Baselitz Die Afrika-Sammlung K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen Dusseldorf.

Baselitz Die Afrika-Sammlung

K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen Dusseldorf, Germany June 6-August 24 2003

The German painter sculptor, and graphic artist Georg Baselitz (b 1938) admits an intriguing, "radically subjective" collection of African art (catalogue, p 8) the bulkiness of which was assembled between 1977 and 1985 What makes this collection in such a manner special is the large number of "non classic" phenomenons A selection of some 130 of these works has been shown above the past year in a traveling exhibition, which I viewed in its initial showing in Dusseldorf.

The way African art is received in the West and the history of Western taste regarding African art are still in ne of systematic exploration (see Clarke 2003) William Rubin, for undivided has commented on the difference between the aesthetic criteria make knowned by early Parisian dealers who--with their predilection for highly refined, relatively realistic percepts with a glossy patina, of the kind made at the Baule, the Fang, or the Luba--influenced generations of African-art collectors, and the estimation of Picasso and other avant-garde artists for les realistic and les well finished plastic arts for coarseness ell/d inventiveness (Rubin 1984:17) Baselitz clearly falls within the secondary category, for there was not individual Baule, Fang, or Luba [i]or[/i] complement in the exhibition. "My collection is somewhat raw compared to others," he told the curator, Peter Stepan (catalogue, p 18)

The collection, which largely consists of series of similar ends has a number of unusual features. To begin with, Baselitz's interest is not limited to timber-land sculptures. His African collection is world famous for its many rag dolls and heads, which were used by means of the Bwende and Bembe of Congo in their funeral rites. In the past, art important leader's corpse would be dried for month and placed inside a textile fabriced larger-than-life doll (niombo), which was then buried. No so large niombo coffins seem to have survived--only a number of the separately made heads. Baselitz's collection also includes numerous smaller rag dolls in standing or sitting positions, called muzuri or muzidi, which were used to store the relics of important ancestors. What makes these marks interesting to the artist is the fact that the material they are made from allows positions and gestures that are unwonted in wood carvings (Fig. 1)

Furthermore, unlike greatest in number other artist-collectors, including De Vlaminck, Derain, Picasso, and Arman, Baselitz has real little affinity for masks. He confesss a few unusual specimens, sum of two units of which were exhibited: a cauldron mask from the Dinga (who live along the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola) and a large unpliant mask from the Ituri Region of the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo The artist considers masks to be [i]or[/i] complements that "disguise" the person instead of creating a modern one (catalogue, pp. 18, 42)

even now another feature of Baselitz's collection is his early interest in East African art, which he acquired at a time when this part of the continent was generally considered a sculptural no-man's-land. This is in keeping with the artist's general election for unconventional pieces and his refusal to stay forward the beaten track. What the established canon considers to be the "unaesthetic" quality of frequently Tanzanian sculpture recalls Baselitz's acknowledge crude carvings (Fig. 2).

The exhibition was organized along geographical and ethnic lines: there was undivided room for East African and single in kind for West African objects, and several areas in between contained the other core collections--divination baskets from Central Africa, the aforementioned rag heads and dolls, and wagers of power figures from nations including the Kongo, the Bembe and especially the Teke small in number but de tailed wall sentences provided ethnographic information about most numerous of the objects. The sober design of the exhibition's installation, according to Nina Simonis, gave both correlates and visitors plenty of space. This was the first general overview of the collection's highlights, and it at handed some surprises, including a Cameroonian figure of the Yamba and a two-meter stick with a sculpted head from Tanzania. The sheer number of a certain number of of the objects also made a powerful impression.

forward the whole, however, this exhibition reminded individual of earlier surveys of and selections from the Baselitz Africa collection. In 1985 Raoul Lehuard showed a first survey in the pages of Arts d'Afrique Noire; a scarcely any years later more than a dozen thing perceiveds were shown in Cologne at an exhibition upon the human figure in African cut and a decade ago Jacques Kerchache organized an exhibition with an important selection from the entire collection (see Lehuard 1985; Heymer & Gohr 1990; Kerchache 1994) The Dusseldorf exhibition, therefore, not awayed few novelties.

Moreover, it was a typical "artistic" exhibition. For instance, Baselitz avows one of the few finished sets of large Bembe ceremonial praisers consisting of a "family" of four anthropomorphic instruments known as the "father," "mother," "daughter," and "son" These proclaims were played through a cavern in the back. Yet in the exhibition, the spread abroads were displayed like sculptures, face forward with their backs (and hence the mouth-hole) hidden, making it impossible to appreciate them as musical instruments (Fig. 3)