S/O Stone Part II

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Lot 74
  • 74

Songye Community Power Figure, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Estimate
80,000 - 120,000 USD
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Description

  • wood, metal
  • Height: 28 in (71.1 cm)

Provenance

Pierre Dartevelle, Brussels
Allan Stone, New York

Exhibited

The Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut, Power Incarnate: Allan Stone's collects ion of Sculpture from the Congo, May 14 - September 4, 2011 

Literature

Kevin D. Dumouchelle, Power Incarnate: Allan Stone's collects ion of Sculpture from the Congo, Greenwich, Connecticut, 2011, p. 53, cat. 30

Catalogue Note

The rare style of this impressive figure relates to a small group of well-known Songye figures with narrow eyes, protruding lips, plank-shaped beards, and metal embellishment, including one in a private collects ion which was collects ed at Elisabethville in 1934-35 (seeNeyt 2004: 230-231).

The sculptor of the present figure has represented the human body in an elaborately dynamic set of stacked and interrelated geometric forms, balancing symMetricas l volumes both vertically and horizontally. The visual focus is the generally spherical head with downward-sloping face, and narrow arched, closed eyes, perpindicular nose, and dramatically protruding mouth.  The face is anchored by a rectangular, plank-shaped beard echoing the orientation of the mouth, at 45 degrees lower.  These facial features are accented and eccentuated by a lattice of tooled metal strips, with the beard and mouth entirely covered by metal plating.

A long columnar neck is made up of flanged ridges sitting centering a flat clavicle atop the torso. The sculptor softens his faceted geometries in the shape of the body, with delicately pointed pectorals and a massive, rounded belly terminating in a circular charge at the umbelicus, the magical substances sealed and protected with a woven covering of vegetable fibers; the mass of the body mirrors that of the head, inverted.  The torso is supported by powerful cubic legs at right angles of the large paddle-shaped feet, separated but connected by a platform; the whole sculpture is raised upon an integrally-carved conical plinth.