Vente Christie's - 27 juin 2018

Commentary on an eyema byeri Fang statue
By Louis Perrois
This male ancestor efigy, eyema byeri, was
the major piece of the exhibition ‘Sculptures
africaines dans la collection Durand-Dessert,
Fragments du Vivant’, organised in September
2008 at Hôtel de la Monnaie in Paris, as part
of that year’s ‘Parcours des Mondes’ show.
From the collection of the famed 1930s art
dealer Paul Guillaume, this ancestor fgure is the
quintessence of the sculptural genius of the Fang-
Beti of Atlantic Equatorial Africa. A long-known
piece, it was acquired in June 2006 at Sotheby’s
– Paris by Liliane and Michel Durand-Dessert ; it
wonderfully completes the ensemble of rare and
superb pieces assembled by this knowledgeable
couple, keen collectors of exceptional African pieces
with prestigious pedigree. Jean-Louis Paudrat, the
catalogue’s editor wrote : ‘This fgure, through the
artistically triumphant symbiosis between wholly
opposite references – “small man and animal”,
“infant and old man” – constitute for the Durand-
Desserts the model of this lost unity that art has the
power to make reappear’ (Catalogue, 2008, p. 12).
Regarding these comments on the initial
resemblance between the efigy’s overall
morphology and some, almost fantasised,
contextual elements, they can in fact be explained
by Westerners’ astonishment at the surprising
freedom of expression of African sculptors,
especially among the Fang, who do not hesitate to
transpose the relationships of corporeal volumes
that are represented. Indeed, the ancestor’s majestic
posture, with its broad imposing shoulders and
its massive head decorated with fat plaits, its
face bearing a very fat nose, but also its outsized
forearms with hands atop the thighs, and the thick
calves, might vaguely suggest some animal, the
famous “silverback” gorillas found in these lands.
Personally, I do not believe that this relationship of
an iconographic nature is relevant in the Beti-
Fang area, given the known oral traditions, whilst
it is among the Kota, as it is for example for the
“emboli” masks from the Makokou-Mékambo
region, a representation of a forest spirit that is
especially feared and celebrated during initiations.
Photo: Hughes Dubois
Outsized proportions of Fang statues
As I have mentioned elsewhere in various
publications on the arts of Gabon, I completed
comprehensive doctoral research on Fang
statuary, whose fndings were published in 1972
with the title ‘La statuaire des Fañ, Gabon’. ‘One
of the decisive elements of the analysis, called
the “ethno-morphological analysis”, was the
study of proportions of the principle volumes of
represented elements of the body (head, torso,
legs) as a diferential characteristic of identifed
styles and variants. From the 1960s, the subject of
“African proportions” of sculpted representations
was considered by several authors, such as Hans
Himmelheber (Negerkunst und Negerkunstler,
Braunschweig, 1960), Margaret Plass, and
William Fagg (African Sculpture. An Anthology,
London, 1964). Later, a thorough investigation
on this same subject appeared in L’art africain
by Jacques Kerchache, Lucien Stéphan, and
Jean-Louis Paudrat (Mazenod, Paris 1988).’
In this book, the philosopher Lucien Stéphan writes
(p. 111-113) about the ‘representations of proportions
209