African Abstractions The Collection of Jay T. Last By Jonathan Fogel TRIBAL people You may or may not have heard of Jay Last, but chances are you have the legacy of his inventive mind in your pocket. His work with Fairchild Semiconductor, the earliest tech company in what is now Silicon Valley, resulted in the first practical integrated circuit chip, which in turn resulted in … well … the electronic world we live in today. Another thing you may not know about Jay is that he’s been an avid art collector for more than fifty years, a span of time that even he finds more than a little shocking. In the course of those decades, he formed what is unquestionably the world’s most comprehensive collection of Lega art, which is now held by the Fowler Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles. His interest in African art goes far beyond Lega, however, and his Southern California home is an absolute treasure trove of remarkable sculptures from across the continent. FIG. 1: Jay Last holding his first purchase. Photo: Scott McCue, 2013. FIG. 2: Multiheaded bust. Lega, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Ivory. H: 14.1 cm. Ex Charles Ratton, Paris; Merton Simpson Gallery, New York. Image courtesy of the Fowler Museum at UCLA. Photo: Don Cole, 2001. FIG. 3 (right): Mask. Lega, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Early 20th century. Wood, paint. H: 26.4 cm. Fowler Museum at UCLA X2007.21.63; Gift of Jay T. Last. Ex private collection, Italy; Marc Leo Felix, Belgium. Image courtesy of the Fowler Museum at UCLA. Photo: Don Cole, 2001. Jay’s road to African art was a convoluted one. He grew up in Western Pennsylvania in, as he puts it, “one of these steel mill/coal towns that when you’re about twelve you start wondering ‘how am I ever going to get out of here?’” Part of this wondering involved a map of Africa that hung on his bedroom wall. The getting out part involved a doctorate in physics from MIT and becoming one of the group of eight scientists who founded Fairchild in 1957. It also involved extensive travels in Africa in the following years. As a graduate student at MIT in the mid fifties, Jay took a trip to New York for a meeting of the American Physical Society. While there, he visited the Museum of Modern Art and for the first time discovered art. Seeing abstract modernism was a life-changing moment and he needed to know more about it. Art books were not as extensively published then as they are now, but he got what he could find. One of these was Elisofon and Fagg’s Sculpture of Africa, and the section on the Lega leapt out at him. “It just blew me away. I’d never dreamed of there being things like that around.” A multiheaded ivory bust
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