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TIKI STONE HEAD, MARQUESAS ISLANDS image 1
TIKI STONE HEAD, MARQUESAS ISLANDS image 2
Lot 156

TIKI STONE HEAD, MARQUESAS ISLANDS

Arts of Africa, the Pacific & the Americas
17 December 2024, 16:00 CET
Brussels, Chaussée de Charleroi

Sold for €25,600 inc. premium

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TIKI STONE HEAD, MARQUESAS ISLANDS

height 30 cm

Literature
Mazière, F., Archipel du Tiki, vie et mort des îles Marquises, Paris, 1957, p.32

Footnotes

The image of the tiki, a representation of the human being, is omnipresent in the Marquesas Islands, carved as free-standing figures, on architectural supports, utensils and ornaments.

The Marquesas carvers excelled all other Polynesians in the manufacture of stone figures. Whilst smaller in size that those of Easter Island, the variety in scale was extensive, ranging from approximately 15cm to 3m in height. Stone figures or heads were inserted into the walls or the base of the foundations of the me'ae, the sacred temples, and their enclosures. In the forests, tiki of large and small size are found, the larger ones constituting the solitary or group guardians of the sacred sites. They represent etua, deified ancestors whose supernatural powers sustained and protected a community. They are carved in grey or pink tufa and also basalt.

When Karl von den Steinen travelled extensively in the Marquesas Islands at the end of the 19th century he photographed a number of stone figures on various islands but wrote that they were rare. He himself collected a colossal stone head, described as the head of a victim, on the island of Hiva Oa, which is today in the Humboldt Forum, Berlin.

Of the Marquesas Islands, Gauguin wrote: "The basis is the human body or the face. The face especially. One is surprised to find a face where one thought it was a strange geometric figure. Always the same thing and yet never the same thing."

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