Vente Christie's - 27 juin 2018

© Alice Springs, circa 1978
of exhibition design, but also the decision to group
“stylistic variants” together, giving as one of their
examples the way in which ten Mumuye statues
conveyed “the range of visual solutions found
within a single ethnic group”. Having had what they
describe as a “very strong experience” there
resulting in “an awareness ; a clearer vision of [their]
commitment and [their] taste”, the passion was
well and truly released.
In 1991, two singularly distinctive pieces joined the
collection : an elegant Bassa female fgure of
taught rounded proportions and a face and bust
generously ornamented with a network of incisions.
Although her open-mortised knee joints suggest
the original insertion of attached legs, their
absence in no way compromises the balance of the
sculpture, but according to her owners, enhances
her presence. Consistent with the Durand-
Dessert's preferred theme of human gestation : a
Keaka helmet with features only schematically
portrayed is surmounted by a human form
vigorously raising itself from the stuf of the earth.
Throughout the 1990s and without ever intending
to mimic a museum’s need to be representative
historically and educationally, the collection
continued to grow with the addition of several
vestiges of ancient West African civilisations
including, as reproduced in this book, these Djenné,
Nok and Sokoto terracottas, this Akan head
believed to be from the 17th century, these Kalabari
urns dating from between the 10th and 13th
centuries, and this monolith by the north-eastern
Ejagham, which is probably pre-16th century.
There were also carved wooden masks and statues
from more recent periods, which had been added
to the collection on the basis of the inventiveness
shown by their talented creators. Of great age -
17th century perhaps - and carved transversely
across a section of Afzelia africana trunk, is the
anthropomorphic extremity, criss-crossed with
cracks, of a Mbembe drum which would once have
been heard beating at the confuence of the Cross
River and the Ewayon.
Shown by Hélène Kamer to her gallery visitors in
1974 along with ten other “Mbembe Ancestors”, in
1993 it joined all the other sculptures in their
collection which, although sometimes deeply
ravaged by erosion, retained through the vestiges
of their "skin", deeply incised as it was, their
essential and original vitality.
During these years particularly rich in events
highlighting the rising tide of public interest in the
art and traditional cultures of sub-Saharan Africa,
the Durand-Desserts, driven by insatiable curiosity,
missed no opportunity to visit every anthological
exhibition, including "Le grand héritage" of 1992 at
the Dapper Museum and "Trésors cachés du
musée de Tervuren" in 1995-1996. Other events
they remember in detail include "À visage
découvert” at the Cartier Foundation in 1992 ; the
1993 presentation of the Pierre Harter Cameroon
collection bequeathed to the Musée National des
Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie and, at the same
institution, "Vallées du Niger” in 1993-1994,
followed in 1997 by "Arts du Nigeria”, which was
dominated by some of the two hundred and
seventy-six pieces acquired by the French state
from the Barbier-Mueller collections. Without
overlooking the 4th Salon International des Musées
et des Expositions, "L’Art africain dans la collection
de Baselitz” in 1994 for which Jacques Kerchache
designed the spatial installation, and 5th Salon de
Mars exhibition organised the following year by
Philippe Guimiot of ffty-one major African and
Madagascan pieces from the Baudoin de Grunne
collection. During this period, and now recognised
by their peers, they were able to access the major
private collections of Europe and the United
States ; those brought together, for example, in
America by the Ginzbergs, the Malcolms, the
The art of the future
presupposes the art of the past,
there is no real cut between
revolved and coming artistic
creation: the future that
we perceive in“primitive” art
relies on the foundations of an
archaic past
Fehers, the Dintenfasses, Franyo Schindler,
William W. Brill and the Clymans, in Belgium by the
Vanderstraetes, Jean Willy Mestach, Claude-Henri
Pirat and Pierre Dartevelle, and in France by Pierre
Harter, Hubert Goldet, André Fourquet, Michel
Périnet, Hélène and Philippe Leloup, Alain Schofel,
Max Itzikovitz, Alain de Monbrison, the Weills and
the Gaillards, Guy Porré, Jean-Paul Chazal, Patrick
Caput and Dominique Lachevsky.
Having built relationships of trust with the gallery
owners from whom they sourced pieces, and whom
they respected both for their expertise and their
personalities, they nevertheless felt no exclusive
afiliation to any one dealer, and continued to be
totally independent in terms of their judgement and
freedom of choice.
Other acquisitions during the second half of the
decade included : in 1995, a Tchamba statue whose
dissymmetry suggests movement ; and in 1997, the
statue of a woman which “emanates intense
energy”, and which they had wanted ever since
marvelling at it in the Uotombo exhibition. Despite
not ftting precisely with the customary typology, it
was attributed by a number of qualifed experts to
the Baga people. In the same year, they acquired
the frst of their "nail fetishes" ; a Beembe sculpture
whose trunk is sketched out only in broad lines,
contrasting strongly with the delicate rendering of
the face. Recalling their fascination with the Bongo
efigies exhibited ten years earlier in Cologne,
triggered essentially by the one collected in 1973 by
Christian Duponcheel, which they saw again in the
Francesco Pellizzi collection in New York before it
was erected in the Metropolitan Museum, the
Durand-Desserts, aware of the arrival in 1999 and
2000 of a second wave of these funerary posts
from South Sudan, brought together a series of
which four by the Bongo, Belanda and Morokodu
peoples are reproduced here. These, together with
the Moba and Dagara sculptures from the border
regions of Ghana and Burkina Faso acquired in
2000, constitute an index of forms, which, at the
same time as having a certain afinity to the initial
source, combine the daring of abstraction with
realistic control of fguration.
Obtained in 2001, the only pieces in the collection
to represent the nevertheless prolifc production of
the Senufo and Baoule peoples are a kafgeledjo, a
conformationally threatening object clad in
coarsely woven clothing to which a large number of
cartridges is attached, and an asiè usu statuette
that displays a very real and unsentimental beauty.
In the spring of 2001, the vast two-level space they
had occupied in the Rue de Lappe since 1991
hosted the "Africa" exhibition of "Works by Pino
Pascali and the Ejagham". This would be the only
time that their gallery dedicated exclusively to the
promotion of contemporary art would show, and in
large number, traditional pieces from sub-Saharan
Africa : twenty-eight panels and two crests,
emblems of the Leopard Society, as well as two atal
monoliths, all from the Ejagham culture. Visitors
were amazed to fnd hanging above these pieces,
and suspended from the mezzanine level rail,
around sixty paintings on paper by one of the major
artists of the Arte Povera movement. However,
there was nothing particularly unusual about this
juxtaposition.
The title of the exhibition, "Africa", is borrowed from
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