Take!A fabulous African and Oceanian collection will sell in Paris

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Take!A fabulous African and Oceanian collection will sell in Paris

Michel Périnet had gathered 61 exceptional sculptures since the 1970s.The whole is estimated 25 million.We only speak with restitutions...

We read strange things in the press.Especially when you start to think, which the latter is not often, too busy satisfying its readers or advertisers.I thus have before me the current number of "Beaux-Arts Magazine".It is a question on page 152 of the dispersion of the works gathered by the jeweler Michel Périnet, died in 2020 to 90 years.A merchant that we saw at the Biennale des Antiques Parisienne.Nothing that very normal.The monthly has a shutter on the market like all the art reviews.

Shoulder mask Nimba Baga de Guinea.An iconic model.Former collection Degaurice Nicaud.Photo Christie's, Paris 2021.

It all starts with a panegyric.Note, however, that the review remains more sober here than the catalogs of Sotheby’s and Christie’s, where the dear deceased (there are much more collectors than collectors) generally borders on holiness.Good husband, advised professional, respectful colleague and great donor for charitable institutions ... here, none of this.The man, on which few things know himself, remains "a paragon of requirement and discretion in very diverse fields.»His artistic interests have varied over time.The beginner started with Art Nouveau jewelry, while the latter remained an old moon.He then went to the Pont-Aven school and Art Deco.There had also been modern painting, including that of Francis Picabia.Art Deco had been sold at the auction in 2014.

La bonne époque pour acheter

From the 1970s, Michel Périnet passed, which seems reasonably early, to the arts of Africa and Oceania.European artists had discovered them shortly before 1910.They already proved to be fashionable in the pre-war surreal circles.The prices were not around 1975, however, what they become today.As swollen as culturalist thighs.He also circulated less false and parts that we will describe as "issues".The jeweler, who was not a bulimic, was therefore able to build a set of very, very high level.The proof!A auctioneer who has been known eighteen years at Christie's Paris, François de Ricqlès, and three specialized Parisian merchants, Alain de Monbrison, launches Entwistle and Bernard Dulon, estimated the 61 pieces which will pass on June 23 under the hammerBetween 18 and 25 million euros.

Part of the collection with Printz row and Mathieu's canvas.Photo Christie's, Paris 2021.

"Beaux-Arts Magazine" shows extracts on pages 152 and 154.There are indeed striking parts with impeccable "pedigrees".The head of Gabon (prized between two and three million) belonged to the painter Maurice de Vlaminck.The extremely rare Tapuanu mask of the Mortock Islands (it is in Micronesia) leaves a museum in Dresden, which destined.The Kota Helm, also Gabonese, has passed through the hands of the merchant Paul Doucet and the designer Jacques Doucet.All this was going on a very long time ago, which concretes the provenances.There is therefore the insurance wanted for the happy buyers, who may put them like Michel Périnet, on a Wooden Wooden Wooden Broker from Eugène Printz and under a youth canvas (he was then in great shape) of GeorgesMathieu.A wedding that has become very "fashion".

Deux visions

Until then, everything is fine Madame la Marquise (1)!Only this article comes at a time when the daily press is in a spoliation and restitution stories all the way out of editing."Le Monde", especially.Now is the moment of great contrition.What Pascal Bruckner, labeled rather on the right, called a long time ago "the sob of the white man".We know that the Geneva Meg, who should rename himself (where are we, by the way?) Made at the moment very strong in the genre.The exhibition put on September (it is still necessary well to happen there this year!) Will remain without objects."Declaration of intention, simple noise", the other day told me a friend who was soprano (and not tenor) of the labor party.She did not appreciate the perpetual setback of the current director on the institution's website.The Zurich Rietberg, as I have already told you, acts in subtlety.Its new director Annette Bagwati shows and corrects the shot, without announcing a restorative hemorrhage of the collections, moreover rather Asian.It calls on the famous "strains peoples" without brandishing them like standard.

ULI statue of New Ireland.Photo Christie's, Paris 2021.

So we arrive, and this is the object of my article, not to a two -speed society, but to a schizophrenic vision in the face of exported or spoiled African objects.On the one hand, there is the sometimes fair speech, but often terribly well thinking, journalists serving as a megaphone for a Bénédicte Savoy always as doctrinaire and scowl.We have to return everything.A work was necessarily poorly acquired during the colonial period.A vision supported by lips the Macron government.An idea that the Germans develop more firmly, the country receiving recently to return to Benin its “raid” bronzes in 1897.And on the other hand, everything remains today allowed on the market, or even in museums which would now acquire.The Quai Branly has just welcomed, under costly bells with glass melons signed Jean Nouvel, the prestigious Don Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière.The Parisian galleries organized last September (the masks were then seen by masked visitors) the "journey of the worlds" as if nothing had been.And major sales continue.The proof!

Incohérences

I want coherence not the major quality of the human brain, but all the same!How can we not develop a global vision here?Objects on the market have arrived in the West at the same time as those in museums.Some come out of the rest, such as the Dresden mask of the perinet succession.So what miracle is it that those of public collections are demonized until the last, while those belonging to private people keep all four white feet?There are two weights there, two measures.Three even if we say that a perinet object would undoubtedly be accepted with joy by a European or American institution.But what surprises me the most is that no one apparently asks the question.Why here and not there?Bénédicte Savoy and her friend Felwine Sarr must not go to do their market at Christie’s.And Christie's does business above all.

(1) It was the title of a song by the orchestra of Ray Ventura in 1935, the success of which was enormous and lasting.You have all told on Google.

Pratique

"Michel Périnet collection", sale on June 23.Visits the previous days.Christie’s, 9, avenue Matignon, Paris.Such.000331 40 76 85 85, site www.Christies.com

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