FEATURE
114
FIG. 58 (left):
Reliquary guardian fi gure,
éyéma-o-byéri.
Okak-Fang; Equatorial
Guinea or Gabon. Before
1931.
Wood, brass. H: 70 cm.
Georges de Miré, Paris; Étude Bellier,
Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 15 December
1931, lot 46; Helena Rubinstein,
Paris/New York; Jacob Epstein,
London (acquired after 1931); Carlo
Monzino, Lugano-Castagnola,
Switzerland.
Fondation Dapper, Paris, inv. 3132.
FIG. 59 (below): Page from
the 1931 de Miré catalog
showing fi gure 58.
Image courtesy of the author.
FIG. 60 (below): Page from
the 1931 de Miré catalog
showing fi gure 61.
Image courtesy of the author.
FIG. 61 (far right):
Cup. Kuba; Kasai region, DR Congo.
Before 1931.
Wood. H: 16 cm.
Georges de Miré, Paris; Étude Bellier, Hôtel Drouot,
Paris, 15 December 1931, lot 78; Musée de l’Homme,
Paris.
Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris,
inv. 71.1931.22.37.
Photo © Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac;
dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Claude Germain.
as a “strange divinity”; the famous
Fang standing fi gure (lot
46, FIG. 58), was described as
being “justly considered one
of the masterpieces of the Art
of Black Africa.”39
All three catalogs featured
unusually abundant photographic
illustrations. The May
7 and Breton-Éluard sales presented
small photographs of
individual objects in a manner
similar to the matter-of-fact
mode Flagel and Portier had
selected for the Rupalley catalog,
but the de Miré catalog
was more innovative. Rather than presenting
all the lots in either frontal view or profi le view
with fl at, even lighting, as had been the norm in
previous auction photography, this publication
showed many objects in three-quarter view, lit
more expressively. Key lots were given full-page
illustrations, and on the pages showing multiple
objects, they were arranged in single-photograph
still lifes, rather than presented as individual
tiles or cutouts in a collage. The feel of the
publication, as a result, was closer to a catalog
for an exhibition than one for a sale, a line that
Ratton and Carré blurred further by commissioning
a preface from Georges Henri Rivière,
who, in his capacity as assistant director of the
Musée d’Ethnographie, expressed his “envy that
the Trocadéro is not yet rich enough to buy this
magnifi cent collection in its entirety.”40