Object Details
- Local Numbers
- E 1 BMB 13.1 EE 70
- General
- Title is provided by EEPA staff based on photographer's notes.
- Local Note
- Frame value is 2.
- Slide No. E 1 BMB 13.1 EE 70
- Photographer
- Elisofon, Eliot
- Collection Photographer
- Elisofon, Eliot
- Place
- Africa
- Mali
- Topic
- Rites and ceremonies -- Africa
- Masquerades
- Masks
- Animals in art
- Animals in art -- Aardvark
- Animals in art -- antelopes
- Animals in art -- Composite animals
- Wood-carving
- Headdresses -- headgear -- Africa
- Dance
- Photographer
- Elisofon, Eliot
- Culture
- Bamana (African people)
- See more items in
- Eliot Elisofon Field collection
- Eliot Elisofon Field collection / Mali
- Extent
- 1 Slides (photographs) (col.)
- Date
- 1970
- Archival Repository
- Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art
- Identifier
- EEPA.1973-001, Item EEPA EECL 3383
- Type
- Archival materials
- Slides (photographs)
- Color slides
- Collection Citation
- Eliot Elisofon Field Collection, EEPA 1973-001, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution
- Collection Rights
- Permission to reproduce images from the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives must be obtained in advance. Where noted, some images remain under the copyright of Life/Shutterstock. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.
- Genre/Form
- Color slides
- Scope and Contents
- "Headdresses of this kind are distinctive for their formal qualities as well as for their idiosyncratic construction. All other related Bamana sculptural genres are monoxylic (carved from a single piece of wood), but these works are invariably carved as two separate units - the head and the body - which are subsequently joined together at the neck either with iron staples, U-shaped nails, or metal or leather collars attached with nails. The especially complex, tiered horizontal headdress is exceptional for its expression of pentup corporeal power. It gives compelling evidence that horizontal headdress were not modeled on a single animal found in nature but rather represent an abstract force expressed through an amalgam of zoomorphic features. Here the animal in the lower half, which appears to be an aardvark, is more fully realized than in others because of the inclusion of its head. It is possible this work was commissioned by a voluntary communal labor association known as gonzon. Gonzon owned headdresses called n'gonzon koun, or 'anteater head,' which were sculpturally identical to those used by the ci wara association of the same community. They were not danced in the field, however, as were ci wara headdresses, but rather in the village on occasions when the gonzon performed charitable farmwork." [La Gamma A., 2002: Genesis: Ideas of Origin in African Sculpture. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Yale University Press, New Haven and London]. This photograph was taken when Eliot Elisofon traveled to Africa from March 17, 1970 to July 17, 1970.
- Collection Restrictions
- Use of original records requires an appointment. Contact Archives staff for more details.
- Record ID
- ebl-1536870822481-1536871014896-3
