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47. Door (Anuan)
Baule, Côte d'Ivoire
Wood, pigment; 130 x 61 cm (51 1/8 x 24 in.)
19th–20th century
Museum Rietberg, Zurich
RAF 520

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47. Door (Anuan)

Carved and decorated doors (anuan) such as this one once enhanced the entrances to courtyards and rest houses within Baule family compounds. However, utilitarian works on this monumental scale appear to have been commissioned from artists relatively infrequently. The patron who commissioned one would have intended it to suggest his or her personal concerns and discriminating taste, and would have given the artist some degree of creative license to customize it.1 Although the images adorning such secular works were selected mainly for their aesthetic appeal, many of them illustrate proverbs.2

The work shown here consists of a long rectangular wooden panel featuring several motifs carved in relief and accented with color, set against a checkerboard field of recessed black and white squares. The gong and striker of a diviner (komien) are featured prominently in the middle of the composition, suggesting the important role that divination plays in everyday life in the resolution of problems (see cat. no. 25). At the top is the dominating form of a horned head in a style similar to that of Baule Mblo portrait masks, which depict idealized faces crowned with decorative animal horns. The bilateral symmetry of the diviner's gong and striker is repeated below, in the motif of two oval female faces (oriented sideways) flanking a central rectangle. The formal balance of these two heads is enlivened by the asymmetry of their contrasting colors: one is red, the other black. In some Baule masquerade contexts, where red-masked and black-masked personages appear together, the colors indicate male or female gender (or vice versa) and accentuate their contrasting and complementary roles.3 At the bottom, concentric red, black, and white arcs serve to anchor the composition and tie together the overall color scheme. Throughout, the smooth surfaces of the refined figurative elements contrast with the rough-textured field against which they have been arranged.

1. Baule 1997, p. 272.

2. Susan Vogel, in Art of Côte d'Ivoire, vol. 2, ed. Jean-Paul Barbier (Geneva: Barbier-Mueller Museum, 1993), p. 136.

3. Baule 1997, p. 171.