93 amples. The Biafran War was preventing European dealers from accessing the region at the time, but Malian traders such as Traoré, who had been active since the 1950s, had all but exhausted their local resources and were now active in the Cameroon/Nigeria border region. On two subsequent occasions, February and July of 1973, he returned with additional works and provided insights into their significance. At the time of their final encounter in the summer of 1973, Traoré relayed that he was transferring to Leloup what had been the final remaining works from Mbembe communities east of the town of Abakaliki in the Anambra province. The information he provided was published in the gallery exhibition catalog, which remained the sole monograph devoted to this tradition until 2013 (LaGamma 2013). Leloup’s opening text underscores the fact that this corpus embodied an entirely fresh aesthetic that represented a powerful contrast with established preferences: For the last twenty years that I have devoted to l’art nègre, I’ve seen the interest and taste of collectors evolve. In this art that was called “savage” a preference for forms already defined by a classic perfection developed: Fang statues, Baule masks, Benin bronzes. The criteria of quality were the fineness of the sculpture, harmony of the volumes, brilliance of the patinas, to sum up, the same as those used since the Renaissance to judge works of art (Kamer 1974: 1).2 FIG. 4: Seated figure. Mbembe, Ewayon River region, Cross River Province, Nigeria. 17th–18th century. Wood (Afzelia). H: 64.5 cm. Provenance: O. Traoré, Lomé, Togo; Hélène Kamer, Paris, 1973– 1974; purchased by the Musée National des Arts Africains et Océaniens, Paris, in 1974; transferred to the Musée du Quai Branly and displayed in the Pavillon des Sessions, Musée du Louvre, 2000. Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, inv. 73.1974.1.1. Photo: Hughes Dubois; Musée du Quai Branly/Scala/Art Resource, NY. Shortly before the opening of the exhibition at Leloup’s gallery on Quai Malaquais, one of the most sublime of these works was acquired by Pierre Meauzé for the Musée des Arts Africains et Océaniens in Paris (fig. 4). The limbs of that seated figure are long and attenuated with arms extended forward and cupped hands resting on either knee. The human body is so pared down to its underlying structure that it is difficult to even assign it a gender. Surface erosion to the face has swept away most of its original features. All that survives of the visage are traces of horizontal depressions for the eyes and mouth as well as the slight vertical ridge of the nose and oval ears that project at either side of the head. Throughout, the exposed grain of the wood is emphatically horizontal, evocative of exposed layers of geological strata. In its report for the minister of cultural affairs at the time of its acquisition, the Louvre’s laboratory analyzed the wood and identified it as Afzelia africana, known in English as African mahogany, or doussie, and locally in Nigeria as apia. Now in the collection of the Musée du Quai Branly, that work has been a centerpiece of the Louvre’s Pavillon des Sessions since its opening. The present exhibition was inspired by research relating to the acquisition in 2010 of another example, also from Leloup’s 1974 show, by the Metropolitan Museum of Art through a private sale by Christie’s (fig. 12). It had previously been in a private collection in Japan.
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