Lagos

One of the most valuable experiences one can have during journeys to far places is the refreshed awareness that there is not only one truth, but many. Let’s use as an example that wonderfully chaotic formation of multiple realities that the people more simply call Lagos.

If the results of the 2006 census are correct, close to nine million people live here. Yet this also means that we have to deal with at least nine million truths, not including that of the unreported population.

One of the truths hardly considered in Europe is that Lagos has an extraordinarily lively arts scene, within which extraordinarily wealthy collectors pay extraordinary prices for extraordinarily interesting pictures. I became acquainted with this part of the truth on Wednesday evening at the second Art House Auction at the Civic Centre on Victoria Island. Outside the door, polished motor yachts bobbed in the evening sun, while inside a white-haired auctioneer, whose accent led one to believe he had been flown in directly from Oxford, auctioned off 103 paintings and sculptures by David H. Dale, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Ben Osawe, Uche Okeke, El Anatsui and many others. During the auction, elegantly dressed models served art aficionados champagne and tuna snacks. If the oil painting entitled Faith by George Edozie (priced at N 450,000) had not nearly been crushed by the swinging door snapping shut, the evening would have been perfect.

That evening, the highest price went to the 1966 painting Blue Moon by the Lagos-born artist Yusuf Grillo. It is a mere 60 by 60 centimetre yet highly concentrated festival of bright blue and magical violet, which only finds earthly underpinning thanks to the contrasting green-brown tones. Grillo’s work changed hands for 8.8 million Naira. One truth is that this picture is quite worth its price.

Right in front of the heavy cast-iron portal to the Civic Centre on my way home I experienced some more very different truths – those of the Okada drivers on the Falamo Bridge, and the lemon merchants on Awolowo Road, for instance. And suddenly the thought came to me that ultimately Grillo’s impressive Blue Moon is only a picture.

When I arrived in front of my pension and saw three kids drinking palm wine under the trees, I asked myself whether they’d believe me if I told them I had just come from an art auction where someone paid 8.8 million Naira for a picture. They could eat lunch at one of the snack bars across the street 44,000 times for that money.