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African and Oceanic Art from the Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva: A Legacy of Collecting
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Mblo Twin Mask
Côte d'Ivoire; Baule peoples, 19th century
Wood, pigment; H. 11 3/8 in. (29 cm)
Provenance: Roger Bédiat, Côte d'Ivoire, before 1955; [Henri Kamer, 1955]; Barbier-Mueller collection, since 1978
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In Baule communities, Mblo performances feature masked dancers who impersonate familiar subjects that range from animals to human caricatures. The dances culminate in a performance that pays tribute to the community's most admired member. The individual thus honored is depicted by a mask that is conceived as his or her artistic "double" or "namesake." The highly stylized compositions of double-faced twin masks are the abstract projection of ideas relating to complementary opposites. In the Barbier-Mueller mask, obtained through Roger Bédiat, a French colonial official in Côte d'Ivoire during the mid-1930s, the right red side has greater dominance given its slightly larger scale and more complex trilobed coiffure. The bold juxtaposition of color and formal asymmetry thus imbues the composition with dynamism. See the Mblo mask from the Met's collection.
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