrows; signs of use. Certificate of origin and provenance.

“To articulate historians, the most consistent features of Baule art is a kind of peaceful containment. Faces tend to have downcast eyes and figures most often hold their ams against the body. […] Among their abundant art forms, the Baule people continue to place the greatest value on masks and figure sculptures, which remain the only sculptural art still widely used in Baule villages. While there is a difference between the Baule view of their objects and that of Western connoisseurs, there are points of agreement. Aesthetic appreciation is one: Baule artist, and individual owners of objects, certainly sometimes enjoy the beauty of these objects and the skill it took coproduce them. Lit: Baule: African Art, Western Eyes. Susan M. Vogel 1997.

"Portrait masks embody the core Baule sculptural style that is echoed in figural sculpture and decorative arts. They also have provided Baule sculptors with their prime opportunity for artistic invention, and the corpus demonstrates enormous formal diversity. This diversity is often apparent in imaginative decorative passages extending above the face Such masks appeared as the final sequence of an operatic public entertainment known as Mblo. Mblo performances consist of a succession of dances that escalate in complexity and importance, culminating ultimately in tributes to the community's most distinguished member. Individuals honored in this way are depicted by a mask that is conceived of as their artistic double or namesake. "

Lit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Metropolitan Museum Bulletin: Recent Acquisitions, 2004-2005 (Fall 2005) , p. 47.

Mblo fasce masks (last photo sequence) , used for undertainment dances that are newly invented every couple of generations, are one of the oldest of Baule Art forms. This refined human face mask, the prototypical Baule object in art collections, is usually a portrait of a particular known individual. . . African Art, Western Eyes. Susan M. Vogel 1997 page 141.

Lit. : Susan Vogrel, African Art Western View, Page 134 - 143.