BRAFA 2014

From January 25 through February 2, 2014, Tours & Taxis will be the setting for the Brussels Antiques and Fine Arts Fair (BRAFA), which promises, as always, to be of great interest to Belgian collectors as well as international visitors. Tribal art will be represented this year by ten dealers and galleries: Pierre Dartevelle, Bernard Dulon, Yann Ferrandin, Jacques Germain, Bernard de Grunne, Sarah de Monbrison, Adrian Schlag, Serge Schoffel, and Galerie Schoffel-Valluet, as well as by the event’s vice president, Didier Claes. 

For more information, visit www.brafa.be

Image courtesy of BRAFA

Jacaranda Tribal at Bruneaf 2010

African Art Celebrated at Joburg Art Fair Last Week

Recession or not, the art world goes on, and never was this more obvious than at the Joburg Art Fair this past weekend.

For those of us who thought that the tough economic times would put a damper on the occasion, we couldn’t have been more wrong.

The price tags were certainly not shy (a particularly unique and gorgeous Kentridge work at the Goodman Gallery stand was going for a weighty R1 083 000) and among the 23 galleries participating, there were quite a few red “sold” dots to behold.

This is a phenomenon that Ross Douglas, director of the company Artlogic, which runs the Joburg Art Fair, commented on during the media walkabout on Friday March 26.

“For me, one of the really interesting things about the Fair is that if you’d tried to do an art fair in SA eight years ago, there wouldn’t have been enough galleries,” he says.

“But in the last four or five years, suddenly a whole lot of galleries started up.

“Last year was a really difficult year financially, and what we’ve seen is that these galleries, despite this really difficult recession, have managed to sustain themselves,” Douglas says.

“We’ve lost two SA galleries between last year and this year – Warren Siebrits and Bell Roberts – but I’ve been amazed at how galleries have managed to sustain themselves through what has been a very long and difficult year.”

However, it’s not just the buyers and art connoisseurs who got their two cents worth from the Fair.

There has always been an educational angle to the weekend, which is why there were a series of free art talks by experts in the field running throughout all three days of the Fair.

“One of the ideas behind the Fair is to make it really accessible to people, to get people inquisitive about art, and interacting with art, and the talks are a nice way to understand art,” explains Douglas.

Chili Hawes, director of the October Gallery in London, which has exhibited at the Fair for three consecutive years, says that she can see people’s enthusiasm for art increasing.

“Especially this year, I see a lot of people really keenly looking at the work, and so that’s very refreshing to us,” she says.

“People really appreciate it and love it and seem to be interested in it and learning about it.”
Arguably of the best offering that the Fair provides is access to international galleries’ stands, because as Douglas says, SA galleries focus on SA art, whereas some of the international galleries focus on art from the rest of the continent.

For those folks who spent part of their weekend at the Fair, the chance to see works never before seen in SA would certainly not have gone unappreciated.

To read our original posting on the 2010 Joburg Art Fair, click here.



Source: The Citizen
By: Natalie Bosman

Joburg Art Fair 2010 is This Weekend

From the 26th to the 28th of March 2010, Sandton Convention Centre will be the home for 23 participating galleries, featuring the work of over 400 artists and 40 designers from South Africa and the greater continent. The Joburg Art Fair showcases the cream of contemporary artistic production and is a critical platform for positioning African artists as players in the international art arena.

In its 3rd consecutive year, the Joburg Art Fair has established itself as a key event on the calendars’ of galleries, artists, buyers, sellers, international collectors and the like, as well as anyone with an interest in contemporary art, design and culture from the continent. As the only event of its kind in Africa, the Joburg Art Fair aims to represent the continent.

From its inception in 2008, the Joburg Art Fair has combined the various disciplines of art. The project has been driven by the desire to make contemporary art and design more accessible and available to the public. And it’s working. The Art Fair’s second year saw a 50 percent increase in numbers, with the total visitor count rising to 10 000.

In addition to the galleries, 11 special projects have been created to give new and emerging artists an opportunity to showcase their works. These projects offer visitors an experience that goes beyond the purely commercial.

The overarching theme for the 2010 Fair is ‘Art & Industry’. A series of projects will mirror the international move towards the beneficial collaboration of artists with industry. The Joburg Art Fair is a forum for these exchanges and dialogues to take place. The partnership of Art & Industry is a catalyst for fresh perspectives and solutions in production that are both inspired and progressive. Art breathes new life into industry, and this synergy serves the growing demand for the contemporary and ‘cool’.

The New York Arts of Pacific Asia Show This Week

The anchor of New York City’s Spring Asia Week, this show, presented since 1995, brings together an ever more prestigious assemblage of the world’s leading galleries and dealers specializing in the fine arts, textiles and objects de arte of Asia, the Subcontinent, Japan, the Pacific Islands, and the Near and Middle East.

The Arts of Pacific Asia Show takes place during the major Asian auctions at Sotheby’s, Christies, Phillips, and Doyles, and major gallery shows now adding to the luster of the most vibrant Asian art market in the world.

Collectors, major museum curators and connoisseurs are the core of Asia Week buyers, and the show’s more than 70 exhibitors gather from Asia, Europe, the UK and across America to make this rigorously vetted event the most respected Asian art fair in the world.

Show Dates: March 25th - March 28th, 2010. Check out http://www.caskeylees.com/NY_Asia/NY_Asia.html for more information.

Update from Maastricht: Buyers are Anywhere!

"Going Dutch: Buyers aplenty at the Maastricht art fair"

RECESSIONS affect art fairs in different ways. The most obvious is when buyers stay away, especially if a fair has fallen from fashion or if entry tickets are too expensive. Another is when dealers abandon ship, curtailing the fairs they attend to two a year, say, instead of three. Or they suddenly offer deep discounts to ensure a sale. Slashing prices is a sure sign of lack of confidence.

This year at the Maastricht fine art fair, Europe's premier decorative and fine art festival, there was a different problem: an abundance of ordinary offerings, not so much second-rate as indifferent. Dealers have clearly found it hard to source fresh, top-quality works during the recession. Much of the art was even quite stale: Antonio Guardi's beautiful 18th-century “View of the Villa Loredan at Paese”, presented by Simon Dickinson, a London dealer, was on its fourth Maastricht visit, after a winter with another dealer and no buyers in New York.

None of this was evident at first glance. The private view on the first day, March 12th, was anything but private. A record 10,500 people attended. Cashmere, fur, high heels and hairspray was the uniform of the day. Maastricht is a destination fair; people regard it as an outing. The number of personal jets that bore them there would have been higher had Munich airport not been closed by fog.

More than $3 billion worth of art work—covering every category and period, from ancient Egyptian statuary to post-Modern painting—was presented on 263 stands (24 more than last year). The exhibitors came from 17 countries; most were American, British or continental European, but some trekked from further afield, such as Uruguay and South Korea. A conservative estimate would put the fair's entire offering at over 25,000 pieces. Yet no more than a dozen were truly memorable.

Alan Rubin of Pelham Galleries, a British dealer based in Paris, is something of a maestro. His stand is always a theatrical show, and this year was no exception. The centrepiece was a magnificent canopied bed that once belonged to Talleyrand, the great 19th-century French diplomat. But the most intriguing item was an elaborate automaton clock that hadn't been seen in public for more than 100 years. Standing 130 centimetres high, it had feet shaped like dragons that spat out pearls at regular intervals.

Chinese specialists also like to put on a show. Ben Janssens, a London-based Dutchman and the chairman of the fair, had a small side room at his elegant stand displaying 20th-century Japanese bronzes. Beautiful late Japanese craftsmanship is beginning to gain ground among collectors, especially Westerners, who no longer want to compete with the Chinese in buying Chinese porcelain and metalware.

Lacquer, though, is still something in which Western collectors lead the way. Littleton and Hennesy, which has offices in London and New York, unveiled a spectacular lacquer piece at Maastricht: a 15th-century chest of drawers depicting a Taoist paradise. From the Manno collection in Japan, the chest was unusually large—more than 80 centimetres across and 64 centimetres high—and, despite its age, impressively well-preserved (lacquer is treated with special care in Japan). A Western collector bought it on the second day of the fair, happy to pay the full asking price of €3.1m ($4.2m).

Another eye-catching display was Bernard de Grunne's crowd of 27 Igbo monumental standing sculptures from Nigeria (above), many of them taller than their owners. Drawn in part from his father's collection and that of Jacques Kerchache, once a leading French dealer of tribal and contemporary art, this unusual show featured works that had not been seen in public for many years. Much sought after by French, Belgian and, increasingly, American buyers, these pieces are both fragile and rare, and they seldom travel. The demand for African art has grown over the past five years, and it is expected to expand yet further with the reopening of the Museum for African Art in Manhattan next year. Several buyers were keen on the most important statues—a male and a female carved by a sculptor known as the Awka Master—which ultimately went to a European collector for close to the asking price of €400,000.

Maastricht is the sort of fair where clever dealers bring their discoveries. Often these are works acquired at auction for a bargain price, owing to an original misidentification. John Mitchell Fine Paintings, a family dealership in London, arrived with a Dutch winter landscape it had found in a French provincial sale last summer. The picture came from a chateau in central France and was so dirty as to be almost unrecognisable. Auctioneers described it as Dutch school (circa 1620) and estimated its value at €20,000-30,000. Some cleaning and a good deal of research established it as a hitherto unknown work by Adam van Breen. Dated 1611, it is one of the earliest known paintings of its kind, and was snapped up at Maastricht by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, for €910,000.

An even more impressive surprise came from Mr Rubin, again of Pelham Galleries. He brought a large French champ de bataille painting, a huge formal garden landscape featuring a grand chateau. Mr Rubin had bought the picture at an auction house that was unfamiliar with this kind of work and gave it an estimate of €50,000-70,000. Given the painting’s odd perspective—at once topographical and a bird's eye view—Mr Rubin identified it as a lost work by Pierre-Denis Martin, who painted some of the most important topographical landscapes in the Trianon palace at Versailles. The picture depicts the visit of Louis XIV to the Chateau of Juvisy, and is still available, priced at €2m. Its value lies mainly in its discovery, the product of experience, a good eye and meticulous archival research. At its best, that is what Maastricht is known for.

Despite the paucity of works with the wow factor, dealers at Maastricht reported considerable buying interest. Mr Janssens sold 30 pieces on the opening day, and 20 more over the first weekend. James Ede, a London-based antiquities dealer, has called this fair his best fair ever. During the worst months of the recession, collectors refused to sell unless they had to, drying up both the supply of and the demand for top-quality works. Sourcing first-class art may still be difficult, but the experience of the Maastricht dealers over the past few days is that there is no shortage of money to spend. The worst of the recession appears to be over, for both dealers and buyers.

Source: The Economist

Maastricht Treasure Hunt Lures Collectors, From New York Times

MAASTRICHT, the Netherlands — This small Dutch city may be known for its winding cobblestone streets, quaint town square and a church dating as far back as the sixth century, but it is also home to a cavernous convention center where, every March, about 70,000 art lovers flock for the European Fine Art Fair. A supersize event in many ways, this year’s edition has been notable for a few standout sales amid the absence of big-ticket items.

The fair is larger than ever: 263 exhibitors (24 more than last year) from 17 countries showing nearly $3 billion worth of art in every collecting category from ancient times to the 21st century. While there are examples of brand names — drawings by Rubens and Tiepolo; paintings by Gauguin, Giacometti and Picasso; even one of Damien Hirst‘s dead animals — that is only part of what draws crowds. It is that sense of discovery that keeps crowds returning: a 1796 portrait of Countess Tolstoy, the writer’s grandmother, by Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun hanging in a closet at Robilant & Voena, dealers from London and Milan (price: about $4 million), or a Samuel Palmer landscape secreted in a small nook in the stand of the London dealer Lowell Libson.

Giacometti's “Three Walking Men,” for sale for $25 million.

On Thursday, two hours after the opening festivities began, there were seven minutes of drama. The caterers turned on their ovens and caused an electrical overload, plunging a portion of the convention center into darkness. Nobody panicked, and, fair officials said, nothing was stolen. “I saw a man who calmly got out his flashlight and continued shopping,” said Malcolm Rogers, director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, who was making his annual pilgrimage here along with a group of trustees.

People watching is part of the fun. Although the fair runs through next Sunday, during the first few days scores of museum directors and curators cruised booths. Some high-profile collectors were here too, among them: A. Alfred Taubman, the former chairman of Sotheby’s, with his wife, Judy; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art trustees Leon D. Black, the financier, and Mark Fisch, a real estate developer.

“There are no blockbusters, no $30 million Rembrandts of years past, but is that what these fairs are all about?” Mr. Fisch asked. “Is it really relevant to anyone’s collecting experience? There are so many wonderful things to see.”

Big-ticket paintings were noticeably absent this year, dealers said, because inventories are low. When the economy took a nose dive two years ago, most galleries suffered and, being cash-strapped, were not able to replenish their stock. As soon as things started to pick up, dealers found that the best works tended to be too expensive to buy for resale.

But there are still plenty of unusual things to see here, including objects making a public appearance for the first time in centuries.

From Daniel Katz, a plaster statuette by Jean-Pierre Dantan of Paganini.

Daniel Katz, a London dealer, for example, filled a wall of his booth with 30 intricately carved plaster statuettes (1831-44) whimsically depicting musicians and other famous personalities in the arts. Made by Jean-Pierre Dantan (or Dantan the Younger), a French sculptor who was known for his amusing caricatures, he captured the likenesses of Paganini and Berlioz, Strauss and Liszt. “It’s a Who’s Who in the world of Paris in the 1830s,” Mr. Katz said. Despite the $1 million asking price, the suite of statuettes sold to an unidentified American collector in the first 24 hours of the fair’s opening.

Word of the most alluring works spread quickly. Crowds could be seen gasping when pearls began to drop from the mouths of dragons surrounding a fantastical neoclassical clock once belonging to Prince Charles Alexander, governor general of the Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium), for sale at Pelham, the London gallery. Alan Rubin, Pelham’s founder, said the $2.5 million gilt metal, bronze and silver clock had not been displayed in public in 100 years.

The section devoted to modern and contemporary art keeps changing. Last year a number of heavy hitters like Acquavella Galleries of New York and Leslie Waddington of London dropped out. Collectors could be heard grumbling that the offerings were not as strong as they have been, but there were some new dealers, like L&M Arts of New York, which was offering a Giacometti painting.

Although it has been just over a month ago since “Walking Man I,” Giacometti’s six-foot-tall sculpture of a pencil-thin figure, became the world’s most expensive work ever sold at auction (fetching $104.3 million at Sotheby’s in London), prices for his works are already escalating. L&M Arts bought its Giacometti, “Portrait of Maurice Lefebvre-Foinet” (1964-65), depicting the noted Parisian art supply shop owner, at Christie’s in Paris in December for $3.3 million. After cleaning, it was being offered at around $6 million.

Landau Fine Art from Montreal was showing “Three Walking Men,” a sculpture that Giacometti conceived in 1948. The gallery bought it at Christie’s in New York two years ago for $11.5 million. Landau had it at the fair last year priced at $19 million; this year it was $25 million. “Everyone expected us to raise the price,” said Alice Landau, who runs the gallery with her husband, Robert. “The market has changed.”

It wouldn’t be an art fair without at least one work by Mr. Hirst. Haunch of Venison, a London gallery owned by Christie’s, was featuring “This Little Piggy Went to Market, This Little Piggy Stayed at Home” his 1996 installation of a pig sliced from nose to tail and submerged in formaldehyde. The work caused a commotion when it first appeared in “Sensation: Young British Artists From the Saatchi Collection” at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1997. With a price tag of about $12 million, the pig had not sold as of Sunday morning, officials at the gallery said.

But red dots could be spotted around a new works-on-paper section. Because the interest in drawings, prints and photographs has been steadily building in recent years, the organizers added a special second-floor space devoted exclusively to this section of the market. There was a booth of Irving Penn portraits at Hamiltons, a London photography gallery. There were also master drawings from all periods, including a 1788 Gainsborough drawing, “Figures in a Wooded Landscape,” that Lowell Libson was offering for about $412,000. The seemingly quick black chalk strokes appear almost contemporary in their execution.

As of Sunday afternoon Mr. Libson had not sold the drawing although he said he has had serious interest from an American museum and several collectors. Still, as a first-time exhibitor, he seemed unfazed. “This fair gives me a new opportunity,” Mr. Libson explained. “It’s a place to present British works in a broader European context.”

Source: The New York Times

By: Carol Vogel

Masstricht Antique Arts Fair in the Netherlands is Going on Now

From Friday, March 12 through Sunday, March 21, 2010 visitors can explore The Fine Europeans Art Foundation (TEFAF) Maastricht in the Netherlands. The event presents the best choice of the very best in fine art. Art lovers in attendance have a unique chance to view and to buy paintings from Bruegel to Bacon as well as objects reflecting 6,000 years of excellence in the applied arts.

On display is a selection of genuine masterpieces from 263 of the world’s most prestigious art and antiques dealers from 17 countries.

No where else will you find such rigorous investigation of their quality, condition and authenticity. Every item is checked by one of 26 vetting committees made up of over 155 internationally respected experts.

Some of the top dealers in tribal art will have works on display and for sale.

For example, from Paris, The Galerie Meyer Oceanic Art has set up a booth of authentic works pictures below.

Also, The Entwistle Gallery, located in both London and Paris, is paying a visit to Maastricht to show off the highlights of its collection of African and Oceanic arts. Here are some visual images of the works on display.

For more information on the fair and other presenters, visit TEFAF's website.

Tribal Arts Fair in Santa Fe

This weekend is the yearly Historic Indian & World Tribal Arts fair in Santa Fe, NM. This is a really wonderful fair where lots of American Indian and other tribal art dealers come out. The majority of dealers will be from the Southwest but this year there are several NYC dealers as well including Chinalai Tribal Antiques, Merrill B. Domas and Paul E. Gray, and Oumar Keinde African Art.

If you haven't visited Santa Fe before, it is a vibrant town with numerous galleries and a thriving art scene. It is well worth a visit - though if you want to visit during the Art fair or next week's Indian Market you'll have to book hotel rooms well in advance.

The photo is from last year's Indian Market and as you can see, the town square fills up with antiquities, ethnographic objects, and people. It's an extraordinary experience.

NYTimes Write Up on Tribal Art Show

NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL TRIBAL & TEXTILE By KEN JOHNSON, KAREN ROSENBERG

More than 60 galleries and dealers from the United States and abroad — significantly fewer than last year’s 76 — are installed in the 69th Regiment Armory for the 15th New York International Tribal & Textile Arts Show. Missing from the floor are some of the high-end European dealers in African art, and the English textile dealers, but there is still the usual bounty of lavish textiles, sculpture and statuary, exotic curios and jewelry.

An emphasis on extraordinary textiles from indigenous and precolonial cultures is a hallmark of this show. It is true again this year, with outstanding Central Asian material at Gail Martin Gallery; a selection of colorful Persian and Syrian carpets and utilitarian bags at Alberto Levi; and a pair of heavily beaded Northwest Coast Indian leggings at Myers and Duncan. It is all presented with deft professionalism and backed up with some useful educational material.

Not too many dealers have shipped big, expensive stone sculpture, given the economy, but there are one or two monumental wooden pieces. For a reminder of the role of religion in daily life in Africa, stop by Dave DeRoche to see a late-19th-century “rhythm pounder,” probably Senufo, from Ivory Coast. This imposing wooden sculpture of a woman was used to pound the earth each spring to enhance the soil’s fertility and ensure a good harvest.

As always, there is a small but fine selection of Pacific Island material. Lewis/Warra has an unusually ornate, possibly mid-19th-century Malagan ceremonial mask from New Ireland, a part of New Guinea, while the Thomas Murray display includes some top masks from the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea, one shaped like a bird’s beak. They are part of a group of a dozen beautiful Oceanic carvings from a single California collection put up for sale.

For pure fascination and enjoyment, visitors might like to check out the hand-painted wooden Egyptian sarcophagus lid, about 1069-702 B.C., at Arte Primitivo. It is in great condition. Equally enchanting is a minor retrospective of paintings by self-taught artists at Cavin-Morris, including a delightfully simple painting of a mule by Bill Traylor, the Alabama-born former slave and outsider artist, that was drawn on a Montgomery, Ala., sidewalk in the 1940s.

There is lots of other strange and wonderful stuff in the show, though some of it is hiding in cases, so you really have to take the time to look. Clam Galerie has a Mayan poison bottle that is close to 1,400 years old, while Kip McKesson has a carved divining staff used by a Tanzanian witch doctor to make the rain come, ward off evil spirits, see the future or even frighten enemies on the eve of battle. Who wouldn’t want to hold the staff?

Another revelation is the range and beauty of native jewelry in gold, silver, tin, shell, stone and other materials. What an obvious inclusion this material is, although there has not been so much of it at the fair in the last few years. The jewelry has an undeniable beauty, so I would not be surprised if more finds its way into future shows. Let’s hope so.

The show is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. onFriday; 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday; and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday; (212) 532-1516, caskeylees.com; $20.

2009 New York International Tribal & Textile Arts Show

We will be showing some fine work from our gallery at the 2009 New York International Tribal & Textile Arts Show at the New York City Armory from May 14 to May 16. We will be located in Booth B2 at the show. Please stop by and see us!

The Armory is located at 68 Lexington Avenue at 26^th St.

In addition, we are hosting a wine tasting of several wines from South Africa. South Africa has become one of the largest and best recognized producers of wine in the world.

Here is a short excerpt about the wine industry in South Africa: “In the post-apartheid era, since 1994, South African wine has returned to the world arena with significant impact, growing from some 50-million litres exported that year to topping 139-million in 2000, representing more than 25% of good wine production….Internationally, the industry is small, ranking 16th with about 1.5% of global plantings, but production, at seventh position, accounts for 3% of the world's wine.”

Dori Rootenberg

www.JacarandaTribal.com

2009 San Francisco Textile and Tribal Art Show

During February 13 -15, 2009, more than 100 of the finest international dealers in tribal art descended on San Francisco for the 2009 San Francisco Tribal and Textile Arts Show. The show, in its 23^rd incarnation, is at the forefront of the tribal art scene and is considered to be the best show of its kind in North America. At the show, you’re guaranteed to see many of the most prestigious and respected dealers from all corners of the world with a fantastic array of museum-quality sculptures, textiles and antiques.

Jacaranda Tribal exhibited for the first time and we showed some important pieces including a mid-19^th century Zulu vessel. It was gratifying to meet many collectors who were unfamiliar with the beauty and diversity of the material culture from southern Africa. The show was a success for us and we are looking forward to returning next year

African Art was only a portion of the show’s offerings. Thomas Murray, a San Francisco based dealer, showed some fine examples of Indonesian art. Michael Hamson showed art from Papua New Guinea while the Stendahl Gallery brought pre-Columbian pieces from Costa Rica. Bruce Frank Primitive Arts showed many fine Oceanic pieces and reportedly had a very strong show. There was also a fair number of Native American, Southeast Asian, Indian and Middle Eastern pieces. Paris dealer Yann Ferrandin sold a rare pair of North Nguni initiation figures while Conru presented two great North Nguni figurative sticks. The galleries were as varied as the art with dealers from San Francisco, L.A., New York, Paris, and Brussels, to name a few.

Most dealers at the fair, unsurprisingly, reported fewer sales than last year. Collectors were cautious and many held off buying until the last day. On the positive side, while Tribal Art has become an increasingly common part of the general collector’s interest, it remains under the radar. Prices didn’t skyrocket with the latest art market bubble and so we can’t expect them to fall at the same rate as contemporary or modern art prices have. It wasn’t a sold out show by any means, but this is one corner of the art market that we feel is more stable than not..

This show continues to maintain a consistently high standard. I’m always impressed with the range and variation of artworks shown here. If you haven’t been to the SF show before, it’s certainly worth a visit. Just remember: the show is large so make sure you give yourself a full day or two to really check out the art and meet some of the dealers.

Dori Rootenberg

www.JacarandaTribal.com