Among the Dan peoples of the Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia in West Africa, sculptural masks, often called ge, provided a range of functions across local cultures belied by their relatively simplistic and uniform appearances. Dissipate but powerful, spirits were said to visit the dreams of carvers, inspiring the creation and forms of the masks made. In other cultures, a woman who bore many healthy children or a successful military man might inspire aesthetically similar masks, making the history and usage of Dan and Mano masks difficult to trace and distinguish.

Masks could be incredibly potent, and if their history and usage could not be determined, in these belief systems, also possibly dangerous, carrying unbridled magic or spirits within them. A mask might be used for ancestral interventions, to solve disputes, to regulate society or become sites of prayer and sacrifice. Masks were usually designated as male, female, or mixed. Mixed masks, which bear similar features to the present work, “fulfil special roles”, according to Monni Adams, “such as being messengers, or speakers for important maskers, village ‘police,’ or other, less disciplinarians, as well as comedians or tricksters” (M. Adams, ‘Locating the Mano Mask’, African Arts, vol. 43, no 2 (2010): 16-37).

African tribal artifacts also famously inspired the Cubists and led to the infamous “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art in 1984-85. A debate raged through the pages of Artforum over the perceived “Western egotism” of the displays, which lacked dates, explanations, and context for the indigenous objects from Africa, Oceania, and North America that were displayed alongside the works of Picasso, Gauguin, and Brancusi.

Alisa Lagamma wrote in The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin in 2020 of medical missionary Dr. George Harvey who collected and studied masks of the Dan and Mano peoples. Harley attempted to write down the complicated histories or “biographies” of specific masks, including one that belonged to a supreme judge of his clan, named Nya. In his role as high priest, Nya possessed a spirit mask that was made for him in 1870 (not the present work). This mask was often used in council meetings with elders when ancestral approval was sought. Following his appointment to the Liberian government, he retired his mask which was subsequently passed down to his son. His son, wary of the powers the mask contained and unable to contain it, donated it to a museum.

The Senegalese poet and politician Léopold Sédar Senghor mourned the strange yet beautiful fate of masks that entered museum collections, rendered inert and without context. He wrote a poem entitled Masque Nègre which he dedicated to none other than Picasso:

“Perfect bronze head and its patina of time.

Unsullied by makeup, redness or wrinkles, or traces of tears or kisses

O face as God created you before the very memory of the ages.”