Astrolabe Bay figure, Telum Sotheby’s New York | 16 May 2013, Lot 42 Dream Piece #31Astrolabe Bay figure, TelumSotheby’s New York16 May 2013, Lot 42$755,000 Solomon Island canoe prow, ex. Gaston de Havenon, $2,160,574, Sotheby’s Paris 2011. It is hard to overemphasize the importance and rarity of this Astrolabe Bay figure. Astrolabe Bay was one of the first areas in New Guinea contacted by Western explorers such that by 1897 the Hungarian collector Lajos Biro could find but one figure remaining. Thus, there is an almost mystical quality of Astrolabe Bay material and a sculpture such as this is something you’ve probably heard about, maybe seen in a book but have never laid eyes upon. The likelihood of one showing up at auction would be the equivalent of seeing Bigfoot himself stride hairy-armed into Sotheby’s York Ave showroom. While named after the corvette “Astrolabe” in 1827, its captain Dumont d’Urville never set foot there. The first European to visit was in 1871 when the Russian naturalist-ethnographer Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay was literally dropped straight into precontact New Guinea. Thankfully Maclay was a gentle and thoughtful soul with both medical and artistic skills that soon endeared him to the local folk and such that he freely wandered into interior villages where he encountered several large “telum” figures. Between the three trips Maclay made to Astrolabe Bay between 1871 and 1883 he collected four telum figures that now reside in the Kunstkamera Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. There are a few other early telum figures—in Leiden, Wuppertal and Budapest museums that make for a shockingly small corpus. The present figure was one of two collected in 1889 by the German explorer/journalist Hugo Zöller of the Kölnische Zeitung (Cologne Post) in the coastal village of Bogadjim. The obvious pair to the Sotheby’s figure is the Jolika Collection example from John Friede now in the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Friede figure at the de Young Museum in San Francisco Stylistically these two are quite similar and at first glance potentially carved by the same hand. They both are relatively small—the Sotheby’s figure at 38 ½” (98 cm) while the Jolika about four inches shorter. These obviously relate closely to the large telum Maclay sketched in Bongu back in 1872 now in the Leiden Museum. Maclay Telum Leiden Maclay Drawing 1872 All have large heads and spiked headdresses with mouths clasping what was probably representations of boar’s tusk ornaments. But the two Zoller figures are definitively more archaic with fuller robust volumes, exaggerated features—massive thighs, huge, splayed hands and heads that jut forward, low on the chest. I love it when the formality and tendency to stiffness of a New Guinea art style is walked back in time to a juicier, fleshed out, living and breathing vitality. All this is critical. It is one thing to be able to acquire an Astrolabe Bay figure, one of the most elusive pieces of Oceanic art, but another to own one of the two oldest. Yes, the $755,000 the figure fetched back in 2013 is a lot of money but in retrospect it seems a bit of a bargain. At that time, I was well established in the field, confident of my knowledge of New Guinea art and recognized, in a somewhat detached way, this piece’s significance. In the intervening twelve years my appreciation for Astrolabe Bay material has grown and my response to this figure is anything but detached. I think the British term gobsmacked is more accurate. I have recently seen the figure in person and there is a deceiving quietness to it, maybe its light brown weathered surface or weirdly occluded eyes deflect one’s gaze. Its aesthetic presence is not the slap you in the face variety but something far more disarming, almost regal. Yet, in today’s somewhat harsh, discerning market this figure would command attention and, I would think, at least triple in value. Telum Bogadjim village, Astrolabe Bay Maclay drawing with Telum figures from 1872
