PORTFOLIO 144 The Gazes of Masks A Chronicle of Pierre Amrouche’s Twenty Years of Travel through Gabon By Elena Martínez-Jacquet Regards de masques. September 2015. Éditions Présence Africaine/ Amrouche Expertises et Services. Text and photos by Pierre Amrouche, preface by Louis Perrois. ISBN: 978-2-9529480-9-8 As I opened the door to Africa in September of 1965, I did not realize that I was entering my life, and that it would be devoted to African art. Pierre Amrouche A man of many talents, Pierre Amrouche is an expert in the fi eld of African art and his name is associated with many historic auctions, including those of the Hubert Goldet and René Gaffet Collections in 2001, and that of the Claude and Pierre Vérité Collection in 2006. Since 2011, he has been active as a consultant for Christie’s. Amrouche is also a photographer and an author. He has not restricted himself exclusively to the fi eld of tribal art and has pursued these three facets of his life largely independent of one another. He has had three collections of poems published by Editions Présence Africaine and an exhibition of his photographs, titled Jours Tranquilles au Bénin, was held in 2011. When he applies the range of his talents to a unique project in the tribal art realm, such as his 2013 work on the Bernard and Bertrand Bottet Collection, the results are particularly special. One such project is Amrouche’s latest publishing venture, on press as we prepare this issue of the magazine. It is an effort that is particularly personal in nature. Titled Regards de Masques (The Gazes of Masks) and some 200 pages long, the author provides an account in words and images of his many trips to Gabon between 1976 and 1993, which he often took in the company of friends such as Jean-Louis Roiseux, Laurent Coulais, Réginald Groux, and Jean-Michel Gueneau. These were undertaken on behalf of documentary movie productions, the Gabonese government, or simply for his own personal pleasure. Above and beyond any “offi cial” reasons for his travels, there was another deeper and more intimate underlying one, which led him to keep journals. Amrouche had an unquenchable thirst for encounters and discoveries. These included art objects to be sure, but his greatest interest was in the men and women who had created the coveted masks and fi gures, and he pays homage to them through the many in-situ photographs that appear in this book, a few of which we offer examples of here. Amrouche’s fl uid yet concise writing style keeps the anecdotes fl owing at a pleasing rhythm throughout the book. These cover many subjects: long hours of trekking, mechanical failures, initiations he witnessed in Sango territory, descriptions of pasta feasts with Laughing Cow brand cheese and tomato sauce, and both the objects he was able to get and the ones that got away. Regards de Masques is an account of the joys and tribulations of sixteen years of Amrouche’s adventures in the bush in quest of other ways of life that might enrich his own. It has characteristics of a novel in the eighteenth-century literary tradition, but it is also the story of a very atypical traveler, who, through his humanistic approach founded on respect for others, offers his readers considerable insight into the arts and traditions of Gabon. FIG. 1 (left): Pierre Amrouche with Martin Moulengui at Mougamou. FIG. 2 (below): An incident while traveling through Étéké. FIG. 3 (right): In the Fang region, 1983. All images © Amrouche Expertises et Services, photos: Pierre Amrouche.
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