Tag: Kota

I’m proud to officially announce our next auction on April 4th 2017. The first part of this sale will be dedicated to the Laprugne collection (comprising 79 lots), and the second section will present objects from various owners. Now at the vanguard of the auction season, Christie’s’ African and Oceanic Art department has shifted its auction calendar to coincide better with the rhythm of the market. Coinciding with the highly anticipated opening of the “Picasso Primitif” exhibition at the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, it surely will be worth a trip to Paris.

Built over several decades, the Laprugne collection spans all continents and is the lifework of Mr. and Mrs. Laprugne. Starting in the 1970s, Jean-Pierre Laprugne ran the Parisian gallery ‘Mazarine 52’, which specialized in African and Oceanic art. In his early twenties, abandoning his position as a teacher early on, Jean-Pierre Laprugne saw it as his life mission to save these works of art from oblivion and reveal their origins and artistic merits in his gallery. In a classical French tradition, he honed his knowledge through tireless visits to flea markets at dawn and a large network of amateurs which he also frequently met at Hotel Drouot. Over time, this would yield countless treasures. His gallery quickly became a popular meeting spot in the Saint-Germain quarter thanks to Jean-Pierre’s knowledge, open mind and good humor. He inspired a whole generation of likeminded collectors and dealers with his contagious passion. Through the years he was able to build up an exquisite private collection, discretely safeguarding the masterpieces he found for his private sanctuary. At the heart of his collection is a unique group of 7 Kota reliquary figures from Gabon, displaying the unique diversity these guardian figures can show (see the teaser photo above). This exciting collection contains many more unseen and unpublished treasures never before on the market.

The sale of the Laprugne collection continues into the various owners sale, including two dedicated sections. A first group of objects, all miniatures under 20 centimeters, demonstrates the virtuosity of African artists when sculpting small-scale objects. A second section presents a carefully selected group of African and Oceanic masks from the highest quality showing the incredible creativity in the reinvention of the human face. Amongst these masks, a rediscovered archaic Sepik River mask from Papua New Guinea which has remained in the same family since being acquired at the famous auction of the collection of André Lefèvre in 1965. With these focused selections we respond to the current market’s desire to explore categories in-depth. Normally considered in the context of a museum, this comparative approach represents a fresh perspective in the auction model to appeal to seasoned collectors and new audiences alike.

The viewing days are:

Wednesday 29 March: 10am-6pm
Thursday 30 March: 10am-6pm
Friday 31 March: 10am-6pm
Saturday 1 April: 10am-6pm
Sunday 2 April: 2pm-6pm
Monday 3 April: 10am-6pm
Tuesday 4 April: 10am-1pm

The sale will take place on Tuesday April 4th at 4pm. Hope to see you there!

ps click here for an interview with Jean-Pierre Laprugne from 2003.

The William Rubin Kota, I nicknamed her Ruby, was in China last week – more specifically in Hong Kong. The preview was also accompanied by a lecture on the connection between the art from the Kota and Western Modern Art. Reaching to new audiences in the east, Christie’s clearly is doing an effort. The first two weeks of May, Ruby had already been on view at the Christie’s headquarters in New York. As you can see below, she was presented next to a painting by Mark Rothko from 1958: a pairing that worked very well. According to some it was the Kota that made the Rothko better, and not the other way around.

A nice surprise when walking to Christie’s was the fact that there were a lot of banners featuring Ruby on Fifth Avenue. See one below near Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. I loved seeing African art invade the public space, especially at such a busy spot in Manhattan. Kudos to Christie’s African art department for all the promotion.

As one of the icons of African art, Ruby not surprisingly got her own 80-page catalogue; you can browse it here. It includes essays by Susan Kloman, Pierre Amrouche, Charles-Wesley Hourdé, Louis Perrois, Frederic Cloth and William Rubin himself. You can also view a short documentary about the Kota’s last owner, William Rubin, on the website of Christie’s here.

The next and final stop of Ruby is Paris, where she will be on view from 18 until 23 June 2015 (info). Ruby will be sold that last day, with an estimate of € 6-9 million – I have a feeling she might break the world record for most expensive African art object ever sold at auction…

A remarkable result earlier this month, was the $ 173,000 for which the above picture sold at Sotheby’s New York (info). It was made by Alfred Stieglitz (who was married to painter Georgia O’Keeffe) in 1915 at Galerie 291 in New York. It’s estimate was even higher: $ 200,000-300,000.

In the catalogue we read:

This well-known photograph of ‘291’ exemplifies the Stieglitz circle’s commitment to the progressive art theories of the time. Modernist drawings, an African sculpture, and a wasps’ nest were an unlikely combination in a Fifth Avenue gallery in 1915, but they demonstrated an approach to art that was bold and new. As Edward Steichen remembered,

‘We had a few drawings by Braque and Picasso, and I determined that they would be fine material for the next exhibition. I bought some bolts of cheesecloth . . . and we covered the dust-darkened walls with it . . .Then I hung the few Braques and Picassos on the walls and several of the more or less related African sculptures with them. The place looked clean, fresh, and alive again, but I felt something was missing . . . When I mentioned this, [Emil] Zoler said he had a big wasp’s nest in fine condition. A wasp’s nest was perfect, especially in relationship to the Cubism we had on the wall, and it was brought in’ (A Life in Photography, Chapter 5, unpaginated).

As Helen Shannon proposes in her essay ‘African Art, 1914: The Root of Modern Art,’ to which this entry is indebted, the photograph offered here functions as a kind of artistic manifesto. Two Picasso drawings—Still Life: Bottle and Glass on Table (1912), and Violin (circa 1912)—flank a Kota reliquary figure, whose shapes are echoed in the drawings and the organic forms of the brass bowl and wasps’ nest. Stieglitz had been among the first in America to promote Picasso’s work, and in 1914, he had mounted a ground-breaking exhibition of African sculpture, an innovation outside of ethnography circles. As Shannon writes, this meshing of cultures, different decades, and the natural world calls into question the traditional distinctions between Western and ‘primitive’ societies, and between high and low art (Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries, pp. 178-9).

The photograph offered by Sotheby’s was acquired directly from Stieglitz. Apparently only five other prints of this image are known: at the National Gallery of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and one formerly in the Gilman Paper Company Collection, sold by Sotheby’s in 2006.

UPDATE: While I had first written that the present location of the featured Kota was unknown, Patrik Fröhlich kindly informed me that Stieglitz’s Kota is at the Fisk University in Nashville. His wife Georgia O’Keeffe donated his collection (including three other African objects) to them in 1949 (info).

UPDATE2: Yaëlle Biro informed me that this Kota in fact is co-owned by Crystal Bridges in Bentonville, Arkansas – read more about it here (where you can also see Stieglitz other African art).

UPDATE3: now, we only still need to try to locate that wasp’s nest 🙂

In February 1916, Stieglitz used another Kota reliquary figure to illustrate the cover of the 12th issue of his 291 magazine (named after his gallery). This example was rediscovered in a New England estate in 1981 and is now in the Dapper Museum in Paris.