by KWAME OPOKU
The kota sold by Christies for Euro 5.5m in Paris on 23 June 2015
But what about loss to creators and original users?
The Art Newspaper informs us that a kota has fetched a very high price in Paris:
“A 66cm-tall wooden sculpture has become the most expensive work of African art sold at Christie’s France, fetching €5.5m in Paris today, 23 June. This price tag makes it the third most valuable work of African art ever auctioned; the record stands at $12m for a rare Senufo female statue, which sold at Sotheby’s New York in November 2014.” [1]
We learnt also from The Art Newspaper that the kota figure comes from the collection of the late William Rubin, a former director at the New York Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). There is also a reference to what the paper describes as “somewhat glamorous provenance”, the object having been previously possessed by cosmetics tycoon, Helen Rubinstein, and a collector of modern art, David Lloyd.
I looked in vain in the newspaper for any reference to the people or the persons who made the artefact and from which country it originally came. There was not a word on how that object travelled from Africa to the U.S.A.
Kotas are reliquary figures, called mbulu ngulu among the Kota from Eastern Gabon and Byeri by the Fang who are found in southern Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Republic of Congo. Other related peoples also produce kotas; they keep the skulls and bones of their ancestors in containers, baskets or other holders on which are placed carved figures, now generally called kota figures in the West. It is believed that the people can call on the Ancestors through the relics for help. They were thus the intermediaries between the living and the dead. The veneration of ancestral relics is widespread among many peoples.
Given the religious nature of kota reliquary, I was very intrigued to find out how the so-called Rubin Kota left its country of origin and reached America where contrary to all art history traditions the name of the collector was substituted for the name of the artist who created the object. [2]
The Art Newspaper cites the names of Helen Rubinstein and David Lloyd who had possessed the object before William Rubin. The possession of an object that probably left its country of origin under dubious circumstances is described by the Art Newspaper as “somewhat glamorous provenance”. But what is “glamorous” about such a possession? The original owners in Africa that were supposed to keep the skulls and bones of their ancestors may not even be aware of the whereabouts of the kota. Does it not matter that what is part of a people’s belief may be decorating the rooms of non-believers elsewhere in the world for aesthetic pleasure?
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