(piano music)
- [Steven Voiceover] We're in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
looking at the spectacular sculpture
of two figures seated side by side,
this Dogon Couple.
- [Peri Voiceover] This Dogon Couple was probably found
in a shrine in the Dogon village,
and the black color comes from the fact
that it's been given several offerings of sacrifices.
This could have been blood, this could have been milk,
this could have been alcohol or palm oil.
- [Steven Voiceover] And if you look carefully
at the sculpture, you can see where little bits of oil
are still coming to the surface.
- [Peri Voiceover] The figures look almost identical
at first glance.
We can see subtle differences
between the male and the female,
but the big marking is the fact that the man
has his arm around the woman.
Putting one's arm around a woman
would not have been done in Dogon culture in public.
So this, obviously, has some symbolic significance.
- [Steven Voiceover] This is a really important clue
that what we're looking at
is not contemporary Dogon society,
but is very likely a representation
of the mythic history of the Dogon people.
- [Peri Voiceover] This could either be communal ancestors
that would have been worshiped in a shrine,
or they could represent the primordial couple,
or one of the Nommo pair that the Dogon talk about
in terms of their oral myth.
- [Steven Voiceover] But we have to be careful
when we try to read this couple
through the lens of Dogon origin mythology
because different researchers
have understood those origin myths in different ways.
- [Peri Voiceover] Ethnographers came to the Dogon
at different times;
they visited different villages;
and they came with their own set of methodologies
and beliefs and assumptions.
- [Steven Voiceover] These are people
that live in a broad area,
it's a dispersed community,
and so, there will be real variation
even in understanding among the Dogon themselves.
- [Peri Voiceover] In addition to that,
the Dogon differentiate between the types of speech
that they offer depending on who they're talking to.
So for example, front speech might be
what an uninitiated person
might learn about Dogon cosmology.
Versus back speech or clear speech,
which is a much deeper level of understanding
that would only be appropriate for someone
who was a member of society and usually male.
- [Steven Voiceover] There's an interesting analogy
between front and back speech to looking at the sculpture.
We can look at it with relatively uninformed eyes
and appreciate its form or qualities,
but we have to really understand Dogon cosmology
to understand what this sculpture meant to them.
- [Peri Voiceover] We have this beautifully balanced couple
with the cylindrical torsos and long ovoid heads
and noses that are almost the shape of arrows.
The distinguishing feature here
between the male and the female is subtle.
So we have a beard on the man
and a lip labret for the woman.
But both have the herniated belly buttons,
both have breasts that are prominent,
and both rest their hands in their laps.
The biggest difference in who these figures are
and their roles is really depicted in the back.
- [Steven Voiceover] The clear distinction
is not only one arm wrapped around the female figure
but what they're wearing on their backs.
The woman has a cylindrical form that is a child
that clings to her back
that is almost identical in scale and shape
to a quiver that would have held arrows for the man.
So we this idea of childbirth, of nurturing,
of the procreative,
and we have the idea of hunting.
- [Peri Voiceover] We get a sense here
of the complementarity between the men's role
and the women's role in this society.
Now, if we look at the stool on which they're sitting,
we see four female figures that support the stool itself.
Those four female figures and the four legs of the couple
create the number eight, which actually relates back
to a very important part of the cosmology,
the four Nommo pairs who are responsible
for a whole host of issues
that form Dogon life the way that it is today.
- [Steven Voiceover] One of the aspects
that I find most interesting is that kind of soft quality
to the turns of their body.
They seem to me almost boneless.
- [Peri Voiceover] And that would be supported by the idea
that this is the Nommo pair.
They were described as watery beings
that hadn't yet taken on human bodies.
- [Steven Voiceover] And they lived in a world
where there was union and also conflict
between the sky and the earth,
the earth not a solid place but a watery, marshy place.
- [Peri Voiceover] And this disorder requires balance,
requires order and proportion
which we find time and again in Dogon's sculpture.
- [Steven Voiceover] But when I look at this sculpture,
it is all about structure and order.
The figures are perfectly vertical.
And the way that he raises his arm and shifts his shoulder
is one of the only parts of this sculpture
where the pure symmetry is broken.
- [Peri Voiceover] And that arm is touching her breast,
and his left hand is touching his penis.
So again, as we saw with the back,
there is a need to depict the nurturing, procreative,
and fertile aspects of the male and female complementarity.
So, is this a couple?
Or could this relate to another Dogon story
in which the sky, the father of the Dogon,
breathes life into man and woman
by allowing the man to lay down in his shadow
and the woman to lay down on top of the man
creating a human being
that has the characteristics of both sexes,
so that within each individual there was a duality
between the male and the female
that need to be in harmony with one another.
- [Steven Voiceover] And that's where so much of the beauty
of the sculpture comes from,
is this tension between the way that they mirror each other
and yet are each distinct from each other.
(piano music)