Page 18 - Bonhams Olivier Collection Early Chinese Art November 2018

THE OLLIVIER COLLECTION
OF EARLY CHINESE ART:

A JOURNEY THROUGH TIME

In the 2013 film Plot for Peace, a thrilling documentary about how South Strauss’s home contained a collection of medieval Italian majolica; in
Africa inched towards the end of apartheid and the release of Nelson another, Renaissance bronzes; and a third room contained a Tibetan
Mandela, a shadowy figure flies around Africa in a private jet, knitting collection, a number of Chinese works and a major collection of Russian
together negotiations and deals, in rooms fogged with clouds of cigar- objets de vertu from the fabled workshop of Carl Fabergé. These were
smoke. This man, whose nom de guerre was ‘Monsieur Jacques’ and types of old artefacts to which he had never paid any attention in the
who seems to have stepped from the pages of a Frederick Forsyth novel, past. And as an unprecedented pleasure, he was able to touch these
was revealed to be Jean-Yves Ollivier, a French businessman. Until that types of treasures for the first time. For him, this amazing accessibility
point, he had been known as a commodities trader; but he used his day was the most important initial aspect, the experience which started him
job to create a network of contacts across the continent which enabled actively collecting. The physical contact made him feel for the first time
him to act as a secret envoy brokering the 1988 Brazzaville Protocol. that works of art could possess something spiritual and emotional.
This agreement paved the way for the withdrawal of Cuban troops from
Angola. In return, South Africa removed its forces from Namibia, which This is a theme to which Mr Ollivier frequently returns when discussing his
allowed that country to become independent. Ollivier’s role in these collections. He is clearly a very logical pragmatist; no-one could crunch
negotiations only came to light when archive footage showed him being out a deal with a group of African sovereign nations without an incisively
honoured both by the white former South African leader P.W. Botha and forensic mind. Nevertheless, Jean-Yves Ollivier’s descriptions are almost
by Nelson Mandela. mystical when he talks about touching objects. He never treats an object
as static; for him, they are full of life.
The subject of this astonishing story, Jean-Yves Ollivier, has an
outstanding collection of early Chinese art, mostly included in this Although Robert Strauss introduced him to a world where collectors
single-owner auction at Bonhams New Bond Street on 8th November had the luxury of living with masterpieces, he was not the inspiration
2018. The pieces were assembled with the help of leading art advisors, behind Mr Ollivier’s own collection of early Chinese art; Mr Ollivier first
principally the Brussels-based dealer Gisèle Croës, and are all of saw archaic bronzes while visiting the National Palace Museum in Taipei
museum quality. in 1969. For him, this Bronze Age art was even more powerful because
it was not created just as merchandise, but for ritual purposes, which
The collection includes superb Chinese archaic bronzes, and perhaps have imbued a certain spiritual element in each object. Mr Ollivier recalls
his favourite early Chinese masterpiece, the massive, richly glazed and his immediate fascination with archaic bronzes was generated because
superbly sculpted Tang Dynasty Bactrian camel. In his elegant European in some way he felt touched both by the craftsmanship and by an aura.
home, the works stood carefully but freely arranged on display shelves, He described the sensation himself: “I feel as if each piece is infused
tables and plinths around the rooms. with a human spirit. It is as if the unknown human who made it has
transmitted his soul into the material.”
Ollivier did not come from a long line of art collectors. Indeed, the
very opposite was true. Born in Algiers, during the Algerian War of He still believes that a work of art is infused with the spirits of its previous
Independence, he and his family fled the country, arriving in Paris in owners. It is this which makes his collection uniquely personal. It is an
1962. Having found himself in what he terms “difficult circumstances” expression of one collector’s journey, through vanished cultures of bronze
– he was arrested and imprisoned for running messages for Algérie casting which for many connoisseurs reached their apogee nearly three
Française, a resistance group opposing Algerian independence – Ollivier thousand years ago, Not all items in the collection are necessarily archaic
wanted a clean slate. or very early in date. Some of his pieces are later; the superb silver-gilt
bowls, the Buddhist sculptures, the Densatil-type gilt bronze plaque of
Aged 17, he left for London. A bright boy, he landed a job at the dancers, the impressive ceramic funerary figures. Taken together as a
stockbrokers Strauss, Turnbull & Co., and was taken under the wing of whole, however, the unique assemblage brilliantly represents one man’s
Robert Strauss, the fabled art collector. Ollivier recalled that it was an panoramic vision, as he explored the long and rich culture creativity
invitation to his connoisseur-employer’s country house in Sussex which through epochs of dynastic Imperial China.
enabled him to discover art collecting at the highest level. One room in

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