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lecting, he’s acquired a fair number of pieces, largely from West Africa, that challenged his aesthetic with their intricacy. Few of them stayed in the collection. What he finds most satisfying is abstraction with a rigorous refinement of line. An outstanding and ancient Grassfields elephant mask in his dining room epitomizes this, as does a stunning eyeless Lega mask that he donated to the Fowler. Such refined sculptures have absolutely no room for error. As he observes, “Some people think it’s easy to create a masterpiece of simple form. It’s not. But when you have it, you know it.” Almost as interesting as the objects themselves is the art market they come from and the various personalities involved in it. In half a century of collecting, Jay has seen the market change from what seemed to be an inexhaustible stream of accessible material in the sixties and seventies to the situation today, where great pieces demand such high prices that it takes serious commitment to acquire them. To him, that takes a lot of the fun out of it. Fifteen hundred dollars wasn’t exactly chump change when he bought his Sakimatwematwe in the sixties, but it’s a far cry from the two million plus that another example sold for at Sotheby’s a few years ago. He’s bought material from just about every dealer you’ve heard of and a number you probably haven’t, and his stories about his experiences with them range from enviable to funny to downright shocking. The book he’s presently writing on that subject promises to raise some eyebrows. More than just being a collector, Jay has long realized that the arts need to be supported. He and his wife, Deborah, provided part of the funding that built the Fowler Museum’s current building, and two years ago they endowed a curatorial position there for African art. In addition to the Lega donation to the Fowler, another major collection of his, some 140,000 examples of American lithography, is being donated to the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Not everything is so serious minded. As you get to know Jay, you find that there’s a deep streak of humor and whimsy behind his staid façade. Many of his African objects have a bit of a nod and a wink about them, but it’s most apparent in his collection of owls. Some years ago he realized that the binary symbols 010 form an abstraction of an owl’s eyes and beak. Since then, he’s acquired scores of owl figures, ranging from masterpieces of pre-Columbian sculpture to outrageously tacky things that friends have bought for him for a dollar. Though it may baffle many a somber collector, he far prefers the latter. FIG. 17: Elephant crest. Grasslands, Cameroon. Wood. L: 67 cm. Photo: Scott McCue. FIG. 18: Dance crest, tsesah. Batcham, Grasslands, Cameroon. Wood. H: 72 cm. Photo: Scott McCue.


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