1975.14 Uli figure | DMA Staging Content Management System

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

Stout figures with massive heads, stylized arms, and short legs were the focus of memorial ceremonies for important men in central New Ireland. Called uli, these sculptures have been described both as portraits of deceased village chiefs and ancestor figures. They were displayed in groups at the culmination of a year-long series of memorial feasts. Uli are hermaphroditic, having both a prominent phallus and breasts. They embody fertility and aggression simultaneously, suggesting at once the ability of women to procreate and the success of men in warfare.

The uli are cumulative sculptures with paint layered on lime plaster on wood. The pigmented valves of sea snails form eyes and plant fibers serve as a scraggly beard. Although many ceremonial sculptures were left to rot after their initial use, uli were kept in a secret place between ritual occasions, and fresh paint renewed fragile surfaces for the next ceremony.

Adapted from

DMA Label text.

NOTES

1880s or slightly before, around the earliest period that sculpture left the island in any numbers - Louise Lincoln, MIA, in correspondence to Carol Robbins, December 31, 1986

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PROVENANCE

n.d.: Klaus Clausmeyer Collection, Dusseldorf

1966: Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, Koln

1967: Robert Stolper & Morton Lipkin, London

1975: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts purchased from Morton Lipkin [1]

Notes:

The main source for this provenance is the Collections Records object card in the Collections Records object file (1975.14).

[1] The name of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, founded in 1933, was changed to the Dallas Museum of Art in 1983.

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Encyclopedia Britannica~Read about the climate, people, culture, and history of Papua New Guinea.
Encyclopedia Britannica~Learn more about the region of Oceania.
National Museums Scotland~Explore resources about arts of the Oceania region of the Pacific.

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Apply to objects where number equals 1975.14

General Description

Stout figures with massive heads, stylized arms, and short legs were the focus of memorial ceremonies for important men in central New Ireland. Called uli, these sculptures have been described both as portraits of deceased village chiefs and ancestor figures. They were displayed in groups at the culmination of a year-long series of memorial feasts. Uli are hermaphroditic, having both a prominent phallus and breasts. They embody fertility and aggression simultaneously, suggesting at once the ability of women to procreate and the success of men in warfare.