Pair of figures ·  Cameroon, Tikar · ID: 3048285

Description

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Gebauer (1979) and Fagg (1981) already found these figures to be early commissioned works for Western customers. The figures are an example of “transitional art”, as David Zemanek (2021) put it, the attempt to transform traditional art forms into marketable trade goods.

This type of figure seems to have been very popular around 1910-30 and was offered at markets throughout the Cameroon grasslands. Acquired in the markets as handicrafts, the figurines transformed in European trade into rare authentic works of art from Africa. As such, they entered private and museum collections in the Western world, which gave them “the nimbus of the supposedly authentic” (Zemanek, 2001, p. 8).

Comparing literature

Zemanek, David, Transitionale Kunst der Tikar aus Kamerun, BoD, Norderstedt 2021 Gebauer, Paul, Art of Cameroon, New York 1979