2 Editorial Without a doubt, the most common question I’m asked when I have the pleasure of meeting a reader of this magazine is, “When will you run an article on pick your subject?” My answer is always the same. We’re getting to it. The world is a big place and we address artistic traditions that span millennia and myriad peoples from every inhabited continent. In almost two decades of publishing, we’ve covered a staggering array of art forms from an all-but-countless number of cultures, but it still feels like we’ve only just scratched the surface. This is one of the things that is so interesting about what we loosely call “tribal art.” Its endless variety of forms deriving from deep-set human inspiration and creativity makes this field entirely different from Dutch paintings or French porcelain. This depth means that there is always more to discover and always new areas to research, although now that we’re well into the twenty-first century, we’d like to think that we’ve got at least most of the basics of this nailed down. Apparently we’d be incorrect if we did. Vuvi masks, an example of which appears on the cover of this issue, are not particularly uncommon on the art market. They’re not in every auction, but they show up from time to time, usually to no particular acclaim. Despite their distinguished Gabonese provenance and clean-lined minimalist forms, they frequently don’t fetch particularly high prices, so much so that they are sometimes referred to—in a needless denigration—as “poor man’s Fang.” When Charlotte Grand-Dufay’s article hit my desk, it came as quite a surprise to me to realize that, although a few anthropological works address the culture itself (which is sometimes called Pove), this is an entire artistic form that has not previously been addressed in art historical scholarship. Indeed, Western scholars have identified this group and their artwork as separate from their Tsogo neighbors only relatively recently. For such a familiar art form to remain unaddressed for so long speaks eloquently to the amount of work that remains to be done in this field, but we are pleased to help close at least this particular gap by presenting Grand-Dufay’s fine monograph in the following pages. Another documentation issue that is always relevant to this field is the matter of the age of the artworks it embraces. For lack of better information, a great many objects, particularly wooden sculptures from various parts of the globe, are frequently given the appellation of “nineteenth or early twentieth century,” based on a reasonable guess at the piece’s age at the time of a reasonably projected collection date. Given the pervasive lack of documentation for so many objects, this is probably as good a guess as any, but sometimes, when good evidence actually is present, the results can be surprising. The Nuu-chah-nulth halibut club that is the subject of our Object History section in this issue boasts impressive provenance that takes it back to Cook’s third voyage and a collection date of 1778, and it was likely an old piece even then. Its cultural attribution was lost for quite some time, and if its Cook provenance had also been forgotten, it might today be dated quite differently. Conversely, most of the material from the Vanuatu Field Collection presently on display at the National Gallery of Australia hails only from the 1970s, though the pieces were created within a tradition that has been producing such works since time immemorial. The Katsina figures that we illustrate from the Autry National Center in Los Angeles are from the early twentieth century but are part of an ancient indigenous tradition that is still very much alive. As we go to press, the buzz in the room is all about the fact that some 300 works of pre-Columbian art that have long formed the collection of the Museu Barbier-Mueller d’Art Precolombí in Barcelona will be offered at auction at Sotheby’s in Paris next month. There’s a lot to this story, which you can read about in a special article in this issue. But more than the closure—or, more accurately, transformation—of the museum or even the specific objects in the collection, what’s being widely discussed is that this promises to be a “game-changing” event. This would put it in league with sales such as the 1966 Parke-Bernet sale of the Helena Rubinstein Collection, which didn’t so much break records as establish them, while at the same time setting the stage for an expanding market for tribal art in the US. Another of these was the Hubert Goldet sale held in Paris by de Ricqlès in 2001, which stirred up a frenzy of bidding and kicked at least the high end of African art up to another level. The markets for African and pre-Columbian art are very different animals, however, and have markedly different considerations. Pre- Columbian art is scarce and truly top-quality pieces are even scarcer. On the relatively rare occasions when they appear, masterpieces of pre-Columbian art already fetch strong prices, comparable to those achieved by the best examples of African art. A pre-Columbian piece first broke one million dollars at public sale almost ten years ago with the sale of a Maya jade celt at Christie’s. More recently, a controversial Maya stucco sculpture of a warrior made 2.9 million euros ($4.1 million) at auction through Binoche and Giquello in Paris. The Barbier-Mueller Collection has no shortage of truly remarkable pieces, but the relative paucity of them elsewhere may be a strong factor in how much future market influence such a sale can have. There’s a palpable excitement in the art market when a major collection comes up for auction. That is certainly the case in spades with the Barbier-Mueller material. Will this proposed auction fetch strong prices? No one is likely to predict otherwise. Will it be a barometer for the current state of that particular facet of the art market? Absolutely. A game changer? Can’t wait to find out. We’d like to welcome our new chief editor for Europe, Elena Martínez-Jacquet, who has long been our special issues manager. At the same time, we must bid a reluctant farewell to our wonderful publisher, Françoise Barrier, who has worked miracles over the years in developing this publication into what it presently is. She will be sorely missed and we wish her all the best in her future endeavors. Jonathan Fogel Our cover shows a ritual mask from the Vuvi people of Gabon. Wood, pigment, kaolin. H: 42.5 cm. The Bridgeman Art Library, Detroit Institute of Arts, inv. 81.913. Donated by Mr. and Mrs. Max J. Pincus. Photo © Bridgeman/Detroit Institute of Arts.
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