Jérôme Neutres – Jean Pigozzi’s imagined Africa

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8 the exhibition, what would become over the years the most important collection of African contemporary art in the world, replete with some ten-thousand works today. As with Roussel, in a sense, Africa is first also for Jean Pigozzi a land of desires and mythologies, a window into imagining another possible world, a springboard for poetry. But unlike the author of Impressions of Africa who wrote his own text about it, Jean Pigozzi put together another sort of narrative in the form of a collection of contemporary African works of art. To Raymond Roussel’s “Impressions” of Africa, today we offer comparing the “Expressions” of Africa created over these last thirty years by the artists of the “dark continent” chosen by Jean Pigozzi, and who have proven over time to be the best African artists. Works often radically foreign to western artistic practices; or sometimes created as a function of or in comparison with western ghosts. The current exhibition was constructed through a subjective exploration of the Pigozzi Collection, by looking at these works with the eyes of their collector, by listening to the history of Jean Pigozzi’s artistic tastes and desires. We have wanted to offer an original reading of this collection as a collection. And also to create, through the reference to Raymond Roussel, a mirror effect between two eras, two looks, two continents, to show how much Africa, if it has been a fundamental motivation of western artistic imagination, was also nourished from African dreams of Europe. “Cultures are changed by exchanging and are exchanged by creating,” said poet Édouard Glissant, a hero of cultural diversity. What made a person like Jean Pigozzi accumulate tenthousand works in thirty years? What are the reasons that drive him to concentrate this exceptional collection on one territory in the world, Africa, that he explicitly does not visit and where he will probably never go? How did this innovative artist of photography who is also this pioneer collector find himself amidst creations of African art so different from his personal artistic work? Or is it in fact that Jean Pigozzi found in these African artists a part of himself, conscious or unconscious, that he had not been able to express in his practice of photography? These are the subjects of our exhibition. We have also had Jean Pigozzi speak about his artists, their work, their style, his desire for art. The previously unseen interview published in this catalogue takes a look at a selection of his remarks about his collection. There is an Africa, the geographical and sociological continent of the world that requires several lives to travel through and understand, like all the world’s great regions and civilizations. There is also an Africa of contemporary artists, which is not the same reality, but which comes from it directly. Subjective looks, poetic images, artistic creations, which sometimes take root in traditional cultural practices, and sometimes in thought about the intersections of the history of African art and the history of western art. There is finally an Africa of Jean Pigozzi, an artistic reality collected and nourished in the imagination of these collected works, that does not seek exhaustivity or an academic panorama, but that offers a certain vision of an imagined Africa that becomes in turn a sort of work in-and-of itself. When we speak of Jean Pigozzi’s collection, we must mention the driving force of André Magnin, in all likelihood the best expert of the contemporary African artistic scene, who was hired by Pigozzi in 1990 as an “art researcher” to establish what is today the most significant collection of contemporary African art. If Jean Pigozzi approved the acquisition of each work, if the mix that comprises the collection – and which resembles no other – is in the end Pigozzi’s personal choice, there is also a lot of André Magnin in this collection – his tastes, his encounters, his loyalties. It is clear, for example, that Kinshasa and the Congo are very represented in the collection, and that other countries – in particular the countries of English-speaking Africa – are absent. It is another map of Africa that this collection draws, a geography that corresponds to a history different from the continent’s history: the history of a collection, the history of André Magnin’s trips, the history of Jean Pigozzi’s artistic friendships particularly. Because Jean is a man of emotion, whose collection – like an address book – bears witness to his faith in friendship. There are not many artists who he met and whose works he purchased at the beginning of the 1990s that are not found over and over again today in the collection’s new developments. Chéri Samba has thus been present in this collection since its beginnings. We find, in fact, material with a real retrospective of Samba, a brilliant
9 painter, from his first storyboards from the 1970s to his more simplified large format canvases from the 2000s - 2010s. It is extremely rare in the history of art collections to meet a collector who has managed (if the collector has the desire to do so, because collectors often have changing tastes and fly from collection to collection according to their desires...) to follow an artist’s entire career. The case of Samba in the Pigozzi collection is not unique. We could say the same of Moke, Lilanga, Hazoumè... The artists from his collection are for Jean Pigozzi a sort of new family. A family that he chose for himself. The farthest away from his European-American culture and his Italian-French roots. Unless, on the contrary, this new family has revealed to him another part of himself, like Jean Genet who said in Prisoner of Love that he had become, out of fascination for Africa, a “black man who has white and pink colors.” Rousseau. Jean Pigozzi loves the numerous paintings of this exceptional master even if he has often been refused by curators (or perhaps because of that?). Our exhibition is proud to present masterworks by Bodo, works as strong as they are unique. Not only does this painting deserve to be known and recognized, but our subject is first and foremost Jean Pigozzi’s look onto Africa and its artists. Bodo holds a special place in this geography of Pigozzi’s imaginary Africa. It is perhaps not by chance, because this work is based fundamentally on phantasmagoric visions. Pierre Bodo’s oneiric painting inevitably seduced Jean Pigozzi, whose collection is based on an African dream. Even the most daring and audacious of collectors, if they accept and take ownership of risk taking by investing in the names of unknown artists, still end up listening a tiny bit to criticism and the market. You can go for a short time against the vox populi of the art world, as was the case of the great pioneer collectors, like Jacques Doucet buying Brancusi when the critics teased him severely (“Art for Americans!” mocked critic Louis Vauxcelles), and acquiring Douanier-Rousseau’s The Snake Charmer which would be refused for years by national museums when it was donated! But it is rare for a collector to spend his or her life fighting against the winds of the institutions and the market. Now, if a good number of artists from the Pigozzi collection are today (almost) finally recognized and (almost) celebrated as they should be given their importance, not only did that take a lot of time, but moreover certain names, like Lilanga or Bodo, continue to cause bewilderment or indifference in the west. If in this case, Pierre Bodo is still exiled from panoramic exhibitions on Africa in renowned museums and art centers, even the ones presented from the Pigozzi collection, Jean Pigozzi still maintains his full admiration for him. The painter, now deceased, developed an eminently original world, a surrealist poetry that imposes a style that is not found elsewhere. His fantasy allegories sometimes remind people of Hieronymus Bosch and his imaginary landscapes have the apparent naïveté of style that makes people think of Douanier-
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Page 12: 136 Credits Concept Krystyna Gmurzy

Jérôme Neutres – Jean Pigozzi’s imagined Africa

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