Bangwa Figure

A German adventurer named Gustav Conrau was the first European to make contact with the Bangwa, reaching Fontem in 1898, where he befriended the powerful chieftain Assunganyi. In the short period of their association, Conrau sent innumerable artifacts from Fontem to the Konigliches Museum fur Volkerkunde (now the Ethnologisiches Museum der Staatlichen Museen), Berlin, many of which remain in their collection to the present and provide priceless documentation of the ethnographic and artistic expressions of the Bangwa.[2]  Two examples de-accessioned from the museum in the 1920’s remain the most significant examples of Bangwa in the European canon—the “King” and “Queen” ancestor figures now held by the Musee du Quai Branly, Paris, and the Dapper Foundation, Paris.  The “Queen” appeared in photographs by Walker Evans (1935), and Man Ray (1937), and both pieces have sold repeatedly over the years.[3]

Fortuitously for the Bangwa, their inaccessible location in the highlands, and the longevity of the Fontem chief Assunganyi (who died in 1951), kept the artistic traditions alive and in relative stasis well into the 20th century.[4]  In 1966-67, Robert Brain, a student from the University College, London, toured the Bangwa heartland and wrote his doctoral dissertation on the specifics of Bangwa cultural structure, and followed that with “Bangwa Funerary Sculpture,” in which he delves specifically into the art and artistic milieu of the Bangwa at the time.  To be a carver--unlike being a farmer, for example--was a highly respected role, and many of the men were encouraged from youth to try their hands.  European pressure to acquire these beautiful sculptures had also begun to affect workmanship, so already Brain noted a broad range in the quality of execution among carved examples across the board.  For the nobles, however, and especially for the chieftains, an insistence on the carver’s skill was the norm. “They say that it used to take twenty years of apprenticeship before a sculptor could tackle an ancestor figure, and that a Night Society mask should not be attempted with any chance of success until a carver had both a daughter and a son.”[5]

Our example stands obviously within the tradition of the accomplished carver. The chiefs kept for themselves and their effigies the representations of royal regalia, including the leopard’s teeth necklace, leopard skin anklets, the long gourd of palm wine, (broken here), the enormous tobacco pipe, and the tall headdress, which signified with its height the long lineage of an important chief.[6]  The open mouth, powerful posture, and exposed genitalia are meant to convey the vitality, fearlessness, and fecundity of an effective chief. The heavy patina infers not only heavy usage with frequent applications of ceremonial “medications,” but meticulous preservation by smoke and soot in a challenging climate.[7]  This extraordinary piece reads well from all sides, and exhibits the expressiveness, craftsmanship, and beauty comparable only to the best-known pieces held in museums today.