One should also avoid classifying an object as fake simply because only a few well-known and well-catalogued pieces existed before the war.  As we said at the beginning, the enormous prices paid for African sculptures at times have encouraged the search for such pieces, and many objects of known and unknown types have been brought back from Africa. In the last 25 years the number of valuable objects in existence in Europe and the United States has increased a hundredfold, and I am sure that this is a very conservative estimate.

For example, before the war we knew of only a few specimens of the kifwebe mask from the Songye tribe, less than 50 in the world, to give a number.   Several hundred have arrived in the last ten years and have sometimes been classed as doubtful and even fake. The Kurumba antelopes, the large Nimba sculptures, and still many others are also in this category.  I wish to remind the reader that at the time of my first expeditions into Africa 25 years ago, only very few of the Dogon sculptures, the Bambara antelopes, and even the Dogon, Mossi, or Bobo masks were known to exist.  There were the specimens brought back around 1935 by Marcel Griaule and kept at the Musëe de l'Homme of Paris, and those brought back by Lem at about the same time and sold to the Helena Rubinstein Collection.

Around 1955, I was amazed to ascertain that a very large number of specimens of these types, considered extremely rare at the time, were available in Africa.  I was not yet aware of the true situation, because after having personally brought back hundreds of them, my successors who visited these areas (Europeans as well as Africans) found several thousand more.  The market value of these objects has considerably decreased.  A Dogon kanaga mask was worth the price of a Fang sculpture or a Kota reliquary around 1948, about $3,000 (15,000 F at that time).   Today they are to be found on the market for about $500, while a Fang or a Kota, even of mediocre quality, is now priced in the tens of thousands of dollars.

What took place in west Africa twenty years ago continues today in other areas.  I will cite briefly the hundreds of pieces brought back from Cameroon, in particular the Bangwa sculptures of which we know only a few specimens, the Dan masks and Baule sculptures from the Ivory Coast, the Bobo masks from Upper Volta, objects from all the ethnic cultures of Nigeria, the Luba and Songye sculptures from Zaire.  Some of these objects number in the thousands, and I would not hesitate to add that most of those appearing on the market in the last quarter of a century are far more important than those of the same type known before the war.  This has not prevented the proportional decrease in value of a kifwebe mask, a Luba sculpture or a Bobo mask.

This is due to the ever-changing situation in Africa.  The opening of roads, the creation of airports, and the rapid acceptance of Islami, especially among the young, have induced Africans to dispose of the objects in which they no longer believe.   Their growing need for money has done the rest.  The search for art objects in Africa continues today with a thorough charting of each area.  Sooner or later the virgin areas are systematically visited and cleaned out of all art objects.

Most ethnologists have had to adapt to this new situation, created by the extraordinary affluence of objects, and revised some of their positions.  Jacqueline Delange, Francine N'Diaye, Pierre Meauzé, Jean Laude in France; Albert Maesen, Paul Timmermans in Belgium; Elsie Leutzinger in Switzerland.  Roy Sieber andLeon Siroto in the United States have been the forerunners and have applied themselves to studying and reporting on these objects, until then unpublished.  I apologize

to the many others I am omitting.

Others, unfortunately, have adopted the position of the ex-curator of the BritishMuseum, William Fagg, who continues to propagate his personal advice with disturbing inaccuracy.  He is persistently misleading the public, claiming for instance that there is only one authentic Kurumba antelope in the world (that of the Helena Rubinstein Collection), only two or three nimbas, three kifwebes, and so on.

One must equally guard against classing hybrid or atypical pieces as fakes, for (as we have seen) artists of some tribes have continually realized works of other tribes, sometimes far away, and this has produced a mixture of styles.  This is particularly true of artists working in ivory, as well as casters, because they have been and still are less numerous than the sculptors working in wood and have been called upon to do jewels and prestige objects in styles having no relationship to those of their own people.

I have more than once heard certain ethnologists declare an object fake because they did not know of another piece exactly like it.  In addition, especially where court pieces are concerned (royal objects in gold, bronze, or ivory) there are a large number of unique pieces executed on the order of kings or important chiefs in Africa.  These objects, which do not serve in the ritual ceremonies, are not of a traditional design.  But some are invaluable due to their extreme rarity, indeed of their unique character.  One can cite as examples the silver court objects of the Fon Empire in Dahomey, the Benin bronzes and ivories from Nigeria, the various objects from the court of the Moro Naba emperor of the Mossi in Upper Volta, those of the king of the Kuba at Mushenge in northern Kasai, and many others.

The Expertise

We come now to the problem of the expertise.  As we have shown, the determination of the production date of an object, which is almost always the single criterion of authenticity in the classical arts, is of no consequence for African pieces.  Of all the methods of detection provided by modern techniques, such as the carbon-14 test for organic materials (wood, ivory), molecular analysis of metals, ultraviolet or infrared rays, as well as thermoluminescence, none are really useful.

Nor can one depend uniquely on technical details, such as the nature of the wood, patination technique, or the tools that were employed.  A forger can obtain the right wood or sculpt with traditional tools.  Also, it is possible that a perfectly authentic object can be completely lacking in patina.  In my judgement, it is much more important that the expert who is called upon to give an opinion on an object have a thorough knowledge of the various details of traditional styles and especially that he possess that rare faculty of having an instinct for quality.  To feel the quality of an object is to have a sixth sense which, unfortunately, escapes too many people and places all the responsibility of judgment with the expert.  It is possible to learn to recognize the styles characterizing different tribes, their sociology, and their customs through books that have been published on the subject, or better yet, to study them in the field.  But taste and a feeling of quality are never acquired.  This is innate.

It would be indiscreet to give examples here, but we all know amateurs who, without an special knowledge in the beginning, have succeeded in forming collections that count among the most beautiful in the world as a result of their taste and discernment, at times with very modest means.  On the other hand, some specialists who hold a number of impressive degrees and with enormous funds at their disposal have been responsible for disastrous acquisitions which have discredited the showcases of many museums and famous collections for which they have been advisors.

It is relatively easy for someone to become aware of his lack of knowledge in a certain area and to remedy it, but no one is ever conscious of his lack of taste.   This is the reason that those who are incapable of perceiving the quality and the beauty of an object suffer an irreversible lack which they will never be able to correct: it is simply because they do not feel the necessity to do so.

An authentic object can be of the highest quality or extremely mediocre. This will substantially affect its commercial value. A fake, on the other hand, has no quality whatever; it is a thing without life.  Because that which counts in the final analysis is the capacity to feel something of the soul of the artist, and especially the spontaneity of his move. One cannot overemphasize the hand which creates has not the hesitations of the hand which copies.  Therein lies the whole problem.  The connoisseur’s eye is not fooled.

An expert must, at the same time, have a wide knowledge of techniques and styles and especially a sense of quality.  His advice comes from his inner conviction but, taking into account the extreme complexity of certain problems, this is unfortunately not always sufficient.  All experts have sometimes made mistakes, in all fields of art.  They can even change their opinions several times on the same object.  Large museums are accustomed to taking objects considered as masterpieces from their exhibiting rooms to join the fakes on reserve in storage.  This does not prevent the later rehabilitation of the piece in question, which could then reappear before the public in a place of honor.  This actually happened about two years ago at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) with a bronze horse coming from Greece and dating from the geometric period.  As the director of the museum admits, world experts are absolutely divided on the subject of this piece, which periodically is classed as authentic or fake.  Neither examination with ultraviolet or infrared rays, the thermoluminescent method, or molecular analysis has apparently resolved the problem.  I have taken the liberty of mentioning this example here because the story has been widely circulated by the American press, but usually this type of incident is handled with the utmost discretion, for obvious reasons.

Many other works of art questioned by the majority of experts are still exhibited in different museums; their withdrawal awaits only the departure of the conservator currently in charge.  To conclude, let us say that the advice of experts is rarely unanimous.  In effect, there are objects that serve as standards of authenticity and others of falsification, but there are also others that do not offer the least proof one way or the other.  Each expert has a "feeling" for the object following his personal criteria.  Expertise relies more on instinct than on technically verifiable facts; the idea of certain date does not apply to African objects: the majority among them come under the category where the expert must, above all, obey his own inner conviction.

I turn here to a formula cited by Patricia de Beauvais, in an article appearing in Paris Match on September 28, 1974, entitled, "Has the Louvre paid a million dollars for a fake Fragonard?"  This remarkable account of the controversy raised by the acquisition of this painting closes on these words:  Battle of experts apropos to which it is fitting to recall this modest definition of a difficult profession among all: "A good expert is an expert who is wrong less often than the others."  The directors of the Louvre, as well as Mrs. Daniel Wildenstein, count among the most important specialists in the world on this subject.  However, these highly competent experts, obeying their inner convictions, bring forth diametrically opposed opinions.

Let us say, in conclusion, that there is no universal authority on black art.  Africa is a large continent, with large unknown areas.  There are experts for certain regions of Africa (Ivory Coast, Congo, Upper Volta, etc.), just as there are specialists in

Japanese, Chinese or Iranian art, rather than for all of Asia.  A general work on black art written by one author, and there are many of them, is worthless, all the more so because the majority of these books invariably reproduce the same famous objects.  It would take a college of ethnologists to write such a book, and preferably those having worked for years in the field, and on the objects.

We all still have much to learn through direct, human relationships with the inhabitants of the African bush, who are extremely reticent when it comes to questions about fetishism.  I have personally experienced these relationships and those who have worked as I have, in the bush in daily contact with Africans would certainly not contradict me.  It is my hope that such a work, or rather a series of works with illustrations, preferably not yet published, will one day be realized and that a large public will finally see in black art something other than the primitive sculptures whose only merit has been in

serving as a source of inspiration for cubism and our modern art at the beginning of the century.