2018
MERCATORFONDS
PETRIDIS
LULUWA
MERCATORFONDS
LULUWA
By Elena Martínez-Jacquet
Living between the Lubudi and Kasai Rivers in south-central Democratic Republic of the Congo, the
Luluwa people are famous for their elaborately carved figure sculptures, masks and decorative arts.
Constantine Petridis, chair of the Department of the Arts of Africa and the Americas at the Art Institute
of Chicago, draws on first-hand accounts from the 1880s to the 1970s of explorers, missionaries,
colonial servants, anthropologists and art historians to situate Luluwa art in its original environment
of production and use. Through an analysis of published and unpublished sources as well as collection
objects and archival photographs, this monograph sheds new light on the historical context of one of
Central Africa’s most spectacular artistic legacies.
www.mercatorfonds.be
9 7 89 4 6 2 3 0 2 1 4 3
le prix
international
du livre
d’ART
TRIBAL
Un événement organisé par Tribal Art magazine
en partenariat avec Sotheby’s France
2018 FINALISTS
PILAT 2018
FRENCH CATEGORY
Edited by Michel Draguet with a
preface by Pierre Loos.
Published by Mercatorfonds.
33 x 22.5 cm, 424 pages,
fully illustrated in color.
79.75 euros.
ENGLISH CATEGORY
Edited by John Friede, Terence E.
Hays, and Christina Hellmich.
Published by Prestel.
22.9 x 33 cm, 666 pages,
fully illustrated in color.
120 dollars.
ENGLISH CATEGORY
By Constantine Petridis.
Published by Mercatorfonds.
29.7 x 24.5 cm, 240 pages,
299 color illustrations.
79.95 euros.
FRENCH CATEGORY
Edited by Yves Le Fur.
Published by Actes Sud and the Musée
du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac.
25 x 31.7 cm, 368 pages,
400 illustrations.
55 euros.
SPECIAL JURY PRIZE
Fabriquer le regard – Marchands, réseaux et objets
africains à l’aube du XXe siècle
By Yaëlle Biro
Published in French by Les Presses du Réel
17 x 24 cm, 408 pages
30 euros
Yaëlle Biro, who is a curator at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art in New York and has produced numerous
exhibitions including African Art, New York, and the
Avant-Garde (2012) and The Face of Dynasty: Royal
Crests from Western Cameroon (2017), has devoted
many years to researching how African art has been received in the West. Her
particular focus has been on the early twentieth century, a period of time that was so
seminal to the development of the aesthetic approach still widely applied to the arts
of this continent. This also was the subject of her 2010 doctoral dissertation. Using
the wealth of information provided by her research, often drawn from little-known
sources, this book examines the fundamental roles that dealers, artists, and art critics
played in determining how African artworks were viewed, valued, and circulated in
Europe and on the other side of the Atlantic.
A book on the origins of the African art market could not fail to garner the attention
of the PILAT jury, and the decision to award it an honorable mention was unanimous.
The release of the Savoy-Sarr report on the
controversial subject of the restitution of cultural
property from France, which occurred in the
midst of the gilets jaunes protests, set a mood that
could not have been less conducive for the annual
cocktail party held before Sotheby’s winter sale,
at which the winners of the Prix International
du Livre d’Art Tribal (PILAT, or the International
Tribal Art Book Prize) are announced. Nonetheless,
art enthusiasts came out in force on the
evening of December 10, 2018, previewing the
strength of the market that was confi rmed by the
sale results on December 12. The ambiance was
convivial when Charles-Wesley Hourdé and Nicolas
Rolland were named the winners of the award
for the best French-language book of 2018 for
their remarkable work Galerie Pigalle – Afrique,
Océanie, and Nick Tite of the Royal Academy
of Arts in London received the same honor for
the English-language book Oceania. These works
were selected by an international jury presided
over by Pierre Moos. The jury also gave an honorable
mention to Fabriquer le Regard by Yaëlle
Biro, and it praised all four of the fi nalists’ books,
which are listed below.
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