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Auction archive: Lot number 29

Magnificent and Rare Cadaverous Male Figure, Easter Island/Rapa Nui

Estimate
US$800,000 - US$1,000,000
Price realised:
n. a.
Auction archive: Lot number 29

Magnificent and Rare Cadaverous Male Figure, Easter Island/Rapa Nui

Estimate
US$800,000 - US$1,000,000
Price realised:
n. a.
Beschreibung:

moai kavakava height 18 1/2in (47cm) Provenance Mr. J. Pike, Esq., Nantucket, Massachusetts Sotheby's, New York, 2 December 1983, Lot 65 Merton Simpson Gallery, New York Christopher B. Hemmeter Collection, Honolulu, Hawai'i Bonhams, London, 17 June 1991, Lot 184 José Ramon Pons Oliveras Collection, Barcelona, Spain Mark and Carolyn Blackburn Collection, Honolulu, Hawai'i, acquired from the above in 1992 Published Edler, John Charles Art of Polynesia - Selections from the Hemmeter Collection of Polynesian Art, Hemmeter Publishing Corp., Honolulu, Hawai'i, 1990, pl. XVI Kaeppler, Adrienne, Polynesia - The Mark and Carolyn Blackburn Collection of Polynesian Art, University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, Hawai'i, 2010, fig. 527 Exhibited Albuquerque, New Mexico, Easter Island in Pacific Context, Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, 1997 / Kamuela (Waimea), Hawai'i, Easter Island Foundation, 2000 Los Angeles, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2017-2020 (temporary loan) Botanical identification report and x-rays, supervised by Michel and Catherine Orliac and completed in 1993 confirming the wood type as Sophora toromiro. A letter from Terence Barrow dated 4 June 1985 accompanies the lot. INTRODUCTION by Fredric Backlar Around the second half of the first millennium, all accounts suggest that Hotu Matua, a Polynesian king from an island called Marae Renga, arrived at the shores of Rapa Nui. It was not until Easter Sunday in the year 1722, when Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen captained the next vessel to arrive at the island's shores, leaving with the name they gave it – Paasch Eyland. Easter Island is the most isolated island in all of Oceania and forms the southeastern point of the Polynesian Triangle, with the Hawaiian Islands to the northwest and New Zealand to the southwest. Living in complete isolation with relative stability and doubtless happiness for around 1000 years, the people of Easter Island, the Rapa Nui, were constructing stone platforms around the island by the 12th century and the world-renown gigantic monolithic stone statues (moai) they supported by the 14th century. In 1770, a well-organized Spanish fleet arrived on Easter Island, certainly bearing gifts for exchanges, as by the time they left, three Rapa Nui chiefs had signed annexation treaties. Four years later, Captain James Cook arrived, his crew exhausted and needing relief on their search for a non-existent southern continent. By the early 19th century, whaling ships and seal-hunters had begun populating the Pacific, increasing the number of visits, exchanges and appearances of new diseases on the island. By 1862, a Peruvian armada arrived taking over 1400 Rapanui as slaves back to Peru. Like their Polynesian ancestors, the arts of Rapa Nui included wood carvings, textiles, music, dance, and tattooing of the human body. The medium the artists are most famous for are the figural wood carvings, moai miro, curious human and combined human-animal forms, including birds, lizards and sea eels. Perhaps the most enigmatic of these figures are the moai kavakava, whose name derives from the monumental stone moai figures around the island, and kavakava, the Rapa Nui word for ribs--literally "image with ribs." Characterized by an emaciated appearance, the moai kavakava is a human male whose main features immediately appear cadaverous, with exposed rib cages, visible and clearly-defined spinal cords with pronounced vertebrae, and heads with a pronounced nose, chin and cheekbones, and rounded, trance-like eyes. Records from missionaries on Easter Island from the middle to the late 19th century indicate that moai kavakava were brought to important ceremonies and danced or worn by men and women, suspended from their bodies attached by human hair cords through the enlarged pierced vertebrae behind the neck. Some accounts witnessed as many as twenty figures worn around the body of one individual at a time. When not in use, they were wrapped in tapa and suspended from the interi

Auction archive: Lot number 29
Auction:
Datum:
2 Jul 2020
Auction house:
Bonhams London
Los Angeles
Beschreibung:

moai kavakava height 18 1/2in (47cm) Provenance Mr. J. Pike, Esq., Nantucket, Massachusetts Sotheby's, New York, 2 December 1983, Lot 65 Merton Simpson Gallery, New York Christopher B. Hemmeter Collection, Honolulu, Hawai'i Bonhams, London, 17 June 1991, Lot 184 José Ramon Pons Oliveras Collection, Barcelona, Spain Mark and Carolyn Blackburn Collection, Honolulu, Hawai'i, acquired from the above in 1992 Published Edler, John Charles Art of Polynesia - Selections from the Hemmeter Collection of Polynesian Art, Hemmeter Publishing Corp., Honolulu, Hawai'i, 1990, pl. XVI Kaeppler, Adrienne, Polynesia - The Mark and Carolyn Blackburn Collection of Polynesian Art, University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, Hawai'i, 2010, fig. 527 Exhibited Albuquerque, New Mexico, Easter Island in Pacific Context, Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, 1997 / Kamuela (Waimea), Hawai'i, Easter Island Foundation, 2000 Los Angeles, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2017-2020 (temporary loan) Botanical identification report and x-rays, supervised by Michel and Catherine Orliac and completed in 1993 confirming the wood type as Sophora toromiro. A letter from Terence Barrow dated 4 June 1985 accompanies the lot. INTRODUCTION by Fredric Backlar Around the second half of the first millennium, all accounts suggest that Hotu Matua, a Polynesian king from an island called Marae Renga, arrived at the shores of Rapa Nui. It was not until Easter Sunday in the year 1722, when Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen captained the next vessel to arrive at the island's shores, leaving with the name they gave it – Paasch Eyland. Easter Island is the most isolated island in all of Oceania and forms the southeastern point of the Polynesian Triangle, with the Hawaiian Islands to the northwest and New Zealand to the southwest. Living in complete isolation with relative stability and doubtless happiness for around 1000 years, the people of Easter Island, the Rapa Nui, were constructing stone platforms around the island by the 12th century and the world-renown gigantic monolithic stone statues (moai) they supported by the 14th century. In 1770, a well-organized Spanish fleet arrived on Easter Island, certainly bearing gifts for exchanges, as by the time they left, three Rapa Nui chiefs had signed annexation treaties. Four years later, Captain James Cook arrived, his crew exhausted and needing relief on their search for a non-existent southern continent. By the early 19th century, whaling ships and seal-hunters had begun populating the Pacific, increasing the number of visits, exchanges and appearances of new diseases on the island. By 1862, a Peruvian armada arrived taking over 1400 Rapanui as slaves back to Peru. Like their Polynesian ancestors, the arts of Rapa Nui included wood carvings, textiles, music, dance, and tattooing of the human body. The medium the artists are most famous for are the figural wood carvings, moai miro, curious human and combined human-animal forms, including birds, lizards and sea eels. Perhaps the most enigmatic of these figures are the moai kavakava, whose name derives from the monumental stone moai figures around the island, and kavakava, the Rapa Nui word for ribs--literally "image with ribs." Characterized by an emaciated appearance, the moai kavakava is a human male whose main features immediately appear cadaverous, with exposed rib cages, visible and clearly-defined spinal cords with pronounced vertebrae, and heads with a pronounced nose, chin and cheekbones, and rounded, trance-like eyes. Records from missionaries on Easter Island from the middle to the late 19th century indicate that moai kavakava were brought to important ceremonies and danced or worn by men and women, suspended from their bodies attached by human hair cords through the enlarged pierced vertebrae behind the neck. Some accounts witnessed as many as twenty figures worn around the body of one individual at a time. When not in use, they were wrapped in tapa and suspended from the interi

Auction archive: Lot number 29
Auction:
Datum:
2 Jul 2020
Auction house:
Bonhams London
Los Angeles
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