2 In her acclaimed 1933 The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein speculates about which of the early modernist artists fi rst became interested in African art. Although she was personally well acquainted with many of them, she offers no conclusive answer, speculating that it may have been Maillol, possibly Derain, or perhaps Matisse. However, two points about which she is unequivocal are that Matisse was the fi rst to have expressed infl uence from African art in his own practice and that he was the one who introduced Picasso to it “just after Picasso had fi nished painting Gertrude Stein’s portrait,” so perhaps in late 1906 or early 1907. She doesn’t go into detail about this encounter, but other sources say that it took place at her studio on Rue de Fleurus in Paris. Some recall that this was a Dan mask, but other, possibly more reliable, sources hold that it was a Vili fi gure. In any case, it was an object that Matisse had recently acquired, most likely from a dealer named Emile Heymann. By the account of French writer and artist Max Jacob, who was also present, Picasso refused to be parted from the sculpture during dinner that night, and then went back to his studio and commenced to change the course of world art. But that’s a story that has been related at length elsewhere. Less discussed is Emile Heymann. Little is remembered about him save that he may well have been the fi rst dealer in Paris to run a shop dedicated to non-Western curios, antiquities, and “weapons of savages.” It was called Au Vieux Rouet (At the Old Wheel) and was located at 87 rue de Rennes (the same street on which Charles Ratton would open a shop around 1920 at number 76). Heymann was known by the exotic sobriquets “le père Sauvage” and the somewhat less fl attering “le negrier de la rue de Rennes.” He dealt in, among other things, African art brought home by colonials, military personnel, and seamen, but offered them as curiosities rather than as art. Perhaps because of this, his name is largely forgotten, while those of dealers who were his contemporaries or who closely followed him—Joseph Brummer, Paul Guillaume, William O. Oldman (see the portfolio section of this issue), Charles Ratton, Arthur Speyer, The J. F. G. Umlauff Company, W. D. Webster, and Charles Vignier, among others—are legendary. Of the above, the Paris-based dealers Guillaume, Brummer, and Ratton were particularly tireless in their efforts to have African and Oceanic art recognized as art. To this end, they promoted these works through a great many exhibitions and often in the context of modernism, where clear connections were drawn. Guillaume’s involvement with the 1914 Statuary in Wood by African Savages: The Root of Modern Art at Alfred Stieglitz’s “291” gallery in New York is well remembered, to cite just one example. Brummer’s contributions to Vignier’s multicultural art exhibition at Paris’ Galerie Levesque in 1913 and to Robert J. Coady’s Washington Square Gallery from 1914 onward are somewhat less so, though these also were seminal events. In the end, their efforts, combined with those of countless other curators, dealers, scholars, and collectors, proved successful, and today, a century later, the traditional arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas are an essential part of almost every major museum collection in the Western World (or the subject of creative exhibition initiatives, as is the case in Philadelphia, which is discussed in these pages). Their efforts also lie at the root of what is now the premier art fair for this fi eld, Parcours des Mondes, which will be held in Paris September 6–11, bringing some eighty international dealers together, each presenting fi ne material that is resolutely art. I’ll be there for it. I hope you will be too. Jonathan Fogel EDITORIAL Our cover shows an unusually large Maori greenstone hei tiki from New Zealand, one of the few objects kept by Dorothy Oldman after the death of her husband, noted collector and dealer William Oldman. William Oldman archive. Courtesy of Robert Hales.
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