87 FIG. 9 (right): Male fi gure. Baule, Côte d’Ivoire. Late 19th–early 20th century. Ex Paul Guillaume; Leon Bachelier. Private collection. © Philippe Fuzeau. FIG. 10 (above): Han Coray, c. 1920. Photographic print. © Pieter Coray Collection. GALERIE DADA Dada Afrika has its roots in the first Dada exhibition, which was held at Han Coray’s gallery in Zurich in 1917 under the title Dada. Cubistes. Art Nègre. A first in Switzerland, the event featured works of African art shown side by side with the creations of the European avant-garde, inviting reflection on the relationships in art that transcend the cultural origins of the individual pieces (fig. 7). Han Coray (sometimes spelled Corray, 1880–1974), a progressive Swiss educator with a passion for African art, ran a gallery in 1916 and 1917. He was close with the Dada artists and made his space available to the movement. Galerie Coray thus became the center of Dadaist activity after the Cabaret Voltaire closed, and Coray himself became known as one of the main players in “the birth of Dada” (fig. 10). This phase was marked by a shifting of the artists’ interest from performance soirées to the organization of exhibitions and debates about art. Events of this kind were most notably supported by Tristan Tzara, who served as spokesman for the international movement, and by Paul Guillaume, who lent African pieces to the first exhibition in 1917 (fig. 9). Dada thus became a catalyst for the African art market and contributed to the birth and development of private collections of African art. These collectors included Tzara, the author of Poèmes Nègres, as well as that of Coray, who was one of the major Swiss collectors of his time and from whom the Rietberg Museum still has some 250 unique pieces (fig. 11). The reciprocal influences that the avant-garde and tribal art markets had on one another is also palpable in the field of photography, as is demonstrated by Man Ray. He settled in Paris in 1921 and produced a singular corpus of works, many of which featured African art objects that Paul Guillaume had lent him. These photographs have now achieved the status of icons in art history. In addition to photography, Man Ray also created “ready-mades” using found objects. The Fisherman’s Idol, illustrated in figure 12, for example, was made using floating objects. Its forms are reminiscent of those of Easter Island statues, as seen in figure 13.
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