KWAYEP 93 inspired by foreign merchants from both near and far. In experimenting with new styles, artists offered their elite clientele from whom they earned a living the chance to adopt new fashions and fads. New styles and experimental developments were more likely to appear in outlying border regions because cultural exchange took place there more readily than in the more conservative cultural centers. 13 The literature variously refers to the artist as Kwayep of Bawok14 and Kwayep of Bamana.15 This variation is due to the turbulent history of the chefferie of Bawok. In the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, it was famous in the Bamileke area for its sculptors’ workshops from which the leaders of neighboring communities and small kingdoms commissioned their chiefly sculptures and insignias. Located near the then-modest kingdom of Banganté, 16 it was notable for a particularly expressive style that required great proficiency on the part of the carvers. Pierre Harter, the doctor who collected one of Kwayep’s works along with other Cameroonian art while treating leprosy there in the 1950s and 1960s, and Raymond Lecoq, an art historian from France, documented works that demonstrate the expressive style of the Bawok workshops. 17 The articulation of the figures into abstract stereometric elements and geometric ornamentation sometimes reminiscent of cubism is characteristic of these artists’ works, as is the impression of movement in a static figure (fig. 9). By 1875, the artists of Bawok could no longer live in peace because their neighbor, Fon Ngassam of Banganté (an ancestor of N’jiké II), repeatedly attacked their village with his troops. His goal was to force the region to submit and become a province of Banganté, but resistance was strong. Finally, in about 1906 most of the inhabitants fled and settled an area southeast of Bali-Nyonga under the leadership of Nana X, in what would later become part of British Cameroon. A smaller group of inhabitants moved to an area of the Bamena chefferie, in the vicinity of Banganté. 18 Thus the Bawok style was transplanted and spread over a large area, and works in the same or related styles can be found across great distances. It should also be noted that the products of specific artistic centers, such as “Bawok” workshops, often circulated outside their own borders. In the Grassfields and neighboring areas, artworks often moved from place to place as political gifts or by being traded in certain circumstances, when the trading partners were of high social rank. Kwayep’s ancestors had lived in historic Bawok but he probably belonged to the smaller group that resettled in the Bamena chefferie. This can be assumed from Egerton’s FIG. 9: Bawok school figurative architectural element, nko. Bali-Nyonga, Grassfields, Cameroon. Early 20th century. Wood, traces of pigment. H: 69.5 cm. Collected by Pierre Harter. Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, inv. 73.1992.0.33. Photo © 2012 Musée du Quai Branly/Scala, Florence. FACING PAGE: FIG. 7: Frank Christol, 1930, The Wood Sculptor Surrounded by His Sons. Gelatin silver print. Musée du Quai Branly, Paris. Gift of Frank Christol, PP 0022973. Photo © 2012 Musée du Quai Branly/Scala, Florence. FIG. 8: F. C. C. Egerton, 1936, Kwayep, the Sculptor from Bamana, with His Boys. From Egerton, African Majesty, pl. 69. statement that Kwayep, who lived in Bamena “… had learned the art of sculpture in the Bawok school.”19 Given the wide distribution and popularity of the Bawok style, it is entirely possible that a work by Kwayep could have been sold in Bana, one of the larger kingdoms in the Bamileke region. Moreover, Bana had a network of contacts with neighboring areas and was an important military station at the time of colonial conquest, which may have contributed to the trade and movement of political art, including works by Kwayep. In precolonial times, considerable power and wealth were concentrated in a number of chiefdoms in the Grasslands, owing, among other things, to an impressive network for exchanging goods over a wide area. The trading ties between the regions resulted in the “migration” of works of art. It was possible to strengthen political links by exchanging the insignia of rulers, in particular. This custom persisted through early colonial times. Bali-Nyonga, about five kilometers from the new Bawok chefferie, where some of
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