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Figure , C-14 dating: 18th–19th century (inconclusive % probability)
Wood
114 x 24 x 18 cm (44 7/8 x 9 7/16 x 7 1/16 in.)
The Marcia and John Friede Collection, a Promised Gift to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco L05.1.19

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Artist Biography: (none) PROVENANCE: "Collected by J. Voit in 1929, found submerged in the lake at the site of a chief's house. Pierre Loeb Collection, Paris; British Rail Pension Trust, London." (Catalog #553, New Guinea Art: Masterpieces from the Jolika Collection of Marcia and John Friede, 2005, Volume 2, p. 182.) EXHIBITIONS: 1979 - "The Art of Lake Sentani"; Musée d' Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and Musée d'Ixelles, Brussels, 1979, "L'Aventure de Pierre Loeb." 1959 - Museum of Primitive Art, New York, 1959, "The Art of Lake Sentani." PUBLICATIONS: 2005 - "The consensus among the many scholars who have studied this figure is that it is female. It is probably the most sensitive and beautiful carving collected on the Viot expedition, which was financed by Pierre Loeb, and is the piece Loeb kept for himself. Its monumentality and unworldliness remind me of the west portal at Chartres Cathedral, my favorite example of European religious art. Simon Kooijman suggested that tranquility and balance were the essence of Sentani sculpture. He attributed that emphasis to a lifetime of balancing on small canoes on the lake (Gathercole, Kaeppler, and Newton, 1979: 58). In France this figure was called "le Bossu," the hunchback, but actually the deformation is probably a tropical ulcer or tumor. Human figures frequently crowned the tops of the supporting posts of the chief's house where they "came up through an opening in the floor" (Kooijman, 1959: 18). Other figures were placed in front of the chief's house while some were apparently "part of the jetties or bridges between the houses" (ibid). The freestanding figure here probably belongs to the latter category, as is implied in the text by Kooijman and Hoogerbrugge in Greub, 1992: 89, 93." (Catalog #553, New Guinea Art: Masterpieces from the Jolika Collection of Marcia and John Friede, 2005, Volume 2, p. 182.) 1993 - Newton et al., 1993, fig. 261. 1992 - Greub, 1992: 101. 1979 - Galerie Albert Loeb, 1979, no. 23. 1959 - Kooijman, 1959, figs. 40, 40a, and 42. 1951 - Rousseau, Apollinaire, and Tzara, 1951, fig. 8.

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