Facial Mask Lapicque

This mask is characterized by three pairs of eyes placed symmetrically two to two. It is named after the Lapicque in honor of the painter Charles Lapicque (1898-1988), who owned the first known specimen of this mask dated in the century XIX. It also belonged to the collector and gallery owner Charles Ratton, although it was Aristide Courtois, administrator of Colonies, its first owner. This mask, which comes from the Alto Ivindo, caused the admiration of several generations of collectors and artists who saw in it the most crazy meanings, from the head of the elephant given the central edge in relief with whose trunk they compare it, to the leaves of a tree or different forms of the female sex. This mask, like the masks with various eyes of other ethnic groups, most likely means the possibility of seeing the past and the future, the interior and the exterior, the hidden and the apparent, that is to say a whole series of dualities, a mask that sees everything and at the same time endowed with divinatory qualities.

The eyes of this mask are the three white pairs, although it is the one in the center that serves the vision of its wearer, the dancer. It has two pairs of red lip-like drawings, the meaning of which we do not know. It is an eggoid mask, and flat surface, without mouth or nose. The Quai Branly museum has catalogued it as a zoomorpha mask, assimilating the central vertical edge to the elephant's trunk. No explicit reference appears, but no doubt this mask participates in the initiatory rites of the Bwiti.

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