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30 p.: ill. Berieben, bestoßen, vergilbt, sonst guter Zustand / Rubbed, scuffed, yellowed, otherwise in good condition. - Our first piece of African tribal sculpture was a chance purchase. I had accompanied an art historian friend of mine on his visit to the leading dealer in primitive art in New York and was attracted by the charm of a Bambara antelope carrying her young on her back. Our son had just been born, and the carving seemed a fitting present for my wife, who shared my delight in this acquisition. Over time there followed more visits to the same store (a veri- rabie treasure trove), to the shops of other dealers, to museums, private collections, auctions and libraries, and a growing excitement about the scope and impact of this art form. We had been collecting 20th century sculpture for some time and found ourselves in sort of a dead end street. The most modern manifestations of sculptural techniquewelding, nuts and bolts, assemblies, and what notcarried no meaning for us. And while eminent art critics have suggested that these attempts to satisfy the public clamor for the radically new represent the victory of mind over junk, as far as we were concerned this contest did not even end in a draw. We found more refreshing creations which, at least in their classical stage, were not market oriented. Essentially, and with certain exceptions, African tribal art is religious. These objects are religious not because of the choice of a subject matter, but in the wider sense that they point beyond themselves to the realms of ultimate concern, the great, dimly conceived but freely acknowledged forces of the universe on which man depends in passing critical thresholds like birth, reaching maturity, or death, and throughout his life as an integral member of the social order. Religious content in this wider sense may also well be the reason why emotionally we prefer African tribal sculpture to other forms of primitive art which we admire without wanting them for permanent companions. The common denominator in all African art is the attempt io strengthen life giving forces, the affirmation of creation and order, the restraint of sickness, death and destruction. And then there is its marvelous scope, varying from the charming, lender, even playful to the dynamic and awe-inspiring, and from the nearly representational (if never of the variety that went out with the advent of photography) to the almost totally abstract. The question has been raised whether the African carvers should be considered artists or just craftsmen, whether one can really talk about the art of peoples whose language does not even contain a word for beautiful. But the question merely betrays the fragmentation of our concepts. A generation that asks many existential questions but finds few essential answers can readily sense the wholeness in the approach of the primitive artist even though paradise lost cannot be recovered. There is neither reason to maintain the neat compartmentalization of reality into what is beautiful, good or true nor cause to insist on being in the forefront of the cult of the meaningless. Over the years our collection has grown, and each new accession carried with it the travails and joys of searching and finding. As our financial resources were not unlimited, there was little chance to give in to the temptation of satisfying what is at least part of every collec- lor's acquisitiveness, let us call it the stamp collecting syndrome: an object is wanted not so much because it is truly desirable, but because it is rare. The siren song of the promotional dealer "only 10 or 20 or 30 of this type are known to exist" (the numbers are seldom correct). Sprache: Englisch Gewicht in Gramm: 550.
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