FEATURE
On June 7, during the 2018 annual Cultures
I had the pleasure of presenting my new publication
Heaven and Earth (fi g. 1) at an event organized
by its publisher, Mercatorfonds, and hosted by
Peinture Fraîche bookstore. Luluwa art is well
represented in North American and especially
European museums, and it has long been cherished
alike. Surprisingly, though the text of my new
book is essentially a translated summary of my
PhD. dissertation that was written in Dutch
more than twenty years ago, the publication
100
Between Heaven and Earth
Luluwa Sculpture of the Democratic
art fair in the Sablon district of Brussels,
Luluwa: Central African Art between
by African art scholars and enthusiasts
FIG. 1 (above):
Cover of Luluwa: Central
African Art between
Heaven and Earth by
Constantine Petridis.
Published by Mercatorfonds,
Brussels, in 2018.
Republic of the Congo
FIG. 2 (left): Half fi gure.
Possibly Luluwa or Luntu,
Democratic Republic of the
Congo.
Wood. H: 28.9 cm.
Ex Paul Timmermans; Merton
Simpson Gallery, New York; Donald
Morris Gallery, New York/Michigan;
Donald Stern; James Hogan; Donald
Morris Gallery, New York/Michigan.
Private collection, USA.
Photo courtesy Donald Morris
Gallery, New York and Michigan, ©
Dirk Bakker.
Because this sculpture was the
subject of a painting by the late
artist and collector Jean Willy
Mestach, it is possible that he also
once owned it.
By Constantine Petridis
nevertheless can make the claim of being the
fi rst monograph to be published on the subject.
For a variety of reasons, two earlier attempts to
write more extensively on the topic by Albert
Maesen and Paul Timmermans, respectively,
never materialized. The political and economic
instability of the Congo over the past two decades
has contributed to the lack of any serious
fi eldwork projects more recently, and, regrettably,
this ongoing unrest continues to affect the
country to this day. Most likely this will prevent
further fi eld research from happening any time
in the near future.
Despite my brief sojourns in Luluwaland in
south-central Democratic Republic of the Congo
as part of my doctoral research in 1994 and
1996, and some other in situ research before
and after those visits, most of our knowledge as
reviewed in my new book derives from library,
museum, and archival research conducted primarily
in European institutions, most notably
the Royal Museum for Central Africa
(RMCA) in Tervuren, the Ethnologisches
Museum in Berlin, and the Museum für
Völkerkunde in Hamburg. The various
published and unpublished accounts I
consulted included those written in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
by explorers and ethnologists such as Hermann
von Wissmann and Leo Frobenius. The handwritten
notebooks that the Belgian art historian
Albert Maesen compiled during his collecting
and research expedition for the RMCA from
1953 to 1955 were particularly valuable for my
investigations. Though I am aware of its shortcomings
and limitations, I trust that the scope
and size of my publication will signifi cantly expand
our understanding of the Luluwa corpus
in its cultural and historical setting. Whether