Butterfly Girl - Poli Mana - Lot 43

Butterfly Girl - Poli Mana Hopi, Arizona Carved wood (cottonwood root), natural pigments H. 33 cm (without base and feathers) Circa 1900-1910 Provenance : - Mabel Dodge Luhan Collection (1879-1962) - Collection Galerie Flak, Paris - Léo Scheer & Nathalie Rheims Collection, Paris, acquired from previous owners in 2003 Published: - Esprit Kachina, Barton Wright, Julien Flak, Paris, 2003, page 95 "I have two beautiful Pueblo dolls. They're the most beautiful thing in the world. I'll put them in your room...". Paul Eluard, letter to his wife Gala, 1927 (Gallimard, 1984, p. 23) Superb, moving female figure of a Jeune Fille Papillon (Young Butterfly Girl) adorned with a tabletta featuring a central flower symbol surrounded by cloud and rain motifs. The back of the tabletta is decorated with corncobs. This naturalistic figure wears a yellow manta (feminine cape) with a red border, and a necklace with a squash blossom motif on the rounded end. Her predominantly dark costume contrasts with the colors of her face (cheeks highlighted in red, dominant green, yellow and orange on the tabletta). The figure of the Young Butterfly Girl (Poli Mana) is not strictly speaking a Kachina, but rather a "Social Dancer" figure that appears in ritual group dances. The particularly beautiful Poli Mana dance is performed on all the mesas in autumn. Boys and girls as young as four take part in this ceremony. The dance begins early in the morning with the youngest. After each performance, they retire and older dancers take their place until the end of the day. The Butterfly Girls also appear at the Mamzrau women's ceremonies, where they are known as Pahlik Mana. They usually wear an elaborate tabletta on their heads, incorporating symbols linked to corn and clouds. This endearing Jeune Fille Papillon inspired Nathalie Rheims' text "Un fétiche, une mystérieuse personne en bois", reproduced in the introduction to this catalog (see page 9), and evoking the fascinating power of attraction this figure exerted over her. In terms of provenance, this remarkable Kachina Poli Mana was part of the early 20th-century collection of Mabel Dodge Luhan, a great patron of the arts who, in 1917, founded an artists' residence in Taos, New Mexico, frequented by Georgia O'Keeffe, Ansel Adams and writer D.H. Lawrence.