Art1

Instructions for Practicing for the Midterm Project ● Choose an artwork discussed in the material this week ● Include an image of the artwork ● Include a caption (note that artwork titles are italicized)

○ The caption includes: Artist (if known), Title, date, materials, dimensions, repository (or who owns it, often a museum)

○ Sample: Parmigianino, Madonna of the Long Neck, 1530-1533, oil on panel, 73x60 cm, Uffizi, Florence

● Write one paragraph (5-6 sentences/a little more is ok) about how it relates to the time and place where it was made. This can include a combination of the following: why it was important when it was made; what it was used for; what it symbolized; what story it tells. This paragraph MUST INCLUDE:

○ The name of the period/culture ○ A vocabulary word or key term. This could be about the form of the

object (eg. line), the technique (eg. lost wax casting), philosophy/religion (eg. Islam), a historical event (eg. Ice Age), the time period (eg. Bronze Age), how people lived (eg. hunter/gatherer). See me if you need help with this

● One or two sentences about how what you learned about the object challenged what you thought about the culture, history, the human development or culture. If you didn’t know anything about the culture, these sentences could be about what surprised you. This is an important part of the assignment,

● Include the webpages that you referred to in your research. ● Use your own words! Do not copy/paste. You may not get credit for the

assignment.

Artwork

Figure from a Reliquary Ensemble: Seated Female, 19th–early 20th century, Fang peoples, Okak group, Gabon or Equatorial Guinea, wood, metal, 64 x 20 x 16.5 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art). Video from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Fang peoples of Gabon believed that ancestral relics held great spiritual power. Byeri was a Fang association devoted to the veneration of lineage ancestors and founders, leaders, and fertile women who made significant contributions to society

during their lifetime. After death, their relics, particularly the skull, were conserved in cylindrical bark containers and guarded by carved wooden heads or figures mounted atop the receptacles.

The lustrous black surface of this carved female figure still glistens from repeated applications of palm oil used for ritual purification. The sculptor shaped this figure to illustrate the ability to hold opposites in balance, a quality admired by the Fang. He juxtaposed the large head of an infant with the developed body of an adult. The static pose and expressionless face contrast with the palpable tension of the bulging muscles and the projecting forms of the arms, legs, and breasts. These reliquary sculptures may be male or female and are not considered portraits of the deceased. They were often decorated with gifts of jewelry or feathers and received ritual offerings of libations, such as palm oil.

On the occasion of initiation into Byeri, the figures were removed from their containers and manipulated like puppets in performances that dramatized the raising of the dead for didactic purposes. During the early twentieth century, Fang reliquary sculpture began to be acquired by Western collectors, who admired the inspired interpretation of the human form. This particular work was formerly in the collections of two well- known modernist artists, the painter André Derain and the sculptor Jacob Epstein.