118
FIG. 1 (below): The tsesah
crest from the Museum für
Völkerkunde, Leipzig.
From Paul Germann, Das plastischfi
gürliche Kunstgewerbe im
Graslande von Kamerun, Leipzig:
Spamerschen, 1911.
According to oral tradition, the creation of
tsesah crests began in the early eighteenth century
in the powerful chiefdom of Bandjoun in the Bamileke
region.1 While historically the region’s 102
monarchic polities have had distinct local identities,
they shared parallel structures of governance
centered on the personality of an all-powerful
sovereign, the fon. Across the region, competition
among chiefdoms fostered artistic patronage as
the leadership commissioned art that demonstrated
its legitimacy, prestige, and wealth. As such, the
arresting form of tsesah crests is believed to have
been developed to give expression to these notions
of royal power.
Held or worn atop the head by an emissary
of a fon’s inner circle, the tsesah was a towering
presence in rare performances that punctuated
matters of state ranging from royal funerals, enthronement
rites, and the delivery of judicial sentences.
The small number of these crests, as well
as the rarity of occasions at which they appeared,
tied them intimately to the persona of the fon, and
only one tsesah would have been active in a chiefdom
at any given time. By the time these works
were collected by Westerners across the Bamileke
region, they were no longer used in performances
but were kept in royal treasuries. As a result, the
events they once animated were never documented
by outsiders and little is known about the specifi
cs of their choreography and function.
The distinctive status of tsesah crests in the
Bamileke region found an equivalence in the West
from the moment the fi rst few examples were taken
from Cameroon to Europe during the early decades
of the twentieth century. Their dramatic reinterpretation
of the face, characterized by strong
yet carefully balanced vertical and horizontal axes
as well as a distinctive projecting planar surface of
the brow adorned with vibrant geometric incised
patterns, immediately captured the attention of
European art critics, especially in view of their resonance
with the period’s artistic preoccupations
tied to the emergence of new modes of representation
that were moving away from fi guration and
naturalism. Despite a very narrow corpus, tsesah
were widely published and exhibited and came to
be seen as central to the African art canon.
Only fi fteen major examples of the tsesah corpus
are known to survive, and one of these masterpieces
was recently added to the Met’s collection (fi g. 1).
Collected by Pierre Dartevelle in Bandjoun around
1970, this work is widely considered to be the prototype
of the narrow corpus of tsesah crests due to
its age, scale, and repairs. It is currently showcased
with three others selected from American collections
(fi gs. 8, 9, 10) in The Face of Dynasty: Royal
Crests from Western Cameroon (on view at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art until September 3,
2018), the fi rst comparative display of such crests
to be staged in the United States.2
FIG. 2 (right): Crest, tsesah.
Bamileke peoples,
Grassfi elds region,
Cameroon. 18th century.
Wood. H: 94 cm.
Collected by Pierre Dartevelle in
Bandjoun, c. 1970; Dartevelle
Collection, Brussels, until 2017.
Metropolitan Museum of Art,
purchase, Acquisitions and Rogers
Funds, and Anonymous, James J.
Ross, and Marian Malcolm Gifts,
2017, inv. 2017.35.
Majestic in scale, this captivating
creation is at once massive and
ethereal. An expansive twodimensional
forehead soars above
a series of volumetric features
compressed in the lower half of the
composition. The penetrating gaze
of boldly outlined eyes is oriented
heavenward. The geometric motifs
that originally densely inscribed
the upper part have been replaced
by deep grooves of erosion. The
extensive repairs testify to its long
life acting as an avatar of Bamileke
royal power. Once it became too
fragile to be worn, it was not
discarded but rather kept in a
trove within its community and a
replacement example was carved,
continuing an evolving tradition of
artistic innovation.
One of the most canonical African
art forms is the tsesah crest, commonly referred
to as “Batcham,” created by Bamileke masters
in the Cameroon Grassfi elds region, and a new
exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum has afforded
a rare opportunity to reconsider these
rare and iconic artworks. Drawing upon extensive
research performed since the 1960s by European,
American, and Cameroonian scholars,
revisiting some of this information through a
contemporary lens, and adding new documents
extracted during archival research, this article
will consider the mechanisms that led tsesah
crests to achieve an outsized position in the African
art world and also will investigate their continued
resonance in Cameroon.
By Yaëlle Biro
FEATURE
The Canon and Its
Consequences:
The Reception of Bamileke Tsesah Crests