By Carter B. Horsley

The Spring 2008 auction of African, Oceanic and Pre-Columbian Art is highlighted by several excellent works including a male ancestor figure from Indonesia, a Baga serpent, and a Songye Community power figure.

Lot 32 is a very good male ancestor figure holding a vessel and wearing an elaborate crown with three crests from Nias, Republic of Indonesia. It is 26 7/8 inches high and is property from the estateof Ralph and Patricia Altman. Born in Mannheim, Germany, Ralph C. Altman (1909-1967) emigrated to the United States in 1937. In 1946 he opened Altman Antiques, a gallery for "primitive art" in Los Angeles. In 1956, he joined the University of California as a lecturer, and in 1963 was appointed the Founding Director of the Museum and Laboratories of Ethnic Arts and Technology, later to become the Fowler Museum at UCLA. He was instrumental in acquiring the Sir Henry Wellcome Collection, which became the foundation of the Fowler's extraordinary growth.

The lot has an estimate of $40,000 to $60,000. It sold for $157,000 including the buyer's premium as do all results mentioned in this article.

The auction was quite successful with a sale total of $10,165,325, well above the pre-sale high estimate of $6.7 million. Jean Fritts, director of African and Oceanic Art, said after the auction that "we saw significant crossover interest from collectors of Impressionist and Modern and Contemporary Art who entered the field at the very highest levels of qualty, seeking to collect great masterpieces."

Lot 132 is a "superb" frog carved from warthog tusk from Lega, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is 3 1/2 inches long and has an estimate of $25,000 to $35,000. The catalogue entry notes that another example is in the Musée Royal de L'Afrique Centrale in Tervuren and that the work is illustratedin "The Tribal Arts of Africa," by Jean-Baptiste Bacquart and "Belgium Collects African Art" by Dick Beaulieux. It failed to sell.

Antelope headdresses are among the most popular works of African Art and Lot 106 is an unusually abstract design of one from Bamama, Mali. It is described in the catalogue as "superb" and described as sitting upon an aardvark and having been in the collections of Everett Rassiga and Stephen and Regina Humanitzki of New York and Pace Primitive and of having been exhibited at the Museum of African Art in New York in 1995. It is 15 inches high and has an estimate of $25,000 to $35,000. It sold for $61,000.

Many knives, especially from Konda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, are spectacular sculptures. Lot 72 is a pair of such knives, one 19 1/4 and the other 23 inches long, the smaller in the form of a bird and the larger in the form of two birds facing each other. The lot has a very modest estimate of $4,000 to $6,000. The lot sold for $13,750.

Lot 7 is a superb hunting charm from the Karawarari River, Papua, New Guinea. Only 7 inches high, it was once it the collection of Joop M. Felius of Deltft. It has an estimate of $7,000 to $10,000. It sold for $12,500.

Lot 58 is described by the catalogue as a "magnificent and highly important Baga Serpent" from the Republic of Guinea. It is 65 1/2 inches high and has an estimate of $1,500,000 to $2,000,000. It sold for $3,289,000.

The catalogue description is "bansonyi/a-Mantsho-na-Tshol, of vertical dynamically undulating form, the serpent rising from a cylindrical base, with bulbous convex abdomen below the concave, elegantly tapered neck surmounted by a protruding crescent lotos-shaped head, decorated with triangular design in relief; exceptionally fine aged patina with red, white and dark brown pigments."

The work was collected insitu by Hélène and Henri Kamer, 1957, who had a gallery in New York and was acquired from them by Pierre Matisse who exhibited it in his gallery where it was acquired by the present owner in 1967. It was subsequently exhibited at the National Museum of African Art in 19987-8, the Museum for African Art in New York in 1994-5, and the Metropoitan Museum of Art in 2002-3.

The catalogue entry notes that this serpent was one of eight similar figures collected on their only field trip to Guinea in 1957 and that several from this group are now in the collection of the Musée du Louvre, Pavillon des Sessions (formerly the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Menil Foundation in Houston.

The Baga live along African's Atlantic Coast in what is today the Republic of Guinea and the catalogue mentions that "Oral traditions recall how the ancestors of the Baga and of peoples of related cultural heritage – Pukur, Bulunits, Landuma, and Nalu – were driven out of their homeland in the highlands of the mountainous Fouta Djallon region in the interior of Guinea. According to this tradition, the Baga were expelled by the Islamic Fulbe people because of their refusal to convert to Islam, and also because their farming lifestyle was incompatible with the destructive cattle-herding practices of the intruders. Written history and archaeology confirm the historic validity of these accounts and place the beginning of the Baga Diaspora sometime before the fifteenth century." They brought along their sacred masks included a serpent spirit headdress called a-Mantsho-na-Tshol, "which is credited is credited with guiding the ancestors toward new lands and protecting them by inspiring fear in outsiders."

"Each Baga subgroup and each village has its own account of the historical migration, describing the origin in Fouta Djallon, the itinerary, and often the names of individuals who led them. These accounts played a preeminent role in the hierarchic organization of Baga society and continue to the present day. Villages are divided into two to four sections, sometimes called 'tribes' among the Baga themselves. They are ranked according to the order in which the respective ancestors are said to have arrived from Fouta Djallon. Each section is subdivided into five or six clans, ranked in the same manner. The clan of the founding ancestor of section or village is preeminent. The Serpent Headdresses are clan insignia, each representing one section of a village.... As incarnations of the spirit a-Mantsho-na-Tshol, they appeared 'at the end of the first level of the initiation for boys and girls among certain Baga subgroups, and just before the actual circumcision at the beginning of the boys' initiation among others. In this context the headdress was sometimes identified as rainbow, which the Baga and their neighbors associate with the beginnings and endings, life and death, and the continuation of lineage – all essential themes of the initiation cycle.' As to the challenges of performing while wearing the tall figure, Lamp...elucidates: "Sometimes but not always there are nail holes or grooves in the base [as the case with the Dinhofer Baga Serpent], indicating some way of securing the headdress to an armature. But it is hard to explain how such a tall vertical column could be secured by simply tying or even nailing the small basal support to anything. The evidence suggests that the main support for these headdresses was a cylindrical receptacle in the top of a conical armature worn on the dancer's head. This and some kind of reinforcement, such as nailing, pegging, or wrapping with cloths and twine at the base of the column, would have aided the skillful dancer; but rigorously careful balance would still have been the essential force against gravity....Baga Serpents vary significantly in size, the smallest measuring around 55 in. (140 cm) in height and the largest up to 100 in. (254 cm). As the challenge of balancing the headdress...increases with the figure's height, most of the tall sculptures were carved to enable the dancer to keep the center of gravity close to their vertical axis. As a consequence, the carver emphasizes the frontal view and extends the serpent's abdomen and head to the sides while at the same time reducing the figure's curvature in profile.....While the surface decoration of the Dinhofer Baga Serpent, an interlinked diamond-shape pattern in relief highlighted with red, white and dark pigment, is classical and can be found on other serpents, a special feature is the design of the face with two triangles of nearly Pythagorean outline and a circular eye mirrored by the figure's frontal ridge. This feature closely relates to the aforementioned figure in the Musée du Louvre...and another small serpent in The Cleveland Museum of Art, comparable also for the elegant tapering of the neck."

Lot 170 is described in the catalogue as a "superb and highly important Songye Community power figure" from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is 35 inches high and has an estimate of $250,000 to $350,000. It sold for $451,000. The work was collected in situ by Gaston Heenen, Governor of Katanga, before 1937 and was included in the 1999 exhibition at the University of Iowa Museum of Art exhibition, "Kilengi: African Art fromthe Bareiss Family Collection."

The catalogue provides the following commentary:

"In 1937 the City of Antwerp invited Frans Olbrechts, the noted African art scholar, to organise a large scale exhibition of Congolese art. The show Tentoonstelling van Kongo-Kunst gathered 1525 objects from the Belgian Congo alongside a selection of contemporary art "inspired by the Congo" as well as a significant number of historical documents attesting to Antwerp's rank as 'the first African colonial market'....The show became not only a monument to Olbrechts but also a landmark for museum history. While Olbrecht's desire to present the objects as art and not ethnographical material followed the approach of other major exhibitions of African art during the 1930s, his scientific method of classification, which was based on stylistic, rather than ethnic or geographic differences, represented a significant departure from earlier attempts at classification. Olbrechts implemented this new system in both the show and in his brief essay for the exhibition catalogue, which presents many ideas later elaborated in his influential Plastiek van Kongo....The Antwerp exhibition sourced primarily from the large collection of Congolese art in Antwerp's Vleeschhuis-Museum, home to no fewer than 1600 Congolese objects which the City had acquired from Henri Pareyn in 1920. However, the display also borrowed a large number of objects from private collectors, an important change from the approach of previous exhibitions. As Olbrechts notes, this allowed to 'bring to light many completely unknown objects'....Two of these "completely unknown objects" are today venerated as great masterpieces of Songye sculpture, and both were lent by Gaston Heenen: the community power figure now in the Mestach Collection....and the present lot. Born in 1880, Gaston Heenen joined the Belgian colonial government in the Congo in 1911, and over the course of the next 20 years established himself as one of the most prominent figures in the administration of the Congo. Heenen spent most of his time in the province of Katanga, and from 1922 onwards became perhaps the dominant figure in the life of the province for almost a decade, serving as Vice Governor General from May 1928 - September 1931, and from January 1932 - September 1933. Noted for following liberal policies which often ran counter to those advocated by the central administration in Léopoldville, Heenen was interested in the history and culture of Congo's native tribes, and formed an extensive collection of Congolese art during his time in Katanga, as well as writing a history of the Luba people....Roy...notes: 'This is a large and impressive example of a very public nkishi power figure that once served to protect an entire community. To the wooden figure have been added elaborate strips of copper on the face, buttocks and abdomen; several collars of snakeskin and lizard hide containing magical materials; a strand of costly blue Dutch beads and iron points, which form the regalia of a chief and reflect the status of the figure; a large horn container for magical materials; and a wooden, club-shaped object which must represent a weapon. The major container for the bashimba medicine is a large recess carved in the abdomen and sealed with a copper plate. The figure is in the Kalebwe style, from the central part of the Songye country. Its size indicates that it was a community figure.'"

Lot 181 is described as a "fine and rare Kaguru Throne" by Tanzania. It is 45 5/8 inches high and has an estimate of $20,000 to $30,000. It sold for $37,000. The catalogue describes "it as rising from four interlinked legs with openwork design, the circular seat with a rectangular backrest decorated on the reverse with intricately carved geometric design in relief, surmounted by a human torso with spherical head and crested coiffure; metal pegs inserted into base; fine, aged varied brown patina." It also was exhibited at the University of Iowa Museum of Art in the 1999 exhibition "Kilengi: African Art from the Bareiss Family Collection."

Lot 13 is a powerful and nicely stylized Chontal stone mask, Late Pre Classic, circa 300-100 B.C. It is 6 inches high and has an estimate of $15,000 to $25,000. It sold for $18,750. The work is, according tothe catalogue, "distinguished by the serrated ear flanges and puckered mouth, with prominent brows, nose and rounded cheeks, a horn projecting from the forehead; pierced in four corners for attachment; in mottled porphyry." "The horn," the entry contyinued, "is considered an insignia of shaman, as shown on numerous West Mexican figures. Combined with the agitated expression, this mask may be showing a transformative, ecstatic shamanic experience."