(gentle piano music)
- [Beth] We're here in the Brooklyn Museum,
looking at a wooden sculpture, a figure that preformed
an important role, it guarded a reliquary.
- [Peri] This figure is almost a talisman,
in that it was intended to ward off
those that might harm the contents of that box.
Or, as a warning to others who might
come in contact with it and be harmed by it,
like uninitiated men and women.
- [Beth] So, the contents of the box
that this figure guarded were sacred and powerful.
- [Peri] They were usually the bones of important members
of society, important ancestors,
along with potent substances
like beads that they may have owned and medicine.
- [Beth] So, who constituted a great man
for the Fang people?
- [Peri] A very high-status noble person
who had lived a long and good life.
This would include lineage heads, clan heads,
special warriors, even craftsmen who were
exceptionally talented, as well as women
who had borne lots of healthy children.
It's believed that the Fang utilized these
reliquary boxes with remains, rather than putting them
into a more permanent cemetery because they
had been nomadic or semi-nomadic.
They were probably maintained by elder men in the community
who would be in charge of putting them together
and consulting them when there was
some great decision to be made.
- [Beth] The figure has an elongated torso,
a large rounded head, eyes that look down,
a closed mouth, the arms are clasped together,
but there's a sense of very powerful musculature.
So, there's a balance between a figure
that has a sense of calm and contemplativeness
and at the same time, real power and strength.
- [Peri] It's almost as though the figure has this coiled up
energy, this vitality that's ready to spring forth
if it was needed, but otherwise
retains a very calm dignified appearance.
- [Beth] The top of the head is enlarged.
- [Peri] For the Fang, we see an emphasis on the head,
particularly the coiffeur,
and the tubular nature of the limbs and the body.
There's also an emphasis on the herniated belly button
which is of course where the umbilical cord
first gives life to humans just as this reliquary
is guarding the remains of the deceased
who have returned back into the spiritual world,
waiting for rebirth.
- [Beth] So, this particular figure is a male figure,
but the Fang also made reliquary guardian figures
who were female.
- [Peri] These figures also had a second life as puppets
during young men's initiations.
In other words, they were brought out to educate young men
about their ancestors and help young men experience
or be in the same place as the essence or the energy
of their ancestors who really were the founding fathers,
the lineage heads, of their ethnic group.
While the face is very typically stylized,
the hairstyle was popular when this object was actually made
So, we have these three crests and kind of a duck tail
in the back which is what Fang men at the time,
high-status men, were wearing.
- [Beth] When we look at so much African art,
we're looking at art that is not
naturalistic and intentionally so.
The purpose of the object was to express certain
spiritual ideas and so we see abstraction.
We see eyes that are reduced to half-circular shapes,
the cheeks forming these diagonal lines
and a kind of reduction to geometric shapes
that our historians call abstraction.
And we can also note that in the limbs
which are very cylindrical and rounded.
- [Peri] The artist could have very easily
depicted a naturalistic looking figure,
but they chose abstraction.
This is a conceptual piece, it's about the idea
of a reliquary, the idea of this guardian figure,
rather than depicting an actual human
or how they look in nature, which was not of interest
to this Fang artist.
The wonderful tension in this figure is the fact that
he is suggesting one approach with honor and respect
with eyes closed and patience.
At the same time, he is suggesting his strength
to ward off spirits or humans that may want to
disrupt the contents of his box.
(gentle piano music)