Baule Figure 

"The Baule inhabit the geographic center of the Cote d'Ivoire. According to tradition, they are a branch of the Asante that was led into exile by Queen Abla Pokou in the eighteenth century. However, it is more likely that the Baule are an ancient race, related to the proto-Guro and the Lagoon Peoples; they intermixed with wandering Akan tribes, picking up their language and a number of their cultural institutions. The use of gold-plated staffs of office, for example, is fairly recent. The Baule borrowed the use of masks of the neighboring Guro, with whom they shared certain charateristics of style (the Akan do not use masks).

Baule figurative sculptures are well-known, although they are often incorrectly described as effigies of ancestors. According to Susan Vogel, the sculptures are of two types. The first represent spirits of nature, called asie usu, that wander about in the bush; some are depicted as hideous, others are very beautiful and radiant in gold. These spirits can posses human beings and use them as medium, called komien. During the divination sessions, the komien display figuratives sculptures of the spirits; the pleasing appearance of the sculptures is intended to propitiate the asie usu, who have a potentially repellant character that should not be unleashed.

The other type of Baule sculpture comprises the male and female images blolo bian and blolo bla, who are spouses from the other world. Each Baule man or woman is supposed to have a wife or husband whom he or she left behind to come to the realm of the living; if a Baule is led to believe - through bad dreams, for example, - that the supernatural spouse is displeased with him, he must set up an altar and make offerings to the angry spirits. These offerings include sculpted portrait; the "spouse of the beyond" will indicate what sort of sculpture should be made. 

Vogel notes that the beauty of the figures is an integral part of their function. The expression "as beautiful as a sculpted figure" shows that "beauty  is necessary for a figure to be efficacious"

Alain-Michel Boyer maintains that it is extremely difficult to distinguish an  asi usu from a blolo-bian/bla figure. "Entering an unfamiliar house, a Baule would be able to tell one from the other only with extreme difficulty." However, because it is considered the more beautiful, the figurative sculpture of the spouse of the other world is the object of particular attention. It is oiled, clothed and decorated with jewlry; and often, as result of this attention, it can be distinguised from a spirit sculpture, which does not have the same glossy patina."

Bibliography: Werner Schmalenbach (ed.), African Art, Prestel-Verlag, Munich, 1988, p. 122