Magazines - Tribal Art Spring 2009

By Bérénice Geoffroy-Schneiter

Introduction
“I never had the feeling I was a collector, nor consequently of ever having ‘started’ a ‘collection’ at any particular time. Two aspects of this notion bother me: firstly, that of a maniac trying to assemble groups of any kind of object, for whom chance alone has decided that he chose to collect art works rather than cigar labels. The second, equally regrettable as far as I’m concerned, is that of an entrepreneur who formulates a plan that he pursues methodically throughout his lifetime. Right or wrong, I do not recognize myself in either of these characterizations. Like many ‘collectors,’ I prefer the term aficionado to describe my approach.” Daniel Cordier expressed these words to Alfred Pacquement in 1989, when he donated some 500 contemporary and modern art works to the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Twenty years later, this exceptional yet modest man, a former French resistance fighter and associate of Jean Moulin, again made a generous gift to the French State in the form of a sort of “anti-museum.” This consists of some ninety so-called exotic, or primal, objects that echo some thirty contemporary works.