Dream Piece #25 Marquesas Islands Double Figure Sotheby’s Paris 30 September 2002 Dream Piece #25 Marquesas Islands Double FigureSotheby’s Paris 30 September 2002$287,913 It takes a long time to develop a personal aesthetic and it takes even longer to change it. At least it did for me. My love for Oceanic art did not develop from books, museum exhibitions or being exposed to a family or friend’s collection. My entire conception and appreciation of the art developed one object at a time field collecting in Papua New Guinea villages. I remember being ecstatic when in a remote Abelam village being brought a well-used lime gourd for the first time. It didn’t have any great design nor an especially elegant shape but what it had was authenticity. It came straight out of an older man’s string bag still partially full with lime and a gnarled bone lime stick sticking out the top. It was not something gimmicky or hastily made to sell to some hapless tourist but a real, authentic tribal artifact. I was in love. So, over the years, in hundreds of villages where thousands of New Guinea objects passed through my hands what I learned to appreciate were the truly old objects, especially those with archaic styles where the spiritual presence literally burst through, stared you in the eye and had the aesthetic impact of a swift slap to the face. This aesthetic sensibility has been hard to shake, reluctant to let in different, let’s say cooler, more refined and subtler forms like those often encountered in Polynesian art. This all drastically changed about five years ago when I lucked into a superb Marquesas figure that supercharged my interest in the area. So now I can look back at the Sotheby’s Paris sale at the end of September 2002 and stare open-mouthed at this Marquesas Islands double figure. While before I saw this as pleasing, classic and somewhat predictable; I now see its incredible rarity, its monumentality, refinement and perfection. In the last ten years as a substitute to owning full sized Marquesas ritual figures I have been collecting tapuvae, the often beautiful stilt steps which themselves feature relatively large tiki figures. What initially struck me on the Sotheby’s double figure is the formal similarity of these two figures to ones commonly portrayed on tapuvae, just supersized. They are fully realized with well-proportioned bodies, smooth rounded volumes that verge on the naturalistic. The heads are distinctly stylized with the huge circular eyes, large scroll ears, flat nose, wide mouth with tongue visible and raised scarification on chin and jaw. That this sculpture has two addorsed figures is quite rare in Marquesas temple statuary. Most often these deified figures are larger, columnar in form with bodies and limbs veering only slightly from their overall post-like structure. While not huge at 17 ½” (44.5 cm), the piece is clearly architectural judging from the nub of a hacked-off post jutting out the top. It is interesting to note the flat disc atop the heads. Edward Roberts, a British sailor who lived in the Marquesas Islands between 1798 and 1806 remarked “There is a rough image fixt in the ground at the moria (ma’ae). On the head of this log of wood is put a small part of everything sent. This no one eats, being held sacred.” Thus the flat heads of larger post figures and probably the disc on the present piece were used for such offerings. In the Sotheby’s catalog entry for the piece, it notes that such addorsed double figures occur on smaller items like fan handles and stone tiki pendants but are extremely rare in architectural elements from Marquesan ma’ae temples. The undeniable mastery of this sculpture suggests it being made for a high-ranking chief or priest and befits its divine use. I especially love how the rough-hewn chisel marks above the face accentuate the smooth precision of the figure below. Sometimes I wonder if the huge popularity and mass marketing of tiki culture has somehow blunted our appreciation of the original sculptures that inspired it. Not exactly familiarity breeding contempt but maybe something like apathy. For me it’s the opposite. I look at the present sculpture and am in awe of its calm dignity. There is an otherworldliness that harkens to the unknown but at the same time, as with all great Oceanic art, there is an authority and presence that reaches across time and space to touch us all. In addition to its beauty, the provenance on this Marquesas piece is superb. Already by 1911 it was in the collection of Hungarian artist/dealer Joseph Brummer and published in a 1913 article “Plane and Surface.” Subsequently it went into the collections of artist Jacob Epstein and the savvy Carlo Monzino. At the Sotheby’s Paris 2002 sale it was the first lot and sold for 291,750 Euros ($287,913 at the time)—an amount that almost seems quaint in relation to the sums fetched recently at the Barbier Mueller sale. I would have to think that today this piece would be ten times more expensive. Who says Oceanic art is not a good investment?
