"Mr. Lissauer."

~For the great Day of Wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?~

Philip Bilse Dedrick

Over the years P.D. and I shared in many likes and dislikes. We hated Mahler (the man just never knew when to stop). We admired the surrealist French painter Odilon Redon. We laughed over Monty Python. Vehemently disliked Minnesota’s corny Prairie Home Companion. Wept together at the film Powder. And absolutely adored and loved Mrs. Peel from The Avengers.

But the one thing we were never destined to share was his passion for “That ugly primitive art,” as I always called it. Naturally in return I suffered the slings and arrows for my “sad ignorance” with a barrage of merry aspersions to my gentle person.
How many took notice that the two story Clark Arts Building had a three story stairwell which occupied a New Guinea totem (‘an ancestor figure in the form of a house post’)- one of only two that exist in the world, I have been told. “It arrived in the largest box I have ever seen in my life,” P.D. stated, explaining further, “The stairwell was built around it.”




His office and apartment were cluttered (putting it mildly) with much the same: grassy masks, weapons, textiles and carved figures of Oceanic and Pre-Columbian Art. This ‘affliction’ was shared by many friends in Rockford who also collected such artifacts, most provided by a unique dealer from Australia that I had met only once: Mr. Lissauer.

As Andrew Langoussis often said, "That man should have a movie made of his life."
(Hermann) Mark Lissauer and his mother survived the Nazi concentration camp Bergen Belsen, later joining his father in Australia. In 1959 he began collecting artifacts from tribal cultures in New Guinea, then on to Nepal, India, China, and Indonesia.

His first encounter with P.D. was over 35 years ago through the Beloit College Museum. “The first meeting did not divulge his deep humanity and profound erudition,” Mr. Lissauer said, “(but) on my twice yearly meetings in Rockford I learned to enjoy and appreciate his friendship and kindness… he gave me one of his ‘world view’ prints as well as a small painting.” Now going on 87 years of age, Mr. Lissauer is trying to establish a website for his large stock of material… and continues to travel, collect, and sell.

Meanwhile the myriad of work collected by P.D. now resides at the obscure Freeport Art Museum in Illinois… the museum claiming its “tribal holdings are second only to those of the Field Museum in Chicago,” which comes as no surprise due to the largesse of a single art professor whose reach went far round the world.