Welcome to Kongo: Power and Majesty

Warren Bennett, Department of Objects Conservation, positions an ivory oliphant on loan from the Linden-Museum, Stuttgart, on his customized and painted mount. The opportunity to see this oliphant next to other examples from the corpus on loan from Rome, Florence, and Écouen has led us to believe that they are likely from the same workshop. Provenance information suggests that this would have been connected with the court of Kongo King Afonso I Mvemba a Nzinga (r. 1509–1542). Photograph by David Sastre, Department of Objects Conservation

Welcome to the exhibition blog for Kongo: Power and Majesty (September 18, 2015–January 3, 2016), where, in weekly posts, we'll expand upon the content presented in the exhibition.

The subject at hand—art created by artists of Kongo heritage from the fifteenth through early twentieth century in present-day Republic of the Congo, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo—is dazzling in its aesthetic range. At one end of the spectrum of sculptural forms are the elegant, jewel-like figurative miniatures carved in precious ivory for the finials of the staffs of office commissioned by ambitious titleholders. At the other end are the massive and fiercely aggressive Mangaaka power figures that served as the defenders of entire communities. These utterly unique creations were the outcome of a collaboration between an artist and a priest; hewn from wood by a carver, they were consecrated and enlivened with vibrant pigments and an array of vegetable and animal media carefully selected by the ritual specialist.

Although the Kongo precolonial artistic record survives in a highly fragmented form, one cannot fail to come away impressed by the scope of this tradition, as well as by the talents of its most outstanding practitioners. Art historians who chronicle the achievements of pre-twentieth century Kongo artists are, however, obliged to get to know their authors entirely through works preserved in the West. No biographical information about Kongo carvers was recorded. Instead, for insights into the vision of specific individuals, we are entirely reliant on scrutinizing their original creations.

In the past, connoisseurs have sought to identify the distinctive styles of individual Kongo sculptors and their workshops.* At its inception, this exhibition sought to put those proposed attributions to otherwise undocumented masters to the test. Bringing together works that have been dispersed internationally, the exhibition would provide an opportunity to view artworks identified with distinctive hands side by side and to delve into their collection history. For instance, was a single artist or workshop of the sixteenth-century Kongo court responsible for creating a series of carved ivory oliphants that are preserved in European Wunderkammern? Only through viewing these works together could this thesis be put to the test.

Above: Oliphant, 16th century, inventoried 1553. Kongo peoples. Ivory; H. 32 5/8 in. (83 cm), Diam. 3 in. (7.5 cm). Palazzo Pitti, Museo degli Argenti, Florence (Bg. 1879 avori, n.2). Below: Oliphant, 17th century, inventoried 1642. Kongo peoples; Kongo Kingdom. Ivory; L. 27 1/8 in. (69 cm), Diam. 3 in. (7.5 cm). Linden-Museum Stuttgart, Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde

As the exhibition project evolved and a number of these groupings came into sharper focus, the formal consistency between sculptures made a convincing case in some instances for fleshing out the distinctive style of a master hand. The Master of Boma-Vonde is celebrated for the creation of sensitive and naturalistic seated females, each with a child cradled in her lap and a head that is given greater emphasis proportionally in relation to her voluptuous body. The offspring are shown to be fully integrated into the soft, curvaceous contours of these women's bodies. Four of these sculptures, and a staff by this artist, are included in the exhibition.

Master of the Boma-Vonde Region. Figure: Seated Female Nursing Child, 19th–early 20th century, inventoried 1913. Kongo peoples; Yombe group. Wood, kaolin; H. 9 3/8 in. (23.7 cm), W. 3 1/4 in. (8.2 cm), D. 4 in. (10.1 cm). MIBACT—Polo Museale del Lazio, Museo Preistorico Etnografico Luigi Pigorini, Rome

Master of the Boma-Vonde Region. Power Figure: Seated Female Nursing Child (Nkisi), 19th–early 20th century. Kongo peoples; Yombe group. Wood, metal, kaolin, glass, resin, pigment; H. 11 1/8 in. (28.3 cm), W. 4 1/4 in. (10.8 cm), D. 4 1/4 in. (10.8 cm). Steven Kossak, The Kronos Collections, New York

A contemporaneous sculptor known as the Master of Kasadi is celebrated for the creation of "mother and child figures." Instead of placing an emphasis on the connectedness between the seated female and the child she holds in her arms, the Master of Kasadi presents the two figures as distanced and separate. The seated woman gazes forward, her open mouth exposing filed teeth, while on her head she wears an mpu, the cap of leadership, as well as upper-arm bands, bracelets, anklets, and a rectangular panel that covers her buttocks. The rest of her body is bare, exposing an extensive network of lozenge cicatrization that spans her chest and covers her entire back. With her proper left hand, she supports the head of the horizontally oriented secondary adult male figure, who assumes a variety of different positions. We are able to present six sculptures by this hand in the exhibition.

Left: Master of Kasadi. Figure: Seated Female Supporting Figure with Clasped Hands, 19th century, inventoried 1898. Kongo peoples, Yombe group. Wood, metal, glass, kaolin, pigment; H. 10 7/8 in. (27.5 cm), W. 4 1/2 in. (11.4 cm), D. 4 5/8 in. (11.7 cm). Ross Art Management, LLC, New York. Right: Master of Kasadi. Figure: Seated Female Supporting Figure Clasping Her Breast, 19th–early 20th century. Kongo peoples; Yombe group. Wood, glass, kaolin; H. 10 3/4 in. (27.3 cm), W. 5 3/4 in. (14.6 cm), D. 5 in. (12.7 cm). Collection of Drs. Daniel and Marian Malcolm, Tenafly, New Jersey

The highly versatile Master of Kasadi also appears to have been responsible for the full spectrum of major sculptural genres presented in the exhibition, including a staff, a power figure, three masks, and two bed panels from a female initiation house.

The work of the Master of Makaya-Vista is recognizable only in a handful of exceptional kneeling female figures that adorned staffs of leadership. The approximately twenty surviving examples of Mangaaka figures that had once been claimed for an individual referred to the Chiloango River Master may be by as many different sculptors and instead represent a singular genre and artistic movement that arose during the second half of the nineteenth century, when artists gave form to a specific spiritual force of law and order.

Left: Master of Makaya-Vista. Staff Finial: Kneeling Female Figure, 19th–early 20th century. Kongo peoples; Woyo group. Ivory; H. 5 3/8 in. (13.7 cm), W. 1 3/8 in. (3.5 cm), D. 1 3/8 in. (3.5 cm). Private collection. Right: Master of Makaya-Vista. Staff Finial: Kneeling Female Figure with Turned Head, 19th–early 20th century, inventoried 1936. Kongo peoples; Woyo group. Ivory; H. 4 3/8 in. (11 cm), W. 1 3/8 in. (3.5 cm). Private collection, Brussels

We have also gleaned a greater sense of the artists from a more nuanced understanding of events that were unfolding during the period in which these works were produced. As this project developed, it became as important to flesh out what kinds of needs these artists were responding to through their creations. Their achievements are especially impressive when one appreciates the fact that they addressed urgent matters of life and death. Not only were they at the vanguard of their society but their efforts were directed toward safeguarding and fundamentally redressing challenges to the well-being of their communities in the face of conflict within the region and aggression from outside.

Kongo: Power and Majesty seeks to recast the associations of a region popularly identified with Heart of Darkness and instead place its singular artistic record in the limelight. In the weeks to come, we plan to share with you some of the insights we, as members of the exhibition team, gained over the course of this project. We are also looking forward to featuring the expertise of colleagues outside the Museum on an array of subjects relating to the larger context of the inspiring works assembled. We welcome your thoughts and questions and hope to hear from you in the Comments section at the bottom of our posts.

* The Italian scholar Ezio Bassani was the first to identify the majority of these Kongo artists, and his foundational research is where our reading began. See Bassani, Ezio. "Kongo Nail Fetishes from the Chiloango River Area." African Arts, vol. 10, no. 3 (1977), pp. 36–40, 88, and Bassani, Ezio. "Tre Statue Magiche di un Grande Maestro Yombe." Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell'Istituto italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente, vol. 33, no. 1 (1978), pp. 133–137. See Bassani, Ezio, et al. Africa and the Renaissance: Art in Ivory. New York: Center for African Art, 1988, for a discussion of the early Kongo ivory oliphants. For the first major exhibition to present works by known African masters, see De Grunne, Bernard, et al. Masterhands: Afrikaanse Beeldhouwers in de kijker / Mains de maitres: A la decouverte des sculpteurs d'Afrique. Exh. cat, BBL Cultuurcentrum, Brussels. Brussels, 2001.