Crusoe Kuningbal (Guningbal)

Crusoe Guningbal (Kuningbal): Mimih Carving (circa 1922-1984)

Born middle Liverpool River region, Northern Territory

Language group: Kuninjku

Active: Maningrida, Arnhem Land, Northern Territory

Provenance: Executed in Western Arnhem Land

Purchased in 1982 or 1983 from Arnhemland Aboriginal Art Gallery (Shirley Collins, manageress).

“Kuningbal was a great innovator and a profound influence on other Kuninjku artists. In the late 1960s he introduced sculpted figures of mimih for use in ceremonies. This was an innovation on traditional practice, separate from the dictates of the art market or the public domain. The first three-dimensional mimih figures were modest in scale, but Kuningbal eventually increased the size of the sculptures to a human scale and beyond. The tradition of large mimih sculptures continues today with Kuningbal’s sons and other students of his creating sculptures over three metres high.” Sotheby’s Australia

“It was a single individual who made the Mimih famous: celebrated singer Crusoe Kuningbal, who died 30 years ago. According to anthropologist and art historian Luke Taylor, Kuningbal’s sculpted Mimihs were first made in their refined form for a public ceremony, called Mamurrng, a Kuninjku performance held in honour of a child’s birth, and displayed to the region’s other language groups: an elaborate dance and song cycle, all tales of death and “the activities of ghosts” but suffused with joyful, celebratory overtones. There is humour in the Mamurrng, too: the dancers paint themselves as skeletons and wear macabre headdresses that include carved wooden bones.

Kuningbal was a particular virtuoso, in both voice and movement: he used life-sized Mimih figures in his dance. As Taylor writes, “Kuninjku still smile with pleasure as they recall his hilarious performances and evocative singing.”

“In the mid-1960s, collector Louis Allen became the first Westerner to buy a Mimih carving by Kuningbal: it had a slightly puckish look about it, it was thin and short-armed, its red-painted body was dotted with dabs of white and yellow, there were stylised markings to delineate its face. This look seems to have been a personal invention, perhaps inspired by the gaunt Mokuy spirit figures of East Arnhem Land that Kuningbal saw during his time at Milingimbi mission in the years leading up to World War II. He kept carving, and painting his carvings; he used a grid of black dots as decoration. There was nothing quite like his Mimihs: they were impossibly slender, and the curve in the sculpted wood gave them the air of figures in the dance. By the early 1980s demand in the craft shops for these figurines was picking up. You could buy a good one for just under $50.” -Nicolas Rothwell, The Australian, May 3, 2014

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/in-search-of-the-indigenous-little-people-of-northern-australia/news-story/4b6a79f0661a7ed0c55ae00e29fb119a?sv=cc7b9227b5064c23f8a71a29aa551e0d

https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/80.1985/

Crusoe Guningbal: Auction prices, signatures and monograms – Findartinfo.com

Crusoe Guningbal | Art auction results, prices and artworks estimates

Objects – Crusoe Guningbal – Australian Art Auction Records

The Dealer is the Devil: An Insiders History of the Aboriginal Art Trade – Adrian Newstead – Google Books

CRUSOE GUNINGBAL Sculpture and Bark painting | Aboriginal Bark Art

Crusoe Kuningbal: Auction prices, signatures and monograms – Findartinfo.com

KUNINGBAL Crusoe, 1922-1984 (Australia): auctions and prices since 1987 – | Artvalue | Guide Mayer

AIAM100.com – Australian Indigenous Art Market 100 – Compiled by Adrian Newstead

Aboriginal Art | Sotheby’s

Single individual made the mimih famous-celbrated singer