BOOKS 152 FIGS. 6A, B, and C: Selection of spreads from the winner of the French language category, pp. 66–67, 161, 163, and 100–101. Reproduced with the kind permission of Galerie Schoffel Valluet. FIGS. 7, 8, and 9: Cover and work on printing. art became fashionable, much less information is available about the individuals who collected these “fetishes.” Their names are often forgotten or may be remembered for entirely different reasons. Their motivations differed significantly from those of art collectors and were a reflection of the currents of thought that were prevalent at the time they lived. Doctors searched for the “missing link” in the history of man as Darwin was developing his theory of evolution, colonials were pressed into service to make contributions to embellish the display cases of the natural history museums that were flourishing everywhere in France, military personnel sought material that might justify colonial intervention and the imposition of Western culture. … Finally, the emergence of an art market for “art nègre” eventually fueled their efforts. TAM: Let’s look at the book’s content. How did you compile this abundant archival documentation, and how does it relate to the many photographs of the artworks that are presented alongside it? BG: The material in the book is the fruit of research that far predates this project, as I have been interested in Côte d’Ivoire for nearly thirty-five years. Notwithstanding this, I have recently made some very interesting discoveries, both in libraries and on the Internet. Thanks to my training as an engineer and my years with IBM, I have been using the latter Bertrand Goy Côte d’Ivoire: Premiers regards sur la sculpture 1850–1935 Tribal Art Magazine: The book you authored was published by Galerie Schoffel Valluet in Paris and was specially commissioned. Can you tell us how this came about? Bertrand Goy: This project originated more than five years ago and was conceived of by Judith Schoffel and Christophe de Fabry, who also published the book, in order to mark their entry into the tribal art world in a serious way. It also reflects their desire to memorialize more than fifty years of family history in tribal art through Christine Valluet and Alain Schoffel, Judith’s parents, who are well-known gallery owners and collectors. Côte d’Ivoire seemed like a logical choice of subject to Judith, given her childhood memories. Knowing the interest I have in that country’s sculpture, and since I have spent a great deal of time there, she asked me to work with her on this project. I am grateful to her for putting her trust in me and for accepting my proposal to associate history with art history in an approach that chronologically follows the first encounter of this part of the Gulf of Guinea through the eyes of the first Westerners who showed curiosity about its culture. From my perspective, this approach had dual advantages. First, through research carried out in a number of archives, it allowed a window into the culture as it was before it was subject to external influences and before it was altered by the emergence of the art market. Second, while a great deal is known about the noted collectors who were active in the early twentieth century when this
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