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THE BISMARCK ARCHIPELAGO lations with dealers in Amsterdam and The Hague. He was thought to be a bit eccentric in his single-mindedness because at the time, during the interwar years, nobody was seriously interested in these arts except artists and a few collectors. He also spent a great deal of time at the Basel museum studying the Oceanic collection. The time he spent there and in the company of scholars such as Paul Wirz allowed him to gain a true connoisseur’s insight. Brignoni was also an adept trader, and with his keen eye could find things that turned a profit. At times, his artifact dealings supplanted the earnings from the sales of his own artworks, and the turnover of pieces allowed him to constantly 117 refine and upgrade his collection. Brignoni rebutted the claim that he was influenced as an artist by Oceanic art. He never created sculptures because the very act of collecting them gave him the feeling of personal artistic creation, of “activating my sense of plasticism. I got the same satisfaction from a collected piece as I would have if I made it myself. After I gave the collection away, I started making sculptures. I did it to fulfill my aesthetic sense.”14 Like Nolde, he had a collecting addiction to which he was driven by an almost physical necessity. He likened it to eating and drinking, and to making love. For him, collecting was “an excitement about an object which can drive a man to insomnia, because he lies awake thinking about it. And not until it is bought can he relax, and then it starts all over again with a different object.”15 Brignoni had distinct views on the relationship between the tribal artist and the audience—both indigenous and foreign. While these are dated and Eurocentric, they are worth considering in the context of his own beliefs. “The tribal artist has the duty to sculpt for the community. He works to serve his religion. He does not produce art for art’s sake, and he does not have any feeling for elaborate art. He makes his sculptures following the dictates of his sculpting tradition. We were the ones who saw the beauty of these things. They don’t see it. We see artistic perfection. We are not interested in an object because it represents a certain spirit. I have it because it’s a beautiful sculpture, FIG. 15 (left): Dance mask. Tatanua, New Ireland. Wood, pigment, fiber, cloth, shell. H: 48 cm. Ex Roberto Matta. Private collection. Photo: © Hughes Dubois. FIG. 17 (right): Serge Brignoni, Paris, 1936. © 2013 Città di Lugano, Museo delle Culture. FIG. 16 (above): Malangan figure. New Ireland. Wood, pigment, fiber, shell. H: 110 cm. Ex Heiland Collection; Klaus Clausmeyer, Cologne. Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, Cologne, no. 48257.


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