Māori Post Figure, poutokomanawa Dream Piece #21 Māori Post Figure, poutokomanawaSotheby’s New York, 22 Nov. 1998Lot 162Sold for $1,102,500 The formal, composed intensity of this Māori poutokomanawa post figure once greeted the community and guests into a tribal council house; its authoritative presence conveying both welcome and protection while projecting the prestige and strength of the tribe that owned it. In the wonderful essay that accompanied the figure in Sotheby’s 1998 catalog, Terrence Barrow identified the post figure as being carved in the 1840s by a member of the Ngati Kahungunu working in the Hawkes Bay region along the east coast of New Zealand’s north island--who Barrow reminds us are the descendants of eastern Polynesians from Tahiti and the Cook Islands who traveled there roughly 700 years ago. I was in the auction room when this fantastic Māori male figure sold and had the chance to see it in person. The sculptural quality is magnificent. Its gaze seemed hard to escape, the power conveyed by the supple athletic musculature is of a formidable warrior; someone an enemy would best avoid. I love the intricate detail of the tattoo on the refined, naturalistic face especially as it contrasts with the vast, rounded volumes of the body. I remember the patina being a rich dark brown which Barrow attributed to generations of exposure to the “affectionate touching and smoke of hearth fires lit in the meeting house.” It is important to understand that such a sculpture was not a static, inert art object. As Sidney Moko Mead reminds us in his 1984 book “Te Māori”, Māori artists strove to imbue the work with ihi (power), wehi (fear), and wana (authority) such that the object has the ability to move the viewer in a spontaneous and physical way. Mead goes on to say that Māori art and performance “fill one with awe (wehi) so that the spine tingles, one’s body hair may straighten up, and the whole body trembles with excitement”—which the rugby fans among you know well from watching the New Zealand All Blacks perform their haka dance before a match. Squatting with a wide stance, stamping legs, flexed arms and grimaced faces the players chant the song while staring down the opposing team with a vicious intensity that never fails to give me chills. The present figure’s power is more restrained and latent but still oozes a ferocity just waiting to be unleashed. The communal strength conveyed by this figure unfortunately relates to the demise of the structure it once adorned. Barrow remarks that the whare-whaikaro meeting house the figure was originally created for was destroyed, probably by fire—an all too common occurrence in early 19th century New Zealand as the gods and spirits represented in the ornately carved structures were offensive to the newly arrived missionaries. Maybe less so to the gentleman William Williams from Nottingham, England who sailed to New Zealand in 1825 as a member of the Church Missionary Society. He was said to be a kind man with a scholarly disposition who Barrow notes was a favorite to his parishioners who gifted him this sculpture upon his retirement in Hawkes Bay in the 1870s. Thus, the provenance for the piece is early, pleasingly benign and well documented. This combined with its unparalleled beauty and quality—that Barrow judged to be “the best extant example of Hawkes Bay style of tiki from this period” surely justifies the $1,102,500 price it fetched that day. A huge sum now and monumental at the time that caused, when the hammer fell, a huge burst of applause from the crowded room. Back in 1998 I was still in graduate school but had already started selling some of the New Guinea objects I had field collected the previous few years and travelled to New York and the Sotheby’s auction to get a feel for the Oceanic art market I was tentatively entering. Earlier that day, at the morning sale of the Dr. Edmumd Müller Collection, I remember my nervousness as I kept raising my paddle to buy an ancient Tami Island neckrest—my very first piece bought at auction. Kirby Kallas-Lewis, the Seattle-based dealer sitting next to me, smiled kindly at my rookie awkwardness. By the time the Māori figure sold that afternoon I was relaxed and composed, at awe of both the superb sculpture and the sum of money spent to acquire it. I have no idea what this figure would fetch today but if it was anything less than $5 million dollars I would start robbing Brinks armored trucks in hopes of acquiring it.
