Kulango Kneeling Abstract Figure with Triangular Head

The head is a triangle. Everything else bends to serve it.

Kulango people, Ivory Coast, twentieth century. A small bronze figure, three and a half inches high, kneeling on rounded knees. A narrow torso rises to a pair of small projecting arms, and above them the head spreads wide and flat, point downward, like an arrowhead balanced on a stem. The surface is rough, dark gold and brown, with a hammered look.

Abstraction is an old habit in West Africa. Nobody here is apologizing for it.

Set it on a shelf. Watch the room lean toward it.