John and Marsha Friede in their yard standing next to an enormous New Guinea Highlands Telefomin house door board

 

TM:  I know that expanding public awareness of New Guinea Art is important to you.  How close do you feel you are to transforming the art worlds perception of the art?  Do you feel the old bias is slowly vanishing with your exhibition at the de Young Museum, and the publication of the Jolika Collection?

I don't think there was a bias against New Guinea art, I think people were just ignorant about it.  There was a certain bias, because this is the quality I like best about it, it works for some people the other way.  The New Guinea people were isolated from the rest of mankind for almost 50,000 years.  They migrated from Africa, they and the aboriginals were the same group of people, and maybe little groups spun off on the way and became the Naga, the Hill Tribes of Southern India. There's a possible argument that even the Ainu are part of that movement.  The genetic work hasn't been done yet and we don't know.  We do know that the New Guinea people arrived first in Australia, not in New Guinea.  They walked to New Guinea, the Torres Islands were a plain, more or less the way the Siberian plain occurred 40,000 years later.  There were ice ages back 50,000 years ago and they just walked there.  But when they arrived, it was very different from Australia, and then the ocean rose and they were alone.  It was a jungle, Australia is a desert.  The art, the culture evolved from that, but it did not evolve with the rest of the world.

 

When you collect say the art of Africa, you're talking about an art which was part of the world.  That doesn't mean that the King of Zaire in the year 1500 was familiar with Paris, but he had familiarity with modern technologies, with iron, with metal.  Perhaps with Arab slavers that had been there at least 1000 AD, there before there were even Muslims and all the integration into the world, so they were somewhat familiar.  Our stuff is very unfamiliar.  Also they are acknowledged cannibals.  We probably all were cannibals, but some of us are a little unwilling to admit that.  

In New Guinea it's part of the right of initiation as it is in most of the places where it exists.  Also it's strong, my mother had some beautiful African pieces among impressionist paintings.  If you put some of my New Guinea pieces in the house the way Bill Rubin did in his primitivism show at The Museum of Modern Art they would eat the apartment.  They are so much more powerful.  They would make the people accustomed to the more gentle and civilized styles very uncomfortable.

 

Plate 267. Male Figure, Yimam, Middle Sepik, Upper Karawari River, 36 inches

 

I have always been a propagandist in the same way the young lover proclaims to the world how wonderful his girl or boy is, I proclaim to the world how wonderful this art is, and I have been fortunate enough to have found a partner in the museum who feels the same way.  Very few museums would have given the scale of gallery that we had, installing it all themselves, without asking me to pay one cent for it with the best fiber optic lighting, and display cases I have seen in any museum.  

By some miracle of good fortune we were able to hire Christina Hellmich who had been the Oceanic curator at Salem, Peabody Essex at Salem Mass. and has now become the curator of the Jolika Collection and Oceanic Art in general at the de Young.  She is a fountain of ideas, a geyser of ideas.  She has been very much involved, as I have been with the political side of New Guinea.  The ambassador to the US and Canada, a young man named Evan Paki who is in his 30's, but of course with an advanced law degree, is one of the most educated people in New Guinea.  He was enough of a decent citizen to turn down the partnerships that he had somewhere in Australia, to become the ambassador for what has to be a very low salary.  He is tremendously enthusiastic and has said what we have done essentially is opened a PNG showroom in San Francisco.  It's a nice place for it.  

It is!  The San Francisco people are remarkably open-minded.  I come from the east coast, and the east coast is much more Eurocentric.  The Boston museum didn't have any tribal art until recently, and they have a small collection from a nice man named Bill Teel & his wife.  The Metropolitan took the primitive art museum because Nelson Rockefeller was Nelson Rockefeller and said "you will take this collection".  They always hated it, although now they are starting to realize it is not to be hated and it can be a draw, but they still have not really capitalized on it.  It's the kind of stepchild that I would never want my collection to be.  

We have, as I mentioned from Christina, many programs.  We try to include the contemporary art of New Guinea in the programs but not in the collection.  About the artists from New Guinea, we just had a show and a demonstration and performances with some people at the very end of April, in San Francisco and a big crowd came.  Ninety Percent of those people two years ago wouldn't have known where New Guinea is.  In fact my favorite funny quote from Evan Paki was "I'm glad you are doing this, because I get so tired of answering the question is New Guinea part of Africa?"

 

Plate 138. Figure for a Sacred Flute, Wusear, Lower Sepik, Yuat River, Biwat People, Wood, Cassowary Feathers, Boar Tusk, Human Hair & Molars..., 17 5/8"

 

TM: What are your plans for the future?

 

My plans for the collection for the future is that every good thing will go into the de Young.  I don't say everything, because there will always be pieces that are weeded out.  The de Young has a limit as to what it can show, and if I have a great one and a not so great one, it is better to return the not so great one to the market and maybe pay a quarter of the price toward something else.  But that's immaterial, the collection will go there.  I hope I am successful enough in my venture capital investing to provide endowment, so that the program side will continue to be very active.  

In terms of publications we did the first book which was intended to be an overwhelmingly impressive book.  I felt I had to make the point, this is a great place, this stuff is fabulous. That book was a generic book that covered the whole area of the collection.  It will be followed, assuming I continue to walk the earth, with seven to nine more books, which will be regional books.  The first two books are pretty far along in preparation, and relate to the next rotation of material that will take place at the de Young.

 

In 2009 the present exhibition will come down, a few super New Guinea pieces from all over the place will remain up, as an illustration of the cultures of the island.  Then a large exhibition of highlands and Massim material will go up.  We are currently doing a Highlands book and a Massim book.  They will both be approx 500 pages, with approx 350 color plates with good serious essays by scholars.  That will be followed by other books, I haven't figured out the order, and of course New Guinea is a place where everybody influences everybody so whatever arbitrary line you put on the map, you're wrong.  

 

Plate 502. Ceremonial Mask, Buk, Torres Straits, Turtle Shell, Wood, Cassowary Feathers, Shell, Seed, Natural Pigments, 31.5 inches

 

The Sepik is too big for one book, we'll have to break up Sepik into two groups.  I want to do a book on the Ramu River, no one has ever done a a book on the Ramu.  I want to do a book on Astrolabe Bay, Huon Gulf, and Collingwood Bay.  Also a book on the Northwest Coast (Lake Sentani, Geelvink Bay) and if I can fit it in, we may include the west and south coasts of West Papua (Asmat, Digul and Marind-Anim).  The one book that I think is going to be an extraordinary revelation is the PNG south coast.  We will start with Moresby and Motu going all the way to the Torres Straits.  Obviously we have Australia in there but I don't care about politics.  That will include the classic Papuan Gulf material, the Gogodala material, the Fly River material and Torres material.  Theoretically it has a title like “The Masters of Surrealism”, and there’s nothing except some of the Baining tapa masks of New Britain, which are actually part of the same ancient culture, there’s nothing to touch that stuff for complete wild madness.  Of course it’s not madness, its man’s incredible imagination.  We all have it, but there it ran free.  I think that’s a great thing.  

If the world looks at this as the art of some strange, perhaps smelly foreigners, they are missing the point.  This is one of the primal art image sources in the world.  Take the ancient Alaskan cultures that were on the edge of the glaciers as opposed to the deep jungle.  The terrain was different, so the hunting was different, but the magic was the same.  A lot of the objects were the same.  The spear thrower  weights were made of mammoth ivory not bamboo or shell, but they had the same function.  They did more painting than they did carving, because they didn’t have much in the way of wood.  The glaciers hadn’t left them any great forests.  Unlike the glaciers, you could go there in my life time, and take pictures of them.  The entire culture is on film and that’s amazing.

 

Plate 452. Female Figure, Imunu, Gulf Province, Iwaino People, 24 1/8" 

 

TM: Will you continue to expand your collection?

 

Yes I will continue to expand the collection, assuming that I can honor my responsibilities to the children.  We called it the Jolika Collection,

because that’s an acronym for the children, JO--Johnny, LI--Lisa, and --KA for Karen.  The collection’s very valuable, but children of wealthy people are greedy little bastards, and would have been very upset that Daddy is giving away all that money.  They wouldn’t think of it as art, they just think of it as money.  

My kids took the opposite point of view, they would have liked to keep a few things, but they understand that you can’t give away Mount Fuji and just keep the white part on top.  Then you don’t have Mt. Fuji.  So you have to do the thing right, or not do it at all.  They also understand that there’s a physical, financial and psychological burden in having a huge house full of stuff.  Kids today would like to be free of that, and it’s nice the museum is providing that space.  One of our children is a doctor in San Francisco, and her kids are right there.  One of our other children is a resident of Seattle and while that is not right there, it’s close.  Our son is in New Hampshire, so he’ll have to take a plane to visit his sisters out in California.  After it gets really cold in New Hampshire, he may want to do that from time to time.  We just built a house in Berkeley California right next to our daughter’s house, which is fun, and it’s a place for all the kids to stay.  

In terms of targeting what we’re going to be buying now, it’s clear over the last year or two, as I become more aware of the space limitations in California I have tried to eliminate the middle ground to the extent that I can.  This is a problem for us.  Douglas Newton and I used to talk about this.  We like everything from New Guinea, we may not like the whole statue but we like the nose, the elegant way the feet are, you know you can go one forever.  But you can’t collect forever, because these things just stack up.  

Plate 270. Female Figure, Aripa, Middle Sepik, Upper Karawari River, Ewa People, 42 inches

 

So I am basically buying things in the higher price category, those things that absolutely demand to be in the collection.  Sometimes they force something else out, if they aren’t part of a group.  If nothing else looks like that; it’s even more interesting in a way.  I try not to ever buy seconds.  There are certain types of things we don’t have at all.  This is not because we don’t like them, but because we have never seen one as good as the one I would like to have.  It’s not a stamp collection, so we don’t need to have all the colors of the 14 cent inverted airplane stamp.  If a piece isn’t up to par, it cheapens the collection.  Another thing collectors have to be careful of is that you don’t want to buy one that looks just like the one in a book.  It may look more like the one in the book than you would like.  They guy who made it may have had the book.  

The other kinds of things that we are buying, that I think adds a tremendous amount of value to the books we are publishing and to the collection, are the absolutely minor things.  The everyday objects.  Everything in New Guinea has some symbolic or ritual meaning, even a pounder, that has a face on it, to make it more effective as a pounder.  You can clutter up the world with those things, but if you are very careful, you can get wonderful things.  You get 3 or 4 of those, and the major figure, and you'll get a better understanding of the culture, than if you just had that major figure.  Even the minor pieces can be hard to find, but they are still buyable, so all you reading this should buy them too.  I’m not pushing the prices up on those because they are so low already and I like to leave them there.

 

Plate 85. Headrest, Lower Sepik, Wood, Bamboo, Shell, Fiber, 18 3/8 inches

 

TM: What do you see in the future for New Guinea Art?

 

Well New Guinea was a place with a small population of three million people maybe less.  There aren’t very many pieces.  Now you think there are; I was in Berlin looking at the store rooms, they have a lot of pieces.  But how many really wonderful things are there 2000, 5,000, 10,000?  We read that the Field Collection in Chicago they collected 80,000 objects, I‘m sure it is a lot of relatively undecorated sticks among them.  I don’t think there are 80,000 wonderful New Guinea objects in the world.  That includes the little ones.  They’re all getting bought.  At some point, sooner rather than later, New Guinea art is going to be more like Romanesque Art, than it is like African or contemporary art.  Every year you have more contemporary art.  You’ll be able to buy a piece, I can go out today and buy a Romanesque Capitol, but you want to buy a Romanesque collection?  Forget it.  If you get 5 pieces in 5 years you’re lucky.  It’s not that expensive either.  When you have no pieces, you have no dealers and no collectors.  If anything the prices go down.  

In the case of New Guinea Art there’s enough pieces that I don’t think the prices will go down.  I don’t care.  When I buy a piece, the next click on the value chart is zero.  I’m giving it away, and I can’t even deduct this stuff because it’s worth so much more than what I will ever earn in my life.  The tax consequences of the gift are also zero.  When you leave things in your will to a museum, you have no tax consequences.  A lot of pieces will be left in our will, because we want to live with them as long as possible.  

As you said when you walked in the house if you have 30,000 spirits you're liable to live a long time, maybe two of them are actually pretty good for longevity!  There might be one trying to kill you, but I like to think the majority are on our side (laughter).  This is great fun this collecting, it’s changed our lives.

Plate 329. Ceremonial Carving, Yina, Washkuk Hills, Kwoma People, 28 5/8"

 

Link to de Young Museum and the Jolika Collection 

 

Tribalmania extends its sincere gratitude and appreciation to John Friede for offering his time and insightful views!