Murik Lakes Figure-New Guinea Art-Oceanic Art-Louis Pierre Ledoux
Here is a large Murik Lakes Male Ancestral Spirit Figure, kandimbwag, collected in 1936 by Louis Pierre Ledoux—the young American ethnographer sent there upon the advice of Margaret Mead. In Ledoux’s unpublished manuscript, he describes in detail the male initiation ceremony that features taking the young men to the beach for bleeding the penis—which involves inserting a barbed length of grass into the urethra and yanking it out—repeatedly … Ledoux states, “the initiate wears a long mal (tapa waist belt), the tail of which comes up under the corset, and hangs down to just below the knees, with a small kandimbwag, hanging from one end. I collected one of these which was some nine inches to a foot in length and which had a long mal but no corset” (Ch. 3, page 60). The figure dates to the early 20th century, stands 25” (63.5 cm) in height and is No. 20 in my catalog “Three Collections of Oceanic Art.” The price is available upon request.