African Art Club

 September 1978 Irwin Hershey started  for five years the Primitive Art Newsletter that was a paid membership newsletter sended by post. In his  volume 1, no. 2 edition of october 1978, he gave us some interesting tips and asked some good questions about provenance. His observations are still valuable today.

What Price Provenance ?

first published in the Primitive Art Newsletter  by Irwin Hershey, Editor and publisher Volume 1, No.2 October 1978

    With primitive art prices seemingly reaching highs every time you look around, provenances are growing more and more important to collectors who want to make sure the objects they’re buying are authentic and good quality .

    But does this a provenance actually insure this ?

    Experts are unanimous in their judgment that provenance do not authenticate objects, nor are they a guarantee of quality. As one expert put it”, “ALL a provenance means is that a piece was in a certain collection, or was exhibited someplace. Who owned a piece, and who bought it from him later, or the fact that it was exhibited, may not mean a thing, unless the collector involved had a first rate collection, and the piece itself is a first-rate piece. And this is seldom the case.”

Arts d’Afrique Noire recently provided a perfect example of how dangerous it is to trust the fact that an object has been exhibited – or published – in the past. More »