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Lot 59
Walker Evans(1903-1975)Congo Helmet Mask
1 – 11 September 2025, 12:00 EDT
Online, Skinner Marlborough, MassachusettsSold for US$1,408 inc. premium
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American & European Works of Art (Bonhams Skinner)
Walker Evans (1903-1975)
Congo Helmet Mask, 1935
Gelatin silver print; with Lunn Gallery stamp annotated 'XX 454' in pencil on the verso; matted.
9 1/4 x 6 1/8 in. (23.5 x 15.6 cm)
Gelatin silver print; with Lunn Gallery stamp annotated 'XX 454' in pencil on the verso; matted.
9 1/4 x 6 1/8 in. (23.5 x 15.6 cm)
Footnotes
N.B.
Directly preceding his celebrated work for the Farm Security Administration, Alfred H. Barr the first director of MoMA, commissioned Walker Evans to prepare photographs of over 600 sculptures–many of them masterpieces–that were arriving for the 1935 exhibition African Negro Art. This was the first example of an American art museum displaying African artifacts for their aesthetic qualities rather than ethnographic concerns and has been acknowledged as the catalyst for placing African Art within in the historical context of Western art. MoMA and Evans produced seventeen copies of African Negro Art for an ensuing portfolio of 477 photographs that were to be offered to museums and educational institutions.
Following in the footsteps of Charles Sheeler, who fifteen years prior photographed the collection of art collector John Quinn for the portfolio and publication African Negro Wood Sculpture, Evans was tasked with documenting the incoming loans in a presentation to serve as an archival record of the exhibition. Unlike Sheeler, who used studio lighting to create dramatic modernist reinterpretations of the objects he photographed, Evans was tasked with creating an educational experience. The resulting photographs document their subjects in a diffuse lighting with the goal of allowing the viewer to have uninterrupted access to the material being photographed. He utilized the frame by constructing tightly cropped compositions that removed any context from the objects, creating his own modernist interpretation.
In the years that have passed since Evans produced the photographs for African Negro Art, our understanding and appreciation of art and photography have evolved. At the time they were made, cultural property laws and protections were still in their infancy and the marketplace for African antiquities was wide open to Western collectors and institutions, creating ramifications that are being confronted to this day. While Evans's goal was to create a document with educational merit, and they certainly are reference points for contemporary scholars, they can also be read as a reflection of the time in which they were created. Viewers today can appreciate the aesthetic qualities of the photographs and a close look can show stylistic comparisons to many of the iconic works that Evans produced throughout his long career.