Introduction

Christopher Roy

My own study of the Mossi of Burkina Faso has led to the discovery of one more example of workshop styles in Africa. Among the bestknown works of art produced by the Mossi are masks with concave, oval faces surmounted by the figure of a woman. Such masks have been attributed to the Mossi in all of the surveys of African sculpture to date and are often described as the "archetypal Mossi mask." A mask of this type is one of the important works in the Stanley Collection at The University of Iowa Museum of Art.

The mask in the Stanley Collection is of the type called karan-wemba. The mask is 67 cm. tall and is carved of a single piece of wood. The teeth and eyes are forged iron. No traces of pigment of any kind remain on the surface. The portion of the mask that was intended actually to cover the wearer's face is oval, with curved cheeks to cover the side of the face. The mask is bisected vertically by a ridge. In the recesses on each side of the ridge are rectangular eyes. Above and below each eye is a small triangular shape in low relief that is one of the unique style characteristics of the artist who produced the piece. The mask is surmounted by a female figure that is quite stiff, formal, frontal, and bisymmetrical. The figure has broad, squared shoulders, from which project large conical breasts. The arms are suspended vertically from the shoulders with the elbows bent so that the forearms are parallell to the thighs. The torso is a simple cylinder with a prominent umbilicus and is set into the socket formed by the U-shaped pelvic girdle. The buttocks are large and quite angular, with a sharp line demarking the upper and lower planes. The head is round, long, and narrow, with the face a flattened section. Directly in the center of each side of the head is a simple C-shaped ear. The hairstyle consists of a prominent saggital ridge which extends from the front of the head to the back and projects downward forming a large "pigtail." The entire figure is decorated with elaborate patterns of scarification, burned into the surface of the wood with a heated knife blade. Patterns spread vertically and horizontally from the umbilicus. A broad band of patterns spreads across the hips and buttocks. The arms, upper chest, and back bear systems of parallel lines. The cheeks are covered by numerous short diagonals arranged in vertical rows. Finally, the individual locks of hair are carefully indicated.

Although there is no documentary evidence concerning the origin of the piece or the identity of the artist who carved it, it is of the style produced in the extreme northwestern area of Mossi country in the area of the traditional Mossi kingdom of Yatenga, whose capital is Ouahigouya. Without precise documentation it is difficult to identify exactly the geographical origin of the object, but such characteristics as the lack of a vertical plank, the sharply concave mask face, and the blockiness of the figure's shoulders and conical breasts indicate that it originated to the west of Ouahigouya rather than to the east.

The mask in the Stanley Collection is one of at least six Mossi karanwemba masks outside of Africa that are either by the same hand or are from a common workshop. Masks in the style of the Stanley karanwemba are in the Barbier-Mueller collection in Geneva; the William Wright Collection, New York; and the University Museum, Philadelphia. Masks in a closely related style are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Seattle Art Museum, collection of Catherine White.

The Mossi mask in the Stanley Collection was formerly in the collection of Mr. Gordon Douglas, New York. Both it and the mask in the William Wright collection were sold by J. J. Klejman in 1966.

In each of these examples, the female figure stands alone above the face of the mask without any projecting plank. The face of the mask is oval and very small with triangular shapes above and below each eye. Each of the female figures has conical, erect breasts, squared shoulders, angular hips and buttocks, C-shaped ears, oval head with prominent saggital crest, an identical pose, and very similar scarification patterns. While the similarities are striking, there are enough differences to make it clear that the objects may be the work of a single artist working over an extended period of time or are the work of two or three artists working together in a workshop. If they are the work of more than one artist, then the more accomplished examples in the Met and Seattle are by the master, and the others by a follower.

While the location of the artist or workshop that produced the Mossi mask in the Stanley Collection remains, at least for the time, unknown, there are well-known workshops that are currently productive in Burkina Faso. I visited a workshop of carvers in the village of Ouri, in central Burkina Faso, in the spring of 1983, 1984, and 1985. Ouri is.a village of mixed Winlama, Jula, Bwa, and Nunuma population, on the road that leads north from Boromo to Safane, just west of the Black Volta River. Ouri was first occupied by the Winlama and Nunuma, groups that have been referred to in the past by the More (Mossi) pejorative, "gurunsi." Sometime in the early nineteenth century, several Jula families, of which the most important is still the Fofana family, settled in Ouri, creating an important center for trade in kola nuts and gold from Ghana and slaves captured among the small farmer groups in southern Burkina Faso. Not long after the arrival in Ouri of the Jula merchants, the senior male eider of the Fofana family invited families of the Konate blacksmith clan to settle in a neighborhood on the western side of the village to provide hoes and other iron tools for the farmers in the village. The Konate are a blacksmith clan of Mande origin. Led by the "founding ancestors," Woronfe and Leileko Konate, they had migrated from the Mande area of what is now Mall, by way of the Bobo village of Kapo, near Bobo-Dioulasso, to the Bwa and Marka Dating town of Wakara, about 65 kilometers west of Ouri. There they had settled and produced forged tools for the Bwa and Marka farmers in the area, adopting Bwamu (the language of the Bwa) as their clan language. To this day the Konate speak Bwamu among themselves, although they also speak the languages of their Winlama, Nunuma, Marka, and Jula clients. The migration from Wakara to Ouri was led by Kakamo, six generations ago.

Earlier generations of Konate, in Wakara and Ouri, had carved objects of wood, including masks, but the craft was abandoned for many years until the time of Nani, grand uncle of the current generation of artists, who died in the early 1960s. Nani was the younger brother of Lihani, whose eldest son was Niposi, father of Mibieni, Poboye, Nazin, Naziko, Tiesie, and Tibia--some of whom now carve in Ouri. Nani died childless, but he passed on his artistic genius to his brother's sons. Lihani's younger son was Dubata, who still lives in Ouri, and who was a great carver and passed his skill to his son, Karim. Dubata is also a diviner of great reputation among the blacksmiths and farmers of Ouri and surrounding villages.

Currently the most active Konate sculptors in Ouri are Poboye, Naziko, Bomavay, Tangin, Hezuma, Yekiney, and Karim, assisted by many younger, brothers and nephews. During the dry season from February to May 1984, when I lived in Ouri, these carvers received commissions from maskowning clans in the Nunurea villages of Serena, Tisse, Lasso, and Tierkou, the Marka Dating villages of Bona, Oumina, and Koamba, the Winiama villages of Oulo, Ouarabuno, and Ouri itself, and from the Bwa villages of Bagassi, Hounde, Pa, and Boni. In addition they carved masks in the Bwa style for their own use.

In addition to the objects the Konate family in Ouri produces for five major neighboring ethnic groups, they produce large numbers of masks for the tourist trade in Ouagadougou. The active carvers in the family state that they began to produce copies for tourists soon after independence in 1960. At that time, the farmers in the Ouri region increasingly became part of a cash economy, and ceased exchanging crops for necessary tools, weapons, and masks produced by the Konate. The traditional relationship between the blacksmiths and farmers of Ouri broke down. Earlier, when a farmer needed an iron hoe blade, it was produced by a smith, who was then free to take payment in grain from the farmer's granary at any time during the year. At about the time of independence, farmers began to purchase hoes in the Ouri market from itinerant smiths, and the Konate could no longer survive simply by making hoes and masks and were forced to carve copies to sell in Ouagadougou, Abidjan, and BoboDioulasso.

In the late 1930s Franz Olbrects discovered a body of Luba sculpture he attributed to "The Master of Bull." The artist's name was lost because the missionaries and colonial officers who collected the objects neglected to ask the right questions. The papers included in this volume make it clear that we have learned from our mistakes, and that future generations of art historians will have the information they need to develop a truly diachronic approach to the art history of Africa.

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