Exhibition opening on Sunday, November 20th from 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM with a lecture from Peter Herrmann at 5:00 PM.

The exhibition will run until February 11, 2012.

For the first time, all 27 bronzes from the Paul Garn collection will be shown as a complete exhibition.

The discovery of an old collection is a huge stroke of luck for a gallerist because the pieces with the highest value on the marketplace and in the academic discourse are those with provenance.

In 2007, we were offered works from a Dresden collection. After probing some of the bronzes and preparing expert thermoluminescence reports, we conducted further research and discovered two additional lineages of the descendants of Paul Garn. After long negotiation, we succeeded in acquiring the majority of their bronzes. The gallery now presents a selection of 27 pieces, all of which have something special about them and some of which could even be described as unparalleled. Some pose riddles; others are classics comparable to those shown in museums around the world.

Amongst them, a Marka mask that may very well be the oldest of its kind ever found; an Ife head whose quality can be matched only by those in the National Museum in Lagos or the British Museum in London; a one-of-a-kind mask from eastern Nigeria; and a figure that looks like Nok but comes from Mali that may very well be a stylistic bridge – of which we have documented so few in Africa.

For the fourth time in five years, we are addressing the topic of cast metals in an exhibition. Like almost nothing else, age determinations based on physical testing methods provide us with important reference points for establishing timelines in African history. What few Europeans realize is that it is now almost exclusively art that can provide us with reliable clues about African history. Sadly, the idea introduced by Friedrich Hegel that the African continent is historyless still thrives wrongly interpreted in the minds of most Europeans. Due partly to the break from an oral tradition towards a Western-style academic transmission of history, many Africans suffer from this external perception of a supposed lack of cultural past.

It was Peter Hermann who first performed a dating of Cameroonian bronzes in the 1990s. Back then, the entire global literature on Cameroon contained no age specifications. Today, it’s widely accepted that bronze casting arrived in the Grasfields some 300 hundred years ago in the course of a mass migration, a fact from which important art historical conclusions have been drawn.

The bronze culture of southern Nigeria is even more complex because it extends back at least to the seventh century. Here, too, the gallery established standards. Unusually for a gallery, we financed art historical research that took Nigerian viewpoints into account and found a way to communicate our findings that had broad public appeal. Encouraged by countless correspondences with scholars and collectors, we began to date pieces as older than they were being dated elsewhere in Europe and North America. Today, in 2011, the African theses espoused by Peter Hermann have been widely accepted.

By means of an exportation for exhibition in the United States and a re-importation to Germany, we helped establish legal security for the trade. We devoted our energies to Nigerian reclamation and were, to that end, in close contact with Nigerian scholars. After years of addressing these and similar issues, we are now considered one of the preeminent galleries with a focus on art history and a commitment to in-depth examination of African art.

We’ve also focused our energies, if slightly less exhaustively, on Mali, whose wooden sculptures, architecture and terracotta excavations are better known to the public than the bronzes. Our collection spans the region with a mixed selection of pieces, including a well-known group of small riders. A 300-year-old casket lid, designed like the miniature of a granary door, is an enigma.

The bronzes of the Paul Garn collection were traded in Europe in the early 20th century, well before the conflict over copies and originals of imported objects darkened the mood of collectors and researches. Paul Garn was a vintner who travelled widely throughout France in the 1920s and, from what his descendants know, bought many items in the southern part of the country.

If our last exhibitions were marked by bold theories and the presentation of contested pieces that left much room for controversy, then this exhibition boasts a certain measure of calm. In order to enjoy that calm, we’re showing and publishing exclusively those works from the former Garn Collection. The pieces speak for themselves – for a century-old collecting tradition, for the long history of sub-Saharan Africa and its most impressive cultural output.

Will be translated

Haben Sie schon das Durchgeknallteste gehört, was uns die Ethnologen seit der Negierung des Kunstbegriffs zu bieten haben? Allen voran die eifrige Wiener Doktorin die doch tatsächlich der Meinung ist, wir hätten die Objekte aus der Sammlung Garn mit einer Strahlenkanone bearbeitet um sie noch ein bißchen älter zu machen als sie ohnehin schon waren.

Zur Erinnerung verschiedene Artikel die diese Inhalte schon bearbeiten:

Artikel, 2006 Von Fälschung und Vision veröffentlicht in der Afrika-Post
Artikel, 2007 Schöpfungs- oder Entwicklungstheorie
"Wer nach zweihundert Jahren der Aufklärung meint, das Leben wäre von Vernunft und Logik bestimmt, wird sich nach einem Betrachten der ethnologischen Wissenschaft und ihrer Einstellung zur Kunstgeschichte Nigerias eines Besseren belehren lassen müssen...."
Artikel, 2007 In der Höhle des Hasen
Artikel, 2007 Ethnologie versus Kunsthistorik veröffentlicht in der Afrika-Post
Artikel, 2008 Alterszuordnungen von Bronzen aus Westafrika
Artikel, 2012 Das große Testament - Über Unsinn der Frau Dr. Barbara Plankensteiner

Hier ein Auszug der Referenzen des Labors Ralf Kotalla.

Hier ein Auszug der Referenzen der Galerie Peter Herrmann.

Eine Bitte an alle Leser: Sollten Sie irgendwoher eine plausible Erklärung kennen, auch wenn sie nur andeutungsweise erklärt wie eine "ionisierende Bestrahlung" relevant funktionieren soll, wären ich und viele andere Sammler, Händler und Auktionatoren weltweit dankbar. Frau Plankensteiner hat unseres Wissens noch nie und nirgendwo eine Veröffentlichung oder eine wissenschaftliche Erklärung ihrer "Strahlenkanone". Sie rennt obsessiv in Kamerun und Nigeria herum und fotografiert Werkstätten die Repliken alten Bronzen herstellen die sie dann diskriminierend und beleidigend "Fälscherwerkstätten" nennt oder zumindest diesen Begriff impliziert. Oder kennen Sie sonst irgend etwas relevant Geschriebenes von ihr das wir nicht kennen? Gibt es noch einen Ethnologen oder eine Ethnologin, die den erhabenen Quatsch einer Strahlenkanone vertritt? ( außer weiland Forkl )

Hinweise über das Röntgengerät eines Facharztes sind von der Bitte ausgenommen. Wir meinen ein Gerät mit Schalter, wo man 300 Jahre, 310 Jahre, 320 Jahre, 350 Jahre usw einstellen kann, damit alles schön stilistisch passt. Wir gehen jedem Hinweis nach - Schon im Voraus herzlichen Dank.

Text by Ralf Kotalla: The Thermoluminescence Analysis

A lot of minerals have the feature to store energy from a field of radioactive radiation and to radiate it again in form of light impulses, the so­called thermoluminescence "TL". The field is formed by the tracks of non­stable uranium, thorium, potassium and rubidium isotopes, which are nearly everywhere in the earth's crust. With some exceptions, each clay, which is used for forming objets d'art and articles of daily use, contains such radiosensitive minerals. Quartz and feldspar have a favourite position as supporter of the "TL" feature.

The thermoluminescence analysis gives information of the last time of burning. The determination of age in the "TL" certificate refers to the "burning age" of the sample, which means the time of its last heating to a temperature of more than 500° celsius and shows the place where the sample has been taken.

To determinate the age, the ceramic samples are heated under conditions of laboratory, through which energy is setting free in form of visible light impulses. This energy is the measure for the radioactive self­ and ambient radiation, which influenced the ceramic minerals since the last burning. The more of the self­ and ambient radiation has been stored, the older the ceramics has to be classified.

As therefore the age of ceramics depends on the measure of the free setting energy, an exact determination of age is possible.

Laboratory Ralf Kotalla