Portrait Face Mask (Mblo) with Bird
Portrait Face Mask (Mblo) with Bird
Maker
unknown Baulé
(Ivory Coast, Africa)
Date19th century
MediumWood and pigment
Dimensions12 in. x 7 1/2 in. x 3 3/4 in. (30.5 x 19.1 x 9.5 cm)
ClassificationsTribal Art
Credit LineAlfred Stieglitz Collection, Co-owned by Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas
Accession number
ASC.2012.4
Descriptionblackened and incised coiffure in three ridgesOn View
Not on viewCollections
Label TextThe stylized forms and clean shapes of Baule masks appealed to many artists and collectors in the West during the early twentieth-century, and the influence of African artworks such as these was an important factor in the development of European Modernism. In 1909, artist Max Weber took notice of these influences among the works of Paris Modernists such as Picasso and wrote to Stieglitz about what he had seen. Weber featured masklike forms in some of his own paintings, as well.
This mask is featured in Georgia O’Keeffe’s painting Mask with Golden Apple, 1923. The juxtaposition of the African mask with the apple very likely serves as a comment on Stieglitz’s quest for a uniquely American art. One of Stieglitz’s favorite statements was “that the root of European modern art lies in the ‘statuary in wood by African savages’ and that the apple is an appropriate metaphor for the native American artist’s spirit.” The apple’s dominant placement, in front of the mask, emphasizes what Stieglitz saw as America’s need to stand alone, independent of European influences.
