African Art Club

africantype says:

As I said before,provenance is a term used by ethologists and gallerists to detemine the origin and function of an object. Whereas the ethnologists are more interested in the socio-cultural aspect, the gallerists are more interested in the place,the object comes from, its second provenance by a prominent person and its illustration in a catalog or book.
Thus is not astonishing that ethnologists in office rarely issue appraisals, wheras the galleries do so basing it on criterias mentioned above as well as on eurocentric aesthetics.
We should start breaking with established rules identifying the value of an object through these standards, but base our appraisal on critical questions on how an explorer collected the objects(ethnological item for archive registration), how and where the famous painters got their objects(flea market) and which religious or ceremoninal function it had to perform.
The desperate last step in following European concepts of ethetics is to attribute the work of art to famous workshops, thus having an argument of augmenting prices.
In the exhibition in Riehen(Beyeler Foundation), they spoke about masters of..

The last auctions show rather clearly that the provenance from a gallery is still far more important than the original provenance.
In the age of Internet it is ,though, rather easy for a serious collector to make research on a piece or an ethnic group before buying an object and I am sure he will find outstanding pieces for an acceptable price. Combined with a longer stay in Africa living with people performing their ceremonies and sitting with the elder ones in the open air to talk over past ceremonies being performed upto now, is the utmost you can do to find an authentic piece (though”ugly”) and to develop critera of appraisal from the bottom and its religious context, the artist rarely being one to create without formal rules imposed.