it was really - Mathias Kessler

Mathias Kessler im
Gespräch mit Nicholas
Lambourn, Direktor für
topographische Bilder,
Erforschung and Reisen,
Christie’s London
am 9. September 2009.
Bilder aus „Christie’s:
The Polar Sale“ Katalog.
Zitate aus dem Gespräch
auf dieser und den
folgenden Seiten.
On September 9, 2009
Mathias Kessler interviewed
Nicholas Lambourn of Christie’s
London. Images from Christie’s:
The Polar Sale catalogue.
Interview excerpts found on
this and following pages.
34
Holy Relics
Nicholas Lambourn: Over the
years we’ve sold not only the
fine art that’s been associated
with the various expeditions
but also a lot of relics—a
lot of holy relics really, from
Livingston and Stanley in Africa
to Scott and Shackleton in the
Antarctic. The relics somehow
catch the imagination of the
public and always create a lot
of excitement when they come
up. It’s almost a way of touching
history.
I don’t think people decide,
they just, as time passes they
just become more and more
iconic, these emblems. And
as we look back on history
with perspective, I think it’s
more easy to recognize the
extraordinary achievements
of the early explorers, who
were out there on their own
without maps, without GPS,
without back up. In a today’s
very protected, cosseted world,
it is almost unbelievable what
these people did.
Putting a Price on a Biscuit
It’s relatively recently that
[these objects have] been
looked on in terms of a market,
as becoming commercial. A lot
of these objects are in museums
and are untouchable—
they’re priceless really.
We started having a sale called
Exploration and Travel in ‘96
We’d always done travel-
related literature and works
of art, although putting the
word “exploration” in brought
in not just flat art and books
and so on, but also these relics
for the first time. It’s from
then, really, that the relics have
started to become a market in
their own right.
I think it was the Polar Sales
particularly that started this.
We sold the Scott relics for the
Scott family in ‘99 and then in
2001 the Shackleton collection
for Shackleton’s heirs. And of
course these collections were
full of very poignant objects,
particularly the Scott relics
which had items removed from
the tent when it was found in
1912. So, Scott’s goggles and
ration bags—unbearably poignant
pieces and we had to sell
them. I mean, how do you put
a price on a biscuit found in a
tent? But it’s the story that goes
with it that is just so extraordinary.
And every little piece—we
had pieces of the primer stove
that they had in the tent—and
every little piece that you have
helps to tell the story of what
happened to them.
So, the pieces embody the
history and help to tell the history,
so it was a real pleasure
cataloging these extraordinary
things that had been tucked
away in a bank vault for fifty
years, bringing them out. And
then, they told, well, they added
to the story we already knew, so
it was fascinating writing about
them and seeing what they
contributed to the story.
And then of course we sold
them in the sale and they made
some extraordinary prices.
and then you suddenly realize
that the people out there, the
public, where putting a very
high price on these relics and
consequently a very high price
on the—I mean it just reflected
the extraordinary awe that
people had for the achievements
of Scott, Shackleton,
and so on.
I’m a picture specialist at
Chrisites, but doing topographical
pictures, pictures relating
to travel—a lot of their value
is often in the history, in the
fact that they’re documents,
they’re recording information,
the earliest views of Sydney,
and so on. They’re topographically
interesting. Their interest
not necessarily as great works
of art in their own right but as
historic documents.
There’ve been lots of exceptional
historic documents. For
me, the most evocative lot was
a map of the middle of Africa
which [Henry Morgan Stanley]
took with him on his trans-
African journey. Of course it’s a
printed map and of course the
center was blank, but he filled
it in as he went. He was the
first man to go down the Congo
and he actually pencilled in the
route of the Congo on a blank
piece of the map for the first
time.
Twenty-first Century Collectible
I am not sure if there will be
a twenty-first century collectible
similar to those relics,
because I don’t think you can
repeat the achievements. The
context is so different now.
We’ve explored the world
essentially—of course there’s
lots still to do, but I think it’s a
very different world now. It’s
not quite the same sort of thing
that’s going to excite us, I mean
what excites us about these
achievements is the extraordinary
stamina of these guys:
Stanley going down the Congo,
999 days, meeting and having
to fight with a village every day
as he went down down the river,
but perservering, doggedly and
brutally, really, perservering ‘til
he got to the end. Shackleton
doing the same, at the South
Pole and close to the South
Pole in 1908. Turning back just
short and getting home and
saving his men and so on. I
mean there’s just extraordinary
stories.
These days the people that
go out to the Antarctic take
paragliders and girlfriends.
it’s just laughable, it’s not the
same. You can’t put it in the
same context, but of course
from the artistic point of view
the way we look at nature, the
same what you’re doing and the
same what say, Humboldt was
doing in Central and Southern
America at the turn of the
eighteenth, nineteenth century
and then encouraging artists to
go out and paint the Brazilian
rainforest for the first time and
then to start amassing information
about the particular
nature of plants. It’s a sort of
systematic study of nature for
the first time—this seems to
be closer to what’s going on
now with people looking at.