Further details
Utotombo
Context and short History of an African Art Exhibition in Brussels by
Frank Herreman*
In September 1987, Elze Bruyninx, who at that time held a research position at the University of Ghent, Marie Louise Bastin, then a lecturer at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Anne Leurquin, one of Bastin's former students, and myself, Frank Herreman, then a staff member at the Ethnographic Museum in Antwerp, were requested to form the selection committee for an exhibition of African art in Belgian private collections at the Centre for Fine Arts (today known as Bozar) in Brussels, and then under the leadership of Jan Debbaut.
The exhibition, named "Utotombo", had to be conceived and produced in a very short time-span, between October 1987 and its opening on March 25, 1988. The title of the show was chosen upon the suggestion of Marie-Louise Bastin. She informed us that among the Chokwe peoples of Angola the word utotombo signifies a well-made and efficient object that was created with great craftsmanship and affection. Between early October and mid-December we visited about sixty private collectors and photographed a total of about 1,500 artworks from the much larger number of objects we encountered. What we discovered surpassed our wildest expectations in terms of both quality and diversity. Though we did include all the collectors who had contributed to two earlier African art exhibitions in Belgium - one held in Brussels "African Sculpture: New Perspectives on a Patrimony," in 1977, the other in Antwerp "Arts premiers d'Afrique noire" in 1975 - we added about six times more names to the list. The dominant role which Brussels and to a lesser extent Antwerp continue to play in the trade and collecting of African art in general-and of Congolese art in particular-goes back to Belgium's colonial history. Early on, colonial officials were commissioned to acquire objects to contribute to the budding collection of the newly founded Museum of the Congo in 1898, it is today known as the Royal Museum for Central Africa and is located in Tervuren. Missionaries and some colonials developed a personal interest in the "native arts" Missionaries used their collections for propaganda exhibitions to
support their work in Congo. Objects deriving from both missionary and private colonial sources also ended in the commercial circuit. The African art trade in Belgium was mainly to be found in Brussels. During the 1950s most of the Brussels dealers traded works of African art next to the European antiquities. The 1960s saw the emergence of dealers who started to concentrate mostly on African objects but also on works of art from Oceania, and American Indian cultures. The independence of the Belgian colony in 1960 and the return of colonial servants to their homeland brought a new load of Congolese art onto the Belgian art market. 1960 was also the time when other European countries witnessed their colonies access independence. This new situation brought a new generation of dealers that traveled directly to Africa in search of merchandise.
At first, very few exhibitions of African art were organized in Belgium after World War II. The Brussels Universal Exposition of 1958 did host an exhibition art from the Congo and Ruanda and Burundi. In 1963 the Tervuren Museum organized "Art d'Afrique dans les collections belges", comprising a selection of more than 600 sculptures from other African countries than the former Belgian Congo. Then, in 1975, Philippe Guimiot organized in Antwerp the noteworthy exhibition "African Sculpture: New Perspectives on a Patrimony". It included works from the Antwerp Ethnographic Museum and from a few Belgian private lenders. In 1977, Guimiot collaborated with Lucien Van de Velde in Brussels on the exhibition "Arts premiers d'Afrique noire" (First Arts from Black
Africa). All the selected works of art for this show came from private collections. Both exhibitions served as direct inspirations for "Utotombo" ten years later.
As soon as our team started with the selection process, we realized that "Utotombo" could offer a much wider range of objects than the two exhibitions held previously. It was agreed that, as a result of the large quantity of high-quality objects, and the expanded range of types and genres we encountered - including also jewelry, decorative arts, and furniture, aside from masks and figures - we would raise the initial limit of 150 loans to a final selection of 336 objects. The catalog would include images of all the objects as well as entries explaining the function and meaning of every object, and a number of essays by several then leading scholars in the field of African art studies. In both the catalogue and the exhibition, the selected works were organized following their geographic distribution from western to southern Africa. One room in the exhibition was used to illuminate the use and function of African. I was given the task to extract some works, and to write an essay focusing on the relationships between art religion, society and economy. It was published as a supplement to the actual catalogue. The "Utotombo" catalogue was already sold out two weeks before the exhibition's closing. Today, the publication is highly desirable among book African art aficionados, and often referred to as part of an object's pedigree. What distinguished "Utotombo" from most of succeeding African art exhibitions was the fact that it drew exclusively from private collections. While this imposed some restrictions, it also celebrated the continuous search for the unknown and the underrated by the Belgian collectors. Based on a combination of knowledge, intuition, and an open mind, they continuously were looking for new forms, genres, and artistic traditions in African art. The six objects that are part of this auction and that were included in "Utotombo" clearly demonstrate the ambition of a Belgian collector of hat period to put together a first rate collection. Four sculptures are from the Democratic Republic of Congo. They include a superb power figure covered with nails and pins from the Lower Congo region; another and rare nkissi figure from the Yombe peoples that is still loaded with power substances and is standing on a base in the shape of a tortoise; a finely carved female Yombe figure decorated with upholstery tags, and a large giwoyo mask from the Pende peoples. The two other artworks come from the Yoruba peoples of Nigeria. One is a ritual staff, eshu, with two figures. The other is a major carved female figure, except the face. It probably served as an altar figure representing a follower of Shango. These six works of art that are put at auction are a testimony of the high level that some Belgian collectors had reached in the years preceding "Utotombo". It was the enthusiasm of these collectors that gave us the impetus to make "Utotombo" become a major event in the history of African art exhibitions.
*A more extensive essay about the history and context of the Utotombo exhibition will be included in the forthcoming essay by Frank Herrreman: "The Delenne Collection and the Exhibition "Utotombo" (Brussels, 1988): Some Recollections." In Fragments of the Invisible: The Ren and Odette Delenne Collection of Congo Sculpture, ed. Constantine Petridis, Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013. I wish to thank Constantine Petridis for his advice.
REFERENCES CITED
Antwerp 1975RAfrikaanse beeldhouwkunst: Nieuw zicht op een erfgoed, exh. cat. Brussels: Philippe Guimiot, 1975.
Bastin 1988
Bastin, Marie-Louise, et al. Utotombo. L'Art d'Afrique noire dans les collections privées belges, exh. cat. Brussels: Société des Expositions du Palais des Beaux-Arts, 1988.
Brussels 1958
Kunst in Kongo, exh. cat. Brussels: Algemene Wereldtentoonstelling, Sectie van Belgisch-Kongo en Ruanda-Urundi, 1958.
Brussels 1977
Arts premiers d'Afrique noire, exh. cat. Brussels: Crédit Communal de Belgique, Centre Culturel, 1977.
Herreman 1988
Herreman, Frank. Afrikaanse kunst; enkele belangrijke functies toegelicht. Supplement to the exhibition catalogue Utotombo: Kunst uit Zwaty-Afrika in Belgisch privé-bezit. Brussels: Vereniging voor Tentoonstellingen van het Paleis voor Schone Kunsten, 1988.
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