natural curiosityThe British market in primitive artByJeremy MacClancy

Reprinted with permission from Jeremy MacClancy (ed.) Contesting Art. Art, Politics, andIdentity in the Modern World, Berg Publishers, Oxford, 1997, pp. 27--62

Certain objects are today dubbed "primitive art." They are bought by people who value them.Others sell these objects for profit. Once this market exists,historians can employ themselvesdescribing and interpreting this "primitive art." The objects gain pedigree, the collectors prestige,the historians jobs, and the dealers money. Collectors, experts, and dealers coexist and mutuallysupport one another. They cannot be separated.

The market in primitive art is distinctive for its central metaphors, for the degree of passiondisplayed by committed collectors, and for the difficulties that arise when a European taxonomydrawn from a fine art tradition is imposed on objects that come from other cultures. Primitive artis so varied in style, so broad in its global reach, and stillso relatively little researched that manypurchasers are unsure of what they are buying. A collector with eye may perceive the soul andmystery of a previously ignored masterpiece but may not be sure that the object is authentic. Thedefinition of fake is itself problematic, for most primitive art is anonymous. In this atmosphereof uncertainty (aggravated by the risk of losing money), the role of a dealer with reputationbecomes more central, and supplementary criteria are employed to bolster confidence: patina,provenance, and tribal prestige. But the power of these dealers to determine taste is limited by

the pronounced individuality of certain collectors. In this small, highly volatile market-onestrongly affected by fashion-price remains particularly difficult to assess.

This essay is an exploration into the culture of capitalism, an investigation into a culturallyconstituted pattern of consumption by tracing the trajectory of exotic objects in a Westernsetting. After describing the sociology and development of theBritish end of this internationalmarket, I examine the criteria by which these objects are classified. I conclude with a nativeaccount of collectors' psychology. These objects may come fromnon-Western contexts, but,installed in the homes of Western collectors, their context oforigin becomes but a small part ofthe meaning they bear. We are, after all, dealing with a Western process. 1***In the eighteenth century, members of the nobility and the very-well-to-do placed artificialcuriosities alongside natural curiosities (minerals, crystals,and dried plants) in the curiositycabinets of their living rooms. Exemplars of other worlds, these foreign objects attested theirowners' openness to the savage and strange. Within a century these items were reclassified ascurios, a pejorative term signifying their lowly status on theracist, universalizing hierarchy of artestablished by Western high culture. These ethnographical now unconfined by cabinets, were nolonger juxtaposed with pieces from natural history. In Britain, these byproducts of the colonialenterprise bore witness to the Increasing knowledge by which its expatriates categorized andruled their subject races. To the main British collectors of the early twentieth century (Beasley,Fuller, Hooper, Oldman, Webster), these objects had ethnological import, one often framedwithin "an allegory of redemption."2 Hooper confessed that he wished "to preserve the relics of

dead and dying cults" 3 Fuller, an ethnologist himself, said, "The guiding principle in forming mycollection has been, and is, the study of comparative technology and the evolution of design"; hisaim was to select specimens of "Neolithic Man," that is, objects made before contact withwhites.4 Gathercole, speaking of these men's collections of Maori objects, says the vision thatthey reveal of an essentially timeless Maori wasa compound of the eighteenth century Noble Savage, the nineteenth century economicman and the European stereotype of the valiant tribesman honorably defeated in colonialwars.... [This] romantic, a historical tradition . . . made the conquering plight of theMaori more palatable and his past more appealing.5

Only Epstein, the one other big collector of the time and a sculptor himself, amassed objects fortheir artistry. Epstein's peers, modern artists in ContinentalEurope, differentiated objects madeby what were then called "uncivilized races" from those produced by Eastern civilizations (forexample, Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian)- yet they saw objects made by Africans, nativeNorth Americans, and Pacific islanders not as curios, but as primitive, or Negro, art. To them,these objects were concrete solutions to artistic problems, works of art in their own right. Likemost art movements, this change in aesthetic appreciation camelate to Britain.6Throughout the late I 940s the British art market generally was in a slump. People were short ofmoney. Most primitive art sold cheaply- if not in job-lots. The small market in this art waseffectively run by a coterie of dealers, collectors, and curators.7 Dealers used to attend sales inthe London auction-houses and scour London markets and curio or junk shops-odd mixtures ofpaintings, primitive art, antiquities (archaeological objects), and other bric-a-brac. Some dealers,

such as James Keggie, used to visit other towns around Britain, searching for objects in theircurio shops. The market was small. Dealers could not afford todeal exclusively in primitive art:Ohley dealt in all types of fine art; Keggie specialized in both anthropology and history ofscience." By word of mouth, dealers slowly built up their own networks of favoured customers,committed collectors, many of whom already were, or became, their friends. Dealers wouldtelephone particular collectors if they had obtained a piece that they knew would appeal to theirtaste. A number of dealers also sold their good pieces abroad.Some collectors (such as Hooperand Oldman) were dealers themselves. Hooper used to sell objects to dealers on the Continent(especially those in Brussels) in order to finance the purchase of objects he particularly liked.Dealers also sold items through the auction-houses."8

In the immediate postwar years the only British buyers of primitive art were the big prewarcollectors (minus Beasley, who died in 1939), artists, writers, and the occasional whimsical9purchasers Unlike the French bourgeoisie, the majority of the British middle class had not (andstill, to a comparative extent, has not) any understanding of primitive art. To them, these objectswere frightening, fearful, awesome.10

An emergent group of collectors were those who had learnt of primitive art through their greatinterest in contemporary art. This small group became all the more important, given the risingpurchasing power of the British middle classes in the early and mid-1950s. Influential dealerswho entered the market and sold them pieces were Herbert Reiser, John Hewett, and (slightlylater) Phillip Goldman. They were men of repute, each with hisown gallery. Together withother established gallery owners who exhibited primitive art, they gave confidence to buyers and

lent stability to the market. It is with them that the close dealer-client relationship started tobecome the most common way of selling expensive items. They acquired the big clients(Hewett's included Pablo Picasso, Nelson Rockefeller, Stavros Niarchos, the Hunt brothers, andSir Robert Sainsbury); others gained lesser ones.

In 1958 Hewett joined Sotheby's at the request of Peter Wilson, its recently appointed chairman.Wilson's entrepreneurial gifts and talent for the kind of showmanship appropriate to the patriciantraditions of the firm enabled it to develop from a small London based huddle of gentlemenappraisers to its present leading position in the international art market."11 Hewett, a well-builtbearded ex-Guardsman of much dignity, was brought in to enliven the Antiquities and PrimitiveArt Department. By advertising more and by increasing the number of sales, he raised its annualturnover within a decade from £34,000 to £250,000.

By the mid-1960s art was securely recognized as a commodity toinvest in."12 As prices forvalued paintings rose so far that all but the richest of collectors were priced out of the market,less moneyed individuals began buying objects in other sectorsof the market, areas where theycould still afford to buy good pieces at reasonable prices. Atauctions of primitive art they werejoined by some more wealthy people who thought ethnographical promising potentialinvestments. Prices began to rise.

As the primitive art market started to expand, new dealers entered the trade. Some openedgalleries, some worked from home, some set up stalls in Portobello (there were eight there in 1971), some did all three. Dealers remember the mid- to late I 960s as the beginning of a boomthat lasted until 1980. Although certain astute dealers had already bought the best objects owned

by private British museums, good pieces were still available cheaply and not too difficult to find;dealers could then still sell items bought at the major auction-houses to collectors because mostcollectors had not yet started attending the sales rooms; African runners were still visitingLondon calling on dealers with bags full of "high quality" objects. Few dealers themselves leftEurope in search of objects. Phillip Goldman's repeated tours of Papua New Guinea wereexceptional.

The British home market, however, remained small: serious collectors (never more than twenty),dealers, and curators continued, and continue, to be a loose group of mutual acquaintances.Today about sixteen dealers have stalls in Portobello. They buy from country dealers who comeup to London on Fridays to sell their objects (not only primitive art) from stalls in BermondseyMarket. They also tour Camden Lock Market on Sundays, Camden Passage Market onWednesdays, and the auction-houses on viewing days. Some advertise in country newspapers.A few tour the country themselves, but most find it more worthwhile to buy from runners whocomb their home region attending local auctions and visiting nearby antique shops. Most arevisitedby collectors who wish to sell or exchange something they havetired of or that they havejust bought cheaply in another market (such as Greenwich). Almost all have their own clients.Few buyers are strangers; the majority are dealers from America or the Continent who visit twoor three time a year. Most Portobello dealers also have to deal with others types of objects (suchas Oriental, Islamic, Himalayan, Ancient Egyptian) if they areto survive, although they also tendto specialize within some subsection of primitive art.

All maintain contact with the upmarket dealers. Most of the latter operate from home, receiving

clients there or going round to see them. "There's a lot of legwork in this trade," complained onedealer. Another said that to be successful, one had to be verysocial. He wasn’t, and so heretired.

The majority of business is done with other dealers, buying and selling objects with one another.Since different dealers tend to have different sorts of clients who buy within different priceranges, this constant passage of objects within the trade ensures that pieces ..of different qualityeventually reach the appropriate type of buyer. Some dealers at Portobello (most of whom areundercapitalized) prefer selling to the trade because dealers tend to know what they want, theytend to know what they are prepared to pay, and they will pay.Dealing with other dealersguarantees a faster turnover. As one said, "You can get higherprices from private clients butyou've got to dance around with them. That's not my style." A few dealers at the top end of themarket may make large amounts of money in a series of spectacular deals, but they appear to bethe exception. Several dealers who operate from the street markets refer to their own collectionsas their retirement pensions."

As a general rule in the art market, people who buy objects ofthe highest quality will alwayseventually get a good return on their money. Dealers stress that, compared to other sectors of theart market, it is much more difficult to sell second-rate pieces of primitive art. This tendencydoes not influence sales of North American Indian or Polynesian objects since so few pieces arein circulation. But it did affect dealers in African objects in the 1 960s and 1 970s because therewere so many items on the market. (After the Biafran war, manyobjects of Nigerian origin endedup in London.

Some collectors, scared by the number of fakes, 13 only buy pieces from reputed dealers andmay refuse to consider valuable objects offered at low prices by other dealers. Hewett, for one,has reputation. Dealers and collectors agree that he also has presence. They speak of hismystique, panache, sophistication, character, charisma. By theearly 1970s he had been in thebusiness so long and had been so successful that newcomers to the trade, confusing reputationwith image, began to emulate his style. One even grew a beard.Such dealers, ones with name,can charge a premium. It is said that Hewett could sell a spoon till then valued at f5 for f5OO.But even reputed dealers can lose their eye, sell fakes, or otherwise stitch up their clients. Saidone collector, "Dealers are bastards!"

Upmarket, image is very important. A dealer must be known to constantly have good pieces. Hemay buy an expensive item, even if he cannot sell it for much more, if it will impress his clients.He may have to buy a whole collection from a private seller inorder to get its best pieces. Theremainder he can sell to lesser dealers who have more customers for objects at that price level.One particularly successful dealer said that he advertised notin order to sell certain objects butin order to present an image of himself as a dealer in objectsof the highest quality. Heaccumulates pieces of a certain type (say, Maori objects) because he knows that he will get abetter price for them as a collection than if he sold them separately. He has set up a network ofstringers on the Continent and in the British provinces; they pass good pieces on to him andreceive a commission when he sells them. He thought the way tosuccess in the primitive artmarketplace was "to set up as many vassals as possible."Under British law any form of agreement, unless highly formal and open, between dealers to buy

pieces jointly is illegal. But some dealers admit that if theymeet at a country auction and knowthey are, after the same object, they will often agree not to bid against one another and to sharethe object afterward. This is an especially advantageous arrangement if the bidding exceeds theirindividual upper limit. Dealers stress that rings in the primitive art market are highly informaland are nothing like so well organized as, say, those controlling the rug trade because theycannot remove the possibility of an outside buyer out-bidding them: the market includes somevery individual personalities.Even at the level of the major auction-houses, the market remains a small, loosely knit collectionof individuals. When organizing a sale, they write to particular collectors warning them thatcertain objects are coming up for auction. After the viewing, appraisers have drinks or dinnerwith well-known collectors (often their friends), encouraging them by chatting about certainpieces, describing them in detail, assessing their possible value and their potential asinvestments.

Although the British home market is much smaller than the American one, 14 London remains aworld center because of the sales that Sotheby's and Christie's can stage. Their success is duepartly to their great international prestige and partly to thequantity and quality of objects still inthe country-most of them originally obtained in colonial circumstances.

A major reason for the late 1960s-to-1980 boom in prices was the rapid increase in the Americanmarket. (Today most British dealers say that Americans make upthe majority of their clients.)These Americans tend to be highly successful, newly rich professionals who buy a few objects as

house decoration for reasons of prestige and investment. An object hanging on the sitting-roomwall advertises its owner's taste, supposed aesthetic sensibility, and financial shrewdness: thanksto the American tax laws and some compliant dealers prepared to overvalue pieces, Americanswho bequeath their works of art to an institution on their death can make an immediate profit ontheir purchases by saving on taxes.15

In the late I 970s the boom reached its height with the auctioning by Sotheby's and Christie's ofseveral important collections. In 1975 in the sale of the Taracollection a Puna mask went forF22,000-then thought a scandalous price. Next year when the Pinto collection came under thehammer, several pieces sold for more than f 22,000 each. Between 1977 and 1 980 Christie'sauctioned off the valuable Hooper collection in four annual sales. In 1978 in the sale of the Ortizcollection at Sotheby's, several objects reached staggering prices: a wood face mask fromVanuatu went for F]80,000, a Raratongan wood figure for f200,000, and a Hawaiian woodfigure, apparently collected by Cook, for f250,000. These prices were particularly high for twomain reasons: (1) the entry into the market since the sale of the Pinto collection of the BritishRail Pension Fund whose buyer, Ederlstein, had a great passionfor primitive art; (2) the presenceat the sale of two collectors prepared to spend a lot of moneyMonzino, an Italian Swiss, andDeiaunoit, a Belgian, who bought the Hawaiian figure. Two years later Sotheby's auctioned offthe Schwarz collection thought to be the best collection of Benin bronzes in the world. For thefirst time representatives of a non Western government attended a sale in order to buy 1 6 backobjects for the sake of national pride.16 In the sale, more than ten items went for over £100, 000apiece, the Nigerian government buying the three most expensive objects.

The sales next year were disappointing. There were still some high prices, but over 30 percent ofthe lots did not find buyers. Overexcited vendors and appraisers, misled by the recent trends,had overpriced their material. In response to the increasing demand for objects, many pieces ofpoor quality had been put on the market while good pieces for sale had become rare; objectsbought by or bequeathed to public museums do not reappear on the market."17 Simultaneously,the three main purchasers at the top end of the market had allwithdrawn: Delaunoit and Monzinohad stopped buying, as had Ederistein (due to public protest at a pension fund using its assets tobuy art); there were no more outstanding Benin bronzes to attract the Nigerians. Others, thinkingthe market had reached i ts top the year before, had already stopped collecting and begun toinvest their money in other types of art objects. Prices stopped rising. The bubble had burst.The market has remained soft or skittish since then. There arefewer auctions today, and piecesbought in the Ortiz and Hooper sales now reappearing on the market sell for less than they wentfor a few years ago. Appraisers complain of the difficulty of finding good pieces-owners arereluctant to sell in a depressed market-and of selling them for more than the reserve they set.Although the sale of a Benin bronze head in June 1985 for f320,000 at Sotheby's was a worldrecord for primitive art, it was widely suspected that a high percentage of the objects in theauction were "bought in.' 18 Dealers grumble that the rise in prices means that most Britishcollectors can no longer afford the pieces they want. They saythat more collectors now attendthe sales rooms, that country dealers are now more inclined togive their objects to the auctionhouses than to themselves, and that collectors are disinclinedto buy pieces from dealers which

have been illustrated in an auction catalogue: thanks to the illustration a collector can identify theobject a dealer is offering him and so assess his profit margin-an off putting prospect, Andappraisers are keen to include photos of as many of their pieces as possible in their catalogues.Many upmarket dealers have closed their galleries and now operate solely from home. As themarket shrinks they become more important by default because, thanks to their backers, they aremore financially secure than lesser dealers who either go under or are forced to diversify intoother sectors of the art market. Although potential vendors are not now so keen to sell, they arealso not so greedy. So if they do decide to sell, they do so for a reasonable price. The upmarketdealers, however, continue to charge high prices because theirclients have money. These dealersare relatively insulated from the softness of the market because they deal with its top end.To overcome present difficulties, some dealers and appraisers have started selling other sorts ofobjects and have thus extended the range (and meaning) of the primitive art market. Newmarkets have been created for Indonesian and Naga art, which is still available in sufficientquality and quantity. The prices of textiles, furnishings, andcolonial art (objects made sincecontact that include European figures) have multiplied in the last five years, In each of thesethree areas items of good quality can still be had for relatively little-a great attraction toimpoverished British buyers.

Museums are not isolated from the market. Bill Fagg, Keeper ofEthnography at the BritishMuseum from the late 1960s to 1976, has referred to the complementary developr-nent ofmuseums and collectors, with collectors often taking the lead in the foundation of museums.19Hooper was greatly encouraged by his friend Henry Balfour, therenowned curator of the

PittRivers Museum at Oxford 20 Fagg himself is well known as the friend of many collectors:they ask him to assess their latest pieces; several have donated items to his department. Fagg'smentor was Leon Underwood, the collector, modernist sculptor, and author of three books onprimitive art. Fagg, unusual among British curators, was (and is) prepared to judge piecesaesthetically. He started work at a time (1946) when British social anthropologists ignoredmaterial culture and ethnologists were interested only in taxonomy. Fagg began writing indeliberate reaction to this lack of interest in primitive art.He is now "the principal contributor"in the English-speaking world to the study of African art: hismany books are distinctive for theiraccurate documentation of individual pieces."21 The consultantto Christie's since 1976, BillFagg is a highly respected academic who works in the marketplace. His opinion holds weight.****These objects, categorized, then recategorized several times the last two centuries, are now givenroom in national art galleries. In New York they have their own, the Michael C. RockefellerWing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The objects exhibited there have no accompanyingtext, photomurals, or music. They are to be regarded as works of art in their own right.22 As art,they are an integral part of the international art market, andso we can ask by what criteria arethey judged, and how are those criteria ranked?

Articulate dealers and collectors speak of their objects' soul, spirit, power, sacredness, magic,and mystery. They are visible embodiments of invisible realms,concrete forms enclosing a heartof darkness. This language of collectors and dealers is a modern variant of the eighteenthcentury's noble and ignoble savage. They are new verbal formulae reflecting our changed

conception of black ways. The makers of these objects are no longer considered unintelligent,infantile juju worshipers acting instinctually. They are seen to have aesthetic sensibility. Theirobjects, instinct with vitality, may have transcendental quality, but the power on which they drawand to which they give plastic form is still irreducibly Other. Good Western sculptures may alsohave power: what distinguishes the carver of a primitive pieceof art is the exotic source of thepower he taps. The mystery of his object is thought to come from a radically different culture.The soul it represents is not that of its maker but of its tribe. Most objects are not thought toexpress a personal vision but the occult forces of a native region. The mystery that Westernersattribute to these objects is an ultimate explanation of theirfascination for us. It is acontemporary manner of scoring the racial divide and of legitimating our attention.If such core metaphors as soul and mystery cannot be broken down into neat sets of transmissibleverbal discriminations, how then can they be communicated? To owners of these objects,aesthetic criteria, which are embedded in a well-documented Western art historical tradition, aremere verbal dressing. They do not touch the soul of their possessions. If these central tropescannot be unpacked, then the people who can use them most convincingly are those individualswho are thought to have eye-a notion as necessarily imprecise as soul, spirit, power, or mystery.The idea of eye rests on a conception of a universal aesthetic: anyone with good eye canappreciate primitive art, although the person may have no knowledge of their ethnographiccontext. The object still speaks to someone scrutinizing it, although the person may beethnologically ignorant. When an anthropologist asks dealers and collectors what does it meanto say that someone has good eye, some look blank. Some say one is asking hard questions.

Others say that a dealer with good eye is one who can identify-pieces that will sell well: that isto define eye as the ability, whether or not articulable, to apply consistently and successfully thecurrent canons of taste to any object they regard. Most serious collectors and long-establisheddealers will say that they think that they have eye and, revealingly, will admit that they eithergained or developed their eye by looking at hundreds of objects, by reading widely about them,by seeing what sold well, by talking to others more knowledgeable than they -in short, as onesaid, by learning the consensus. The circle closes, the neophyte becomes an adept by a slowprocess of nonverbal, visual education.

Not all have eye. "Some have it. Some don't. No amount of education is going to help a personwho hasn't got it." People in the trade do recognize that people can improve their eye throughexperience, that they can lose it with age, and that some justseem to be born with the gift. Ifpeople are unsure of how to apply Western aesthetic criteria to non-Western objects (which seemto mock European art categories), then the metaphor of eye becomes all the more important, asdoes the role of people who are said to have it.

So in the primitive art market a dealer with eye surrounded bybuyers still learning their waybecomes far more influential in determining taste than, say, adealer in paintings of the ItalianRenaissance, where the canons of taste are far more firmly set. In the fine art market a personwith eye comes to the fore only when an unknown picture has tobe identified: is it an oldmaster? Ask the man with eye. Art historians justify their jobs by their skillful use of verbaldiscriminations; to them, eye is very much a dealers' concept.23 John Hewett has eye, peoplesay. He bought objects for their aesthetic value and sold themaccordingly. He did not bargain.

He set a price for an object. Hewett did not give a client a long spiel about a piece. He did nottry to persuade him. Hewett just looked very carefully at an object, said, "It's very good" (if itwas), and then allowed his client to examine it. Hewett began dealing at a time when little hadbeen written in English about primitive art and when many British collectors of contemporary arthad only just begun paying attention to these objects. No wonder he became so influential. Suchpeople have authority. They help set the consensus, the specially chosen group of objects thatare thought the greatest examples of primitive art and by which all other, lesser pieces arecompared.24

The fifteen or so serious collectors of primitive art in Britain are independent individuals whohave slowly come to learn what they value. They may be influenced, but are not governed, byothers' eye. One London-based collector is acknowledged as having his own, highly particulareye. A strong personality, he ignores dealers' spiel and consistently buys crudely carved, heavy,powerful pieces. His peers recognize the difference of his taste. They just regard it as Other.(Some forgers especially make fakes for the particular eye of certain collectors.) Another Londoncollector has, over the years, educated his eye in such a way that, unknowingly, he has puttogether the best, most consistent collection in Britain of fakes.

A stable market needs more than eye to fix the value of an object. It needs the security ofcriteria that do not depend on individual sensibility. Thus appraisers and dealers, using termsborrowed from the fine art market, talk of objects' patina, age, rarity, and provenance-no matterhow inappropriate these criteria are when applied to objects from a non-Western context. 25

Works of primitive art have no signature. An object can be attributed to a particular region ortribe, but almost invariably not to a particular individual. The tribe is the artist; its plastictraditions are its signature. And to at least one collector "the anonymity of a creator enhances awork of art." 26 It is only recently and still rarely that certain objects have been identified as thework of particular individuals. In these cases, the objects are often attributed to the same (dead)artist by experts exercising their educated intuition. The artist remains anonymous. His stylisticsignature is an imposed construction of Western experts. 27

Collectors want objects that have been used traditionally. Evidence of an object's use increasesits associations with the Other. It augments its evocative power and thickens the context withinwhich its soul is sited. Dealers and appraisers like to talk of patina, the smoothed surface of anobject that has been much handled and so is that much more a part of the tribal traditions itrepresents to Westerners. A fine patina evokes associations offoreign dirt, sweat, labor, and age.It is as though many collectors seek the exotic equivalent of a well-preserved Tudor oak table,one burnished by centuries of careful polishing. The age of a piece is also important, althoughrelative to particular tribes. (One reason given for the recent popularity of colonial art is that theuniforms worn by the white figures in these pieces make them easier to date.) As a general rule,however, the older an object is, the more valuable it is, for then it is all the more embedded in thehistory of its tribal tradition. A strongly suspect, but I cannot show, that although collectors anddealers may boast of objects' age, this does not affect their a historical view of traditional Africansociety. It is as though the age of an object is evidence of the antiquity of the traditions of a tribebut that those traditions are conceived in an a temporal sense, an unchanging period situated in

the past.

Patina is here no necessary index of antiquity. Many objects were stored or put away after ritualuse; when brought to Europe by a runner they can look as though they were made yesterday. Inthe world of fine art, dealers and restorers can foresee what restoration will bring out in apainting, and a restored painting will generally sell for more. This is not necessarily the casewith primitive art. Since many collectors seek evidence of an object's use, they will often paywell for a damaged piece fixed by its original tribal owners. Western restoration would removethis further sign of its native origin. So old Benin bronzes, which, restored, would look likemodern imitations, are often left as they are just as the death of a Western artist fixes the numberof goods labeled with his name on the market, so the demise ofa tribal tradition stabilizes thenumber of goods manufactured within that tradition. Decay, misuse, and destruction only aid theprocess. Oidman's advertisements in the I930s in the Journal of the Royal AnthropologicalInstitute stressed that the objects he had for sale were no longer being made; their number couldonly diminish. "If they can make objects today as good as those when they were first collected,"said one appraiser, "then the price won't rise." Any Plains Indians or Polynesian artifact isconsidered blue-chip stock because the societies that producedthese objects no longer exist. Thecriteria of age, rarity, and patina can be seen as ways by which the upper end of the marketcontrols the number of goods within it by effectively excluding any objects made recently. In theSotheby's sale in June 1985, for instance, none of the objectswas less than sixty years old. GoodCentral American terracottas, made in the last century, in thestyle of pieces several hundredyears earlier are now accepted as genuine."28 They may be copies, but they are still old, no

longer manufactured, and considered of high quality. One upmarket dealer, emphasizing the lifeand power of good primitive art, said that objects recently carved were dead: their evocativecontext was too thin.

The provenance of an object may also contribute to its value. It is easier to sell a piece whoseEuropean past is known. The more complete the record the better, while the prestige of certainex-owners rubs off on their former possessions as though it were part of the patina. An itembrought back by one of Cook's crew can be worth ten times thatof a similar piece whosecollecting history is unknown. Objects from the collection of people renowned for their eye (forexample, Ratton, Rasmussen, Hewett, Kismier) are regarded closely. It also adds interest if anobject once belonged to a well-known early twentieth-century painter, one known to have beeninfluenced by primitive art. But this criterion can work both ways, for these artists bought piecesthat best exemplified their own artistic theories. They did not care if an object was roughlyfinished, crude, or fake. They bought simple, bold, primitive pieces and disliked the subtlerealism of Benin bronzes, which they thought betrayed a non African influence. Many dealersand collectors, however, judged fine art and primitive art according to the same set of values.(Many still do so.) They preferred more naturalistic pieces ofsubdued expression with smoothsurfaces and fine patina. These were easier to appreciate and sold accordingly. In 1930 a pair ofBenin leopards were sold in London for 700 guineas; in 1953 Sotheby's sold a head of a Beninqueen for £5,500. It was only some time after the rise in the number of collectors who came toprimitive art through their interest in modern art that the value of bold, imaginative, abstractpieces began to rise, although today a fine Baule mask still fetches more than an extraordinary,

inventive Mumuy figure.29

A market for good, genuine objects stimulates the traffic in fakes.30 As the number of good,genuine items decreases, the production of fakes rises in stepwith a rise in prices. The sorts ofobjects faked most often tend to be relatively rare, aesthetically appealing, and of confirmedpopularity. Authenticity is a graver problem here than in other sectors of the art market because,as I said above, primitive art has no signature. This problem is centrally important to the market,for if people cannot tell or be told the difference between genuine and fake, they will not invest.What we are looking at here is that the role of nondesthetic criteria for aesthetics makes nodistinction between genuine and fake. Fakes, though, must haveat least a certain minimalaesthetic appeal: the ugliness of an object is sometimes takenas a guarantee of its authenticity."It's so ugly it can't be a fake!".

Baldly put, a fake is something intended to deceive. But who is deceiving whom? The answer iscomplex because fake and genuine are not the two halves of an unbridgeable division (althoughsome may use them that way) but polar terms of a finely gradedcontinuum.

Willett describes this spectrum well:The most obviously authentic works on which all would agree are those made by anAfrican for use by his own people and so used. However, this category can besubdivided because the piece so made and used may be of superior, average or inferioraesthetic quality. A little lower on the scale is a work made by an African for use by hisown people but bought by an expatriate before use. Then comes sculpture made by anAfrican in the traditional style of his own people for sale toan expatriate; then sculpture

made by an African in the traditional style on commission by an expatriate; thensculpture made by an African in a poor imitation of the traditional style of his ownpeople for sale to an expatriate; made by an African in the style of a different Africanpeople (though it may be well done) for sale to an expatriate;made in the style of adifferent African people but badly done for sale to an expatriate; made by an African in anon-traditional style for sale to an expatriate. Finally we have works made by anexpatriate, i.e., a non-African, for sale to other non-Africans but passed off as beingAfrican. This, at the other end of the continuum, is the unquestionable fake31

Willett's description is too straitjacketing, for it depends on a view of foreign societies as staticand lacking innovation. Change is seen as decay. But if certain societies (such as manyMelanesian ones) tolerate, if not actually encourage, innovation, when can we consider anestablished innovation to be part of their tradition? 32 If the tribe (itself a Western conception ofOther peoples) provides both the artist and the signature, arewe then to see ethnographicexamples of where, traditionally, the people of X make objectsfor those of Y, or where thepeople of X imitate the objects of Y as, in either case, producing fakes? More ethnology couldprovide useful information clarifying the ethnographic situation. But any answers to suchquestions would be decided by those influential in the primitive art marketplace.Yet more questions can be raised. What is the ethnographic difference between copying(despised by collectors) and the continuance of a tradition (accepted by them)? Why docollectors value an object that has been used in a ceremony more than one a European bought

just before it could be used ritually, even though its carver had intended it to be used? Somerunners pay both for carvers to make objects and for the performance of rituals in which thoseobjects are used. The runners' photographs of the rituals validates the authenticity of theirobjects. In the trade this ceremony is known as the Blessing of the Exports. Western artistswork for money, but most collectors will not accept that non-Western carvers may do so, too,although selling objects to Europeans is a long established tradition in many areas. By thefifteenth century west Africans had already begun carving ivories, for Portuguese buyers.Westerners, by imposing their own particular conception of the"tribal" associations of an object,end up setting arbitrary limits to the market value of those objects, while the seemingly absurdceremony described above shows what can arise when those limits are tested.Fakes, publicly acknowledged as fakes, can become part of the market if people are interestedenough to buy them. The most well known European faker of primitive art is James Little (1876-1953), the forger of Maori artifacts. Fuller was a persistent collector of Little's work. In June1985 Christie's sold two pieces by him in their sale of "Important Tribal Art." One, "an unusualMaori-style wood bowl," went for £850.33 These fakes seem the ultimate perfection of themarket: they are objects manufactured by Europeans for sale toEuropeans; although they speakof European conceptions of the Other, they have but an art historical connection to foreignpeoples.

The market engenders a written history of primitive art that reflexively stimulates the marketitself. In the last twenty-five years the publication of numerous books and several journals hashelped establish the study of primitive art and of its historyas a respectable sub-discipline.

Employing the language of Western art history (and thus bringing the associated weight andprestige of that vocabulary in its train), authors now judge certain objects masterpieces; they aregreat pieces, ones of good quality, which display "purity of form, simplicity and spontaneity. "34Invoking the critical terminology of art history helps justifyartistic value. The ethnographicassociations and function of an object are ignored for the sake of subjecting it to the formalanalysis of an all-encompassing Western aesthetic. The use of these terms aggravates people's ahistorical approach to primitive art for their employment, suggesting that primitive art, like allother are, can be appreciated by an aesthetic that has pretensions of timelessness and universalapplication. (In this essay I underline Western art terms usedby participants in order toemphasize the historically contingent, particular nature of these categories.Pieces considered authentic by the strictest of collectors' definition may still be thought dubiousbecause dealers, preferring classical works-pieces establishedas good early in the history of themarket sometimes question "the authenticity of works that merely tend to differ from the'archetypes'. .Traders in Africa and Europe are now turning uppieces that markedly diverge fromthose conformations of elegance to which our eyes have become schooled by art books, andwhich we now accept."35 Also, individual creativity beyond bounds set by Westerners is,generally, unwanted. An object difficult to categorize can be difficult to sell.The logical extension of this Western concern for a particularkind of object, one that fits theaesthetic criteria mentioned above, is the statement by dealers that some modern, deliberate fakesare so sophisticated that they are much better than originals.A fake is very much a product of itstime. For if every epoch views art in a different light and with new eyes ... [then] a forgery can never

correlate entirely, in its formal apparatus, with the time andspace Of its pretendedorigin, It far more reflects the taste of the forger's time and the idea of his epoch aboutthat particular art."36

It is the forgeries of past periods that are more evident thanthe deliberate fakes of today, whichalmost invisibly fit into, and not between, our artistic categories: some dealers, though, do statethat while good modern fakes are difficult to sniff out, some can be identified quickly becausethey pander to the pretty. London dealers and appraisers may joke and complain about thenumber of fakes of African objects on sale in New York, but itseems that the subsector of themarket with the highest proportion of skillful fakes is North American Indian art, where itemscan be artfully "reconstructed" from bits of skin, quill, beads, and European trade cloth.The growth of this sort of art historical information allows objects to be identified more easily,grants them pedigrees, gives substance to the notion of style areas, and lends respectability (andthus confidence) to the developing market. These books are notset within the context of themarket; they become part of it, helping to define its shape. Fledgling dealers can now educatethemselves in an armchair. No dealer or collector mentioned tome any particular book thatinfluenced them greatly: they all stressed reading widely. If the words borrowed from art historyplus the central metaphors already mentioned (such as soui, power, eye) can be regarded as therhetoric of the market, pervasive tropes in terms of which we think of these objects, thenappraisers, dealers, and primitive art historians become the rhetoricians of the marketplace,choosing pieces that evince these verbal qualities and determining the way we view them.The effect of exhibitions on the market is difficult to gauge.Several exhibitions were held in

London in the late 1940s.37 Although they received favorable press reviews, none seems to haveinfluenced the sale of primitive art much. Such shows may makepeople more aware of theseobjects as works of art; they do not automatically get people buying them."38 just as authors canturn their books to their own advantage-one collector illustrated his one on primitive art withunusual pieces from his own stock-those he could not sell-so exhibitions can benefit ownerswhose pieces are put on display and illustrated in the accompanying catalogue."39 An expensivepiece in an auctioneer's catalogue now almost demands detailedcredentials with an account of itsform, its use, and its provenance, a bibliography of references where it is illustrated or itsethnology discussed, and a list of exhibitions where it was shown. Perhaps this article itself willbe appropriated by marketers. If it cannot become another reference on some object'sprovenance, for no objects are illustrated, it may help to boost confidence by showing, at least,that the market itself is an object worthy of study.

Price is also strongly influenced by fashion. Appraisers say that only the market in contemporaryart is as affected by fashion. Certain types of objects suddenly become much sought after forshort periods until the popularity of some other (available) kind of piece begins to rise. In theearly 1970s, jukun figures sold for high prices. In 1976 Crowley spoke of the recent Luba craze,and earlier paroxysms over the alleged Tellem figures, Baule weights, Yoruba ibejis, Kuba cups,and Senufo porpianong birds. No one is certain how fashions arise. As one appraiser said, if heknew he could make a lot of money. One recognized way, however, is that of the collector whostarts amassing a particular kind of object and purchasing almost every example that comes upon the market. Dealers, who do not normally buy particular objects for particular collectors

because they find them fickle, start buying pieces to sell to him. As prices rise, other collectorsbecome interested and so the rise in prices accelerates. In the mid-1970s, Aboriginal objectsfrom Western Australia were going cheaply. A thin shield cost F I 00 to F 1 50. Then a very bigcollector began to buy greedily. Prices have multiplied ten times since (especially forchuringas), all thanks to his initial stimulus. Another recognized way of creating fashion is thatof the collector with many examples of one kind of object who puts one of them into the salesrooms. He then bids against himself, so pushing the price right up, sometimes to ten times itsformer value. This new price level established, he can start to unload his other examples on themarket.

The prestige of one tribe's art can also influence price. Prestige here is marketers' shorthand forthe rich history of art history of these objects and for the history of the high prices they havereached. Success feeds success. Classical tribes are created. As one dealer said "A Dan piece isa Dan piece is a Dan piece. It's almost outside fashion." A weak Fang will normally go for morethan a good Yoruba because Yoruba is considered too folksy. People can also expand the marketitself. Some have started to call old objects that were made specifically for sale to Europeans"early tourist art." Now a subcategory unto itself, this novelclass of objects becomes worthy ofstudy and, therefore, of purchase. In recent years primitive art has come to mean not just objectsbut also textiles and furnishings, thanks to the efforts of dealers such as Peter Adler.40 In NorthAmerica, indigo and white cloth used by the lower orders of the Asante now costs as much as themulticolored Kente worn by the elites because indigo and whiteappeals to decorators who usethem as cheap substitutes for expensive American patchwork quilts (R. Johnson, personal

communication). Fake textiles-modern imitations with no soul or spirit, which are not a productof Western-approved traditions-are now being fabricated: the market, once opened, is now beingfirmly established.

While application of the criteria I have listed (such as rarity, fashion, and dealers' repute) cancontribute to the value of an object, they do not, determine its price. For, ultimately, any sale inthis small market-where the objects are so varied and so variable in price and where so many areunconfident of what they are buying-is an individual financialarrangement, the result of apersonal interaction between two 41 personalities, the seller and the buyer. Many dealers,especially those at the expensive end of the market, iterate that there is no fixed price. An objectwill sell for what the market will bear. It is simply a case, dealers say, of finding a buyer whowill pay a price they like. 42

The setting that most strikingly reveals, in a concentrated fashion, the present state of the marketis a major auction room at sale time. This collective self presentation includes dealers,collectors, appraisers buying on commission, and the absent presence of others phoning in. Thenumerous, well-dressed spectators and the occasional television crew only augment the sense ofsignificant event. It is here that one can see, spectacularly displayed, the assembled congregationtransform surplus income into prestigious valuables. It is an arena of competitive individualismwhere potential purchasers fight with bids and, sometimes, with fists. People watch who bidsand who buys. The atmosphere excites. The adrenaline flows. Record prices are set.-There islust in the room.

The objects themselves, stripped of their original use value and granted exchange value, have

become fetishized commodities, both in the Marxist sense and, as we shall see, in the sense ofthe fetishistic relation of an owner with his exotic object. These objects are also investmentcommodities, their economic value part of the meaning they bear.43 While the employment ofdistinguishing criteria (such as pedigree and provenance) may serve to make a piece of primitiveart more singular, its status as commodity (and hence exchangeable with other commodities)negates that very effort at singularity.44 It is money, the point of exchange between buyers andsellers, that mediates their divergent interpretations of the objects and their value.These objects have been made Western totems distinguishing theprimitive art-collecting upperclasses from other social groups. Purchasing primitive art is a socially distinctive act confirmingone's class. Collectors' agonistic speculation in an auction "seals their parity . . . and thus theircollective caste privilege." 45 Training one's eye demands a certain freedom from economicnecessity-a liberty not available to the working classes and so distancing them even further fromappreciators of primitive art.46The auction over, their value set by their price, the objects become part of collections.****I began this essay on an emotional note: people's desire for objects. I end it with a nativephenomenology of the emotions-committed collectors' comments on the psychology of their ownobsessions. To the serious collectors of the early twentieth century, the hunt was very important:"The compulsive quality of [Fuller's] devotion to collecting was compelling. To him, the searchwas exciting, the discovery fulfilling." 47 Like Fuller, Hooper collected objects until his death;he "derived enormous pleasure from seeking them out, the act of discovery itself, the fascinationof the elusive bargain and the thrill of its capture." 48 Somedealers today speak of the pleasure

of the quest, but bargains are now much rarer and the search all too often fruitless.To collectors of primitive art, ethnography is relatively unimportant, except as an adjunct. It issufficient that the object comes from a radically different culture. Which culture it comes fromis insignificant to most collectors unless, of course, it was made_ by people famed for the qualityof their objects. To Stewart, ownership of such an exotic object represents distance and timeappropriated, the cultural Other tamed.49

The age, patina, and provenance of an object may increase its associations to a Westerner. Butthey do not define its central meaning to a committed collector. Serious collectors admit theypay more attention to a piece that is highly priced or was once owned by someone renowned forhis eye. But they say they attend to the piece to see if it has some latent aesthetic quality thatjustifies its high price or was noticed by its previous owner.Following their argument fromaesthetics, whether an object is fake or not should logically be irrelevant. But most collectors,mindful of their pockets, do not seek to acquaint themselves with the soul of a forger working forfinancial, profane ends.50

Works of primitive art are normally objects, not paintings. They can be touched, fondled, pickedup, and carried around -a series of tactile sensations that many collectors emphasize. Sir RobertSainsbury mentions the charge an object can give off, "not unlike a sexual experience." VincentPrice, a longtime collector, writes of the "feeling that to know and appreciate a work of artrequires repeated touching and in some instances possession."51 Above all, collectors ownobjects. They acquire them in order to possess them. This is the pleasure of ownership, ofknowing that an object not just belongs to one but that one isthe only person who can repeatedly

touch, feel, and stare at it, so strengthening one's personal relationship with it.The desire to acquire shades easily into greed, a trait few collectors admit to. One exceptionallyhonest collector confessed he could not refuse pieces offered to him if he thought they were bothof good quality and cheap. He emphasized that every collector was motivated by greed and fear;they suffer the same anxieties as those who play the stock market.,, But most cannot admit that,to them, economics is as important as aesthetics, for if they did confess, their aestheticpretensions would be diminished and they would be despised by their peers, uneasy at suchrevelation. Thus, as we have just seen, collectors can justifytheir avoidance of fakes byreference to nonfinancial terms, such as soul and mystery.

In Britain serious collectors are rare. They tend to be individuals committed to their pursuit,although they may also collect other types of art. Unlike collectors of, say, Impressionistpaintings, which can be admired easily by the most visually ignorant of visitors to their homes,collectors of primitive art have often to endure their visitors' grimaces or squeals of shock whenthey see their collection for the first time. Collectors become that much more isolated. Theyneed the strength of , their aesthetic convictions if they areto continue their eccentric pursuit. 53Collectors and most dealers (many of whom are collectors who started dealing in order tosupport their habit) stress that one must love the subject, that one must have the courage to pay ahigh price for an object that one believes in. (The number of fakes on the market only raises thestakes.) To these people collecting is a passion. Many dealerssay that they buy for themselves.Some are even unprepared to have to persuade potential purchasers to buy an object. "If they'veno eye and no interest in the stuff," said one, "I'm not interested in them." Generally, participants

in this market state that their devotion is greater than that of dealers and collectors in other typesof art and that the personal, emotional experience an object gives them is more important to themthan it is to collectors of fine art. Hooper confessed to "a sense of mission."54 Veterancollectors remember that many dealers in the 1940s and 1 950s were very generous and gaveextremely easy terms of credit. These dealers thought that primitive art deserved to be promoted,that they had to encourage potential collectors if these objects were to be generally recognized asworks of art. It was almost a vocation.

Serious collectors collect over time. They start ignorant and slowly learn. Their taste changes astheir eye develops and as they themselves change. Many collectors, bored by some of theirpieces (not their best objects), sell them to buy new objects from which they can gain furtherexperience. To some this continuing refinement of taste is a spiritual process, a form ofselfknowledge mediated by objects. Keggie thought the best pieces feed the spirit. Fagg argues,"All [collectors) are surely, embarked in some sense upon a journey towards the liberationthrough art of the human spirit."55 To Nelson Rockefeller, hiscollection was "an enricheningexperience and a balance to the pressures of business and politics-a constant source of spiritualrefreshment and strength." 56 On this reading, primitive art becomes therapy, soul food forwhites.

Love, touch, greed, fear, courage, passion, ownership, belief,devotion, taste, spirit,psychological charge, emotion (akin to sexual thrill), self-knowledge, the spending of one's ownmoney: the whole personality is involved in serious collecting.57 The collection expresses itscollector's personality, for he is no visionless accumulator, no mere magpie. He makes

individual objects part of a greater whole-the collection-and this is but an aspect of himself.These appropriated items, recategorized according to his own personal mythology, become thespecimens and trophies of his cultural hunt.58 Chosen, then juxtaposed in a way decided by him,these objects lose their individuality in that of the collector. By their contiguity they collectivelybecome his creation, an advertisement of his power of selection. Given seriality by theircollector, they now become pieces "from the collection of X." Collections, despite thepretensions of their owners, are not atemporal creations: whiie a collector may be an independentpersonality, he still thinks in the categories of his time. But the fetishistic power of the relationbetween collector and collected can threaten to become symmetrical. The collectionappropriates its collector, its creator is overtaken by his own creation, which both possesses himand is possessed by him. The owner and his objects become the home of a decentered self.Little wonder, then, that some strive for immortality by having museums specially built for theircollections.59 Their vision will live. Fagg, speaking of the collector Katherine Reswick,mentions "the extraordinary dynamics, the dynamism, of collection and collector alike-for theyhave become one as no others that I have seen." 60 Reswick confesses that her collection"absorbs, nearly controls me through self-curiosity, aestheticrestlessness, and above all theineradicable desire to live immersed in beautiful things. It is a hunger. . . . Omnivorous, a littlemad, I live among the game trails of circumstance." 61****It is, at least, reassuring to remember that, just as many rituals outlast their interpretations, somost objects outlive their collectors. They can await further owners, the fabrication of furtherclassifications.

Footnotes1 . I thank the following for their generous help: Peter Adleril David Attenborough, Ian Auld,Nigel Barley, Lance Entwistle,William Fagg, Robero Fainello, Werner Gillon, Phillip Goldman,Josef Herman, Angela Hescott, John Hewett, Laiek and David Holzer, Tim Hunt, Antony Jack,the late James Keggie, T. F. Lemaire, Malcolm McLeod, JonathanMankowitz, Ernest Ohley,Hermione Waterfield, and Monica and Peter Wengraff. Ragnar Johnson and Francesco Pellizzimade informative comments on draft versions. I first learnt ofhow the market operates in aseries of conversations with Tessa Fowler. This is the first report of an envisaged wider study ofthe international market in primitive art-a market that is international in both its networks andprice precedents. Although I restrict myself arbitrarily to the British market, I think many of thepoints made also apply to the market outside Britain.2. J. Clifford, "Histories of the Tribal and the Modern," in Art in America, April 1985: 164-177.3. S. Phelps, Art and Artefacts of the Pacific, Africa and theAmericas: the James HooperCollection, London 1976: 13.4. In R. W. Force and M. Force, The Fuller Collection of Pacific Artefacts, London, 1971: vi.5. P. Gatfiercole, "Obstacles to the study of Maori carving: the collector, the connoisseur, and thefaker," in M. Greenhalgh and V. Megaw, eds., Art in Society: studies in style, culture andaesthetics, London, 1978, pp. 275-288: 283.6. 1 use the term primitive art throughout this article because it has become the standard in theliterature. Tribal art-a modern euphemism-reflects the same public ignorance and causes the

same semantic problems. Of course, the adjective in primitive art applies as much to itsclassifiers as to the objects it classes. On the changing content of this term, see W. Rubin,"Modernist Primitivism: an Introduction," in W. Rubin, ed., "Primitivism" in 20th Century Art,New York, 1985, vol. 1: 1-84.7. Ohley ran the Berkeley Gallery in the West End; Wengraff had the Arcade Gallery off BondStreet; Meier had a shop in Cecil's Court, almost opposite tl-ie National Gallery.8. For the lesser sale rooms (steven's, Glendinning's, Puttockand Simpson's), objects had to besubmitted only four days before a sale. The catalogue was printed that night and issued the nextmorning. Sotheby's and Christie's, who sold much less primitive art, demanded that objects begiven them a month before the sale.9. As one dealer said, "A whimsical buyer may not buy much, but you can get a lot of whimsicalbuyers." And is whimsy our ignorant term for a variety of motives, difficult to ascertain, hard tocategorize neatly?10. But to some collectors this was their point. Epstein wrotethat the object and inspiration ofmost African art objects was "religion." These objects were deliberately direct and simplified inmanner in order to produce feelings of awe and fear (in The Sculptor Speaks, London, 1 946:90). Also, the British artist Edward Paolozzi mentions that inthe postwar years "most people inEngland were just not interested in carvings from Africa and the Pacific and art students wererarely, if ever, encouraged to go and look at such things" (inLost Magic Kingdoms and SixPaper Moons from Nahuatl, An Exhibition at the Museum of Mankind, London, 1985: 9).11. See 1. Cooper, Under the Hammer: The Auctions and Auctioneers of London, London, 1977;F. Herrmann, Sotheby's: Portrait of an Auction House, London, 1 980. I do not include any of the

graphs produced by The Tirnesl Sotheby's Art Indexes: these statistics may have lent credence tothe idea of art as a sound financial investment, but they are essentially rhetorical devicessuggesting that mathematical formality can be applied to a nonformal subject-people's decision tobuy and sell.12. See G. Reitlinger, The Economics of Taste, vols. 1-111, London, 1960, 1963, 1970; R.Hughes, "On Art and Money," in The New York Review of Books, 6Dec. 1984: 20-27, fordetails of this transformation and its reasons. Although primitive art is now accepted as art bymost curators and directors of national art galleries, the British Customs Excise Department stillholds a more old-fashioned view. "Works of art" are not subject to duty. But British Customs donot consider primitive art as "works of art." Dealers importing primitive art must call them"collectors' items of ethnographic interest" if they are to avoid paying duty on them.13. 1 have decided not to discuss the illegal aspects of the market. Although an inquisitiveanthropologist hears many stories about theft, the manufactureof fakes, and the illegalimportation of items, these tales are difficult to check and dangerous to quote.14, One dealer said that what is sold in London in a year is equal to what is sold in New York ina week.15. Of course, serious American collectors are not included inthese generalizations, AfricanArts, the most widely circulated American journal in primitiveart, is read by people with anaverage age of forty-four years. Sixty-three percent of its readers have an income between$2S,000 and $40,000. Seventy percent of them have university education beyond the B.A.Teachers and educators form the most numerous single occupational group among its readers,followed by professionals (doctors, lawyers, dentists).

16. The idea that objects should be bought "back" for the sakeof "national pride" because theyare part of that nation's "treasures" is, of course, a modern Western notion based on thenineteenth-century European conception of "nation."17. However, important objects from Eastern and Central European museums have appeared onthe market. These museums, for instance Budapest and Dresden, sold in order to buy things theydid not have.18. The auction-house concealed the fact that there was no buyer prepared to bid above thereserve by "buying" the object itself. This is one of the strategies used by the auction-houses tomaintain the myth that prices are constantly rising-a necessary tactic if investors are not to losefaith in the market. (see B. Burnham, The Art Crisis, London, 1975, esp. pp, 191-213.)19, W. Fagg in W. Gillon, Collecting African Art, London, 1979: viii.20. S. Phelps, op. cit.: io.21. F. Willett, African Art: An lntroductioi), London, 1971: 40.22. S. Vogel, "Bringing African Art to the Metropolitan Museuni," in African Arts, February1982, XV, no. 2, pp. 38-45: 40.23. Bourdieu, speaking of art in general, states, "Everything seems to suggest that even amongprofessional valuers, the criteria which define the stylistic properties of the 'typical works' onwhich all their judgments are based usually remain implicit" (in Distinction: A Social Critique ofthe judgement of Taste, London, [I 9791 1 985: 4).24. Some American collectors speak of an object's rightness.25.One could quote, ironically, the words of Clive Bell in 1922 about primitive art: Here is noquestion of dates and schools to give the lecturer his chance of spoiling our pleasure. Here isnothing to.distract our attention from the one thing that matters-aestheti@,significance. Here isnigger sculpture: you may like it or dislike it',@but at any rate you have no inducement to judge

it on anything 66t its merits. (from Since C6zanne, London, p.1 2 1)26."The Vincent Price Collection," in African Arts, winter 1972, pp. 20-27: 22.27. The same occurs with the work of medieval masters-"tl)e primitives" and for some eminentclassical masters.28. M. McLeod, "Paolozzi and Identity," in Paolozzi, op. cit.,pp. 15-59: 46.29. W. Rubin, op. cit.: 17.30. This discussion about the created opposition between genuine and fake is indebted to the(sometimes lengthy) replies printed in African Arts, April 1976, IX, no. 3, to @ questionnaireabout fakes that the journal sent to important dealers, collectors, and curators.31. F, Willett, "True or False? The False Dichotomy," in African Arts, April 1976, IX, no. 3, pp.8-14: 8.32. The market does now include objects from a few particular primitive genres that havedeveloped because of contact with the West, for instance, the great flourishing of the Navahoblanket.33. Dealers in fine art speak of schools; dealers in primitiveart speak of styles.34. W, Gillon, op. cit.: 33. In Sotheby's and Christie's catalogues pieces may be called very fine,rare, unusual, or classical works, uncontaminated by expatriate influence. They may havesculptorly qualities, a sensitive face, and a good worn creamypatina, or maybe a crustysacrificial dark rich one.35. R. P. Armstrong, "Sorts of Collectors," in African Arts, IX, no. 3, p. 30.36. Z. Velavka, "The Fight against Forgery," in African Arts, IX, no. 3, pp. 63-65: 65.37. "40,000 Years of Modern Art," at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in 1 948;"Traditional Art of the British Colonies," at the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1949;

"Traditional Art from the Colonies," at the Imperial Institutein 1951. William Ohley stagedseven exhibitions of primitive art in his gallery between 1945and 1951.38. The opening of the Rockefeller Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was expected tostimulate a wave of collecting, but prices in the following auctions were not appreciably higher.The exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, "'Primitivism' in 20th Century Art," inlate 1 984 was similarly expected to increase interest in primitive art, and one or two New Yorkdealers state that a few people, after visiting the exhibition, did begin buying primitive art for thefirst time. But the May 1 985 sale in New York of the Robert Plat Armstrong collection showedno great change in public interest: art collectors whose interest in the primitive had just beenawoken by the exhibition were not yet prepared to spend big money.39. The Museum of mankind no longer includes objects from private collections in its showsbecause too often the object was sold at a greatly increased price very shortly after the exhibitionclosed. In November 1978, African Arts abandoned its policy ofusing photographs of objectsfrom private collections. Its editor confessed, "it is with bitter regret that I contemplate how ourinnocence was manipulated to provide startlingly aggrandized re-evaluations of art pieces" (XIII,no. 1: 6).40. In 1983 Peter Adler, a successful London-based dealer, wasfinding it more and moredifficult to discover good pieces of primitive art that were not prohibitively expensive. So hediversified and started buying textiles and household objects.He soon built up a stock becauseother dealers, learning of his new interest but thinking him rnad, passed on to him any items theyhad or were offered. He informed African runners of his changein interest and on their

succeeding visits they began to bring him the sorts of objectsand cloth he wanted. in early 1984he held a show at the Wengraff's Arcade Gallery. Very little sold. Adler thought the show hadflopped because only established collectors had been invited to the exhibition. Later that year heencouraged Sotheby Parke Bernet in New York to hold an auctionof textiles and furniture, usingmainly his collection. To Adler, selling these objects throughSotheby's was the best way ofpromoting these objects, the prestige of the famous auction-house lending respectability to thisnew category of goodsespecially important for the American market because Americans, hethought, were particularly ignorant of textiles: they had not had a chance of looking at themseriously before. The sale was deliberately aimed at decorators, designers, collectors ofcontemporary art, and people in the music business (mainly friends and acquaintances of Adler, asuccessful pop musician). Although the original intention to advertise the sale in contemporaryart journals and in designers' and decorators' journals was not in the end fulfilled, acorrespondent for the New York Times did write a long article about African textiles which waspublished the Saturday before the sale ' . Many came to the special viewing on the Sunday andthe sale itself was a great success: stools that had sold for f3O in 1983 went for f 100 to f4OO.Adler is now writing articles on African textiles for two prestigious decorators' magazines.41. Appraisers, trying to assess an object's worth, will checkthrough their detailed records of allmajor auctions in the last few decades to learn how similar objects have sold. Often, however,the piece is sufficiently individual that past prices provide no reliable guide, or is sufficientlyrare that very few like it have come up for sale in recent years. Appraisers stress the volatility ofthe market and its relatively small size. They say that one can predict quite accurately how much

an eighteenth-century miniature, for instance, will go for; but in primitive art the price is muchmore difficult to estimate.42. The purchaser of the Fijian oil bowl at the North Country sale sold it to a successful Londondealer for over f2O,OOO. His peers thought him extremely rash to pay so much and that hewould be unable to find a buyer. But there are only five such bowls in the world. Three arealready in museums and the fourth is already bequeathed to a museum. The dealer did find abuyer among his wealthy clients, and he sold it to him for four times what he had paid.43. The second reaction of most visitors to my room, on seeingthe Melanesian objects leaningagainst one wall, was to ask how much they would sell for. Their first reaction was most often asurprised cry.44. L. Kopytoff, "The Cultural Biography of Things," in A. Appadurai, ed., The Social Life ofThings, London, 1986, pp. 64-91: 81.45. Baudrillard, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, St. Louis, 119721 1981:117. Museums act as guarantees for these socially restricted exchanges: they "play the role ofbanks in the political economy of (primitive art)" (ibid.: 122).46. P. Bourdieu, "Outline of a Sociological Theory of Art Perception," International SocialSciences journal, 20, 1968, no. 4, pp. 589-612.47. R. W. Force and M. Force, op. cit.: 14.48. S. Phelps, op. cit.: 10.49. S. Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the miniature, the gigantic, the souvenir, thecollection, Baltimore, 1984: 1 46. Stewart quotes Baudrillard,who suggests, in Le Systi@medes Objets, that an exotic object fascinates by its anteriority, which links it to the analogouslyanterior world of the childhood of the object's owner.50. One serious collector, concerned with the educative value of primitive art, says that he cannot

"learn" from fakes: "They bear a false witness" (D. Attenborough, Tribal Encounters, Leicester,1981: 6.51."The Vincent Price Collection" op. cit.: 21.52.It is worth noting that greed turns easily into theft. But,as I said, I do not explore the illegalaspects of the market.53. The comments of a correspondent to a conservative British magazine about the prize lot inChristie's June 1 985 sale reveal the persistence of these uneducated attitudes: Rather to mysurprise, the adjective used to describe the bowl, not only byChristie's learned cataloguer but byother specialists, is "superb", as if it is to be compared with the Parthenon or Michelangelo'sAdam on the roof of the Sistine Chapel. How wide a gulf there is between the dedicatedanthropologist and people like myself. It is, nonetheless, a carving of exceptional quality as thesebarbarous objects go. (from Country Life, 1 5 August 1 985, pp. 442-43). It is not justconservative art collectors who ignore primitive art. When burglars recently raided the home ofone London collector, they stole all his antique wooden boxes.They did not remove the set ofvaluable African ivory lions he had left on the dining-room table.54.S. Phelps, op. cit.: 13.55.W. Fagg, in W. Gillon, op, cit.: viii.56. "Introduction," in D. Newton, Masterpieces of Primitive Art: The Nelson A. RockefellerCollection, New York, 1978, pp. 19-25: 25.57. Stewart argues that collectors necessarily experience nostalgia: "For the nostalgic to reach hisor her goal of closing the gap between resemblance [of objectsin the collection] and identity,lived experience would have to take place.... an experience which would cancel out the desirethat is nostalgia's reason for existence" (op. cit.: 145).58. S. Stewart, ibid.: 147. One woman said her collection was as important to her as her

children. One New York collector has pieces of colonial art onhis sitting-room mantelpiece as awitty, humorous contrast to his collection of serious objects,which he keeps in his library. Eachpiece of the Raymond Wielgus collection "is part of an overallassociation, linked together by theoverriding sensibility of the owner" ("The Raymond Wielgus Collection," African Arts, winter1972, pp. 50-55: 50).59. See, for instance, "A Private Passion for Art," in Newsweek, June 15, 1987, pp. 50-51.60. W. Fagg, African Tribal Images: The Katherine Reswick Collection, Cleveland, 1968: xiii.61. K. W. Reswick, "Preface," ibid., pvii-xi: xi.