< Previous Easter Island/Rapa Nui

Figure, Lizard man, Moai Tangata Moko
Easter Island/Rapa Nui
early 19th century
Wood (Sophora Toromiro)
L. 35 cm
TC 479

The recent and eloquent interpretation of moai tangata moko, is both logical and profound. Lizards which are small and numerous on Rapanui "[Lizards] come and go between the surface of the ground and the bowels of the earth...They are the inhabitants of tombs and the world of the dead; as such they convey there the actions of the living, and, on their return, they transmit to daylight the messages of the ancestors." (Orliac 2008: 143)

Small figures were hung by the back or attached to bodies of dancers. The notion that they were used as weapons probably started "at the end of the nineteenth century when the size of the tangata moko increased." (Orliac 2008:145-146) "These are said to be protective figures used in dance feasts and at the doors of houses...In many parts of Polynesia lizards represent illness and death, the gods being thought to inflict illness by sending a lizard to gnaw the vital organs. By the same token, a lizard can represent life." (Simmons 1980: no.95)

Similar examples are found in the Canterbury Museum, New Zealand, formerly in the Oldman collection, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University no.53601, and the British Museum EP 28 and 29. For discussions of these comparisons see Duff 1969 and Kaeppler 2003.

Provenance:
Entwistle Gallery, Paris 2008
Private Collection, Switzerland
Carlo Monzino, Lugano
Christie's London June, 19, 1979: lot 192
James Hooper Collection, London (H377)

Publishing History:
Steven Phelps. Art and Artefacts of the Pacific, Africa and the Americas: The James Hooper Collection. Hutchinson & Co. London 1976: 88 (plate 44) and 418-419, number 377.
Christie's London. Melanesian and Polynesian Art from the James Hooper Collection, June 19, 1979: 60-61, lot 192.
Charles W. Mack, Polynesian Art at Auction. Mack-Nasser Publishing, Northboro, 1982: 78-79, item 2, plate 25.