Slow Fashion sur le marché de l'art
by Agathe Torres
The art market for the arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas is going through a crisis due to a loss of confidence on the part of collectors. The origin of the buyer’s uncertainty is well known: worries about the provenance and acquisition history of the pieces, concerns about having to repatriate artworks, awareness of the risk of buying a fake, etc. Despite this difficult climate, some auction houses continue to break sales records in those fields. However, these records are almost only concentrated on well-defined types of objects, originating from few different cultures, familiar to collectors.
To follow or not to follow auction sales
For the past few years, I have made it a habit to follow the African, Oceanic, and Americas art sales of the major auction houses in Paris or New York. Although I come from an academic background, where I was taught that the art market is evil, I believe that we are mistaken to avoid this field. Auctions give us access to objects that are no less interesting that those found in museums, on the contrary. The—legitimate—question of their presence in private collections that are so inaccessible is another debate and it is not our subject today, but it should not prevent us from seizing the opportunity to see those artworks up close when we do get the chance.
Museums curators are the first to follow auctions, as their institutions often give them an acquisition budget. Indeed, purchasing at auctions is one of the only ways for museums to accession new pieces, along with those coming from professionally supervised excavations. Coming myself from a curious point of view, I also took the habit of consulting catalogues before auctions, go to the exhibitions of the lots for sale, and analyze the auction results.
Expositions des lots qui d’ailleurs, selon les maisons, peuvent être d’étouffants cabinets de curiosité mis à disposition des potentiels acheteurs, mais aussi parfois présenter un vrai travail de recherche, de cohérence et de scénographie qui s’apparente à des expositions de musée. Une exigence qui, de plus, s’affine à mesure que la méfiance envers le marché croie, auprès des publics et des acquéreurs.
La loi du marché
Il ne faut pas suivre les ventes très longtemps pour s’apercevoir des rouages en place. Je ne saurais dire exactement pourquoi ce fut une surprise mais, comme n’importe quel marché j’imagine, découlant d’une logique consumériste, la loi de la vente est soustraite à une injonction de mode. Cela a toujours été le cas : par exemple, la Mona Lisa, ou la Vénus de Milo sont des œuvres dont la surcote est la conséquence de l’histoire bien plus que de leur réel intérêt artistique.
J’imagine que constater que nous n’avions pas dépassé ces réflexes de mode est ce qui continue de m’étonner. Je me demande alors : est-ce l’acheteur ou l’acquéreur qui fait la pluie et le beau temps dans les ventes aux enchères ? Qui crée l’offre, qui répond à la demande ? Qui de la poule ou de l’œuf ?
Over the last decades, the market for so-called pre-Columbian art collapsed after the ban on exporting objects from their country of origin, which in turn provoked the production of a multitude of fake artworks from the ancient Americas for the art market. But the market for African and Oceanic arts is still vivid, and we observe passing through the sales the same Kota reliquaries, Fang statuettes, or Bamana ciwara crests—all of which were already on the desks of last century’s collectors like André Breton—.
Tribal Art Magazine publishes twice a year a top ten of auction sale results, which allows us to quickly get an idea of the issue. For example, between January and June 2020—a period that includes the big seasonal sales of Christie’s Paris and Sotheby’s NY—, no less than three Fang statuettes made it to the top ten sales of the season, while, unsurprisingly, the other steps of the podium are occupied by reliquaries from Gabon (Fang and Mahongwe). In 2018, Fang artworks were ranked 2nd, 3rd and 4th. We also note the popularity of Baule masks, in particular that of the Marceau Rivière collection, which broke records by selling for some 5 million dollars at Sotheby’s Paris. The same goes for Songye geometric masks, which are often featured in this top ten. In 2017, three Kota reliquary statuettes swept the board. And so on, and so on.
Plus d'informations
Images :
- Artiste okak, figure de reliquaire, XIXe–début du XXe siècle, peuples Fang. Metropolitan Museum of Art (1978.412.441)
- Reproduction d'une figure de reliquaire, Fang, Gabon. Lot 53, Christie’s Paris, vente du 10 avril 2018 © Agathe Torres
- Capture d'écran du site de la maison de vente Christie's montrant les figures de reliquaires Kota récemment vendues
- Artiste baulé, mask, Côte d'Ivoire. Lot 23, Sotheby’s Paris, vente du 18 juin 2019
- Artiste baulé, poulie en forme de Janus, v. 1900. Côte d'Ivoire. Metropolitan Museum of Art (2015.485.2)
« Top 10 », Tribal Art Magazine, N°87 to 91, de 2017 à 2021.
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