Jean-David Cahn on TEFAF and Archaeology

Cahn’s Quarterly 1/2020 English Edition Editorial Making Joins Dear readers While tidying up just recently I came across some photographs and documents relating to the history of the Cahn Gallery. I was especially touched by a photo dating from 1995. It shows my father, Herbert A. Cahn, and the then director of the University of Leipzig’s Antikenmuseum, Eberhard Paul, in one of the museum’s galleries. They are holding two groups of fragments: the upper one shows three centaurs careering to right, the lower one horses’ legs galloping over a rock to right. They were painted by Epiktetos, Fragments of a cup by Epiktetos are reunited after decades apart. The five fragments with the hooves of the centaurs who was active between 520 and 490 B.C. (gifted by Cahn) form an exact join with the fragments belonging to the University of Leipzig’s Antikenmuseum. and is one of the most important painters of the Pioneer Group. The fragments with the cades, were reunited. My father had acquired be kept alive and not neglected in favour of centaurs had been given to the museum by his group of fragments in the 1960s. Had he other scientific approaches in archaeology. the archaeologist and collector Edward Perry done so just a few years later, after 1970, the Warren (1860–1928) back in 1911. The oth- museum would not have been able to accept Furthermore, to my mind, the two archaeol- er, having been identified by Robert Guy as his gift – which all goes to show the absurd ogists’s interlocking hands on which the re- belonging to the same object, was gifted to outcomes to which excessive political cor- united fragments are laid out, have a pow- the museum by my father in 1995. The pho- rectness can lead. erful symbolic meaning. They are a forceful tograph documents the moment when these metaphor of how the preservation of ancient fragments, which had been separated for de- The sight of this image sparked off various cultural artefacts and works of art can be fur- thoughts, not least about the vital contribu- thered – and with it, of course, our knowledge tion made by Robert Guy, who was a friend of Antiquity – if museums and the art trade of my father and who in the last years before work hand in hand. That the various players his retirement worked for the Cahn Gallery. in the field of archaeology do not go their Only someone with an outstanding memory, separate ways, that after the discord and dif- a profound knowledge of the painters’ dis- ficulties of the past few years they find a way tinctive hands and a remarkable faculty for to join forces and work together towards the visualisation would notice that certain dis- same goals is a matter very close to my heart. crete fragments in fact belong to the same object – all the more so when they are housed in different collections. It is vital that this Eberhard Paul (left) and Herbert A. Cahn (right) at the kind of connoisseurship, which is premised Antikenmuseum of the University of Leipzig, 1995. on a broad knowledge of countless objects, The Debate or reprehensible is often difficult. Yet most of us would agree that when an incumbent Changing Values US president sees fit to ponder a retaliatory strike on cultural sites in Iran, a new low in By Marc Fehlmann the debasement of our civilizing principles – even by the standards of the chaotic Trump Societies revise their values all the time. Just fundamentally over the past few decades. Al- administration – has been reached. Thus the as gender-neutral toilets, flight shame and though it is said that later generations find fragility of our hard-won norms and rules is climate change have become a topic of pub- it easier to judge the deeds and mores of exposed for all to see. Not only did the leader lic debate, so the values underpinning our the past than those of the present, finding a of a major Western democracy sink, at least handling of cultural property have changed consensus over what is ethically acceptable rhetorically, to the level of the terrorists he is CQ 1 Cahn’s Quarterly 1/2020 ing by Melchior Berri (1801–1854) on St. Al- ban-Graben as premises for the new museum, which opened in 1966. At a time when Ancient Greece was held up as an ideal for humanity to follow, contrasting sharply with that posited by the Nazi dictator- ship, the ability and willingness of collectors, dealers and archaeologists to work hand in hand was truly serendipitous. The neo-hu- manist image of Antiquity cultivated since the days of Humboldt and taught in Basel’s gram- mar schools could now be conveyed through real, tangible objects. This Hellenism was un- controversial and hence a welcome source of moral and ethical ideals at a time when the Cold War was an ever present threat and the atrocities of the Second World War still with- in living memory. Scarcely anyone gave any serious thought to the negative consequences that might ensue if archaeological materials were to be removed from their find context without proper documentation and thereafter appreciated solely on grounds of their aes- thetic qualities and cultural significance. The conviction that the publication of a newly dis- Fig. 1: The President of the Swiss Confederaton, Dr. Max Petitpierre, and his family visit the exhibition “Masterpieces of Greek Art”, accompanied by Prof. Dr. Karl Schefold, 22.9.1960. Staatsarchiv Basel-Stadt, BSL 1013 2-1387 1 covered object, and hence its inclusion in the (Photograph by Hans Bertolf) total body of knowledge of Antiquity, would be sufficient to satisfy any moral obligation, purporting to fight, but by doing so he rela- scholars and dealers who were to dedicate their must undoubtedly also have been a factor. tivized previous breaches of civilisation, such lives to the study of Classical Antiquity. The politically motivated sense of justice that as those that took place during the Second most Western societies are now steeped in, World War and the destruction of the Buddhas The antiquities market of the 1950s and 1960s moreover, was not especially widespread back of Bamiyan. So egregious are those two ex- was exceptionally buoyant. The auctions of then. Standards generally were very different amples that they easily overshadow the quiet Münzen und Medaillen AG in Basel and Ars from those of today – and that in many re- but steady change in values that has taken Antiqua AG in Lucerne were major interna- spects. The shooting of a rhinoceros as a ca- place over the past few decades, also on the tional events that attracted wares of a qual- thartic experience, as in the film adaptation antiquities market. Nonetheless, seventy-five ity and quantity that these days even the big of The Snows of Kilimanjaro starring Susan years after the end of the Second World War auction houses in London and New York can Hayward (1917–1975), would be unthinkable and sixty years after the now legendary Basel scarcely match. That was the fertile soil on in today’s Hollywood. Hence we can also as- show, Masterpieces of Greek Art, it is worth which a remarkable combination of gener- sume that the dealers and collectors of an- reviewing the shifts and upheavals affecting al interest in Classical Antiquity, purchasing tiquities of the 1950s and 1960s were largely the trade in ancient art and the practice of power and academic inquiry was able to flour- insensitive of the long-term consequences of collecting Classical antiquities. ish. A network of dealers, collectors and schol- loss of context and of those breaches of na- ars emerged and delivered powerful visual tional law that enabled certain finds to leave Having been spared the descent into barbarism proof of its potency and vigour in a spectacu- their country of origin. Yet the Kingdom of brought on by the Second World War, Switzer- lar exhibition held in 1960. This was the show Greece had indeed passed a law to control and land was widely perceived as an island of bliss Masterpieces of Greek Art at Kunsthalle Basel regulate exports of Greek antiquities as early in the post-war years. It was to Switzerland held in honour of Basel University’s quincen- as 1834, during the reign of Otto von Wit- that many refugees who were to play an im- tennial, which brought together some 600 ex- telsbach. The Ottoman Empire, moreover, had portant role in archaeological research and the hibits from all over Europe and the USA (fig. followed suit in 1874 with its first Antiquities trade in antiquities first fled. Among them was 1). Large numbers of them had been loaned Act for the Control and Regulation of Exports Herbert A. Cahn (1915–2002), who came to Ba- by those private collectors who would become of Antiquities and the Division of the Spoils, sel in 1933 together with his brother, Erich B. the founding fathers of the Antikenmuseum and Italy, too, had passed several laws aimed Cahn (1913–1993), Elie Borowski (1913–2003), Basel: Robert Käppeli (1900–2000), who was at curbing the uncontrolled export of anti- who reached Switzerland via France in 1940, on the CIBA board of directors from 1946 and quities, the last major amendment of which Karl Schefold (1905–1999), who emigrated to was its chairman from 1956, Samuel Schweiz- had come into force in 1939. Not all countries Switzerland in 1935 for the sake of his Jewish er (1903–1977), Director General of the were equally vigilant, however, and as the Re- wife Marianne (1906–1997), Heidi Vollmoe- Schweizerischer Bankverein and likewise on public of Cyprus did not ratify the UNESCO ller (1916–2004), whose family, fearing the the CIBA board of directors, the Basel-based Convention until 1999, archaeological finds worst, wisely moved here as early as 1928, the haulier Giovanni Züst (1887–1976) and the could still be exported from that country even Hungarian Classical philologist Karl Kerényi chemist René Clavel (1886–1969), flanked as recently as 1996, as long as the Department (1897–1973), who arrived in 1943, and Leo by Karl Schefold, Herbert A.

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