FEATURE
128
FIG. 14 (left): View of the
exhibition African Negro Art
at the Museum of Modern
Art, 1935, showing the
Rietberg crest.
Archives of the Museum of Modern
Art, New York.
FIG. 15 (right): Map of the
Cameroon Grassfi elds.
Cartography by Alex Copeland,
www.polariscartography.com.
FIG. 16 (far right): The
tsa, the chief’s compound,
during a Madjong
celebration in the chiefdom
of Bandjoun.
Photographed by Dominique
Malaquais, 1998.
The impressive buildings and plazas
that make up the royal compounds
of Bamileke sovereigns stand out
in the landscape of the Grassfi elds
highlands. These architectural
programs have been described by
art historian Dominique Malaquais
as a form of royal portraiture. The
complex carved iconography, the
structure, and the urban layout
of the buildings all speak to the
power of the fon. They function as
a backdrop and stage for important
public gatherings and dances. During
performances, the architecture and
dancers, carrying towering crests on
their heads, engage in a dialog of
grandeur and power.
of these epic creations speaks to the popularity
of this particular form among Bamileke leaders
and to the mobility of both art and carvers (fi g.
15).
The name “tsesah,” which we use here, or “tsema’bu,”
also often used by the late Cameroon
art historian Jean-Paul Notué, are vernacular
names that highlight the crests’ connection with
secret societies and high-ranking associations.17
While they are more precise than an arbitrarily
given topographical name, we should be aware
that the use of tsesah to describe crests found
across the Bamileke region may not be entirely
accurate. While they may be called tsesah in
Bandjoun, but elsewhere have different names,
such as kamandoumze in Batcham18 and tukah
or katso West of the Bamileke plateau.19
DEEPENING UNDERSTANDING
Our understanding of tsesah crests has expanded
since the 1960s, largely thanks to Harter’s
research in the 1970s and ’80s20 and Notué’s
work in the 1980s and ’90s.21 Since the last time
a tsesah crest danced in Bandjoun was in 1925,
on the occasion of the funerals of fon Fotso II,
both specialists relied mostly on oral history to
trace the origins of this tradition and understand
its signifi cance within the Bamileke context. It is
now understood to have originated in the powerful
Bamileke center of Bandjoun (fi g. 16). Not
only were several crests collected in this chiefdom,
but a local artist there identifi es himself as
an heir to the earlier masters. Both Harter’s and
Notué’s primary source regarding tsesah seems
to have been Paul Tahbou, a renowned sculptor
and high-ranking Bandjoun court offi cial.22 He
personally claimed kinship with a long line of
Bandjoun-based sculptors responsible for creating
such works and was a key informant regarding
their history, iconography, and function.
Because of both his activity and status, he was
able to provide information about the crests’ art
historical background as well as their function
within Bamileke’s structure of governance.
Tahbou also provided extensive information
both on tsesah crests’ formal interpretation and
the genealogy of artists responsible for their creation.
He associated the overall form of the crest
with the head of a hippopotamus coming out of
the water.23 According to that reading, an invisible
waterline marks the shift between the vertical
forehead and the horizontal, forward-projecting
cheeks, nose, and mouth. Across the
Bamileke chiefdoms, hippopotamuses, recognized
for their might and their ability to move
both on land and in the water, are considered
pi—powerful animals that might serve as a fon’s
avatar.24 He associated the incised geometric
patterns adorning the plane surface of the brow
as a stylized evocation of the belly of a crocodile,
a reptile ubiquitous in Grassfi elds’ iconography
and linked with royal symbolism.
Tahbou also listed the names of some of the
masters responsible for these monumental sculptures,
including his own father Tehgah, and the
carver Moube Nde.25 They, in turn, had learned
the form from previous generations of master
carvers whose names are now lost. Notué established
that, in Bandjoun, tsesah were created by
several families of elite carvers, which he traced
back as far as Duygnechom, the chiefdom’s second
chief, who probably ruled in the early eighteenth
century.26 Harter also followed the leads
provided by Tahbou, but identifi ed stylistic similarities
between specifi c examples that led him
to think they were the work of a single artist.27
Among these are the examples from the Rietberg
and the Fowler, which, on the basis of style,
Harter attributed to a single master at different
times in his career.28 This artist is now designated
as the Master of Bamendjo.29 Overall, it is now
understood that although the distinctive form of
these crests is consistent, signifi cant variations in
style indicate that they were created over several
generations by different artists. Tsesah crests
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