USUALLY, it is the creators of the art who gain all the focus in this line of business. Little attention is paid to the real chaperones who keep the artistic engine running and the business side of things moving. And it seems to serve this denizen of the fine art industry quite well, for he is the self-effacing, and ultimate back stage type of operative, whose person has so far managed to successfully evade the frequently intrusive visual art columns of the Nigerian newspapers. He would rather write on others by himself or contribute to some trending topic in culture and the arts. I would say, one of his ways of further deflecting attention from himself, thereby creating more privacy to conduct his next adroit business move!
With Olaseinde Odimayo, it isn’t always about profit. There is his prominent compassionate side, especially when he is dealing with up and coming artists who need help and reassurance that going full throttle producing the art is the right way to go. He has also served as mentor to would-be gallerists, some of whom started out as his gallery or business assistants who got their training on the go as his understudy.
He gave to many what he himself lacked, and direly needed, at the very beginning of his own artistic journey but was scarce in supply: reassurances that great outcomes waited at the end of every dark tunnel of great input. He had resigned his plum job as the managing director of the produce company owned by his eldest brother, Oladele Ayeomane Odimayo. It was a company he joined straight from the compulsory National Youth Service, on graduating from the University in Ibadan, and rapidly scaling up the corporate ladder. Oladele, who would eventually be proselytised into collecting African art by Olaseinde, was concerned about the doubtful future his youngest brother was lending himself to. He was most unsparing as he gave what he felt was the necessary brutal advise: he shouldn’t dare!
Olaseinde would stand his ground, even though he knew his big brother only had his best interest at heart. “I let my heart lead me”, he told the writer in a rare interview. “Looking back, I think I must have been something close to an art collector or art dealer in my former life!”
The Lagos art scene was nothing close to what it has become today. There were only a handful of art galleries and as few full time artists. The earliest known art gallery was Jiraj, in Maryland, on the Lagos Mainland, operated by Olujimi Raji, an artist himself and a teacher at Yaba College of Technology. He was a contemporary of the artist and former art instructor, Kolade Oshinowo. Closely following on the heels of Jiraj was Geobi, more prominently a photo framing establishment on Ikorodu road, Lagos Mainland. Emily Aig-Imoukhuede would open The Gong Gallery of Art at Tafawa Balewa Square, Lagos Island. It is also on record that Constance Afi Ekong, reputed as the first academically trained female artist in the country ran The Bronze Art Gallery, on 39, Campbell Street, central Lagos. The gallery reportedly reopened in Calabar recently.
The 1980’s were very uncertain and Nigeria was in the throes of her worst military dictatorship. The majority of the art purchases were by expatriates and foreign embassy staff, most of whom had very short spells in the country. This also meant that selling could be continuous, since positions frequently changed faces. And even if it was just a sprinkling, compared to now, there were encouraging signs of a future full of opportunities. Also, with the effort of a few art dealers that would include Olaseinde himself, a tendril of collectors had begun to appear, mostly from among the top bankers and successful business tycoons. Western embassies were also beginning to stage and sponsor art exhibitions, often in response to the urging of promoters standing in the wings!
“The prime movers of this present art movement were Folabi Kofo Abayomi, Simi Ogunsanya (now Simi Adesanya), Rahman Akar, and of course, myself. You can say, we were the second wave of dealers. We were all novices and we knew virtually nothing about the visual arts in those early days. We didn’t know anything about arts patronage, arts promotion or the arts business in general! It was a pure case of ‘on the job training’, no trainers or mentors. We didn’t have the opportunity or the luxury of being apprentices under masters. We just gave ourselves to this endeavour as in the case of ‘fools rushing where angels feared to tread’. It is comparable to being thrown into the deepest end of an olympic size swimming pool without knowing how to swim! We learnt the ropes by ourselves. In retrospect, you can simply say, it was an idea whose time had come”.
Looking back as he clocked 75, and 35 years on the job recently, he told us what he knew upfront: that surviving in the Lagos art market was not going to be for the faint-hearted. Even before that period, Nigeria had experienced a cycle of economic recessions, political instability, currency fluctuations and shifting cultural tastes, severely testing the mettle of those in business, whatever their field. As the years rolled by, many galleries opened with great promise but closed within a few short years. He started to see in clearest terms what his brother, a time-tested and astute businessman had foreseen which gave rise to his initial grim opinion.
But with time, even Oladele began to admire Olaseinde’s perseverance and innovation, his passion and interest in people which made him go all out to make many friends, urging them to give collecting traditional and modern Nigerian art a thought.
Oladele was no stranger to art collecting himself and had always invested handsomely in European art; he was a well known figure to the London auction house, Sotheby’s. He decided to sponsor his kid brother to one of the conferences held by Sotheby’s, where Olaseinde wasted no time expanding his circle of contacts. Olaseinde also persuaded his brother to save some of his earnings for African art, targeting his older brother’s close friends and business associates as well, some of whom became prolific collectors.
Treasure House Art Gallery
The years between 1982 and 1989 when Treasure House Art Gallery was formally established were spent very wisely on personal research, meeting pillars of the Nigerian visual culture by travelling widely throughout the country, and in West Africa. He also consumed art literature voraciously.This was how he honed himself for the years ahead and the challenges they held. He sought and found the art business griot Amadou Thiam who ran an African art establishment in Lome, Togo named Gallarie Yassine. Thiam is a Senegalese even though he made the Togolese capital his base. The suggestion to get to know Thiam came from his long-abiding friend, the sculptor Ben Osawe. Olaseinde promptly embarked on his journey to meet the established dealer who strengthened his view of the business on an international scale.
Treasure House, as it is more commonly called, sat on a property on Awolowo Road, the most popular district in Ikoyi, which is the oldest Government Reservation Area in Nigeria, and still remains her most opulent. The majority of art galleries even today are in the upscale districts of Ikoyi, Victoria Island and Lekki, in Lagos. Art seemed and still appears to be the exclusive preserve of the financially well-off. But with time, Treasure House broke this rule and moved over to the Lagos Mainland, the capital of Lagos State, Ikeja. This however was not the only area where the “art house” would prove that it was thinking outside the box. It also began to aggressively collect and trade in traditional art and antiques, a daring move, as daring as the original idea of devoting completely to trading in art.
Another Idea Whose Time Had Come
Olaseinde felt that with the focus of the world on the just repatriation of Stolen African artifacts from the pre-colonial and colonial periods, Africa’s elite had to create room in their homes and other user spaces for traditional art, most of which are still being wrought today by descendants of the original producers whose creations had been appropriated. The task could not be left to the formal publicly-owned museums alone, even if they were adequately equipped to house them. The same loyalty that Africa’s elite has shown to the modern and contemporary visual art should extend to legally available traditional art and antiques.
Without a doubt, some legendary artists have produced works which bridge modern and traditional forms but, in his view, that wasn’t sufficient. It is a deeply felt viewpoint rather than a mere marketing gambit.
The Lagos art dealer is also of the view that he was bound to the arts by fate, and not by chance or choice, from birth. His initial attachment to the sciences from elementary school was broken because his immediate older brother, Orekoya, took it upon himself to be his arithmetic teacher at home. And rather than actually instruct and guide, he whipped the very daylight out of him each time he failed to solve a sum. The resulting trauma made him call it quits with the science subjects he had begun to love. For him, it was the divine setting him on his course for life!
It Is Running In The Family
Being comfortable among important people or being among the movers and shakers of society yourself are essential attributes of those to succeed in a social business like art. Olaseinde Odimayo may have practised selling his ideas to friends and associates of his influencial eldest brother, but he went much further afield, widening his own social and business circle. The fact is, the Odimayos had been very prominent from the first half of the Twentieth Century. Their patriarch John Feyisara Odimayo in his later life ascended to the throne of Olofin of Irele Kingdom in the old Ikale division of the defunct Western Region of Nigeria. He was the Jagboju VIII, a powerful paramount ruler between 1976 and 1993, when he deceased. But his earlier life was even more eventful: He was a wealthy and resourceful trader who ran his businesses between Nigeria and the UK from the age of 30.
He graduated from Sido Commercial Institute, Warri (today, the school is known simply as Sido College). Olaseinde was an infant in his father’s prime years but John Feyisara was a household name in the Western Region and everyone had his and her own sumptuous narration about his life. At 32, he travelled to England aboard MV Apapa, which belonged to the passenger fleet of Elder Dempster Shipping Line from the Lagos port. His mission was to commission a shipyard to build him two commercial ferries. When they arrived Nigeria in 1955, they were named “Olaoluwa” and “Lady Soyinka”. The Lady Soyinka in reference was no other than Eniola Soyinka, mother of the famous dramatist and writer Wole Soyinka, who was his dear friend. The ferries made round trips between Lagos and Okitipupa, Warri and Sapele.
John Feyisara added land transportation to his fleet. Two Mercedes Benz trucks plied the old and narrow preindependence roads of Western Nigeria transporting men and goods. He would build a bakery in 1957. He was approached by the late politician Obafemi Awolowo about this time to venture into politics. He consequently joined Awolowo’s Action Group and ran for office in the 1959 elections against Olu Akinfosile of the NCNC for the parliamentary constituency of Okitipupa. He was defeated by his rival. In 1963, he contested again under the banner of Action Group’s breakaway faction, the NNDP under the aegis of Samuel Oladoke Akintola. His opponent was Akinfosile who beat him for the second time.
The foray into politics took a direct hit on him physically and emotionally. The lack of proper attention to his businesses and the fact that it was a great drain on his finances crushed his business empire and they never quite recovered.
One of Olaseinde’s avid art buyers deceased recently. He was a prominent businessman, Sammy Olagbaju, who started out as a banker. At entry level, he was a clerk at the former Bank of British West Africa, now FirstBank, on Marina street. To Olagbaju’s great amazement, Olaseinde was a relative of the late king Odimayo! He had much to say about the towering tycoon-turned-Royal. He was his late father’s account officer at BBWA. Olagbaju recalled that his father used to visit the bank with large deposits and was one of the bank’s biggest customers.
Another high profile customer was the Lagos notability who built one of the famous structures of the afro-Brazilian quarters in the city. The building was famously known as “Water House”. He was Candido da Rocha, born in 1860 and died in 1959. He was reputed as one of the earliest millionaires in the whole country. Whenever Da Rocha visited the bank – a stone’s throw from his home at Water House – he stayed in his chauffeur-driven car and the manager rushed to meet him at the rear seat where he conducted all his transactions!
*Courtesy POSITION Magazine