Dogon Equestrian Figure

John J. Klejman, New York
Howard and Saretta Barnet, New York, acquired from the above on December 30, 1961

Very good condition for an object of this type and great age. Marks nicks scratches abrasions, small losses and hairline cracks consistent with age. Small hole in underside from Carbon-14 sampling. Carbon dating report available upon request. Exceptionally fine encrusted ritual patina.
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Prior to their settlement on the Bandiagara Escarpment, the Dogon lived in the Mandé region of the ancient Mali Empire. Frequently displaced by conflicts with their neighbors such as the Mossi, the Songhay, and the Fulani, the Dogon migrated around the southwestern Sahel until arriving on the Bandiagara sometime around the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Their arrival on the escarpment, in turn, displaced the Tellem people, who had settled on the escarpment around the eleventh century. While very few traces of Tellem civilization remain, scholars like Kate Ezra have suggested a continuity in style between art of the Tellem and the Dogon.¹ Much like most examples in the corpus of Tellem sculptures, the original sculptural surface of the present work is covered with a thick encrusted layer of sacrificial patina, evidence of its repeated and prolonged ritualistic use and in turn, a testament to its significant age. This sculpture of a stylized figure mounted on horseback belongs to a small body of equestrian figures that held religious and cultural importance within Dogon society. Equestrian imagery is a common artistic motif in cultures of the Western Sahel and as Alisa LaGamma notes: "The horse is a traditional indication of wealth, prestige, and social dominance" for the Dogon people.² The rider depicted here is perched alert and upright on the animal, with the rider's S-shaped legs gripping the horse tightly in a position that demonstrates control. The encrusted patina on the figure has rendered the facial features indistinguishable, giving the rider an almost surrealist character. Typical of Dogon sculptural morphology, the torso and the arms of the figure are elongated but the hands are blended into a rounded triangular point. In contrast to the stylized figure of the rider whose cubistic form project calm noblesse, the downward facing and subtly twisting form of the animal, broadly contoured, conveys a sense of movement, as if it is carrying its rider at great speed across an imagined landscape.

In her analysis of a related equestrian figure formerly belonging to Lester Wunderman, now part of the collection of the musée Dapper in Paris (inv. no. 0078), Ezra has suggested that the rider may be female, due to the prominence of the figure’s breasts.³ However, other scholars have proposed that equestrian figures represent hogons, village priests of the Lebe cult, an important ancestor in Dogon mythology and the the first ancestor to die. It has also been suggested that sculptures of this type may have belonged to a hogon, who may have used it as a protective talisman. More significant than its exact iconographical meaning, the sculpture clearly fulfilled an important ritualistic function within deeply religious Dogon communities, as demonstrated by its sacrificial patina.

¹ Ezra, Art of the Dogon: Selections from the Lester Wunderman Collection, 1988, New York, p. 27
² LaGamma, "Lidded Vessel: Equestrian Figure", The Metropolitan Museum, New York, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/312171, accessed April 9, 2018
³ Ezra, ibid., p. 39