Sotheby’s says the nevimbumbao is perhaps the best known Vanuatu artwork in the world, since one of these formidable figures was owned by Pablo Picasso, who greatly admired it and kept it on a chair beside him in his studio.
It seems the figure was willed to Picasso by his colleague Henri Matisse, who also admired it, and passed on by Matisse’s son in 1954. It now resides in the Musee Picasso collection in Paris. Both Picasso and Matisse, of course, were enthusiasts of “primitive” art, which influenced their work.
Nevimbumbao are produced very rarely in certain tribal areas of southern Malakula for ceremonial use. Made of tree fern and wood, along with such insubstantial materials as chicken feathers, plant fibre and spider web, and decorated with natural pigments, they rarely survive intact.
The Sotheby’s nevimbumbao, a demonic figure 1.5m high with feathered stick through the nose and protruding eyes and genitalia, was collected by Paul Gardissat, who went to the New Hebrides (as it then was) in the early 1960s as a teacher. Developing a passion for the islands and their cultures, the catalogue entry says, he went on to record the islands’ oral histories which were later published. The nevimbumbao is Lot 2 in the sale, with an estimate of $30,000 to $50,000. It follows another Malakula sculpture collected by Gardissat, a mask known as the Two Mansip Brothers which was used in circumcision ceremonies. The estimate on Lot 1 is $5000 to $8000.
There are is also some Malakula sculpture at Guy Earl Smith’s sale of Fine Tribal, Oceanic Art & Antiquities and the Lillian Hoffman Estate on August 1 in Sydney’s Double Bay (viewings Galerie Finn at 23 Bay St from July 15 to August 1).
Lot 94 in the Lillian Hoffman Estate is a pair of Malakula marionette sculptures or temes nevimbure in wood, fibre and pigs tusk with polychrome decoration on wooden spikes (estimate $150) while Lot 95 is a pair of male and female ceremonial ancestor sculptures 1.14 and 1.28m high, formed from tree fern with pig tusks and polychrome pigments (estimate $210 plus).
Wikipedia suggests, perhaps maliciously, that Malakula, also spelled Malekula, was named by James Cook, and that the word was derived from the French mal a cul - literally, pain in the ass - because it was infested with cannibals and volcanoes.
