Four pieces under 1m to catch at the Biennale des Antiquaires

The Biennale des Antiquaires runs until next Saturday, and these four pieces, whose offering price is under one million euro, are still waiting for a collector, enough experienced to know that the problem doesn’t concern how much you can spend for a certain work of art, but how to get the highest quality for the amount of money you have at your disposal.

 

The expressive small Lega masque presented by Didier Claes is probably not the best piece of this kind available on the market, nevertheless it is a very seductive one. This type of masks, known as lukwakongo, belongs to the members of the Bwami society who are just a step below the highest level reachable by people in the Congolese society. They are used for the rituals of initiation. The asymmetric eyes – the right one seems swollen –, the hole representing the mouth surrounded by pointed teeth finely engraved in the wood and above all the kaolin covering the surface, all make this object a perfect partner for the symbolist Eve available at Galerie Tamenaga. Odilon Redon drew the beautiful pastel colours surrounding the female figure at the very beginning of the XX cent. The body seems to be a sort of frame outside which pigments have been swallowed up to be redistributed around it. The red ribbon in Eve’s left hand could be the one to be inserted in the two small holes over the mask’s eyes. In this way the future warrior will be able to fix the mask around his shoulders, his shield or his shaft.

 

The other two pieces to hunt are the Hellenistic Portrait of a Princess – perhaps Arsinoe II, from the Ptolemaic period – on display at Phoenix Ancient Art and the Chinese Dignitary from Tang period at Jacques Barrere. During the Tang Dynasty the courtesan used to wear a traditional elaborate robe integrally concealing the body and hands, considered ungracious during this period. Her face is proud and almost condescending. Can you imagine a better companion for the beautiful Greek princess who poisoned the first son of his first husband Lysimachus, then married her half-brother Ptolemy Keraunos and, once he rejected her for she conspired against him with her sons, she married her brother Ptolemy II Philadelphus scandalizing the Greeks?

November 25, 2020