This carved representation of a spirit wife, or blolo bla, furnishes a lovely example of the “restrained naturalism” (Vogel 2011) for which Baule sculpture is so highly esteemed. Notably, it is to the otherworldly blolo spirits that among the finest works of Baule corpus are devoted: “So far as people know, the other world resembles this world, and blolo spirits live in villages complete with elders and families, very much like those on earth. ... The blolo is also the source of human life, the place ... whence comes each newborn baby. Everyone originally came from the blolo and is never entirely free from relations with the spirits left behind there. Everyone had in the blolo an entire family that can continue to interfere with life after birth. Most often, however, it is the spouse in the other world who causes problems, and a Baule man or woman often has a figure carved to represent and appease his blolo bla, or spirit wife, or her blolo bian, spirit husband” (Vogel 1997: 67, emphasis ours).

REFERENCES

Collection Vérité, Saturday–Sunday June 17–18 2006, Drouot (Paris, 2006), lot 382.

Important Tribal Art, Tuesday 15 November 1988, Sotheby’s (New York, 1988), lot 12.

Important Tribal Art, Friday 22 November 1996, Sotheby’s (New York, 1996), lot 26.

Collection Vérité: Arts d'Afrique, d'Océanie et d'Amérique, Tuesday 21 November 2017,

Christie’s (Paris, 2006), lot 75.

Vogel, Susan Mullin. Baule: African Art, Western Eyes. New Haven: Yale UP, 1997.

———. “Baule and Yoruba Art Criticism: A Comparison.” In The Visual Arts: Plastic

and Graphic, edited by Justine M. Cordwell, 309–25. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011

[1979].