For the occasion for the sale of the African art collection of Liliane and Michel Durand-Dessert, I did a short interview with Imo Dara’s Adenike Cosgrove; you can find it here. One of the subjects..
For newer or younger collectors of African art, which artworks do you recommend they keep an eye on during the auction and what advice would you give them?
A great line I once picked up is “buy with your eyes, not with your ears”, inspiring the name of one of my social media accounts at the time ‘listentoyoureyes’. But, your eyes can fool you—many of the best fakes were made to accommodate Western taste, they were made to please our aesthetic—be aware of that. Key to getting a good ‘eye’ is to try to see as much as possible, to build a visual library in your head that serves as an instant comparison when you encounter a certain object. If you don’t have the time for this, make friends that do and look at an object through their eyes. The African art community is full of people who are willing to share their knowledge and insights (you are a perfect example of that!). Make friends and look together.
Thanks to wonderful initiatives as Imo Dara our community keeps on growing. It excites me when I see how many new young collectors are starting to look at African art. It can be a challenging field to enter, and one has to be courageous to start collecting African art – but information has never been seen easily accessible and knowledge is much more generously shared as before, so the future is looking bright!