Paris
The recent African and Oceanic art sales in Paris and Brussels indicated that collectors are only interested in buying the best and rarest pieces, as works at the lower end of the market failed to ignite interest.
Sotheby’s took the lion’s share of the turnover on 3 December, making E5.2m against its E4m-E6m estimate, although the 112-object sale was only 61% sold by lot. The star piece was a Kònò Bamana mask from Mali which set a world record for a west African mask, flying over the E400,000 estimate and going to a European collector for E1.4m.
There was a broadening of the market at the top, with eight of the top 10 lots going to collectors whose primary interests were in fields other than African and Oceanic Art. “These people are looking for beautiful objects in any field,” said Jean Fritts, the department’s international director.
The second-highest earner was an abstract hook mask, which was one of 15 lots of New Guinea art from the John and Marcia Friede collection, which were being sold as collateral debt owed by the Friedes to Sotheby’s. The sale generated E1.3m, helping to shrink their debt to under $17m (from an initial $25m). A dance mask from the Kaipuri village of Indonesia’s Kurudu island was pre-empted by Musée du Quai Branly for E102,750 (est E100,000-E150,000). Pre-empting enables a French museum that is not bidding to buy a piece at the hammer price.
However, a Dogon figure from Mali’s Bandiagara plateau did not find a buyer (est E400,000-E600,000), despite the excitement over the reunification of the piece’s face and body in September 2008 when Alex Arthur, publisher of Tribal Arts magazine, noticed the profound similarity between the two parts, which had previously belonged to different collectors.
On 4 December, Christie’s generated E3.3m from two sales, selling 138 lots, 63% by volume. Its various-owners’ sale crept over the E1m low-estimate, making E1,062,463, while “African Art: Collection of an Amateur” made €2.2m (est E2–E3.6m).
Christie’s star was an ancestor figure from Cameroon. The work, which sold to a French gallery for the estimated E1m, is widely believed to be the king to the Bangwa Queen, formerly in the Helena Rubenstein collection, which Sotheby’s sold to the Musée Dapper in Paris for $3.4m in 1990.
At Hôtel Drouot on 2 December, the collections of Léon Fouks and Armand Charles were sold by Enchères Rive Gauche for E2.6m (est E1.7m-E2.4m). In Brussels on 9 December at Pierre Bergé & Associés in conjunction with Artcurial, 37 out of 45 lots from a private collection of African ivories sold for a total of E987,040 (est E620,000). The leading lot soared past its E70,000-E90,000 estimate to sell for E272,800. It was an item from the Democratic Republic of Congo, which would have been attached to a buffalo’s tail to ward off flies.