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Professor John Picton
School of African and Asian Studies, London.
MA Course Outline
Academic Session 2000-2001
This set of course outlines has been kindly given to us by Professor John Picton, School of African
and Asian Studies, London. The dates have been left in to emphasise that this is intended as a
snapshot of the curriculum.
ART AND SOCIETY IN AFRICA 2001-2002 (p. 2 – 24)
READINGS IN ART AND SOCIETY IN AFRICA (p. 25 – 62)
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ART AND SCOIETY IN AFRICA 2001-2002
The course is broadly concerned with the relationship between visual art and social identity in
subSaharan Africa. It is taught by means of a weekly seminar in which the participants give papers
(see below for the sequence of papers given in 2000-01, listed here to give some idea of the scope
of the course in practice). The intention is that we move the study of African art away from the
persistent and often pernicious imposition on artworks and artists of interpretive categories that are
substantially of external invention. At one time these categories pretended to be social, eg the art of
this "tribe"as contrasted with that “tribe”. More recently they are seemingly temporal, eg "traditional"
art as contrasted with the contemporary. There is no doubt, of course, that art works vary in form
and medium, across the continent, and through time (though we must beware the tyranny of the
norm, and recognise `style' as a retrospective judgement); that a sense of tradition matters; and that
the functional and institutional locations, and contextual implications of visual practice are complex.
However, rather than imposing categories from without we should attend to the manner in which
individuals and communities place themselves in relation to the works of art of their choice (placing
themselves in relation to each other in relation to artworks).
Then we might also begin to understand a little more than we do now of perceptions of form,
tradition and history among people in Africa; and it is with these ideas in mind that I suggest as
themes for the course this session: masquerade and modernity. Now, of course, words like these
are ambiguous. Are we talking of two separate themes, and that's it? Does masquerade represent a
form of modernity? Is modernity itself a masquerade? Clearly we shall have to get some kind of grip
on all of this fairly soon in the course. Meanwhile, one of the essential points about masquerade is
that masked performances survive and indeed thrive in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. They are,
in other words, part of the modern world, the world of here and now (which really is all that `modern'
really means). At the same time, masquerade is also emblematic of the past, of those traditions of
visual and performance practice inherited from the past; but not in the sense of "tribal" or
"traditional" Africa surviving alongside another kind of Africa, described variously as
modern/contemporary/post-tribal etc. For one thing, and as already suggested, the
traditional/contemporary categorisation does not pertain to realities as experienced in Africa.
Consider the following: [i] most of the literature about African art is one of three kinds: excavation
reports and other kinds of archaeological literature; reports of museum collections; and field
research accounts since the 1950s, and indeed with few exceptions since the 1970s, ie the period
since Independence. [ii] most works of art from Africa in museum collections were collected in the
period since 1850, and with few exceptions (Benin City for example, or the west-coast ivories of c
1500, or Ethiopian Christian art) can be dated to sometime within that period, ie within the period of
colonial rule or after. [iii] any attempt to privelege one part of this body of data at the expense of
another in terms of any supposed indigenous "authenticity" is bound to fail. Such, however, is the
condition of the literature until relatively recently; and this is why a measure of deconstuction is
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needed, and why masquerade and modernity provide a useful thematic basis, even as they are also
ironic metaphors of the deconstructive process.
Selected reading:
Abiodun R, H J Drewal & J Pemberton [eds], 1995: The Yoruba Artist, Washington DC
Arnoldi M J, 1995: Playing with Time . . . Central Mali, Indiana
Bassani E & W Fagg, 1988: Africa and the Renaissance, New York
Bradbury R E, 1973: Benin Studies
Deliss C [et al], 1995: Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa, London
Enwezor O [ed], 2000: The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements, 1945-1994
Fardon R [ed], 1995: Counterworks, London (see especially his introduction)
Heffernan F [ed}, 1999: Liberated Voices: contemporary Art from South Africa, New York
Kasfir S, 1999: Contemporary African Art, T&H ;Lawal B, 1996: The Gelede Spectacle, Seattle
Oguibe O & Enwezor O [eds], 2000: Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the
Marketplace
Onobrakpeya B, 1992: The Spirit in Ascent
Ottenberg S, 1997: New Traditions from Nigeria:. . the Nsukka group, Washington DC
Pemberton III J [ed], 2000: Insight and Artistry in African Divination
Phillips R, 1995: Representing Woman, Los Angeles
Revue Noire, 1999: Anthology of African Photography, Paris
Ross D H et al, 1998: Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity
Strother Z S, 1998: Inventing Masks . . . the Central Pende, Chicago
Vogel S [et al], 1991: Africa Explores, New York
Williamson S, 1989: Resistance Art in South Africa
Williamson S, & A Jamal, 1996: Art in South Africa: the future present, Cape Town
I usually give the first few seminars to deal with some of the problems of explanation and
understanding which, otherwise, will keep getting in the way. The intention is to clear the path to
facilitate your own presentations; as thereafter each student will present one or more seminars
based upon their reading of the existing literature according to the thematic bases summarised
above and below. You are at liberty to attend my undergraduate lectures on Wednesdays, 11-2.
‘Let us suppose the idea of art can be expanded to embrace the whole range of man-made things,
including all tools and writing in addition to the useless, beautiful and poetic things of this world’. [G
Kubler, 1962, The Shape of Time p 1] JP: Yet the category of poetic things' can include the tools as
well, and one can ask if anything people make is ever `useless', without social purpose; and the
art-makers are women and men and children; and do remember there is no such thing as `A
Western Conception of Art. ' There are many many ideas about art, in Africa as in Europe.
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‘People not only create their material culture and attach themselves to it, but also build up their
relationships through it and see themselves in terms of it’. [E E Evans-Pritchard 1940, The Nuer,
one of the `classics' of British social anthropology, p 89] JP: What some people call `art' others call
`material culture'. Does it matter? For two million years people have been making things in Africa.
So often, when we say we're talking about art, what we are actually doing is talking about artifacts
with an interest in their shape, or their associated ideas. Of course, these may be "their" interests or
they may be "ours" for artifacts are not the hostages of their originary circumstances, and in any
case the distinction is no longer so clear cut as we once thought. Yet in the history of the history of
African art the collapsing of "theirs" into "ours" has been pernicious in promoting one
misunderstanding after another. This quote and the next also emphasises the social necessity of art.
‘A tradition, therefore, is a cybernetic hierarchy of conceptual and institutional commitments, and
thus an essentially historical phenomenon, not so much a continuously communicated body of lore
as an ongoing social practice that relies on, produces, and modifies the knowledge that it needs ...’
[W MacGaffey, 2000, 17, in J Pemberton III [ed], Insight and Artistry in African Divination] JP: The
idea of tradition is from the Latin, tradere, to give up, hand over, transmit; but the very processes of
handing over provide the forum for change and development; but does MacGaffey suggest that
tradition is nothing more than a control system that permits a retrospective judgement?
‘I am concerned with identity, place, history and how they determine the way one is positioned in a
culture’. [Veronica Ryan, Veronica Ryan, 1987, Kettles Yard Cambridge] JP: This idea of place,
raises the social importance of art; for the "meaning" - if we must use that word - of an art work may
well subsist in that positioning, as much as in any iconographical decoding. S Sontag: works of art
are not just about something, they are something. This reiterates the distinction between signs and
things first articulated by St Augustine, an African, circa AD 395.
‘Art does not transmit information ... the success of systematic visual codes is that they can function
efficiently at a distance ... By contrast to the disembodiment of telecommunications, art re-embodies
the mewing subject. It does not attempt to tell us who we are, but rather asks, Whoare you? and
Where do you stand?’ [Jean Fisher, 1997, in O Enwezor (ed) Trade Routes (catalogue of the 2nd
Johannesburg Biennale) p 22] JP: This is `signs and things' again; and while iconographic and
semiotic decodings are necessary tools they cannot tell us why the work of art is there; and works of
art do not talk either. Go back to the social model then.
‘Let us also remember how we persistently impose alien categories on the art and artists of west
Africa... Instead let us attend to the manner in which individuals and communities place themselves
in relation to the works of art of their choice’. [JP in T Phillips, Africa, the art of a continent, 1995,
345] The idea of the tribe and of `tribal' art, was imposed upon Africa from without in the context of
colonial rule. The realities of identity-and-difference, for artifacts as or people, are complex.
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‘ “African” can surely be a vital and enabling badge; but in a world of genders, ethnicities, classes
and languages, of ages, families, professions, religions and nations, it is hardly surprising that there
are times when it is not the label we need.’ [K A Appiah, 1992, In My Father's House, p 293] JP:
There has been a tendency to essentialise and homogenise African culture/art/aesthetics as if Africa
were some kind of offshore island like the Isle of Wight..
‘European modernity manifested itself in a mirrored reflection of the mask of blackness.’ [H L Gates
Jr, 1995, in Phillips op cit, p 27] JP: The Myth of Primitivism [S Hiller 1991] continues to fascinate.
Yet modernism in European art was predicated upon the misunderstanding of art in Africa, creating
a legacy of the "tribe" as its `other,' a legacy from which we must always plan our escape; and we
could begin by recognising the difference between modernism and modernity.
Assessment 2001-2002.
In previous years, this was based upon three essays (=30% of the mark for the course) and a three
hour exam (=70%), but in the current session, the method of assessment will be as follows:
Part 1. 30% of the final assessment: one paper dealing with a specific theoretical or
historiographical question in the study of African art, 3000 words (minimum) to 5000 words
(maximum)
Part 2. 40% of the final assessment (ie 20% each for a and b):
2a. one paper dealing with a specific case study (eg a masking or other visual practice tradition, a
particular artist, artistic movement, etc), 2000 words (minimum) to 3000 words (maximum)
2b. A second paper either as 2a (or as 1 but within the 2a word limit, ie)
2000 words (minimum) to 3000 words (maximum).
At least one, though preferably two, of these three papers will be written up on the basis of student
seminar presentations, the schedule for which is normally determined no later than class 6, term 1.
The order in which these three papers are submitted is a matter for tutorial discussion, but in any
case the deadlines are:
One paper no later than 10.12.1, ie the last Monday, term 1, [to be returned 15.1.02, class 2, term 2]
One paper no later than 18.3.2, ie the last Monday, term 2, [to be returned 23.4.02, class 1, term 3]
One paper no later than 22.4.2, ie the 1 st Monday, term 3, [to be returned 30.4.02, class 2, term 3]
Students will have the right to revise these papers in the light of tutorial comments, and their own
developing sensibilities, before the final submission of all coursework (see below). Please note: late
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submission will entail delayed return with no commitment to a specific date. NB: all papers should
be handed in to the Departmental office, not to me.
Part 3. 30% final assessment (ie 10% each for a, b, c):
3a. a review of the course based upon a selection of photographs of key material from each class,
normally in class 1, term 3, ie 23.4.02. The identifications and comments as written down by each
student in class will be handed in immediately for photocopying, and both the students' lists and the
correct list will be included in the submission of final coursework.
3b. one brief paper written either taking one of the images seen in 3a as its subject, or to an essay
title to be handed out at the end of that class, 1500 words (minimum) to 2000 words (maximum).
3c. a second paper written as 3b. 1500 words (minimum) to 2000 words (maximum).
NB students unable to be present for the slide review will write a 3rd paper as for 3b. The list of
material reviewed in week 1, term 3, will, however, be included in the final coursework submission
(and the student's absence noted).
These final papers will be written without tutorial guidance and without revision prior to the
assessment. The deadline for their submission is no later than 14.5.02, ie the 4th Tuesday, term 3.
They will be submitted together with all other coursework, and the slide review lists, preferably in
bound form (as for the dissertation), and in duplicate. This will provide for the formal assessment, to
be marked and reported on independently by two teachers, with confirmation by the External
Examiner. It is expected that each student will choose material for their coursework that ranges
widely across the field of African art, and credit will be given for this. The coursework, with the
reports, will be returned to the students once the assessment is completed and the marks are
agreed.
Dissertations:
Students majoring in African art, will provide a draft synopsis of the proposed dissertation by
21.5.02, ie the 5th Tuesday, term 3; and will be expected to show substantial progress towards
drafting the dissertation by 11.6.02, ie the last Tuesday of term 3.
Some questions for MA student seminars.
NB this list is by no means exhaustive, but it should keep you busy enough.
*[i-xvi] = those topics which are appropriate for Part 1 of the assessment.
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1. Tradition and the 20th century: Africa and its art worlds
*[i]
1. How would you respond to Lamp's 1999 request (see: Africa centered, African Arts, XXXXII, 1,
1-12, that we do not forsake the `traditional' for the `contemporary'? Within your response, consider
also the successes and problems inherent in the `Africa Explores' approach of Susan Vogel.
*[ii]
2. To what extent is it possible for a cult or masking tradition to enable local modernity?
*[iii]
3. `A tradition, therefore, is a cybernetic hierarchy of conceptual and institutional commitments, and
thus as essentially historical phenomenon, not so much a continuously communicated body of lore
as an ongoing social practice that that relies upon, produces, and modifies the knowledge it needs.'
(Macgaffey in J Pemberton III [ed], 2000, p 16) Discuss.
4. Discuss critically the manner in which Magiciens de la terre priveleged the 'Neo Primitive' as the
acceptable face of a modern African art.
5. Assess the status of Negritude in the formation of West African modernisms.
6. Comment on the place of tradition in the definition of a modern Nigerian art, and identify the
sources drawn upon in the process.
7. Discuss critically Oguibe's claim that the work of Uzo Egonu manifests qualities that can be
identified with a village Igbo sense of line and space.
8. Compare the experience of exile in the work of Uzo Egonu and Gerard Sekoto and comment on
their differences of form and subject matter.
2. Tradition and the 20th century: photography and the `popular' arts.
*[iv]
9. Discuss critically the idea of "popular" art.
*[v }
10. Which would you consider to be the distinctive features of African photography?
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11. `Body marking is a corner-stone in African art. [Onobrakpeya 1992] Discuss in regard to
20th-century developments.
12. Assess the relevance of the personal arts in the constitution of individual social identity?
13. Comment on the relationship between personal art traditions and modern fashion.
3. Art in South Africa
*[vi]
14. What were the consequences of apartheid for the history and practice of art in South Africa
since the union of 1910?
15. Comment on the conditions and forms of visual and material practice that were extant in the
period leading to the union of South Africa in 1910. To what extent were those forms implicated in
the legitimation of the union?
16. To what extent has the end of apartheid posed difficulties for the artist in South Africa?
4. Masquerade.
* [vii]
17. How would you account for the resilience of masked performance in a modern world?
*[viii]
18. Assess the balance in masked performances between gender, power and play.
*[ix]
19. Comment on the ontological status of the mask in masquerade performances.
20. There are masked performances in which criticism of those in authority can be voiced in ways
that would be impossible otherwise. How would you account for this?
21. `...actors selectively use imagery referring to different pasts to explore, construct, and intensify
their own group identity and, by extension, their relationships with other groups.' [Arnoldi 1995, 131]
Discuss.
22. Discuss the possibilities that masquerade can be a source of history.
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23. Discuss the relationship between puppetry, masquerade and Islam in Mali.
5. Reckoning with the past: visual practice in Edo (Benin) and Asante.
*[x]
24. Discuss critically approaches to the study of the history of Edo and/or Asante art.
25. What does a comparative study of cults of the hand/arm in the lower Niger region reveal about
the constitution and articulation of authority in Benin City?
26. Discuss the participation of the art in the legitimation of royal authority; and in that context
assess the arguments for and against the repatriation of this material to West Africa.
27. Give an account of 20th-century developments in Edo and/or Asante visual culture.
6. Textile history.
*[xi]
28. Comment on the relationship between technical means, and the forms of pattern and design in
West African textiles, and assess the advantages to textile artists of novel techniques and materials.
*[xii]
30. Comment on the usefulness of textiles in contesting taken-for-granted assumptions in the
historiography of West African art.
29. Discuss the differing ways in which history and/or authority is configured in textiles.
7. Is it possible to escape "the Yoruba"?
*[xiii]
31. Yoruba people are the inheritors of rich traditions of visual and verbal art forms, and these come
together especially [a] in the cults of local deities, and [b] in the ceremonial aspects of kingship. To
what extent can one find an exegesis of visual forms in the verbal arts?
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*[xiv]
32. If the emergence of a Yoruba ethnic identity can be documented as a movement only since the
mid 19th century: a. to what extent is it possible to identify and define a Yoruba visual art tradition?
and b. what are the implications thereof for the paradigm of ethnicity in general?
33. To what extent is there a distinctive Yoruba scholarship in regard to the visual arts?
8. Islam and art in sub-Saharan Africa.
*[xv]
34. Assess the approaches to the study of Islamic art within sub-Saharan African contexts.
35. Assess the arguments for and against the derivation of Swahili culture from sources around the
Indian Ocean.
36. Discuss the implications of conversion to Islam for the development of built form.
9. `Meaning' (?) in the visual arts.
*[xvi]
37. `On the assumption that one may speak of the aesthetic quality of an object, does such a
consideration contribute to the significance of a ritual artifact and thereby to the efficacy of the ritual?
(Pemberton 2000, 7) Discuss.
38. Discuss critically Vansina's statement (1984) that `decorative art has no meaning.'
39. Discuss critically the problems and possible successes, including the relevance to living
populations, in understanding southern African rock art.
40. Assess the status of visual metaphors in art, and the successes and limitations of structuralist
approaches to their study.
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Art and Society in Africa 2000-2001: Seminar topics.
[JP = John Picton. The others were either members of the MA class or research-degree students;
and I circulate this schedule at the beginning of 2001-2002 to give some idea of the work of the
class. I will provide a fuller reading list once the class has settled down.]
1. JP: Tradition and the 20th century
Traditions are by definition established in the handing on of practices, whether in art or in other
domains of social life; and in the processes of handing on, and the replication of whatever has been
handed on, changes are inevitable. Traditions are thus hardly static, and indeed an evolving
tradition, while justifying itself in terms of its past precedent, can seem as if it were the agent of other
forms of development as well as their representation. In any case, the existence of an established
tradition does not in itself necessarily rule out the possibilities for the introduction of new forms of
practice; and the relationships between extant traditions may be complex, one drawing upon
another, for example, as subject matter, or as a formal resource. These are, of course, all matters
for close investigation ...
Agthe J, 1990: Wegzeichen - Signs: Art from East Africa 1974-89
* Court E, 1999: Africa on display, in E Barker [ed], Contemporary Cultures of Display, pp 147-173
Deliss C et al, 1995: Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa
Fosu K, 1986: 20th Century Art of Africa
Kasfir S 1999: Contemporary African Art the most recent and the most reliable general account of
20th-century developments; and it serves to balance F Willett's 1971 African Art, still the best
general introduction to the study of African art. Both are T & H.
Magnin A, 1997: Seydou Keita
Museum of Modern Art, Oxford [D Elliot ed], 1990: Art from South Africa
Oguibe O, 1996: Photography and the substance of the image, Guggenheim Museum, Inlsight:
African Photographers, 1940 to the Present
Oguibe O, & O Enwezor, 2000: Reading the Contemporary: African art from theory to the
marketplace
Ottenberg S, 1997: New Traditions from Nigeria: seven artists of the Nsukka group
* Picton J, 1992: Desperately seeking Africa, New York 1991, Oxford Art Journal 15, 2
Revue Noire, a quarterly bilingual journal published in Paris
Vogel S, 1991: Africa Explores
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2. JP: Edo art, dynastic myth and intellectual aporia...
Bradbury found that by the time of his research in Benin City in the 1950s there were very few
people still alive with any memories of the pre-1897 city, and all but impossible to find anyone who
had not read Egharevba's A Short History of Benin, which codified oral tradition under the authority
of the palace and effectively stitched up any possibilities of alternative narratives. Nevadomsky has,
however, published detailed accounts of the manner in which the dynastic myth was
re-enacted/re-invented in the installation of the present king, and Gore has written an account of the
complex cult configurations that are effectively independent of palace control; but, whereas
Bradbury (see `chronological problems', reprinted in Benin Studies) had begun to prise the dynastic
myth apart, most other researchers (ie other than Gore and Nevadomsky) have taken it for granted
as the ground of history and icongraphy. The result is a series of publications in which
interpretations of the art through the centuries of its making and development pre-1897 is assumed
to be identical with the interpretations given to that art (mostly, it should be added, on the basis of
photographs) in late 20th-century Benin City by people who are themselves brought up within the
post-1897 reconstruction. The differing ways in which this art is thus seen as bearing the complex
traces of a heroic past as reconstructed to meet 20th-century requirements must be faced. One
feature of the dynastic myth is its presentation of the king as innovator; and indeed Eweka II has
perpetuated this role; and one example of this is his encouragement for the court pages to engage
in sculpture independently of the sculptors guild.
In trying to reconstruct the `world' of ideas-and-practices in which these objects were participant,
one well-tried method involves the identification of a framework (or structure, hence Structuralism) of
oppositions; and it works but only to an extent. For the contrasts that emerge do not fit into a single
grand paradigm but are cross-cutting and indeed multi-dimensional. One could argue, of course,
that the methods of structuralism and semiotics are merely of the present century (which is true) but
far more problematic is the fact that data on which these techniques are employed are themselves
also of the 20th-century,. For if this has been a century characterised by the careful management of
a dynastic myth within a context of post-1897 reconstruction, we may have no immediate way of
knowing if our neat explanations and iconographies, no matter how convincing they may seem,
would have fitted (in the case of the plaques, for example) 16th-century explanations and
understandings ...
Ben Amos P Girshick, 1976: Men and animals in Benin art, Man
Ben Amos P Girshick, 1996 [2nd ed]: The art of Benin
* Bradbury R E, 1961: Ezomo's ikegobo and the Benin cult of the hand, Man pp 129-137
Bradbury R E, 1967: The kingdom of Benin, in D Forde & P M Kaberry [eds], West African
Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century, pp 1-35, both papers are reprinted in Bradbury, 1973: Benin
Studies
Ezra K, 1992:Royal Art of Benin
Gore C, 1996: Contemporary Shrine Configurations in Benin, PhD
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Gore C, 1997: Casting identities in contemporary Benin City, African Arts , XXX, 3, pp 54-61
Gore C, & J Nevadomsky, 1997: Practice and agency in mammy wata worship, African Arts, XXX, 2,
pp 60-69
Nevadomsky J, 1997: Studies of Benin art and material culture, 1987-1997, African Arts, XXX, 3, pp
18-27 and the other papers in African Arts XXX 3 & 4
Nevadomsky J, & D E Ineh, 1983-84: Kingship succession rituals in Benin
1983: . . . part 1, African Arts, XVII, 1, pp 47-54
1984: . . . part 2, African Arts, XVII, 2, pp 41-47
1984: . . . part 3, African Arts, XVII, 3, pp 48-57
Picton J, 1997: Edo art, dynastic myth and intellectual aporia, African Arts, XXX, 4
3. JP: Textiles, tradition and lurex
A brief visit to any West African market will immediately demonstrate that there is a lot of cloth for
sale. Much of it is woven and printed in local factories; but that was not always the case, for the
history of these cloths hardly goes back more than 100 years, and anyway the designs are geared
to specifically African design interests (at
any rate, they are not the patterns one expects to find in any British High Street draper or
department store). However, these are not the only textiles on sale, for in many places locally
hand-woven and/or hand-dyed fabrics compete successfully with the more expensive factory cloth.
These local industries were already well established early in the current millennium, as too was a
trans-Saharan trade in which textiles passed in both directions; and the factory-printed cloths do not
bear much resemblance to the hand-made fabrics; which suggests that the "African design
interests" of the printed cloths have not been established simply by copying the local product ...
*Ross D et al, 1998: Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity.
*Prince Claus Fund [ed]: 1998: The Art of African Fashion
African Arts, , XXV, 3 [1992] - an issue devoted to textiles
Aronson L, 1980: History of cloth trade in the Niger delta .... Textile History, 11, pp 89-107
[also in D Idiens & K Ponting, 1980, Textiles in Africa]
Aronson L, 1980: Patronage and Akwete weaving, African Arts, XIII, 2
Aronson L, 1982: Popo weaving .... African Arts, XV, 3
Aronson L, 1984: Women in the arts, in M J Hay & S Stichter, African Women, pp 119-137
Aronson L, 1992: Ijebu Yoruba aso olona, African Arts, XXV, 3, pp52-63, 101-2
Picton J, 1992: Technology, tradition and lurex, in History, Design and Craft in West African
Strip-Woven Cloth, Smithsonian Institution
Picton J, [et al] 1995: The Art of African Textiles: technology, tradition and lurex Barbican Art Gallery
Picton J, & J Mack, 1989 [2nd ed]:African Textiles
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4. JP: What's in a mask . ...
masquerade is, according to the appropriate event and season, a commonplace activity of social
(etc) consequence. It is a contemporary phenomenon; but when approached from a standpoint in
Europe and America one must first deal with intellectual baggage that is not based upon
commonplace experience. We need to be aware of the complex histories of `mask' as word, idea,
metaphor and artifact. The use of a mask creates dramatic and social distance between people; but
it is not the only means of so doing, and there is little consistency in the reasons for so doing from
one masking institution to another
Arnoldi, M J, 1995: Playing With Time: art and performance in central Mali
d'Azevedo W, 1973: Mask Makers and Myth in Western Liberia, in A Forge: Primitive Art & Society
* Drewal H J, & M T Drewal, 1983: Gelede: Art and Female Power among the Yoruba
Drewal H J, & M T Drewal, 1978: The arts of egungun..., African Arts, XI, 3
Fardon R, 1990: Between God, the Dead and the Wild,
Horton R, 1957: The Gods as Guests
Horton R, 1963: the Kalabari ekine society, Africa
Horton R, 1967: Kalabari Sculpture
Horton R, 1966: Igbo: an ordeal for aristocrats, Nigeria, 90
Kasfir S [ed], 1988: West African Masks and Cultural Systems
Lawal B, 1996: The Gelege Spectacle, ch 3 ipilese & ch 5 iran, pp 37-70, 98-162
Ottenberg S, 1975: Masked Rituals of Afikpo, esp `Okumkpa'
Phillips R, 1995, Representing Woman, University of California Los Angeles
* Picton J, 1988: Some Ebira reflexions on the energies of women,
Picton J, 1989: On placing masks in Ebira
* Picton J, 1990: What's in a mask; all in African Languages and Cultures, 1, 1; 2, l; 3, 2
Picton J, 1991: Artifact and identity, African Arts, XXIV, 3, pp 34-49, 93-94
Picton J, 1997: On (men?) placing women in Ebira, in F E S Kaplan [ed] Queens, Queen Mothers,
Priestesses and Power, pp 337-369
Siroto L, 1972: Gon: a mask used in competition for leadership among the BaKwele; in Fraser D & H
M Cole (eds), African Art and Leadership
Strother Z, 1998: Inventing Masks: agency and history in the art of the Central Pende,
5. JP: Inventing 'Yoruba'
It stands as such a dominating presence in the literature; and yet the word 'Yoruba' originates as the
Hausa word for the kingdom of Oyo, which from the 17th to the 19th century dominated the savanna
region from the middle Niger to the coast in what is now western Nigeria and the adjacent parts of
the modern state of Benin (a name recently appropriated from the forest empire to the south-east of
Oyo for the former French colonial territory of Dahomey). The authority of Oyo established and
15
maintained its authority by means of the effective use of cavalry; until the advent of the Fulani jihad
in the early 19th century, also dependent upon cavalry. This led to a series of wars and the fall of old
Oyo out of which came a series of new cities, such as Ibadan (founded in 1829), Abeokuta (1830),
new Oyo (1837), together with the beginning of the development of a modern sense of Yoruba
ethnic identity. In due course this led to a renewed focus upon Ife, where Oduduwa the ancestor of
Yoruba kings climbed down from the sky to make the world as we know it, as the "cradle" of Yoruba
civilization. The Oyo empire is also the region of the "classic" (ie best-known, most often cited, etc)
account of Yoruba ritual and mythic tradition, with an apparent pantheon of orisa.. Moreover, it was
from the southwestern parts of this rather than some other Yoruba-speaking region that people were
transported in slavery to the Americas. This in turn determines much of the particular character of
Brazilian Nago (=Yoruba) tradition. Yet notwithstanding these local cult and art traditions, other
developments were in hand in the years immediately prior to the 20th century. This is also when
opposition to colonial rule was first articulated ...
Abiodun R, 1974: Ifa art objects: an interpretation based on oral tradition, in W Abimbola [ed],
Yoruba Oral Tradition
Abiodun R, 1987: verbal and visual metaphors ..., Word and Image, 3, 3, pp 252-270
Abiodun R, 1990: The future of African art studies: an African perspective, in African Art Studies: the
State of the Discipline, National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, pp 63-86
Abiodun R, 1994: Understanding Yoruba art & aesthetics, the concept of ase, African Arts, XXVII, 3,
pp 68-78
Abiodun R, 1995: An African (?) art history: promising theoretical approaches in Yoruba art studies,
in R Abiodun, H J Drewal & J Pemberton [eds], The Yoruba Artist, pp 37-48 & H J Drewal, J
Pemberton, 1991: Yoruba: art and aesthetics in Nigeria (Museum Rietberg, Zurich) esp pp 12-13,
20-28
Drewal H J, J Pemberton & R Abiodun, 1989: Yoruba: Nine Centuries of Art of Art . . .
Eades J S, 1980: The Yoruba Today
Ikon Gallery, 1999: Yinka Shjonibare: Dressing Down
Moraes Farias P F de & K Barber, 1990: Self-Assertion and Brokerage: Early Cultural Nationalism in
W Africa
Laotan A B, 1961: Brazillian influence on Lagos, Nigeria Magazine, 69, pp156-1
Onabolu D, 1963: Aina Onabolu, Nigeria Magazine, 79, pp 295-298
Peel J D Y, 1989: The cultural work of Yoruba ethnogenesis, in E Tonkin et al [eds], History and
Ethnicity. pp 198-215
* Picton J, 1995: Art, identity and identification, a commentary on Yoruba art-historical studies, and
papers by others in R Abiodun, H J Drewal & J Pemberton [eds]The Yoruba Artist 1994: Sculptors of
Opin, African Arts, XXVII, 3
Thompson R F, 1971: Aesthetics in traditional Africa, in C Jopling [ed], Art and Aesthetics in
Primitive Societies, pp 374-381 Though later in date of publication, there is also an earlier version of
his research in W D'Azevedo's The Traditional Artist in African Society
16
* Wescott J & P Morton Williams, 1962: The symbolism and ritual context of the Yoruba laba
shango, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute pp 23-37
Verger P, 1957: Dieux d'Afrique, a photographic essay about Yoruba cults in Brazil
6. PR: Masques a la Mode [lajugo sangan]
The Dogon people of Mali have "traditionally" been taken as paradigm cases of tribal purity, with
masquerade as a particular example thereof; and yet notwithstanding the accounts presented by
Marcel Griaule and his collaborators, current realities suggest otherwise. Dogon people perform
masquerade for several reasons, sometimes within the traditions inherited from the past, and at
other times as a response to present social, economic and political realities. Yet, although these
performances share many common features, in what ways do they differ? In your reading prior to
the seminar you might ask yourself this question in reflecting upon the texts suggested
Ezra K, 1988: Art of the Dogon Griaule M, 1938 [2nd ed 1963]: Masques Dogons
Ezra K, 1965: Conversations with Ogotemmeli.
Imperato P J, 1971: Contemporary adapted dances of the Dogon, African Arts V, 1
* van Beek W, 1991: Enter the bush: a Dogon mask festival; in S Vogel, Africa Explores, 56-77.
7. MK: Ewe - textiles and identities
The rise and fall of states in the region once known as the Gold Coast was indeed a consequence of
competition over access to both trans-Saharan and coastal demands for gold; and towards the close
of the 17th century a few small Akan states joined forces under the leadership of the king of Kumasi,
Osei Tutu, assisted by a priest [okomfo], Anokye, to win their freedom from the kingdom of Denkyira.
This led to the institution of the Asante nation, marked by the descent of the Golden Stool on a
Friday. The formation and success of Asante promoted the demand for patterned textiles, and in the
1730s European traders observed local textile artists unravelling imported silk and woolen cloths in
order to reweave the yarn with locally hand-spun cotton. The distinctive patterning of Asante is
based substantially upon an alternation of warp-faced and weft-faced plainweave made possible by
the introduction of a second pair of heddles. There was an increasing use of silk, and elaboration of
pattern. By the late 19th century the weaving of adwinasa and asasia marked a high point of
creative exploration of the woven textile medium, never to be surpassed in the present century.
Weavers in the Ewe-speaking region (and not all necessarily ethnic Ewe), in contrast, though
employing the same technical means, achieved rather different visual effects making much greater
use of ready-dyed machine spun cotton.
Adler P & N Barnard, 1982: African Majesty: The Textile Art of the Ashanti and Ewe
Cole H & D Ross, 1977: The Arts of Ghana Lamb V, 1975: West African Weaving, esp chs 3,4
Ross D et al, 1998: Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity.
17
* Barbican Art Gallery [J Picton et al] 1995:The art ofAfrican Textiles: Technology Tradition Lurex
7. JL Art in South Africa
In South Africa the politics of apartheid laid upon artists a very specific set of responses and
responsibilities, particularly in the years following the success of independence movements
throughout sub-Saharan Africa (beginning with Ghana in 1957). How did the visual arts develop
over the past forty years? what kinds of relationship was there between black and white South
African artists? what were the partiicular difficulties faced by black artists? and what are artists doing
now that apartheid is ended? One seminar cannot possibly deal with all these questions; but it will
open up a discussion to be continued next term.
African Arts, XXIX, 1, 1996: papers by Godby & Klopper, Koloane, Metz Cameron D, C
Christov-Bakargiev,
J M Coetzee, 1999: William Kentridge
Berman E, 1993:Painting in South Africa
Elliot D et al, 1990, Art From South Africa Museum of Modern Art, Oxford
* Herreman F [ed] 1999: Liberated Voices: Contemporary art from South Africa, esp B
Dhlomo/Zwelethu Mthethwa, pp 64-79, and J Law/Penny Siopis, pp 94-109
Koloane D, 1995: Moments in art, in C Deliss et al, Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa
Richards C, 1991: About face: aspects of art, history and identity in South African visual culture,
Third Text, 16/17, pp 101-133
Sack S, 1988: The Neglected Tradition
* Williamson S, 1989: Resistance Art in South Africa
* Williamson S, & A Jamal, 1986: Art in South Africa: the future present
Younge G, 1988:Art of the South African Townships
8. EH: West African Photography
Photography, the first of the modern arts in sub-Saharan Africa, was brought to Freetown in 1845 by
Augustus Washington, one of the very earliest African American photographers; and in Africa as in
African America, traditions of portraiture and documentation develop in ways that differ from Europe,
avoiding the exoticising and primitivising to which European photographers were prone. It is also
obvious that the history of photography coincides with the history of collecting African sculpture for
the ethnographic amd `Primitive Art' collections of Europe and America; but if the two kinds of image
making exist side by side, so to speak, one wonders if there is any relationship between them. For
example, is it just the artifact of incomplete documentation that a stiffer tradition of photographic
portraiture is maintained in those parts of West Africa characterised by naturalistic sculptural
traditions, while a more relaxed tradition develops in places such as Senegal and Mali where
18
figurative sculpture is either absent or highly schematic? Either way, photography is clearly popular
as a means of enabling self representation: most houses are full of photographs
* Oguibe O, 1996: Photography and the substance of the image, in Clare Bell [et al] Inlsight: African
photographers, 1940 to the present, pp 231-249, Guggenheim Museum
Revue Noire, 1998 [English ed 1999]: Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography, esp
Beginnings, pp 34-75, Portrait photographers, pp 78-168
Diawara M, 2000: Talk of the town: Seydou Keita, in O Oguibe & O Enwezor [eds] Reading the
Contemporary..., pp 236-242
Magnin A [ed], 1997: Seydou Keita
Bigham E, 1999: Issues of authorship in the portrait photographs of Seydou Keita, African Arts,
XXXII, 1, pp 56-67, 94-95
Sprague S, 1978: Yoruba photography: how the Yoruba see themselves, African Arts, XII, 1, pp
52-59
Wendl T & H Behrend [eds] 1998: Snap Me One! Studiofotografen in Afrika
9. ST: Discuss the relationship between puppetry, masquerade and Islam in contemporary
Mali.
Bamana people, like the Dogon, have "traditionally" been taken as paradigm cases of tribal purity
notwithstanding certain historical and current realities, including the presence of Islam. A
consideration of the relationship between puppetry and masquerade might however make us revise
such essentialised simplicities.
* Arnoldi M J, 1995: Playing with Time: art and performance in central Mali
Brett-Smith S, 1994: The Making of Bamana Sculpture: Creativity and Gender
Frank B, 1998: Mande Potters and Leatherworkers
Imperato P J, 1970: the dance of the tyi wara, African Arts, IV, 1
McNaughton P, 1979: Secret Sculptures of Komo,Working Papers in the Traditional Arts, IV, 1
McNaughton P, 1988: The Mande Blacksmiths
10. NA: Discuss critically the idea of "popular" art
In recent years the term `popular' art has come to suggest a discrete category of practice; and in the
years since Magiciens de la Terre (Paris 1989), some writers and collectors have priveleged certain
kinds of apparently `popular' practice attributing to them a Neo-Primitivist "authenticity" as if these
alone were the acceptable face of a modern or contemporary African art (eg in Ghana, Ga coffin
making, and Ewe and Anlo funerary monuments; and the work of some of the now ubiquitous
signpainters throughout the continent) This created a resentment among artists who had come
through the Fine Art departments of West African universities, and who sometimes began to write or
19
speak as if we should thus omit these forms of practice from consideration as `art.' Susan Vogel's
1991 Africa Explores was criticised in precisely this way, for placing artists who were in some sense
part of an international art world in the same space with signpainters. Indeed, one might have all
sorts of reasons for being critical of it, but one achievement of Africa Explores was to show that the
diverse forms comprising the category `popular' had little or nothing in common, other than their
location in a largely urban environment; and yet, in practice, printmaking, signpainting, photography,
masquerade, textile design, etc, may well subsist as parts of a common set of visual environments;
and yet, while possibly functionally inter-related within local art worlds at some level (eg one medium
as source material for another), each will have its own developmental trajectory.
Vogel S, 1991: Africa Explores, chs II & III, pp 94-175; also Cosentino, `Afrokitsch', pp 240-255
* Barber K [ed], 1997: Readings in African Popular Culture
Fabian J, 1996: Remembering the Present: painting and popular history in Zaire, ch 4 pp269-296
Sukuro E, 1990: Art to the people, in J Agthe, Wegzeichen-Signs, pp 139-148 (although concerned
with Nairobi, and thus, perhaps, beyond the remit of this course, this text is important for its
demonstration of the political utility of the visual )
Houlberg M, 1973: Ibeji images of the Yoruba, African Arts, VII, 1
Picton J, 1992: Desperately seeking Africa, N Y 1991,Oxford Art Journal, 15, 2, pp 104-112
Brett G, 1986: Through Our Own Eyes: popular art and modern history, intro pp 7-26, and ch 3, No
Condition is Permanent, pp 83-111
Howell S, 1995: Whose knowledge and whose power? in R Fardon [ed] Counterworks
11. KO: Comment on the relationship between personal art traditions and the modern fashion
industry
`Body marking is a corner-stone in African art' [Onobrakpeya 1992, 139] Body marking, whether
ephemeral or permanent, comprised a series of forms, technical means and intentions of great
variety, but with the advent of modern education, dress, and so forth, these have become
substantially obsolescent; and yet, as the quotation from Bruce Onobrakpeya, one of the leading
artists of post-Independence Nigeria, suggests, these arts are still recognised as a source of
distinctive cultural identity ...
* Onobrakpeya B 1992: The Spirit in Ascent. See also the exerpts from his publications included in:
J Picton [ed], 1997: Image and Form ... southern Africa and Nigeria
* Ottenberg S, 1997: New Traditions from Nigeria: seven artists of the Nsukka group
* Willis E A, 1997: Uli Painting and Igbo Identity, unpublished PhD thesis [in SOAS library]
* Prince Claus Fund [ed Els van der Plas], 1998: The Art of African Fashion
* Houlberg M, 1979 Social hair: tradition and change in Yoruba hairstyles, in J Cordwell & R
Schwarz [eds] The Fabrics of Culture, pp 349-397
20
12. TS: To what extent is it still possible for a masking tradition to enable a local modernity?
‘If tradition is by definition not a brake working against creativity or innovation but the framework
within which each is possible, then it may be useful to consider’ [Cole 1982: Mbari, ch 5,
distinguishing between incremental and innovative change ...] Notwithstanding the dominant but
domesticated presences of Islam and Christianity throughout West Africa, many other ritual and
performance traditions continue to thrive for reasons of local and/or personal relevance, even those
that Islam and Christianity would regard as heterodox. It is, of course, important to remember that
these traditions are as much part of the art of `contemporary' West Africa as photography, easel
painting and printmaking ... Masquerade is, clearly, about many things. Whatever the overt purpose
of any given masking institution and performance, all manner of concerns will be addressed thereby.
Also, we must remember that `power' is another of those words that sail close to the wind of cliche.
Are we talking about legitimate authority? in which case, how is this constituted, acquired and
maintained? Does art provide some kind of index and means of the necessary strategies for the
acquisition of that authority? ... [and how about the modern world? Does performance enable an
identity with it, however it is perceived locally?] ...
Arnoldi, M J, 1995: Playing With Time: art and performance in central Mali
* Lawal B, 1996: The Gelege Spectacle
* Ottenberg S, 1975: Masked Rituals of Afikpo, esp `Okumkpa'
* Phillips R, 1995, Representing Woman, University of California Los Angeles
*Strother Z, 1998: Inventing Masks: agency and history in the art of the Central Pende
13. MF-P: Researches in Black British art
Black and African people have lived in Britain for several centuries (John Blank, the Black trumpeter
at the court of Henry VII was surely not the first) and with the inception of transatlantic slavery most
would have arrived via the Caribbean. Our knowledge of visual artists only begins in the 20th
century. The first, as far as we know, was Ronald Moody who came to study dentistry, but took to
sculpture instead. Hoever, in the years immediately following the end of World War II, Caribbean
people were encouraged to settle here to meet the labour needs of this country; and it is not
surprising that many of their children would have gone through the art school system.
* Araeen R, 1989: The Other Story, the Hayward Gallery
Tawadros G, 1997: Sonia Boyce: speaking in tongues
Caribbean Cultural Center, New York, 1997: Transforming the Crown: African, Asian & Caribbean
artists in Britain 1966-1996
Ikon Gallery, 1999:Yinka Shonibare: Dressing Down
Chambers E, 1988:A History of Black Artists in Britain
Chambers E, 1988: Black Art: Plotting the Course
21
* Chambers E, 1991: History and identity, Third Text, 15, reprinted in G Tawadros & V Clarke [eds]
Annotations 5: run through the jungle: selected writings by Eddie Chambers, pp 97-101
Walmesley A, 1992: The Caribbean Artists' Movement, ch 1
Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1986: From Two Worlds
14. VK: What were the consequences of apartheid for the history and practice of art in South
Africa since the union of 1910?
The place of artworks in the constitution and exercise of, and engagement with authority in Africa is
unavoidable in any consideration of art in Africa... In South Africa, however, the politics of apartheid
laid upon artists a very different and specific set of responses and responsibilities, particularly in the
years following the success of independence movements throughout sub-Saharan Africa (beginning
with Ghana in 1957). How did the visual arts develop over the past forty years? what kinds of
relationship was there between black and white South African artists? what were the particular
difficulties faced by black artists. Coincidentally, these developments also illustrate well the
near-impossibility of understanding (originary intention in) art in the absence of contextual data.
African Arts, XXIX, 1, 1996: papers by Godby & Klopper, Koloane, Metz
Arnold M, 1996: Women and Art in South Africa
* Elliot D et al, 1990, Art From South Africa Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, esp Elliot's intro and the
reprint of Albie Sachs' 1989 paper: preparing ourselves for freedom.
Johannesburg Art Gallery, 1991: Art and Ambiguity, esp essays by Mphalele, Davison,
Schwalkwyck & Nettleton, pp 6-46
Koloane D, 1995: Moments in art, in C Deliss et al, Seven Stories ... Africa, pp 143-157
Nettleton A & D Hammond-Tooke [eds], 1989: African Art in Southern Africa:
Picton J [ed], 1997: Image and Form: prints, drawings and sculpture southern Africa and Nigeria
Picton J & J Law, 2000: Cross Currents: contemporary art practice in South Africa
Revue Noire no 11, 1994
Richards C, 1991: About face: aspects of art, history and identity in South African visual culture,
Third Text, 16/17, pp 101-133
Sack S, 1988: The Neglected Tradition
Spiro L, 1989: Gerard Sekoto, Johannesburg Art Gallery
Williamson S, 1989: Resistance Art in South Africa
Younge G, 1988: Art of the South African Townships
22
15. ST: Assess the arguments for and against the derivation of Swahili culture from sources
around the Indian Ocean
Coastal East Africa is a region well known for its rich traditions of visual culture: pottery, architecture,
architectural ornament, decorative woodwork, textiles, basketry, work in leather and hide,
metalwork, and so forth; and this has been referred to the Azanian art style. The best account of
Azanian art was in fact provided by Somalia in Word and Image , an exhibition with an excellent
catalogue edited by K S & J L Loughran, et al, 1986. From a historical point of view, coastal culture
is an amalgam of Africa, Arabia and India
Connah G, 1987: African Civilizations, ch 7
* Donley L, 1982: House power: Swahili space and symbolic markers, in I Hodder [ed] Symbolic and
Structural Archaeology
Garlake P, 1966: The Early Islamic Architecture of the East African Coast
Ghaidan U, 1975: Lamu: a Study of the Swahili Town
Horton M, 1987?: Swahili culture revisited, Scientific American [photocopy of this and other papers
by Horton in Reading Room]
Middleton J, 1993: The World of the Swahili, an African mercantile civilization, see also J de Vere
Allen 1993, Swahili Origins. and the critical review of both these by J Willis in the TLS of 2.7.93
Sheriff A, The History of Conservation of Zanzibar Stone Town
16. NA: Assess the status of Negritude in the formation of West African modernisms.
The modern state of Ghana achieved Independence in 1957 soon to be followed by most other
countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria and Senegal, for example, in 1960. In Nigeria in the late
1950s a group of students in Zaria at the very first tertiary-level institution of fine art in Nigeria led by
Uche Okeke, formed the Zaria Art Society and set about reforming their teaching programme to give
attention to the indigenous art traditions of the country. They believed, and continue to believe, that
Yoruba, Igbo, Edo, etc., traditions could enrich a modern Nigerian art. Bruce Onobrakpeya,
internationally now the best-known of their society, has published three volumes of autobiographical
documentation of his work. In Senegal its first President, Leopold Sedar Senghor continued to
promote his philosophy of negritude, originally formulated by a group of Francophone African and
Caribbean intellectuals (the word first appears in a poem by Aimé Césaire) in the face of French
racism ... In addition to Deliss et al 1995, Fosu 1986, Oguibe 1995, Onabolu 1963, Ottenberg 1997,
Picton 1992, 1997 & 1998, as listed above, see for Nigeria; Beier U, 1960: Art in Nigeria 1960
1961: Contemporary Nigerian art, Nigeria Magazine, 68, pp 27-51
1962: Nigerian folk art, Nigeria Magazine, 75, pp 26-32
1965: Experimental art school, Nigeria Magazine, 86, pp 199-204
1964: Idah - an original Bini artist, Nigeria magazine, 80, pp
1966: Naive Nigerian art, Black Orpheus, 19, pp 31-32, 39
23
1991: Thirty Years of Oshogbo Art
Jari J [ed] 2000: Accident and Design, Brunei Gallery SOAS
King C & N Durbridge, 1999: Modern art in Nigeria: independence and innovation, in C King [ed],
Views of Difference: Different Views of Art
Onabolu D, 1963: Aina Onabolu, Nigeria Magazine, 79, pp 295-298
see also the exhibition reviews by Cyprian Ekwensi and Babatunde Lawal
Onobrakpeya B, 1985: Symbols of Ancestral Groves
Onobrakpeya B, 1988: Sahelian Masquerades
Onobrakpeya B, 1992: The Spirit in Ascent
And for Senegal:
* Ebong I, 1991: Negritude: between mask and flag; Senegalese cultural ideaology and the `École
de Dakar', in S Vogel, Africa Explores, pp198-209
Axt F & El Hadj M B Sy [eds], 1989: Anthology of Contemporary Fine Arts in Senegal esp L S
Senghor, Introduction, pp 19-20
Harney E, 1996: The Legacy of Negritude: a history of the visual arts in post-independence
Senegal unpublished PhD thesis, SOAS. See also her paper in the Oxford Art Journal, 19, 1
Linsley R, 1988: Wifredo Lam: painter of Negritude, Art History, 11, 4, pp 527-544
Revue Noire, 7, esp pp 1-26
17. KO: Assess the advantages to textile artists of novel techniques and materials
[As already noted tradition is a far from static phenomenon] ... The formation and success of Asante
promoted the demand for patterned textiles, and in the 1730s European traders observed local
textile artists unravelling imported silk and woolen cloths in order to reweave the yarn with locally
hand-spun cotton ... the distinctive patterning known in the Niger delta as `tortoise cloth' ikakibite, is
now proven as originating in the Yoruba-speaking part of Nigeria, and in turn to have set off
developments elsewhere among women weaving on the upright single-heddle loom. In contrast, aso
oke, `uphill cloth' (ie cloth of a kind inherited from the past; or coming from inland; or having high
status) is woven by Yoruba men on a narrow double-heddle loom. Both traditions appear to be
flourishing; and part of the reason for this has to do with the manner in which they are a participant
element in the history and constitution of ethnic and national identity. Ewe weavers from Ghana
have also left their trace ... Yoruba adire (and the nature of its taken-for-granted "traditional" status),
the developments known in Nigeria as kampala ... the nature and substance of West African
appropriation of industrial textile printing...
Aronson L, 1980: History of cloth trade in the Niger Delta, Textile History, 11, pp 89-107
Aronson L, 1980: Patronage and Akwete weaving,African Arts, XII, 2
Aronson L, 1982: Popo weaving, African Arts, XV, 3
Aronson L, 1984: Women in the arts, in M J Hay & S Stichter, African Women, pp 119-137
24
Aronson L, 1992: Ijebu Yoruba aso olona, African Arts, XXV, 3, pp 52-63
Bickford K, 1994: The ABCs of cloth and politics in Cote d'Ivoire, Africa Today, 2nd Quarter
Clarke D, 1996: Creativity and the process of innovation in Yoruba aso oke weaving,
The Nigerian Field, 61, pp 90-103
Clarke D, 1998: Aso Oke: the evolving tradition of hand-woven design among the Yoruba...
Unpublished PhD thesis, and the major source of data and commentary on aso oke
Clarke D, 1998: African Textiles
Cole H & D Ross, 1977: The Arts of Ghana, pp 186-199
Domowitz S, 1992: Wearing proverbs ... printed factory cloth, Af Arts, XXV, 3
Jackson G, 1971: The devolution of the Jubilee design, in J Barbour and D Simmonds [eds],
Adire Cloth in Nigeria, pp 83-93
* Picton J, 1992: Technology, tradition and lurex, in History, Design and Craft in West African
Strip-Woven Cloth, Smithsonian Institution
Picton J, et al, 1995: The Art of African Textiles: technology, tradition and lurex & J Mack, 1989 [2nd
ed]:African Textiles
Ross D et al, 1998: Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity
Salmons J, 1980: Funerary shrine cloths of the Annang Ibibio, Textile History 11, pp 119-140
19. TS. To what extent does the end of apartheid pose difficulties for the artist in South
Africa?
... what kinds of relationship was there between black and white South African artists? what were
the partiicular difficulties faced by black artists? and what are artists doing now that apartheid is
ended? ...
Cameron D, C Christov-Bakargiev, J M Coetzee, 1999: William Kentridge,
Deepwell K [ed], 1997: Art Criticism and Africa
Enwezor O [ed], 1997: Trade Routes (the 2nd Johannesburg biennale)
Geers K [ed], 1997: Contemporary South African Art: The Gencor Collection
Richards C, 1991: About face: aspects of art, history and identity in South African visual culture,
Third Text, 16/17, pp 101-133
Skotnes P, 1995: Miscast
Williamson S & A Jamal, 1996: Art in South Africa: the future present
* Museum for African Art [F Herreman ed], 1999: Liberated Voices
One class in term 1 was given over to planning the seminars, and there were two reading
weeks. Classes in term 3 were given over to exam revision. Remember, that in the 01-2
session there is no unseen exam, and the 1st class of term 3 will be a slide review/test that
will provide the basis for part 3 of your assessment.
25
READINGS IN ART AND SOCIETY IN AFRICA
1. Tradition and the 20th century: Africa and its art worlds
Much of the interest in African art was generated within the first decade of the century by artists in
Paris and elsewhere in Europe who saw in its schematisations the possibilities of a return to ways of
making art untrammelled by the sophistications of the 19th entury. It was this to which the term
"primitive" was given; but art in Africa cannot be reduced to the status of an atavistic footnote to the
history of art in Europe, and it is certainly not primal (as if Africa represented earlier stages in human
development, an idea long since thoroughly discredited in anthropology). In contrast, the collections
of African art in the ethnographic departments of European and American museums could be said to
be the obverse of "Primitivism". Indeed their curators would now claim to be working against
perceptions of the "primitive"; and yet each has its origins in a modernism in which Europe saw
itself, so to speak, as the dominant partner. The process of collecting so often accompanied the
colonial enterprise and the objects were exhibited in ways that bore little relationship to the complex
social and metaphysical conditions of their originary circumstances; if, indeed, that could ever be
possible. Museum ethnography began by promoting the (now long-since discarded as intellectually
and historically untenable, and morally disreputable) idea of "stages of culture" until, in becoming
more sociological, for a while it promoted the idea of "tribal" art. This latter phrase survives, if at all,
only in the context of auction house and monied collectors; for the problem was, of course, that
"tribe" was an ethnographic `misreading' of ethnicity as a flexible package of resources that permit
definitions of identity-and-difference to fit the circumstances to hand rather than providing for a
`timeless' boundedness. Moreover, "tribal" identities proved to be, at least as often as not, a function
of colonial rule, a fiction to be construed within a form of writing known as the Ethnographic Present,
without which they could not survive. Once the realities of time and change were allowed into the
image that had been created, "tribal" had to go. It was at first replaced by "traditional" but this is no
less problematic for the way in which it allowed us to persist in our hankering after and invention of a
kind of (bogus) African authenticity; for by taking for granted a contrast between the "traditional" and
the "contemporary," and then castigating the latter as the intrusion of Europe into Africa, so only
certain forms of practice, those bracketted together within the category of the "traditional," were
priveleged as essentially African. The reality is, of course, that `African art' is the art Africans do,
whereas the "traditional" Eurocentric approaches to Africa had more to tell us about Europe than
about Africa: by preserving an image of the one as "primitive/tribal/traditional" so the image of the
other can be preserved as "civilised." This illusion is of course contested in practice in Africa in many
ways, not least by the manner in which local traditions are among the resources for the
developments in art of the 20th century. Indeed, artists in Africa are ethnographers too, providing
significant documentary evidence of extant practices as also of practices no longer current, even
when their use of the past represents an interpretation of it that addresses current local concerns
rather than providing an exposition of originary intention. All these things are worth attending to,
always remembering also that the diversity of local traditions, the experiences of colonial and
post-colonial rule, and the development of new traditions of visual practice, while promoting distinct
26
ethnic, national and other identities, cannot be reduced to a common narrative or aesthetic (other
than by means of oversimplification).
There is, of course, a literature about "Primitivism" and Museum Ethnography; but rather than
placing European misrepresentation as our immediate focus, it seems to me that we can use our
time more productively by looking in detail at particular traditions and therein allow such critique to
emerge as is needed. Otherwise there is a real danger of wallowing in polemic flatulence as if that
were a substitute for considering what African people do and say about what they do; and among
other things we find that, if the term `traditional' represents a problem category, the sense of
tradition really does matter, for traditions are by definition (from tradere to hand over) established in
the handing on of practices, whether in art or in other domains of social life; and in the processes of
handing on, and in the replication of whatever has been handed on, change is inevitable. Traditions
are thus hardly static, and indeed an evolving tradition, while justifying itself in terms of its past
precedent, can seem as if it were the agent of other forms of development as well as their
representation. In any case, the existence of an established tradition does not in itself necessarily
rule out the possibilities for the introduction of new forms of practice; and the relationships between
extant traditions is likely to be complex, one drawing upon another, for example, as subject matter,
or as a formal resource, as already mentioned.
In the course of the 19th century transatlantic slavery was replaced by colonial rule, and in the 20th
that rule was contested and defeated; and yet, whatever we make of the complex and often sorry
narrative of all that, and what has then ensued, the visual arts have flourished throughout. Indeed,
they enable us to see another kind of `Africa,' one that is not trapped within, for example, plunder,
authoritarian rule, or plague. This is not to insist that art is somehow independent of its social, etc,
environment, but rather that there is rather more to that environment than the stories that dominate
uninformed representations of Africa. One hardly need insist that the period since the mid 19th
century has been one of rapid and far-reaching political, technological, religious, etc, change; and it
has been the period in which both modern ethnic identities and nation states have emerged. In the
visual arts, however, perhaps the most surprising thing has been the resilience of local tradition,
alongside the developments that were as inevitable as change itself. This is not to suggest that
everything from the past has survived intact: that would be merely foolish, for the history of art is
always a history of loss and gain; but that resilience deserves attention and explanation. However,
that same period of rapid change also provides the context for describing the inheritance of the past.
The great majority of works in the sometimes and so-called "classic" traditions, works that would
also be called "traditional", were neither documented nor collected before the colonial period. Many,
even, are of the 20th century; as is almost the entire corpus of field-research literature; and
whatever we reckon about the temporal status of a given tradition, all too often this has yet to be
proven given the fragmentary nature of the art-historical record. Moreover, as this was a period
represented in art not just in terms of an inheritance from the past but also in the new forms and
technical means that have been introduced, if we limit our attention only to those traditions, whether
27
in art or in other forms of social practice, inherited from the past then we are guilty of inventing an
Africa that bears merely limited resemblance to the diversity of extant and contemporary visual
practice. This, of course, is the problem of the dominance in research, writing and exhibition until
quite recently of the "primitive/tribal/traditional" arts. For the developments in the visual arts of the
20th century, and their engagement with an inheritance of the past, have not always found
acceptance among scholars, collectors and connoisseurs. It has been as if there were two art
worlds for Africa, the one an unwitting consortium of Primitivism, auction houses, rich collectors and
Museum Ethnography, and the other more radically minded (but with less money). That these
developments have certainly been influenced by Europe should be a matter for investigation,
recognising that `Africa' and `Europe' are not somehow watertight categories, and never were.
Indeeed, the reality of the present time is that all manner of differing arts, within traditions of practice
and functional locations of differing temporal status, are contemporary with each other. Moreover,
and as already noted, the manner in which artists often draw upon the traditions of the past as
subject matter is itself a source of information about those traditions. As it happens, the concept of
an `art world' as the institutional frameworks of education, making, patronage, and display, is useful.
In a city like Kumasi, for example, one can distinguish between at least three such art worlds: the
university College of Art, the very large number of sign-painting studios, and the arts associated with
local royal and chiefly ceremonial. Their independence and inter-dependence is a subject of
continuing interest that cannot be understood within the misrepresentations of
"traditional/contemporary" paradigm.
In addition to the basic list that here follows, additional material is also given for Nigeria and
Senegal, and for the persistance of local tradition.
Agthe J, 1990: Wegzeichen - Signs: Art from East Africa 1974-89,
Beier U, 1968: Contemporary Art in Africa the first general survey, dated now but still important
Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno, 1991: Africa Hoy (a prime example of how badly we can get it
wrong)
Court E, 1999: Africa on display: exhibiting art by Africans, in E Barker [ed], Contemporary Cultures
of Display, pp 147-173
Deliss C et al, 1995: Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa
* Enwezor E [ed], 2000: The Short Century: independence and liberation movements in Africa
1945-1994 esp intro pp10-16
Fosu K, 1986: 20th Century Art of Africa
* Hassan S, 2000, The modernist experience in African art: visual expressions of the self and
other cross-cultural aesthetics, in O Oguibe & O Enwezor [eds], Reading the Contemporary
invaluable collection of papers, well worth having and all worth reading: Appiah, Kasfir,
Diawara, Koloane, Richards, both editors, etc
* Hassan S, & O Oguibe et al, 2001: AuthenticlEx-centric: conceptualism in contemporary African
art, Venice Biennale and Forum for African Art, Ithaca
Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1991: Cheri Samba: a retrospective
28
Kasfir S, 1992: African art and authenticity: a text with a shadow, African Arts, XXV, 2, 40-53; see
also the commentaries in African Arts, XXV, 3, which followed Kasfir's paper
* Kasfir S, 1999: Contemporary African Art the most recent and the most reliable survey
* Kunsthalle Basel [A Kwami, C Deliss, C Vegh], 2001: Atta Kwami
Kunsthalle Bern, 2000: South meets West [O A Bamgboye, K Geers, A Kwami, et al]
Magnin A, 1997: Seydou Keita
Mount M, 1973/1989: African Art: the Years since 1920
Museum of Modern Art, Oxford [D Elliot ed], 1990: Art from South Africa
* Njami S, 2000: El Tiempo de Africa, see: Africa's Time, esp pp 261-277
Njami S, 1992: Anthropometric vision, Revue Noire, 4, p 5
Oguibe O, 1995: Uzo Egonu: an African artist in the west
Oguibe O, 1996: Photography and the substance of the image, Guggenheim Museum, In/sight:
African Photographers, 1940 to the Present
Oguibe O, & O Enwezor, 2000: Reading the Contemporary: African art from theory to the
marketplace
Okoye I S, 1996: Tribes and art history, Art Bulletin, LXXVII, 4, pp 614-615; reprinted in S Edwards
[ed], 1999, Art and Its Histories, pp 260-263
* Ottenberg S, 1997: New Traditions from Nigeria: seven artists of the Nsukka group,
Picton J, 1990: Transformations of the artifact, in C Deliss [ed], Lotte or the transformation of the
object
Picton J, 1991a: Nigerian images of Europeans: commentary, appropriation, subversion, pp 25-27,
South Bank Centre (Deliss, Malbert et al), Exotic Europeans
Picton J, 1991b: Africa and the two art worlds, African Arts, XXIV, 3, pp 83-86
* Picton J, 1992: Desperately seeking Africa, New York 1991,Oxford Art Journal, 15, 2, pp 104-112
Picton J, [ed] 1997: Image and Form; Prints, Drawings and Sculpture from southern Africa and
Nigeria
Picton J, 1998a: `Patches of history' patching up my art history, in J Picton, G Houghton et al, El
Anatsui: A Sculpted History of Africa, pp 17-25; and, E A Peri-Willis, Chambers of memory, pp 79-88
Picton J, 1998b: Observers are Worried: the "Tribal Image" is No More, in Internationales
Afrikaforum, 34, 3, pp 281-289
Picton J, 2000: In Vogue, or the flavour of the month: the new way to wear black, in Oguibe &
Enwezor Reading the Contemporary: pp 114-126
Picton J, & J Law, 2000: Cross Currents: contemporary art practie from South Africa
Revue Noire, a quarterly bilingual journal published in Paris
Spiro L, 1989: Gerard Sekoto
Studio Museum in Harlem, 1990: Contemporary African Artists: changing traditions
Subiros P, S Njami [et al ], 2001: Africas: the artist and the city, Barcelona
* Vogel S, 1991: Africa Explores
Wahlman M, 1974: Contemporary African Arts
29
In spite of the wealth of documentation that now exists, old stereotypes die hard, and for a recent
demonstration of the problems and misunderstandings largely stemming from the false dichotomy of
"traditional" versus "contemporary," see recent issues of the Los Angeles journal, African Arts
Lamp F, 1999: Africa centered, African Arts, XXXXII, 1, 1-12
Blier S, et al, 1999: replies to Lamp, African Arts, XXXII, 2, 9-10, 85-87
Three more publications have emerged in the last few years, from Japan, which is not party to the
same histories of modernity/primitivism/neo-primitivism as Africa, Europe and European-America.
For this reason they may shed an interesting light on these matters.
Setagaya Museum Tokyo [ed Y Kawaguchi], 1995: An Inside Story: African Art of Our Time
Yoshida K & J Mack [eds], 1997: Images of Other Cultures (a publication concerned with global
misperceptions: Africa, Oceania, Japan, Europe)
Tobu Museum of Art [ed T Shimuzu], 1998: Africa, Africa: Vibrant New Art from a Dynamic
Continent
Ethnic and national identities in Nigeria and Senegal. The modern state of Ghana achieved
Independence in 1957 soon to be followed by most other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria
and Senegal, for example, in 1960. In Nigeria in the late 1950s a group of students in Zaria at the
very first tertiary-level institution of fine art in Nigeria led by Uche Okeke, formed the Zaria Art
Society and set about reforming their teaching programme to give attention to the indigenous art
traditions of the country, undere the rubric of Natural Synthesis. They believed, and continue to
believe, that Yoruba, Igbo, Edo, etc., traditions could enrich a modern Nigerian art. Bruce
Onobrakpeya, internationally now the best-known of their society, has published three volumes of
autobiographical documentation of his work. In addition to pulications by Beier, Deliss, Fosu,
Oguibe, * Ottenberg, and Picton listed above, see:
Beier U, 1960: Art in Nigeria 1960, pp 1-24
Beier U, 1961: Contemporary Nigerian art, Nigeria Magazine, 68, pp 27-51
Beier U, 1962: Nigerian folk art, Nigeria Magazine, 75, pp 26-32
Beier U, 1965: Experimental art school, Nigeria Magazine, 86, pp 199-204
Beier U, 1964: Idah - an original Bini artist, Nigeria magazine, 80
Beier U, 1966: Naive Nigerian art, Black Orpheus, 19, pp 31-32, 39
Beier U, 1991: Thirty Years of Oshogbo Art
Carroll K, 1967: Yoruba Religious Carving
Enwezor O & O Oguibe, 2001: Lagos 1955-1970, in I Blazwick [ed], Century City: art and culture in
the modern metropolis Tate Modern, London, pp 42-69, 274, 278-280
Jari J [ed], 2000: Accident & Design: Gani Odutokun and his friends, esp pp 12-25
King C & N Durbridge, 1999: Modern art in Nigeria: independence and innovation, in C King [ed],
Views of Difference: Different Views of Art
National Gallery of Modern Art, Lagos, 1981: The Nucleus
Okediji M, 1986: Yoruba paintmaking tradition, Nigeria Magazine, vol 54/2, pp 19-26
30
Okita S I O, 1986: African culture in search of an identity, Nigeria Magazine, 54/1, pp 55-60
Onabolu D, 1963: Aina Onabolu, Nigeria Magazine, 79, pp 295-298 see also the exhibition reviews
by Cyprian Ekwensi and Babatunde Lawal
Onobrakpeya B, 1985: Symbols of Ancestral Groves 1988: Sahelian Masquerades 1992: The Spirit
in Ascent see also the exerpts from these publications included in Picton 1997
Ottenberg S, 1997: New Traditions from Nigeria: seven artists of the Nsukka group, see also Picton
references given above.
Udechukwu O et al, 1993: So Far: drawings, paintings, prints 1963-1993
Willis E, 1997: Uli Painting and Igbo Identity unpublished PhD thesis SOAS
In Senegal its first President, Leopold Sedar Senghor continued to promote his philosophy of
Negritude, originally formulated by a group of Francophone African and Caribbean intellectuals (the
word first appears in a poem by Aime Cesaire) in the face of French racism. In addition to Deliss,
Fosu, and Oguibe, see:
Ebong I, 1991: Negritude: between mask and flag; Senegalese cultural ideology and the `Ecole de
Dakar', in S Vogel, Africa Explores pp198-209
Axt F & El Hadj M B Sy [eds], 1989: Anthology of Contemporary Fine Arts in Senegal esp L S
Senghor, Introduction, pp 19-20
Harney E, 1996: The Legacy of Negritude: a history of the visual arts in post-independence Senegal
unpublished PhD thesis, SOAS.
See also her paper in the Oxford Art Journal, 19, 1
Linsley R, 1988: Wifredo Lam: painter of Negritude, Art History, 11, 4, pp 527-544
McEmlley T, 1993: Fusion: West African Artists at the Venice Biennale
Museum for African Art, 1993: Home and the World: Architectural Scultpture . . .
Revue Noire, 7, esp pp 1-26
Tradition and imagination. If tradition is by definition not a brake working against creativity and
innovation but the framework within which each is possible, then it may be useful to consider Cole's
distinction between incremental and innovative change; and this also permits a discussion of
contrasting modes of creativity: replication, excellence, novelty, etc. In other words, if we are to
understand development in art then we must also understand the nature of the changes that are
taking place, and their sources, quite apart from the complex relationships between differing forms
of social practice, with art as both context and representation of change and development.
* Cole H, 1982: Mbari, ch 5.
Cole H, 1988: Igbo arts and ethnicity. pp 26-27; The survival and impact of mbari, pp 54-65; both in
African Arts, XXI, 2
Cole H, & C Aniakor, 1984: Igbo Arts, Community and Cosmos, Achebe foreword, chs 3, 4
Fischer E, 1976: Problems of creativity among the Dan artists, Quaderni Poro, 1, pp 167-178
Fischer E & H Himmelheber, 1984: The Arts of the Dan in West Africa
Johnson B C, 1987: Four Dan Sculptors: continuity and change
31
Ben-Amos P, 1980: Patron-artist interactions in Africa, African Arts, XII, 3, pp 56-57
Notwithstanding the dominant but domesticated presences of Islam and Christianity throughout
West Africa, many other ritual and performance traditions continue to thrive for reasons of local
and/or personal relevance, even those that Islam and Christianity would regard as heterodox. It is,
of course, important to remember that these traditions are as much part of the art of `contemporary'
West Africa as photography, easel painting and printmaking. Magical medicines (MacGaffey) and
divination (Pemberton) can deal with problems Islam and Christianity seem unable to confront.
Initiation (eg Biebuyck, though whether after the onslaught of colonial antagonism and postcolonial
chaos, Lega institutions survive I cannot say; but the general point holds, that initiation) provides
access to local knowledge, again, in ways Islam and Christianity cannot. Ideas about spirit doubles,
familiars and spouses are widespread in West Africa, for example. One Yoruba account of twins
(Houlberg) is that a child's spirit double is born with it. In the Ivory Coast Senufo women sandogo
diviners work with twin-spirit familiars (Glaze). Co-incidentally, 20th-century European interest in
Africa has brought more work to Senufo sculptors than in the past, with contrasting results (Richter).
Baule people (Ravenhill, Vogel) have otherworld spouses who can be troublesome, requiring ritual
and sexual attention, and a sculptured image. In Sierra Leone senior Mende women, through Sande
or Bondo associations (Phillips), enact their mythic status as spouses of the aboriginal spirit
inhabitants of the forests Mende people colonised in the 16th century.
MacGaffey W, 1993: The eyes of understanding, in W MacGaffrey & M Harris, Astonishment and
Power
Biebuyck D, 1973: Lega Culture, esp pp 54-57, 66-67, 142-157
Houlberg M, 1973: Ibeji images of the Yoruba, African Arts, VII, 1
Glaze A, 1975: Women, power, and art in a Senufo village, African Arts, VII, 3
Glaze A, 1981: Art and Death in a Senufo Village
* Pemberton J [ed] 2000: Insight and Artistry in African Divination
Richter D, 1980: Art, Economics and Change, intro & chs 4, 7, 8
Ravenhill P, 1994:The Self and the Other: personhood and images among the Baule…
Ravenhill P, 1996: Dreams and Reverie: images of otherworld mates among the Baule...
Vogel S M, 1997: Baule: African Art Western Eyes
Phillips R, 1978: Masking in Mende society initiation rituals, Africa
Phillips R, 1995: Representing Woman (see also her opening account of differing modes of
representation in successive generations of European writers)
For further discussion of masquerade see part 4; but in the meantime, and in the context of this part
of the list of readings, it is worth noting the examples of Baga and Dogon people. In Guinea, Lamp
has shown how Baga people, terrorised after Independence into abandoning their masking
institutions, have reinvented themselves and their sense of history and identity through masqerade.
Lamp F et al, 1996: Art of the Baga: a drama of cultural reinvention
32
In contrast, the Dogon people of Mali were "traditionally" taken as paradigm cases of "tribal" purity,
with masquerade as a particular example thereof; and yet,notwithstanding the accounts presented
by Marcel Griaule and his disciples, current realities suggest otherwise. Dogon people perform
masquerade for several reasons, sometimes within ritual traditions inherited from the past, and at
other times as a response to present social, economic and political realities, including the
entertainment of tourists. Yet, although these performances share many common features, in what
ways do they differ? In any case, mask and masked identity cannot be taken for granted beyond the
need to create dramatic distance (see later). People may talk about "spirits" and "secrecy" but what
does this mean in terms of local theory? Van Beek (in Vogel, 1991, p 63) writes of Dogon masks
that they `enact the bush endowing the village with power and fertility' though just what this means is
unclear too. Then again, does the acceptability to local Christians of participation in certain kinds of
Dogon masked performance, but not others, indicate an accommodation of Christianity to local
tradition, or a process of accommodation of local tradition to Christianity, or that the ontological
status of the masks concerned were never much more than a dramatic device serving not to conjure
up "spirits" but merely to enhance entertainment?
* Richards P, 2000: `Imina Sangan' or `Masques a la Mode:' contemporary masquerade in the
Dogon region, in K Arnaut [ed], Re-Visions: New Perspectives on the African Collections of the
Horniman Museum, pp 107-123
For further readings in Dogon art and ethnography see:
Ezra K, 1988: Art of the Dogon
Griaule M, 1938 [2nd ed 1963]: Masques Dogons.
Griaule M, 1965: Conversations with Ogotemmeli.
Imperato P J, 1971: Contemporary adapted dances of the Dogon, African Arts, V, 1, pp 28-33
Spmi T & S, 1976: Togu Na
van Beek W, 1991: Enter the bush: a Dogon masked festival, in Vogel, Africa Explores, pp 56-77
2. Tradition and the 20th century: photography and `popular' art
In recent years the term `popular' art has come to suggest a discrete category of practice; and in the
years since Magiciens de la Terre (Paris 1989), some writers and collectors have priveleged certain
kinds of apparently `popular' practice attributing to them a Neo-Primitivist "authenticity" as if these
alone were the acceptable face of a modern or contemporary African art: eg fancy coffin making in
Ghana, funerary monuments in Ghana and Nigeria, and the blatant imagery of some of the now
ubiquitous signpainters throughout the continent. The fact that these are also entirely local practices,
often dependent upon photography (see below), rather works against the very category itself, of
course; but in the meantime the Eurocentric priveleging of these artists created resentment among
artists who had come through the Fine Art departments of West African universities, and who thus
33
sometimes began to write or speak as if we should thus omit these forms of practice from
consideration as `art.' Susan Vogel's 1991 Africa Explores was criticised in precisely this way, for
placing artists who were in some sense part of an international art world in the same space with
signpainters (NB the earlier discussion of local art worlds). As it happens, whatever one's criticisms
of it, one achievement of Africa Explores was to show that the diverse forms comprising the
category `popular' had little or nothing in common, other than their location, as presented in Africa
Explores, in a largely urban environment (and historically the origins of these forms may well be
urban, but their location no longer is). Moreover, printmaking, signpainting, photography,
masquerade, textile design, etc, may well subsist as parts of a common set of visual environments;
and yet, while possibly functionally inter-related within local art worlds at some level (eg one medium
as source material for another), each will have its own developmental trajectory. We might
deconstruct the notion of `popular' but we should not discard the artists responsible for the work.
Meanwhile, photography turns out to be the first of the modern African arts: see below
* Vogel S [et al] 1991: Africa Explores, chs II & III, pp 94-175; also Cosentino, 'Afrokitsch', pp
240-255; (NB also JP 1992 'Desperately seeking Africa, New York 1991')
* Barber K [ed], 1999: Readings in African Popular Culture
* Bouttiaux-Ndiaye A-M, 1994: Senegal Behind Glass (the best account so far of glass painting)
Jewsiewicki B, 1991: Painting in Zaire... in Vogel Africa Explores, reprinted in Barber 1999: A Congo
Chronicle: Patrice Lumumba in Urban Art
Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 1991, Cheri Samba: a retrospective
Secretan T, 1995: Going into Darkness: Fantastic Coffins from Africa, esp 3-23
Fabian J, 1996: Remembering the Present: painting and popular history in Zaire, ch 4 pp269-296
Sukuro E, 1990: Art to the people, in J Agthe, Wegzeichen-Signs, pp 139-148 (although concerned
with Nairobi, and thus, perhaps, beyond the remit of this course, this text is important for its
demonstration of the political utility of the visual arts
Houlberg M, 1973: Ibeji images of the Yoruba, African Arts, VII, 1
Picton J, 1992: Desperately seeking Africa, N Y 1991,Oxford Art Journal, 15, 2, pp 104-112
Poppi C, 1991: From the suburbs of the global village..., Third Text, 14
Brett G, 1986: Through Our Own Eyes: popular art and modern history, intro pp 7-26, and ch 3, No
Condition is Permanent, pp 83-111
Howell S, 1995: Whose knowledge and whose power? in R Fardon [ed] Counterworks account of
the political dimension that art exhibitions can entail
Wollen P, 1993: Raiding the Icebox: reflections on twentieth-century culture ch 7, pp 190-210
Photography, the first of the modern arts in sub-Saharan Africa, was brought to Freetown in 1845
by Augustus Washington, one of the very earliest African American photographers; and in Africa as
in African America, traditions of portraiture and documentation develop in ways that differ from
Europe, avoiding the exoticising and primitivising to which European photographers were prone. It is
also obvious that the history of photography coincides with the history of collecting African sculpture
for the ethnographic and `Primitive Art' collections of Europe and America; but if the two kinds of
34
image making exist side by side, so to speak, one wonders if there is any relationship between
them. For example, is it just the artifact of incomplete documentation that a stiffer tradition of
photographic portraiture is maintained in those parts of West Africa characterised by naturalistic
sculptural traditions, while a more relaxed tradition develops in places such as Senegal and Mali
where figurative sculpture is either absent or highly schematic? Either way, photography is clearly
popular as a means of enabling self representation: most houses are full of photographs articulating
the realities and choices of fashion, status, modernity and tradition; but in South Africa, local
photographers were more concerned with photojournalsm, and the brutal realities of apartheid.
* Oguibe O, 1996: Photography and the substance of the image, in Clare Bell [et al] In/sight:
African photographers, 1940 to the present, pp 231-249, Guggenheim Museum
* Revue Noire, 1998 [English ed 1999]: Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photograph, esp
* Diawara M, 2000: Talk of the town: Seydou Keita, in O Oguibe & O Enwezor [eds] Reading the
Contemporary ..., pp 236-242
Willis R, 2000: Reflections in Black: a history of Black photographers, 1840 to the present
Schadeberg J et al, 1994: Sof’town Blues: images from the black '5Os
Magnin A [ed], 1997: Seydou Keita
Bigham E, 1999: Issues of authorship in the portrait photographs of Seydou Keita, African Arts,
XXXII, 1, pp 56-67, 94-95
Sprague S, 1978: Yoruba photography: how the Yoruba see themselves, African Arts, XII, 1, pp
52-59
Wendl T & H Behrend [eds], 1998: Snap Me One! Studiofotografen in Afrika
Geary C, 1988: Images from Bamum ( sympathetic colonial photography)
Baldassari A, 1997: Picasso and Photography: the dark mirror, pp 45-61 (a revealing look at
European popular photographs of African people, and the sources of Les Demoiselles)
`Body marking is a corner-stone in African art' [Onobrakpeya 1992, 139] Body marking, whether
ephemeral or permanent, comprised a series of forms, technical means and intentions of great
variety, but with the advent of modern education, dress, and so forth, these have become
substantially obsolescent; and yet, as the quotation from Bruce Onobrakpeya, one of the leading
artists of post-Independence Nigeria and West Africa, suggests, these arts are still recognised as a
source of distinctive cultural identity. Their appropriation and transformation within certain other
traditions inherited from the past, sculpture, masquerade, for example, as also within the
developments since the 1960s, has secured the continued relevance of the forms (if not the
practices necessarily) of body marking. In the post-Independence period these have sometimes
been recognised and celebrated as forms of drawing and graphic design of local origin, and thus not
part of the package of technical means inherited via the colonial encounter.
The personal arts mattered, to the extent that they provided, in any given locality, a primary context
and locus of art, and, therein, an aesthetic: the evidence is there in many of the sculptural traditions
of the recent past. There is also the photographic evidence of books of the "disappearing world"
35
variety; and although these promote exoticization and nostalgia, and are thus to that extent
misrepresentative, this material should not simply be ignored. That the body was decorated,
enhanced, transformed, is obvious enough; and whether the means of so doing were ephemeral or
permanent, and whether or not these arts are of continued relevance, we can also still ask questions
of this material. (Indeed, in the `western' context of the development of interest in tattooing and
piercing, these questions are easier to ask now than twenty years ago when they might have been
construed as an undue preoccupation with the bizarre and exotic.) The other primary context and
locus of art was the land construed as an artifact through built form, social and economic rights and
usages, ritual attention and as the ground of masked and other dramatic performance.
For responses to these arts within a Nigerian modernity see:
Oguibe O, 1995: Uzo Egonu. Although this artist lived the greater part of his life in London, Oguibe
has no difficulty in discerning a concern with line and space in his work that fits within Igbo traditions
of body marking and settlement layout as documented in the recent past.
Ottenberg S, 1997: New Traditions from Nigeria: seven artists of the Nsukka group
Willis E A, 1997: Uli Painting and Igbo Identity, unpublished PhD thesis [in SOAS library]
Onobrakpeya B, 1985: Symbols of Ancestral Groves
Onobrakpeya B, 1988: Sahelian Masquerades
Onobrakpeya B, 1992: The Spirit in Ascent see also the excerpts from these publications included in
J Picton [ed], 1997: Image and Form: prints, drawings and sculpture from southern Africa and
Nigeria Bruce Onobrakpeya is internationally the best-known artist of the Zaria art society (see K
Fosu 1986, 20th-century art of Africa, C Deliss et al, 1995, Seven Stories about Modern Art in
Africa) has himself published three volumes of autobiographical documentation of his work.
For responses within the modern fashion industry see:
* Prince Claus Fund [ed Els van der Plas], 1998: The Art of African Fashion
For other extant (or obsolescent) traditions see:
Bohannan P, 1956: Beauty and Scarification among the Tiv, Man pp 117-121 reprinted in A Rubin
[ed], 1988: Marks of Civilization
Cole H, 1974: Vital Arts of Northern Kenya, Af Arts, VII, 2
Drewal H J, 1989: Art or accident: Yoruba body artists and their deity Ogun, in S T Barnes [ed],
Africa's Ogun, pp 235-260
Faris J, 1972: Nuba Personal Art, pp 21-93, esp chs 3, 6, 7
Faris J, 1988: … differences in the male & female personal art …, in A Rubin [ed], The Marks of
Civilization, pp 9-42
* Houlberg M, 1979: Social hair: tradition and change in Yoruba hairstyles, in J Cordwell & R
Schwartz [eds] The Fabrics of Culture, pp 349-397
Klumpp D & C Kratz, 1993: Aesthetic expertise and ethnicity: Okiek and Maasai perspectives on
personal ornament, in T Spear & R Waller (eds), Being Maasai, pp 195-222
36
* Magubane P (text by S Klopper), 2000: African Renaissance
Roberts M N & A F, et al, 1996: Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History Defining the person, pp
85-91; & Inscription of memory, pp 98-112
Sieber R & F Herreman [eds], 2000: Hair in African Art and Culture
3. Art in South Africa
The place of artworks in the constitution and exercise of, and engagement with authority in Africa is
unavoidable in any consideration of art in Africa. This is as obvious in the quest for a modern and/or
national identity as in, eg, the apparent affirmation of an innovative Edo royal dynasty; and even in
the sculptures of Opin (see Picton in The Yoruba Artist) there are hints of a ridiculing of alien
authority . In South Africa, however, the facts of and the relationships between English and Dutch
colonists, and between them and San foragers and Bantu-speaking mixed farmers, entailed a set of
very different histories. While a few late examples of San rock painting in the Drakensburg
mountains record conflicts between Europeans and others (literature concerning the interpretation of
this art is given in part 9 of this list of readings), for the most part the material artifact traditions of
black South Africans were concerned with strategies of gender, initiation to maturity, warfare and
internal hierarchy; whereas white artists seem to have focussed attention upon the illusion of a
seemingly unpopulated landscape. During the 20th century, however, an interest in painting,
sculpture, graphics and installation developed within both rural areas and black townships; and,
inevitably, the politics of apartheid laid upon artists of all populations a very specific set of responses
and responsibilities, particularly in the years following the success of independence movements
throughout sub-Saharan Africa. How did the visual arts develop over the past forty years? what
kinds of relationships were there between black and white South African artists? what were the
particular difficulties faced by black artists? and what are artists doing now that apartheid is ended?
(It is also instructive to compare developments in South Africa with those in East Africa, where much
of the art produced since Independence has presented a critical view of post-colonial political
government. Coincidentally, these developments also illustrate well the near-impossibility of
understanding art (and certainly the originary intentions predicated therein) in the absence of
contextual data. NB see also references listed under photography.
African Arts, XXIX, 1, 1996: papers by Godby & Klopper, Koloane, Metz
Arnold M, 1996: Women and Art in South Africa
Berman E, 1993 (there are earlier editions): Painting in South Africa
Cameron D, C Christov-Bakargiev, J M Coetzee, 1999: William Kentridge,
Deepwell K [ed], 1997: Art Criticism and Africa
* Elliot D et al, 1990, Art From South Africa Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, esp Elliot's intro and the
reprint of Albie Sachs' 1989 paper: preparing ourselves for freedom.
Enwezor O [ed] 1997: Trade Routes (the 2nd Johannesburg biennale)
37
Geers K [ed] 1997: Contemporary South African Art: The Gencor Collection
* Herreman F [ed], 1999: Liberated Voices: contemporary art from South Africa, esp B Dhlomo,
Zwelethu Mthethwa talks about his photographs, pp 64-79, and J Law, Penny Siopis: the Storyteller,
pp 94-109
* Johannesburg Art Gallery, 1991: Art and Ambiguity, esp essays by Mphalele, Davison,
Schwalkwyck & Nettleton, pp 6-46
Koloane D, 1995: Moments in art, in C Deliss et al, Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa pp
143-157
* Magubane P (text by S Klopper), 2000: African Renaissance
Nettleton A & D Hammond-Tooke [eds], 1989: African Art in Southern Africa:
Picton J [ed], 1997: Image and Form: prints, drawings and sculpture southern Africa and Nigeria see
esp E Rankin, below.
Picton J & J Law [eds], 2000: Cross Currents: contemporary art practice in South Africa
Revue Noire no 11, 1994
Rankin E, 1997: A mission for art: the evangelical Lutheran church art and craft centre at Rorke's
Drift, in Picton [ed] Image & Form, pp 47-56
Richards C, 1991: About face: aspects of art, history and identity in South African visual culture,
Third Text, 16/17, pp 101-133
Sack S, 1988: The Neglected Tradition
Skotnes P, 1995: Miscast
Spiro L, 1989: Gerard Sekoto, Johannesburg Art Gallery
* Williamson S, 1989: Resistance Art in South Africa
& A Jamal, 1986: Art in South Africa: the future present
Younge G, 1988: Art of the South African Townships
Some references about art elsewhere in southern Africa.
Bourgois G (ed.), 1997: Zimbabwe: Legacies of Stone,
Court E, 1992: Pachipamwe II..., African Arts, XXV, 1, pp 38-49, 98
Danielsson K [ed], 1987: Mozambique!, [Kulturhuset, Stockholm], pp 24-70
Noy I, 1992: Art of the Weya Women
Rankin E [et al], 1997: Contemporary Art !Xu & Khwe Kimberley/South Africa; an exhibition
catalogue of modern Khoisan painters originally mostly from Angola
Sahlstrom B, 1990: Political Posters in Ethiopia and Mozambique, pp 54-65, 99-107
Schneider E A, 1988: Malangatana, artist of the revolution, African Arts, XXI, 3
For comparison with East Africa see:
* Agthe J, 1990: Wegzeichen - Signs ... 1974-89, esp Etale Sukuro, pp 139-148, 410-437
4. Masquerade
38
In much of sub-Saharan Africa, masquerade is, according to the appropriate event and season, a
commonplace activity of social (etc) consequence, and it is a contemporary phenomenon, though
not one unaffected by developments elsewhere within social practice; but when approached from a
standpoint in Europe and America one must first deal with intellectual baggage that is not based
upon commonplace experience. We also need to be aware of the complex histories of `mask' as
word, idea, metaphor and artifact. The use of a mask creates dramatic and social distance between
people; but it is not the only means of so doing, and there is little consistency in the reasons for so
doing from one masking institution to another. Clearly there is more to masquerade than the
transformation that is the core theme of Sidney Kasfir's book. This is not to deny the importance of
transformation, but one must also recognise that given the lexical and conceptual differences
between Europe and Africa (or should one write ‘Africa': one does not wish to tread the spurious
path of reducing an entire continent, with all its diverse traditions, to a unified banality) a single
issue definition is just not possible. Prior to the issue of transformation is that of social distance;
and some very complex questions of social identity and identification. As often happens, ‘mask,'
whether or not you are convinced of the problems of definition, is a word we find ourselves
having to use none the less. It is, after all, a convenient ‘short-hand' reference to these problems;
which may be not so much with the use of things we call ‘masks' as with the lack of any
consistency of purpose thereafter. Perhaps we should learn to think of ‘mask' as ‘a field of
different attributes among which relevant aspects are accentuated according to circumstances'
[Fardon 1990, 45] rather than searching as if we might discover a coherent and consistent entity;
and then we can more-or-less stop worrying about it! However, the questions of identity not only
concern the status of the masked performer but equally the ontological status of the masks
themselves. We continue to ask what are masks themselves identified as? how are they named? It
may be convenient to talk of `spirit' but exactly what that ‘spirit' is, is after all, an English word.
(It certainly cannot be assumed that there is a word in any African language that easily translates as
‘spirit.' In my experience indigenous metaphysical systems are far too imaginative, and English
translation merely imposes oversimplification.) Yet we must also move on: what kinds of
identities between people and communities are effected and constituted in the possession,
ownership and use of masks? We also must consider the transformations and indentifications
enabled and implied in the use and life histories of masks; the place of masks in the life-histories of
communities; and the categorical articulations implied therein (identities, after all, also entail
differences).
There is, thankfully, much more to it than matters of terminology, for masquerade is, clearly, about
many things including entertainment (see Arnoldi); and whatever the overt purpose of any given
masking institution and performance, all manner of concerns will be addressed thereby. ‘Power' is
often inserted into the description, yet, like ‘spirit,' ‘power' is another of those words that sail close to
the wind of cliche; and this is not so much a matter of terminology but of clear understanding. Are
we talking about legitimate authority? in which case, how is this constituted, acquired and
maintained? Does art provide some kind of index and means of the necessary strategies for the
39
acquisition of that authority? Or are we talking about power as coercive force? and is this physical or
located in some other presumed domain of existence? In the latter case, how does one access this?
and are these accesses and uses legitimate or essentially anti-social? Or, perhaps, we are talking
about influence. Moreover, it should be clear by now that in any discussion of identity and
power/authority, questions of gender and its stereotypes are inevitable. Women's involvement in
masquerade is always problematic. For it is characteristic of masquerade throughout Africa, with
rare exceptions, that women are in some sense placed socially by their exclusion, more or less, from
performance. However, particular traditions of masking practice differ substantially from one another
in the manner and substance of that exclusion. In some, there may be a theory justifying their
seemingly complete exclusion from all aspects of performance and knowledge. In other traditions
their participation may be no more than singing the songs and providing the audience, and yet they
can know all there is to be known. In other words the appearance of secrecy may be no more than
that, serving only to heighten dramatic impact; but, even then, traditions differ in regard to purpose
and intention. Though masked performances in the practice of Ebira eku, Yoruba efe-gelede, and
Afikpo-Igbo okumkpa share some common features, they differ markedly in terms of the status of
the masks, the reality and significance of secrecy, the intentions presupposed in performance, and
so forth. In contrast, in the Kalabari example, it was a woman who, in the mythic past, introduced the
water spirit masquerades to Kalabari people; and men took them from her. Yet masquerade in only
one of the ways of (re)presenting the world of spirits; and most Kalabari spirit mediums are (in
contrast to masked performers) women; moreover, one kind of Kalahari ancestral memorial provides
for a local image of masked performance (virtual reality is not exclusive to the
technologically-advanced ‘West’). Among Senufo people in Ivory Coast, Glaze presents women as
the diviners, also mediating and regulating the relationship between people and spirits; while men
and boys concerned themselves with masquerades, especially in the context of training for
adulthood through an organisation called kpa. There is also a women's kpa and this involves
performance with figure sculpture.
* Arnoldi, M J, 1995: Playing With Time: art and performance in central Mali
Aronson L, 1984: Women in the arts, in M J Hay & S Stichter (eds)African Women, pp 119-137
Biebuyck D, 1973: Lega Culture, pp 210-214
Brain R & A Pollock, 1971: Bangwa Funerary Sculpture, esp pp 117-136
d'Azevedo W, 1973: Mask Makers and Myth in Western Liberia, in A Forge: Primitive Art & Society
Drewal H J, 1974: Efe: voiced power and pageantry, African Arts, VII, 2, pp 26-29, 58-66
Drewal H J, 1974: Gelede masquerade..., Af rican Arts, VII, 4, pp 8-19
Drewal H J, & M T Drewal, 1975: Gelede dance..., Af rican Arts, VIII, 2, pp 36-45
Drewal H J, 1983: Gelede: Art and Female Power among the Yoruba
* Drewal H J, 1978: The arts of egungun..., African Arts, XI, 3
Fardon R, 1990: Between God, the Dead and the Wild,
Fischer E, 1978: Dan forest spirits, African Arts, X, 2, pp 22-27
Fischer E, & H Himmelheber, 1984: The Arts of the Dan
Glaze A, 1975: Women Power & Art in a Senufo Village, African Arts, VIII, 3
40
Glaze A, 1981: Art and Death in a Senufo village
Gotrick K, 1984: Apidan Theatre and Modern Drama
Hersak D, 1985: Songye: Masks and Figure Sculpture
Horton R, 1957: The Gods as Guests
* Horton R, 1963: the Kalabari ekine society, Africa
Horton R, 1967: Kalabari Sculpture
Horton R, 1966: Igbo: an ordeal for aristocrats, Nigeria, 90
And for the sculptured image of the ancestor as masked performer see (in addition to Kalabari
Scupture):
Barley N, 1987: Pop art in Africa? The Kalabari ancestral screens,
Art History, 10, 369-380; and/or
Barley N, 1988: Foreheads of the Dead Smithsonian Institution
Jedrej C, 1980: A comparison of some masks from North America, Africa and Oceania,
Journal of Anthropological Research, pp 220-229
Jedrej C, 1986: Dan and Mende masks: a structural comparison, Africa pp 71-79
Kasfir S [ed], 1988: West African Masks and Cultural Systems
Lamp, 1996: Art of the Baga: a drama of cultural reinvention,
Lamp, 1985: Cosmos, Cosmetics and the spirit of Bondo, Af... Arts XVIII, 3
* Lawal B, 1996: The Gelege Spectacle, esp ch 3 ipilese & ch 5 iran, pp 37-70, 98-162
McNaughton P, 1979: Secret Sculptures of Komo: Working Papers in the Traditional Arts, 4
For further material on Bamana material see, Arnoldi, above, and:
Brett-Smith S, 1994: The Making of Bamana Sculpture: Creativity and Gender
Frank B, 1998: Mande Potters and Leatherworkers
Imperato P J, 1970: the dance of the tyi wara, African Arts, IV, 1
McNaughton P, 1988: The Mande Blacksmiths
Nunley J, 1987: Moving with the Face of the Devil..., esp chs 4, 5, 6
Olajubu O & J R O Ojo, 1977: Some aspects of Oyo Yoruba masquerades, Africa
Ojo J R O, 1978: The symbolism and significance of Epa-type masquerade headpieces, Man
Ottenberg S, 1972: Humorous masks and serious politics, in D Fraser & H M Cole (eds), 1972:
African Art and Leadership
Ottenberg S, 1975: Masked Rituals of Afikpo, esp `Okumkpa'
* Phillips R, 1995, Representing Woman, University of California Los Angeles
Picton J, 1988: Some Ebira reflexions on the energies of women, 1989: On placing masks in Ebira
1990: What's in a mask; all in African Languages and Cultures, 1, 1; 2, l; 3, 2
Picton J, 1991: Artifact and identity, African Arts, XXIV, 3, pp 34-49, 93-94
Picton J, 1992: Masks and identities in Ebira, in J Maw and J Picton [eds] Concepts of the Body/Self
in Africa, pp 67-86
Picton J, 1996: The masque of words, in K Arnaut & E Dell [eds], Bedu is my Lover, pp 5-8
41
Picton J, 1997: On (men?) placing women in Ebira, in F E S Kaplan [ed] Queens, Queen Mothers,
Priestesses and Power, pp 337-369
Picton J, 2000: Two masks from the Yoruba-speaking region; in K Arnaut [ed], Re-Visions: New
Perspectives on the African Collections of the Horniman Museum, pp 171-187
Rea W, 2000: Masks and styles: Yoruba masquerade in a regional perspective, also in Arnaut,
Re-Visions ... pp 159-170
Richards P, 2000: `Imina Sangan' or `Masques a la Mode:' contemporary masquerade in the Dogon
region, also in Arnaut Re-Visions ... pp 107-123 (and NB earlier discussion)
Siroto L, 1972: Gon: a mask used in competition for leadership among the BaKwele; in Fraser D & H
M Cole [eds], African Art and Leadership
* Strother Z, 1998: Inventing Masks: agency and history in the art of the Central Pende,
Tonkin E, 1979: Masks and powers, Man
Yoshida K, 1993: Masks and secrecy among the Chewa, African Arts, XXVI, 2, pp 34-45
In the forests of Sierra Leone and Liberia there are adjacent peoples (see R Phillips 1995, 36-37) of
diverse origins and speaking languages of differing groups, but each with contrasting male and
female initiation organisations that each entail masked performances. The women's organisation,
Sande (or Bondo), is thus one of the very few cases wherein women are responsible for the
procedures of mask/masquerade commissioning, ownership and performance (everything except for
carving the mask, a fact that, at least in the Gola case, is problematic for the sculptor).
Boone S A, 1986: Radiance from the Waters: ideals of femme beauty in Mende art
d'Azevedo W, 1973: Mask Makers and Myth in Western Liberia, in A Forge [ed], Primitive Art &
Society, pp 126-150
d'Azevedo W, 1973a, Sources of Gola artistry, in W d'Azevedo [ed], The Traditional Artist in African
Societies, pp 282-340
Jedrej M C, 1974: An analytical note on the land and spirits of the Sewa Mende, Africa, 44, 1, pp
38-45
Jedrej M C, 1976: Medicine, fetish and secret society in a West African culture,
Africa, 46, 3, pp 247-257
Jedrej M C, 1976a: Structural aspects of a West African secret society,
Jedrej M C, Journal of Anthropological Research, 32, pp 234-245
Jedrej M C, 1986: Dan and Mende masks: a structural comparison, Africa, pp 71-79
Lamp F, 1985: Cosmos, Cosmetics and the spirit of Bondo, African Arts XVIII, 3 see also his review
of Boone in African Arts, XX, 2, pp 17-26
MacCormack C P, 1980: Proto-social to adult: a Sherbro transformation, in C MacCormack & M
Strathern [eds], Nature, Culture and Gender, pp 95-118
Phillips R, 1978: Masking in Mende society initiation rituals, Africa, 48
Phillips R, 1995: Representing Woman chs 4-6, the masquerades of Sande, etc, pp 77-134
42
5. Reckoning with the past.
Sculpture and society in Edo (Benin). If it seems odd that we should persue a consideration of the
modern world by reckoning with the art of a city already well established in the late 15th century, we
should remember that the events of the past hundred or so years define the context of our
interpretation and understanding of this art. When European traders in the late 15th century first
made contact with Edo (Benin), the city, kingdom and empire in the forest to the west of the lower
Niger, it was (according to the scanty written records of the time, and as confirmed in the oral
narratives collated since 1897 in Benin City) already the centre of a thriving and expanding empire.
From the late 16th century, however, Benin entered a period of decline (with seeming evidence for
the increasing ritualisation of kingship), followed by revival and renewed imperial vigour in the 18th.
The 19th century ended with the British Punitive Expedition mounted of 1897, the burning of the
palace, the exile of the king and the looting of several thousand works of art in cast brass, ivory,
wood, wrought iron, leather and hide, textile, beadwork, and so forth. This corpus of material, now
largely scattered through the museums of Europe and America, raises many issues of significance
in the study of art in Africa, not least the manner in which art participates in the constitution,
understanding and articulation of institutions of authority, eg in the metaphorical connotations of
particular animals, colours and materials; and the ikegobo (altar of the hand) provides insight into
aspects of the strategies for the acquisition of that authority. Moreover, a comparative study of the
cult of the hand (or arm: it is characteristically the same word) in the lower Niger region as it is found
in the Igbo- and Igala-speaking areas also, helps us to understand differences in the nature and
articulation of authority, as also the constitution of Edo chiefly orders. For the institutions and
ceremonials of kingship were restored under colonial rule and thrive in the post-Independence era.
However: [i] in 1997, the centenary of th Punitive Expedition, the question of restitution has been
discussed in the media; [ii] it is all very well being able to decode the art and pick out the contrasts
between kings/others, ruler/ruled, palace/town, home/forest, hostile/docile, leopard/pangolin,
land/water, day/night, but as these identifications and contrasts are nothing secret what can they tell
us about the art; and [iii] although this is an art that can be shown to have been made through five or
six centuries, our understanding of it is substantially based upon ethnographic study in the present
century in a context of a post 1897 reconstruction initiated by Eweka II in 1914 when he succeeded
his father, the previous king, who had died in exile.
Bradbury found that by the time of his research in Benin City in the 1950s there were very few
people still alive with any memories of the pre-1897 city, and all but impossible to find anyone who
had not read Egharevba's A Short History of Benin, which codified oral tradition under the authority
of the palace and effectively stitched up any possibilities of alternative narratives. Nevadomsky has,
however, published detailed accounts of the manner in which the dynastic myth was
re-enacted/re-invented in the installation of the present king, and Gore has written an account of the
complex cult configurations that are effectively independent of palace control; but, whereas
43
Bradbury (see `chronological problems', reprinted in Benin Studies) had begun to prise the dynastic
myth apart, most other researchers (ie other than Gore and Nevadomsky) have taken it for granted
as the ground of history and icongraphy. The result is a series of publications in which
interpretations of the art through the centuries of its making and development pre-1897 is assumed
to be identical with the interpretations given to that art (mostly, it should be added, on the basis of
photographs) in late 20th-century Benin City by people who are themselves brought up within the
post-1897 reconstruction. The differing ways in which this art is thus seen as bearing the complex
traces of a heroic past as reconstructed to meet 20th-century needs, must be faced. One feature of
the dynastic myth is its presentation of the king as innovator; and indeed Eweka II has perpetuated
this role; and one example of this is his encouragement for the court pages to engage in sculpture
independently of the sculptors’ guild.
In trying to reconstruct the `world' of ideas-and-practices in which these objects were participant,
one well-tried method involves the identification of a framework (or structure, hence Structuralism) of
oppositions; and it works but only to an extent. For the contrasts that emerge do not fit into a single
grand paradigm but are cross-cutting and indeed multi-dimensional. One could argue, of course,
that the methods of structuralism and semiotics are merely of the present century (which is true) but
far more problematic is the fact that data on which these techniques are employed are themselves
also of the 20th-century. For if this has been a century characterised by the careful management of
a dynastic myth within a context of post-1897 reconstruction, we may have no immediate way of
knowing if our neat explanations and iconographies, no matter how convincing they may seem,
would have fitted (in the case of the plaques, for example) 16th-century explanations and
understandings.
Most of the published literature on Benin art thus deals with those forms and contexts that focus
attention upon the King and the palace. Indeed, this focus is hard to avoid for even those activities
that are in some sense counter to these institutions nevertheless draw use them as a means of
signifying their legitimacy. The work of Norma Rosen (1989) and, most recently, Charles Gore
(1996, 1997). stands apart from the familiar corpus of ethnographic and art-historical writing,
therefore, and to some extent serves to unpack some of its underlying assumptions (including the
art-historical reliance on the dynastic myth). Rosen and Gore have each concentrated attention on
the more overtly charismatic cult leaders that flourish in and around Benin City, beyond the control
of the central institutions, yet each drawing upon them as a repository of forms, conventions and
traditions of practice for the development of their own individual ritual procedures. Gore, indeed,
44
emphasises the continuity provided by these conventions of practice, within an overall sense of Edo
tradition. For even while they are subject to incremental development in their accumulation,
adjustment, re-ordering and reinvention, these conventions remain open to successive
reinterpretations on the part of the charismatic cult leader intent upon utilising his or her own life
experiences and thereby to attract and hold a congregation of adherents.
Bassani E & W Fagg, 1988: Africa and the Renaissance, esp chs 1, 2; and P Mark, European
perceptions of Black Africans...
Beier U, 1964: Idah - an original Bini artist, Nigeria, 80, pp 4-16
Ben Amos P Girshick, 1975: Professionals and Amateurs in Benin Court carving, in D McCall & E
Bay, African Images, pp 170-186
Ben Amos P Girshick, 1976: Men and animals in Benin art, Man
Ben Amos P Girshick, 1995 [2nd ed]: The art of Benin & A Rubin,
Ben Amos P Girshick & A Rubin, 1983: The Art of Power, the Power of Art esp papers by Ben
Amos, and Blackmun
Blackmun B, 1988: From trader to priest in two hundred years: the transformation of a foreign figure
on Benin ivories, Art Journal, 47, 2, pp 121-127
* Bradbury R E, 1961: Ezomo's ikegobo and the Benin cult of the hand, Man, pp 129-137; (for
comparison, see J Boston, 1977: Ikenga)
Bradbury R E, 1967: The kingdom of Benin, in D Forde & P M Kaberry [eds], West African
Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century, pp 1-35, both papers are reprinted in Bradbury, 1973: Benin
Studies see also therein: Father and son in Edo mortuary ritual, pp 213-228, and other papers
Bradbury R E, 1959: Divine kingship in Benin, Nigeria, 62, pp 186-207
Coombes A, 1994: Reinventing Africa, intro & chs 1-3
Craddock P & J Picton, 1986: Mediaeval copper alloy production and west African bronze analysis part II, Archaeometry, vol 28, pp 3-32
Dark P, 1973: An Introduction to Benin and Technology
Ezra K, 1992: Royal Art of Benin
Gore C, 1996: Contemporary Shrine Configurations in Benin, PhD
Gore C, 1997: Casting identities in contemporary Benin City, African Arts, XXX, 3, pp 54-61
Gore C, & J Nevadomsky, 1997: Practice and agency in mammy wata worship, African Arts, XXX, 2,
pp 60-69
Nevadomsky J, 1997: Studies of Benin art and material culture, 1897-1997, African Arts, XXX, 3, pp
18-27 (and the other papers in African Arts XXX 3 & 4)
Nevadomsky J, & D E Ineh, 1983-84: Kingship succession rituals in Benin,
Nevadomsky J, 1983: . . . part 1, African Arts, XVII, 1, pp 47-54
Nevadomsky J, 1984: . . . part 2, African Arts, XVII, 2, pp 41-47
Nevadomsky J, 1984: . . . part 3, African Arts, XVII, 3, pp 48-57
Picton J, 1997: Edo art, dynastic myth and intellectual aporia, African Arts, XXX, 4
Rosen N, 1989: Chalk iconography in Olokun worship, African Arts, XXII, 3, pp 44-53
45
Ryder A, 1969: Benin and the Europeans
Vansina J, 1984: Art History in Africa, ch 10, pp 174-195
Williams D, 1974: Icon and Image, chs 16-17, pp136-178
Asante visual and material practice. `One of the most striking aspects of the history of this period
[ie of European and Atlantic trade] is the rise and fall of Denkyira and Akwamu, and the growth of
Dahomey, Asante and Oyo, from small principalities to large and powerful states. The expansion of
Oyo dates from the early seventeenth century, the rise of Dahomey and Asante from the early
eighteenth. Oyo relied on cavalry imported from the savanna at great expense in return for
European imports (which were obtained on the coast in return for slaves). Asante and Dahomey
made extensive use of firearms, paid for largely by slaves' (Isichei 1997: A History of African
Societies to 1870, p 342).
The rise and fall of states in the region once known as the Gold Coast was a consequence of
competition over access to both trans-Saharan and coastal demands for gold; and towards the close
of the 17th century a few small Twi-speaking states joined forces under the leadership of the Asante
king and founder of the city of Kumasi, Osei Tutu, assisted by a priest [okomfo], Anokye, to win their
freedom from the kingdom of Denkyira. This led to the institution of a new imperial order, marked by
the descent of the Golden Stool on a Friday. The formation and success of the Asante empire
promoted the demand for patterned textiles, and in the 1730s a Danish envoy to the Asante court
observed that local textile artists unravelled imported silk and woolen cloths in order to reweave the
yarn with local hand-spun cotton. The distinctive patterning of Asante is based substantially upon an
alternation of warp-faced and weft-faced plainweave made possible by the introduction of a second
pair of heddles. There was an increasing use of silk, and elaboration of pattern. By the late 19th
century the weaving of adwinasa and asasia marked a high point of creative exploration of the
woven textile medium, never to be surpassed in the present century.
Adler P & N Barnard, 1982: African Majesty: The Textile Art of the Ashanti and Ewe
Lamb V, 1975: West African Weaving, esp chs 3,4
Menzel B, 1972: Textilien Aus WestAfrika, vols I, II, III, (mostly pictures)
Picton J et al, 1995: The Art of African Textiles: technology, tradition and lurex,
Barbican Art Gallery
* Ross D H et al, 1998:Wrapped in Pride, chs 1-10 (lots of pictures)
In the wider context of Asante visual culture and history, it does seem that by the 20th century the
identification of the elements of court ritual (artifacts, rites, institutions, etc) with the great events and
people of the past serves to collapse the past (or rather `the past,' for it is always a construction) into
the present to enable their presentation as justification for the here and now.
* Cole H & D Ross, 1977: The Arts of Ghana
Fraser D & H Cole [eds], 1972: African Art and Leadership, papers by D Fraser, The symbols of
Ashanti kingship, pp 137-152
46
R Bravmann, The diffusion of Ashanti political art, esp pp 153-159
Garrard T, 1898: Gold of Africa
Kyerematen A, 1975: Panoply of Ghana
McCaskie T C, 1990: Inventing Asante, in P F de Moraes Farias & K Barber [eds], Self-Assertion
and Brokerage: early cultural nationalism in West Africa, pp 55-67
McLeod M, 1975: Verbal elements in West African art, Quaderni Poro, 1
McLeod M, 1981: The Asante
McLeod M, 1992: Art and archaeology in Asante, in G Pezzoli [ed], Dall' archeologia all'
arte tradizionale africana , Milan, pp 65-80
Ross D & T Garrard, 1983: Akan Transformations
Schildkrout E [ed], 1987: The Golden Stool: studies of the Asante cente and periphery
A supplement on Oyo and Dahomey: Between Edo and Asante there were other states also
dependent upon and in competition with each other for access to the coastal trade with Europe and
America. For more than two hundred years the kingdom of Oyo controlled the region from the
middle Niger to the coast, establishing its authority by means of the effective use of cavalry; until the
advent of the Fulani jihad in the early 19th century, also dependent upon cavalry. The Oyo empire is
also the region of the "classic" (ie best-known, most often cited, etc) account of 'Yoruba' ritual and
mythic tradition, with its pantheon of orisa ; and in some of these the horse and rider is a significant
figure. Indeed, the sculptured image of the warrior and the conceptual image of the relationship
between deity and devotee can each be related to the use and memory of cavalry; and it was from
the southwestern parts of this rather than some other Yoruba-speaking region that people were
transported in slavery to the Americas. This in turn determines much of the particular character of
Brazillian Nago (=Yoruba) tradition. However, other developments were in hand by the late 19th
century: the fall of Oyo resulted in a series of wars out of which comes a modern sense of Yoruba
ethnic identity, a renewed focus upon Ife as the "cradle" of Yoruba civilization, and the first
articulation of opposition to colonial rule; and the emergence of Yoruba ethnicity has proved to be a
key element of local modernity.
* Picton J, 1994: Art, identity and identification, in R Abiodun, H J Drewal & J Pemberton, The
Yoruba Artist, pp 1-34
Picton J, 1995a: The horse and rider in Yoruba art: images of conquest and possession, in G
Pezzoli [ed] Cavalieri dell'Africa: storia, iconografia, simbolismo, (Centro Studi Archeologia Africana,
Milan)
Picton J, 1995b: Islam, artifact and identity in south-western Nigeria, in K Adahl & B Sahlstrom [eds]
Islamic Art and Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa, pp 71-98
Laotan A B, 1961: Brazillian influence on Lagos, Nigeria Magazine, 69, pp156-165
Dahomey was inevitably in conflict with Oyo and its 19th-century successors over access to and
control of coastal ports. Its visual arts are very different from Oyo and Asante for their more overt
47
representation of dynastic achievement and succession, more overt even than the art of Benin City.
* Blier S P, 1998: Royal Arts of Africa, pp 98-123
Blier S P, 1995: African Vodun
Pique & L H Rainer, 1999: Wall Sculptures of Dahomey
Adams M, 1980: Fon applique cloths, African Arts, XIII,3
A preliminary supplement on Yoruba art: a subject of endless fascination in Europe and America,
and also a significant element in the arts of the Americas. The literature is extensive: see below
`Can we escape the Yoruba?); and by way of a preview, see:
Abiodun R, H J Drewal & J Pemberton III, [eds], 1995: The Yoruba Artist, Washington DC
Wescott J & P Morton Williams, 1962: The symbolism and ritual context of the Yoruba laba shango,
J. Royal Anthrop. Inst. 92, pp 23-37
For some history behind the emergence of modern Yoruba ethnic identity (approx 1850-1950) see:
* Peel J D Y, 1989: The cultural work of Yoruba ethnogenesis, in E Tonkin et al [eds], History and
Ethnicity, pp 198-215
Moraes Farias P F de & K Barber, 1990: Self-Assertion and Brokerage: Early Cultural Nationalism in
W Africa
For an introduction to the 20th-century developments that are configured within the evolution of
modern Yoruba identity, (and NB readings listed earlier) see:
Onabolu D, 1963: Aina Onabolu, Nigeria Magazine, 79, pp 295-298
Beier U, 1960: Art in Nigeria 1960, pp 1-24
Carroll K, 1967: Yoruba Religious Carving
For contrasting modernisms with 'Yoruba' entailed in their frameworks of implication, see:
Enwezor O, 1999: Tricking the mind, in Ikon Gallery,Yinka Shonibare: Dressing Down pp 8-18
Jari J [ed], 2000: Accident & Design: Gani Odutokun and his friends, esp pp 12-25
Picton L, 2001: Undressing ethnicity, African Arts (forthcoming)
6. Textile history.
A brief visit to any West African market will immediately demonstrate that there is a lot of cloth for
sale. Much of it is woven and printed in local factories; but that was not always the case, for the
history of these cloths hardly goes back more than 100 years, and anyway the designs are geared
to specifically African design interests (at any rate, they are not the patterns one expects to find in
any British High Street draper or department store). However, these are not the only textiles on sale,
for in many places locally hand-woven and/or hand-dyed fabrics compete successfully with the more
48
expensive factory cloth. These local industries were already well established early in the current
millennium, as too was a trans-Saharan trade in which textiles passed in both directions; and the
factory-printed cloths do not bear much resemblance to the hand-made fabrics; which suggests that
the "African design interests" of the printed cloths have not been established simply by copying the
local product: anything but, indeed.. Most standard textbooks of African history, however, devote no
more than a few passing references to this fact; and Susan Vogel's account of 20th-century African
arts, Africa Explores , ignores them completely; but they cannot be ignored, and at last a truly
magnificent book has appeared, which is certainly worth close attention:
* Ross D et al, 1998: Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity. See also:
* Prince Claus Fund [ed]: 1998: The Art of African Fashion
In Nigeria, the distinctive patterning known in the Niger delta as `tortoise cloth' ikakibite, is now
proven as originating in the Yoruba-speaking part of Nigeria, and in turn to have set off
developments elsewhere among women weaving on the upright single-heddle loom. In contrast, aso
oke, `uphill cloth' (ie cloth of a kind inherited from the past; or coming from inland; or having high
status) is woven by Yoruba men on a narrow double-heddle loom. Both traditions appear to be
flourishing; and part of the reason for this has to do with the manner in which they are a participant
element in the history and constitution of ethnic and national identity. Ewe weavers from Ghana
have also left their trace, especially in women's weaving but also, more recently (as Duncan Clarke
has found), in aso oke. (See references to Aronson, Clarke, Perrani, Renne, Lamb & Holmes.). In
Ghana, the likeness of and difference between Asante and Ewe/Volta region textiles is still the
subject of research and writing by one of our PhD students, Malika Kraamer. (In the meantime see
Adler, Ross, Picton 1995). The references here mostly concern West African weaving; but woven
textiles are also the subject of patterning that is not contingent upon the weaving process and
specific references to follow subsequently.
Adler P & N Barnard, 1982: African Majesty: The Textile Art of the Ashanti and Ewe African Arts,
XXV, 3 [1992] - an issue devoted to textiles
Aronson L, 1980: History of cloth trade in the Niger delta .... Textile History, 11, pp 89-107 (also in D
Idiens & K Ponting, 1980, Textiles in Africa)
Aronson L, 1980: Patronage and Akwete weaving, African Arts, XIII, 2
Aronson L, 1982: Popo weaving..., African Arts, XV, 3
Aronson L, 1984: Women in the arts, in M J Hay & S Stichter, African Women, pp 119-137
Aronson L, 1992: Ijebu Yoruba aso olona, African Arts, XXV, 3, pp52-63, 101-2
Bolland R et al, 1991: Tellem Textiles the definitive catalogue of Malian archaeological textiles
Boser-Sarivaxevanis, 1991: An introduction to weavers and dyers in West Africa, in Bolland
Clarke D, 1996: Creativity and the process of innovation in Yoruba aso oke weaving, The Nigerian
Field, 61, pp 90-103
Clarke D, 1998a: Aso Oke: the evolving tradition of hand-woven design among the Yoruba...
Unpublished PhD thesis, and the major source of data and commentary on aso oke
Clarke D, 1998b: African Textiles
49
Johnson M, 1978: Technology, competition and African crafts, C Dewey & A G Hopkins,
The Imperial Impact
Lamb V, 1975: West African Weaving
Lamb V, & A Lamb, 1981: Au Cameroun: Weaving- Tissage, esp chs 1, 3
Lamb V, 1984: Sierra Leone Weaving
Lamb V, & J Holmes, 1980: Nigerian Weaving
Menzel B, 1972: Textilien aus Westafrika, vols I, II, III
Picton J, 1992: Technology, tradition and lurex, in History, Design and Craft in West African
Strip-Woven Cloth, Smithsonian Institution
Picton J, et al, 1995: The Art of African Textiles: technology, tradition and lurex
Barbican Art Gallery
Picton J, & J Mack, 1989 [2nd ed]:African Textiles
Renne E, 1992: aso ipo, red cloth from Bunnu, African Arts, XXV, 3, pp 64-69, 102
1995: Cloth that does not die
Weiner A B & J Schneider [eds], 1989: Cloth and Human Experience, intro, pp 1-27
The term `Kuba' refers to a group of peoples at the margins of forest and savanna in the Kasai
region of Congo/Zaire who share similar forms of art among other forms of ritual and social pratice.
Some of these acknowledge the authority of the king of the Bushoong, one of this group of peoples,
and as such are known by others as Kuba. The present dynasty of kings was founded in the early
17th sentury by a dynamic hero, Shyaam aMbul a Ngoong. Kings and people had a profound
interest in decorative pattern, and almost every available surface was so embellished, with a
particular interest in appliqued and embroidered textiles woven of raphia.
Adams M, 1978: Kuba embroidered cloth, African Arts, XII, 1
Binkley D A, 1987: Avatar of power: southern Kuba masquerade figures in a funerary context,
Africa, 57, 1, 75-97
Binkley D A, 1993: The teeth of the Nyim: the elephant and ivory in Kuba art, in D H Ross, Elephant:
the animal and its ivory in African culture pp277-291
Binkley D A, & P Darish, 1998: `Enlightened but in darkness': interpretations of Kuba art and culture
at the turn of the twentieth century in E Schildkrout & C A Keim, The Scramble for Art in Central
Africa, pp 37-62
Darish P, 1989: Dressing for the next life, in A B Weiner & J Schneider,
Cloth and Human Experience, pp 117-140
Mack J, 1980: Bakuba embroidery patterns, Textile History 11; also published in D Idiens & K
Ponting, 1980:Textiles of Africa
Mack J, 1990: Emil Torday and the Art of the Congo, 1900-1909
Mack J, 1998: Kuba art and the birth of ethnography, in E Schildkrout & C A Keim, The Scramble for
Art in Central Africa, pp 63-78
Schildkrout E & C Keim, 1990: African Reflections: art from northeastern Zaire
Schildkrout E & C Keim, [eds] 1998: The Scramble for Art in Central Africa
50
Vansina J, 1978: Children of Woot
Embroidery;
Gardi B et al, 2000: Le Boubou - c'est chic: les boubous du Mali et d'autres pays de l'Afrique de
l'Ouest (NB this has the most up-to-date relevant reading list)
Heathcote D, 1972: Insight into a creative process: a rare collection of drawings from Kano,
Savanna, I, 2, pp165-174
Heathcote D, 1974: Aspects of style in Hausa embroidery, Savanna, III, 1, pp 15-40
Perani J, 1992: The cloth connection: patrons and producers of Hausa and Nupe prestige stripweave, in History, Design and Craft in West African Strip-Woven Cloth, Smithsonian Institution
Applique;
Adams M, 1980: Fon applique cloths, African Arts, XIII, 3
Cole H & D Ross, 1977: The Arts of Ghana, pp 186-199
Salmons J, 1980: Funerary shrine cloths of the Annang Ibibio, Textile History 11, pp 119-140
Resist-dyeing (esp Yoruba adire and the nature of its taken-for-granted ‘traditional’ status, and its
gradual replacement since the late 1960s by the developments known in Nigeria as kampala );
Barbour J, 1970: Nigerian `Adire' cloths, Baessler-Archiv, vol xviii
Jackson G, 1971: The devolution of the Jubilee design, in J Barbour and D Simmonds [eds], Adire
Cloth in Nigeria, pp 83-93
Picton J, et al, 1995: The Art of African Textiles: Technology, Tradition and Lurex
Printing (both hand- and factory-printing, though the former is particularly rare: the only example I
can think of is Asante adinkra) including the late 19th-century reception of exotic printed fabrics
based upon Indonesian wax batiks and the nature and substance of West African appropriation of
industrial textile printing;
Bickford K, 1994: The ABCs of cloth and politics in Cote d'Ivoire, Africa Today, 2nd Quarter
Domowitz S, 1992: Wearing proverbs: Anyi names for printed cloth, African Arts, XXV, 3
Picton J, et al, 1995: The Art of African Textiles: Technology, Tradition and Lurex (again)
Picton J, 2001: Colonial pretense and African resistance, or subversion subverted: commemorative
textiles in sub-Saharan Africa, in O Enwezor [ed] The Short Century: Independence and Liberation
Movements in Africa 1945-1994, 159-162 see also:
J Picton & J Mack, 1989 [2nd ed]: African Textiles for a summary of techniques other than
factory-printing
51
7. Is it possible to escape "the Yoruba"?
It stands as such a dominating presence in the literature; and yet Yoruba ethnicity is a modern
development that can be charted within the period 1850-1950. The word 'Yoruba' originates as the
Hausa word for the kingdom of Oyo, which from the 17th to the 19th century dominated the savanna
region from the middle Niger to the coast in what is now western Nigeria and the adjacent parts of
the modern state of Benin (a name recently appropriated from the forest empire to the south-east of
Oyo for the former French colonial territory of Dahomey). Oyo established and maintained its
authority by means of the effective use of cavalry; until the advent of the Fulani jihad in the early
19th century, also dependent upon cavalry. This led to a series of wars and the fall of old Oyo out of
which came a series of new cities, such as Ibadan (founded in 1829), Abeokuta (1830), new Oyo
(1837), together with the beginning of the development of a modern sense of Yoruba ethnic identity.
In due course this led to a renewed focus upon Ife, where Oduduwa the ancestor of Yoruba kings
climbed down from the sky to make the world as we know it, as the "cradle" of Yoruba civilization.
The Oyo empire is also the region of the "classic" (ie best-known, most often cited, etc) account of
Yoruba ritual and mythic tradition, with an apparent pantheon of orisa. Moreover, it was from the
southwestern parts of this rather than some other Yoruba-speaking region that people were
transported in slavery to the Americas. This in turn determines much of the particular character of
Brazilian Nago (=Yoruba) tradition. Yet notwithstanding these local cult and art traditions, other
developments were in hand in the years immediately prior to the 20th century. This is also when
opposition to colonial rule was first articulated. The readings that are set out below are grouped
according to the following themes: the emergence of a modern sense of Yoruba cultural and ethnic
identity; the development of Yoruba scholarship; the investigation of aesthetic value; and cult
iconographies. NB also the references cited for masquerade (Drewal, Gotrick, Lawal, Ojo, Olajubu,
Picton, Rea) and for textile history (Aronson, Clarke, Renne).
The formation of a modern Yoruba identity.
Beier U, 1960: Art in Nigeria 1960, pp 1-24
Eades J S, 1980: The Yoruba Today still the best general introduction to Yoruba studies
Houlberg M, 1973: Ibeji images of the Yoruba, African Arts, VII, 1
Houlberg M, 1979: Social hair: tradition and change in Yoruba hairstyles,
Houlberg M, in J Cordwell & R Schwartz (eds) The Fabrics of Culture, pp 349-397
Ikon Gallery, 1999: Yinka Shonibare: Dressing Down
Moraes Farias P F de & K Barber, 1990: Self-Assertion and Brokerage: Early Cultural Nationalism in
W Africa
Laotan A B, 1961: Brazillian influence on Lagos, Nigeria Magazine, 69, pp 156-1
Onabolu D, 1963: Aina Onabolu, Nigeria Magazine, 79, pp 295-298
Peel J D Y, 1989: The cultural work of Yoruba ethnogenesis, in E Tonkin et al [eds], History and
Ethnicity, pp 198-215
52
Picton J, 1995: Art, identity and identification, a commentary on Yoruba art-historical studies, in R
Abiodun, H J Drewal & J Pemberton [eds]The Yoruba Artist
Picton J, 1994: Sculptors of Opin, African Arts, XXVII, 3
Picton J, 1995: The horse and rider in Yoruba art: images of conquest and possession, in G Pezzoli
[ed] Cavalieri dell'Africa: storia, iconografia, simbolismo, (Centro Studi Archeologia Africana, Milan)
Picton J, 1995: Islam, artifact and identity in south-western Nigeria, in K Adahl & B Sahlstrom [eds]
Islamic Art and Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa, pp 71-98
Picton J, 2001: Yinka Shonibare: undressing ethnicity, African Arts (forthcoming)
The development of Yoruba scholarship.
Abimbola W, 1976: Ifa: an Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus
Abiodun R, 1974: Ifa art objects: an interpretation based on oral tradition, in W Abimbola [ed],
Yoruba Oral Tradition 1987: verbal and visual metaphors..., Word and Image, 3, 3, 252-270
Abiodun R, 1990: The future of African art studies: an African perspective, in African Art
Studies: the State of the Discipline, National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, pp 63-86
Abiodun R, 1994: Understanding Yoruba art & aesthetics, the concept of ase, African Arts, XXVII, 3,
pp 68-78
Abiodun R, 1995: An African (?) art history: promising theoretical approaches in Yoruba art studies,
in R Abiodun, H J Drewal & J Pemberton [eds], The Yoruba Artist, pp 37-48
Abiodun R, & H J Drewal, J Pemberton, 1991: Yoruba: art and aesthetics in Nigeria (Museum
Rietberg, Zurich) esp pp 12-13, 20-28
Lawal B, 1974: Some aspects of Yoruba aesthetics, Br. Journal of Aesthetics, 14, pp 239-249
Lawal B, 1996: The Gelede Spectacle...
Yai O B, 1999: Tradition and the Yoruba artist, African Arts, XXXII, 1, 32-35
Thompson's Yoruba aesthetics and its critics: in the study of African art, Robert Farris
Thompson was the first to investigate the aesthetic criteria motivating Yoruba art; and from this he
proceeded to develop a pan-African aesthetic. In both he was widely criticised, and for a variety of
reasons. Cole, for example, writes that he confuses descriptive and evaluative criteria. The
underlying problem may well be, of course, that his project is vitiated from the outset by assuming
the existence of what it sets out to prove; but at least Thompson shows that Yoruba sculptural style
can be described in Yoruba words. Since then, Yoruba-speaking scholars have taken up the
challenge posed by the traditions they have inherited.
Thompson R F, 1971: Aesthetics in traditional Africa, in C Jopling [ed], Art and Aesthetics in
Primitive Societies, pp 374-381 Though later in date of publication, there is also an earlier version of
his research in W D'Azevedo's The Traditional Artist in African Society
Thompson R F, 1974: African Art in Motion, pp 1-45
For critical accounts of Thompson's work see:
* Cole H M, 1982: Mbari, pp 169-182
53
Hallen B, 1979: The art historian as conceptual analyst, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (a
photocopy used to be in the library)
Armstrong R G, 1981: review of Thompson's African Art in Motion, in Researches in African
Literatures, 12, 4
For other attempts to account for this area of Yoruba art see:
* Abiodun, 1990, 1994, 1995 and the Museum Rietberg, Zurich, references given above.
* Lawal B, 1974, and 1996, esp chs 6 (costume aesthetics), 7 (sculpted messages), 9 (critical
perspectives) pp163-282 (esp 255-282)
Carroll K, 1964: `who said his work is like a box,' reprinted as postscript 2 in Picton, 1995, in
Abiodun, Drewal & Pemberton [eds], The Yoruba Artist pp 29-31
Carroll K, 1967: Yoruba Religious Carving, pp 79-99
Drewal H J, 1988: Beauty and being..., in A Rubin [ed], Marks of Civilization
Drewal M T & H J, 1987: Composing time and space in Yoruba art, Word & Image, a Journal of
Verbal/Visual Enquiry, 3, 3, pp 225-51,
For the sculptural tradition of Ekiti and Opin, to which much of this discussion refers see:
Picton J, 1995: Art, identity and identification, a commentary on Yoruba art-historical studies, in R
Abiodun, H J Drewal & J Pemberton [eds]The Yoruba Artist
Picton J, 1994: Sculptors of Opin, African Arts, XXVII, 3, 46-59
Walker R A, 1998: Olowe of Ise: a Yoruba Sculptor to Kings, esp pp 13-33
Iconographic accounts of three cult traditions: the ritual and cult traditions of the Yorubaspeaking peoples inherited from the past survive, more-or-less, notwithstanding the success of
Islamic and Christian missionary activity. Participation therein is concerned with the procedures of
engagement with the energy of a deity to effect changes in the circumstances of one's life. We
consider the poetics and practices of Yoruba divination, Ifa; the role of the trickster, Eshu; and the
work of Shango, the deity manifest in thunder and lightening. Each deity has distinctive cult and
sculptural forms; but (as one might expect) we discover problems in their iconographic exegesis.
Abimbola W, 1976: Ifa: an Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus
Abiodun R, 1974: Ifa art objects: an interpretation based on oral tradition, in W Abimbola [ed],
Yoruba Oral Tradition, pp 421-469
Abiodun R, 2000: Riding the horse of praise, in J Pemberton [ed] Insight and Artistry in African
Divination, pp182-192
Bascom W, 1969: Ifa Divination: commuication between gods & men
Gates H L jnr, 1988: The Signifying Monkey, ch 1, pp 3-43
Parons S W, 1999, Interpreting projections ... in Esu iconography, African Arts, XXXII, 2, pp 36-45
Pemberton J, 1975: Eshu-elegba . . ., African Arts, IX, 7
Wescott J, 1962: The sculpture and myths of Eshu-elgba, Africa, XXXIII, pp 336-353
54
* Wescott J & P Morton Williams, 1962: The symbolism and ritual context of the Yoruba laba
shango, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, pp 23-37
Witte H, 1984: Ifa and Esu; ; also see Pemberton review in African Arts, XVIII, 2
Further reading in Yoruba visual arts:
Drewal H J, J Pemberton & R Abiodun, 1989: Yoruba: Nine Centuries of Art . . .
Drewal M T, 1992: Yoruba Ritual
Eyo E & F Willett, 1980: Treasures of Ancient Nigeria
Fagg W, J Pemberton & B Holcombe, 1982: Yoruba Sculpture of West Africa
Morton Williams P, 1960: Yoruba responses to the fear of death, Africa, XXX pp 34-40
Morton Williams P, 1960a:The Yoruba Ogboni cult in Oyo, Africa, XXX, pp 362-374
Morton Williams P, 1964: The cosmology and cult organisation of the Oyo Yoruba, Africa, XXXIV, pp
243-261
Morton Williams P, 1967: The Yoruba kingdom of Oyo, in D Forde & P M Kaberry [eds], West
African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century, pp36-66
Pemberton J & F S Afolayan, 1996: Yoruba Sacred Kingship
Shaw T, 1978: Nigeria
Williams D, 1974: Icon & Image, chs 1-8, pp 1-48
Verger P, 1957: Dieux d'Afrique, a photographic essay about Yoruba cults in Brazil
8. Islam and African art.
The presence of Islam can be taken for granted, as also Christianity; and yet each is habitually
treated as if it were other than African. At the same time, the temporal status and developmental
trajectory of each differ, both between and within themselves. Christianity has more than one route
through Africa, including Coptic Egypt to Ethiopia, and anyone interested in this should see Tania
Tribe about the possibilities of a directed readings option based on her undergraduate African Art
III course; and also 19th-century Catholic and Protestant missionary activity, which is touched
upon in this course under the heading of `tradition and the 20th century.' As to Islam, then, the
literature is strongest in two particular regions: coastal East Africa from Somalia to Mozambique;
and West Africa.
Coastal East Africa is a region well known for its rich traditions of visual culture: pottery,
architecture, architectural ornament, decorative woodwork, textiles, basketry, work in leather and
hide, metalwork, and so forth; and this has been referred to as the Azanian art style. This art could
hardly be more different in character from the Yoruba material referenced above; and yet both are
African while at the same time both entailing a measure of eclecticism (East African coastal culture
is, broadly-speaking, an amalgam of Africa, Arabia and India). The best account of Azanian art was
in fact provided by Somalia in Word and Image , an exhibition with an excellent catalogue edited by
55
K S & J L Loughran, et al, 1986. If one has any familiarity with the literatures of Africa then one must
know of the rich heritage, oral and written, in the Swahili and Somali languages. (These belong to
two quite different language families, however.) There is, of course, more to it than the fact of
diverse traditions of making and decorating; for material forms become the subject matter of poetic
form and allusion, and those same forms can also represent key aspects of social practice. The
social, the poetic and the material are, in other words, three highly interdependent contexts in which
simple domestic things can take on significances well beyond the utilitarian. It is evident that the
familiar contrast between the work of art [that "means" something] and the mere artifact [that is
merely useful] does not apply (as if it ever did anywhere anyway). The visual arts of the East African
coast remind us of George Kubler's proposition that `the idea of art can be expanded to embrace the
whole range of man-made things, including all tools and writing in addition to the useless, beautiful
and poetic things of this world' (G Kubler, 1962, The Shape of Time); yet the category of `poetic
things' includes the tools as well; and the art-makers are women and men.
The rather commonplace textiles known in Swahili as kanga (=guinea fowl) originate in an Indian
block printing tradition. From the 1890s onwards this tradition was increasingly subverted and
supplanted by Europe traders, either replicating the distinctive patterning of these cloths or
producing designs thought to meet with an East African taste very different from the Indonesian
batik-based `wax-print' cloth for West Africa. The result, however, has been the inception of factory
production in East Africa, and also in India, that continues the design base, historically, in Indian
block printing but adapted to contemporary concerns. Part of this is the inclusion of slogans or
proverbs in Swahili in the design.
For Swahili architecture see:
Connah G, 1987: African Civilizations, ch 7
Donley L, 1982: House power: Swahili space and symbolic markers, in I Hodder [ed] Symbolic and
Structural Archaeology
Garlake P, 1966: The Early Islamic Architecture of the East African Coast
Ghaidan U, 1975: Lamu: a Study of the Swahili Town
Horton M, 1987?: Swahili culture revisited, Scientific American (photocopy of this and other papers
by Horton in Reading Room)
Middleton J, 1993: The World of the Swahili, an African mercantile civilization, see also
J de Vere Allen 1993, Swahili Origins. and the critical review of both these by J Willis in the TLS of
2.7.93
Sheriff A, The History of Concervsation of Zanzibar Stone Town.
For other accounts of East Africa art see:
Miller J, Art in EastAfrica (which has reference to the late Fatma Abdullah, a Tanzanian textile
designer working specifically in the medium of printed textiles)
Agthe J, Wegzeichen - Signs.
56
There is also reference to East African textiles in the Barbican Art Gallery catalogue:
The Art of African Textiles, Technology, Tradition and Lurex.
For Somalia see:
Loughran K S & J L, et al, 1986:Somalia in Word and Image
Before moving on, see also:
Wenzel M, 1972: House Decoration in Nubia for the history of a 20th-century tradition of Islamic
influence on built form
Deliss et al, 1995, Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa for modern art developments in Sudan
and Ethiopia
For West Africa, there are three concerns in looking at the effects of Islam on local visual practice.
Firstly can we identify a specifically Islamic art? is it the art of people who are Muslim? or the art of
people some of whom are Muslim? or forms that are part of Islamic liturgical practice and theology?
forms that draw upon Islamic source material? or what?.
* Bravmann R, 1983: African Islam
Bravmann R, 1974: Islam and Tribal Art
Prussin L, 1986: Hatumere: Islamic Design in West Africa, pp 72-100
Prussin L, 1970: Sudanese architecture and the Manding, African Arts, III, 4
Prussin L et al, 1995: African Nomadic Architecture
Adahl K, 1993: Islamic architecture and art in sub-Saharan Africa, in R Granquist (ed), Culture in
Africa
* Adahl K, & B Sahlstrom [eds], 1995: Islamic Art and Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa,
papers by Prussin, Bravmann, Picton, et al
Bedaux R & J D van der Waals, 1994: Djenne: une ville millenaire au Mali
Bourgeois J-L et al, 1989: Spectacular Vernacular, esp chs 9, 11
Gardi B et al, 2000: Le Boubou - c'est chic: les boubous du Mali et d'autres pays de l'Afrique de
l'Ouest (NB this has the most up-to-date relevant reading list)
A second concern is with the complex and often heterodox relationship with local tradition.
* McNaughton P, 1979: Secret Sculptures of Komo: Working Papers in the Traditional Arts, 4, pp
23-45
Bravmann R, 1974: Islam and Tribal Art (a pioneering publication that argues, against its own
evidence, that Islam in sub-Saharan African is simply not like Islam elsewhere).
* Arnoldi M J, 1995: Playing with Time: art and performance in central Mali
Brett-Smith S, 1994: The Making of Bamana Sculpture, pp 10-11
Frank B, 1998: Mande Potters and Leatherworkers Imperato
P J, 1970: the dance of the tyi wara, African Arts, IV, 1
McNaughton, 1988: The Mande Blacksmiths
57
Thirdly, there are the 20th-century developments in architecture in the Hausa city of Zaria.
Aradeon S, 1984: A history of Nigerian architecture, Nigeria Magazine, 150, pp 1-15
Carroll K, 1992: Architectures of Nigeria
Kirk-Greene A, 1961: Decorated houses in Zaria, Nigeria Magazine, 68, pp 52-78
Moughtin J C, 1985: Hausa Architecture
Moughtin J C, [ed] 1988: The work of Z R Dmochowski: Nigerian Traditional Architecture
Prussin L, 1995: African Nomadic Architecture
Saad H T, 1985: The role of individual creativity in traditional African art: the gwani [genius] amongst
master builders of Hausaland, Nigeria Magazine, vol 53, no 4, pp 3-16
Schwerdtfeger F W, 1971: Housing in Zaria; in P Oliver [ed], Shelter in Africa
Schwerdtfeger F W, 1982: Traditional Housing in African Cities
9. Meaning (?) in the visual arts.
One might have thought a paragraph about 'meaning' was almost inappropriate, given that we all but
take it for granted that works of art "mean' something. Yet the word itself can mean so many things
that it becomes efectively meaningless; and other terms can more effectively replace it with greater
accuracy in regard to the representation of intention, whether originary or subsequent. Thus: enact,
entail, imply, intend, presuppose, signify; and/or there is the contrast between denotation and
connotation; and/or the all-important concept of metaphor. We must reckon with context again (a
metaphor derived from weaving: texere = to weave) and with the differing forms of relationship as
and/or as participant within 'weavings together' of ideas-and -practices, for whatever 'meaning' might
be it can only subsist therein; and these relationships can take various forms: simple/contextual,
aesthetic, mnemonic, metaphorical (and these are not neccesarily mutually exclusive in regard to
any one art work). It is, perhaps, useful also to distinguish between visual and material tropes (and,
respectively, to ideas and to energy as what they are about). It is at this point that we come across
the methodological implications of treating art as a kind of text, to be decoded, interpreted, rather in
the manner of a foreign language ["text" here is not being used in a deconstructive sense], using the
wider frameworks of social practice as if it were the dictionary enabling us to 'read' the signs of
which the art work is put together. As a technique of analysis, the semiological decoding may be a
useful starting point; but the problem is that the "message" invariably turns out to be rather banal.
This in turn suggests either that art is little more than a complicated way of wasting time or that the
analogy with language [in the everyday sense, though clearly "art" and "language" cannot be
considered as hard and fast categories] is apt merely superficially. It is, of course, precisely the use
of rhetorical figures in visual practice that (as with poetry) determines the wish to "decode", whilst at
the same time removing the art work from any possible likeness to everyday uses of language (as a
medium of comunication). Evidently there are purposes served by art that are not served more
effectively by language (except in the realm of poetry, which, of course, is an art). One can, of
58
course, consider art works as aesthetic, social and epistemological (or cognitive) facts: they have
form (and this will be subject to evaluation), they entail social relationship, and they are participant is
formation of knowledge (of social, metaphysical etc environments, perhaps). Moreover, as the life
of people is inextricably bound up with the life people impart to works of art, so works of art are
reappropriated or reassigned within successive contexts, and their character redefined in terms of
the aesthetic/evaluative, social and epistemological dimensions that we attribute to the artifacts that,
in practice, we cannot do without. Neither context nor "meaning" (ie the implications of
aesthetic/social/epistemological status) are, in consequence, fixed properties of works of art.
Meanwhile, we might as well reflect upon the distinction (first made by an African - St Augustine)
between signs and things (or, as Susan Sontag writes; works of art are not just `about' something,
they are something).
In this context, therefore, it seems appropriate to consider what is the longest running art medium in
Africa, ie rock engraving and painting: indeed, the earliest evidence for pictorial and figurative art in
Africa comes from a painted rock surface in Namibia dated to some 26000 years ago; and although
located throughout the continent (except in the forested regions) it is in southern Africa that the most
attention has been given to the problems and possibilities of interpretation and understanding.
Moreover, Miscast (Skotnes 1995) raised akward questions about the treatment of the onceforaging peoples of southern Africa (Bushman, San, etc: there is no one uncontentious name for
these peoples) and about the understanding and interpretation of the rock art for which their
previous generations are thought to have been responsible; and as is invariably the case, and not
just in southern Africa, understanding the past has relevance to present realities.
Davis W, 1984: Representation and knowledge in the prehistoric rock art of Africa, African
Archaeological Review, vol 2, pp 7-35
Davis W, 1990: The study of rock art in Africa, in P Robertshaw [ed], A History of African
Archaeology.
Dowson T, 1992: Rock Engravings of South Africa
Garlake P, 1987: The Painted Caves
Garlake P, 1995: The Hunter's Vision
Lewis-Williams J D, 1981: Believing and Seeing...
Lewis-Williams J D, 1983: The Rock Art of Southern Africa
Lewis-Williams J D, 1990: Discovering Southern African Rock Art
Lewis-Williams J D, & T.Dowson, 1989: Images of Power: Understanding Bushman Rock Art
Lewis-Williams J D, & T.Dowson, [eds] 1994; Contested Images...
Skotnes P, 1996: Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of the Bushmen
Signs and things: `For by investing the event with intrinsic perceptual appeal, through the means of
a wide variety of visual and other referents offered as stimuli to aesthetic perception, the participants
ensure that it is singled out and elevated above the level of ordinary everyday experience.' [Chappel
1977, 28] The work of art as thing is, by its very making and placing in the social landscape, a
59
context of ideas-and-practices. At the same time, it is a participant element in wider contexts of
ideas-and-practices; or rather, in virtue of its very existence it is made to seem as if it is somehow an
active participant therein. (We talk as if works of art could act and, even, talk; but of course quite
literally they cannot: it is we who are the active members in the `life' attributed to art, a theme taken
up again in the final section below.) Each element in the make-up of the work of art is what it is,
while at the same time bearing the capacity (placed upon it by us) to signify that which it is not; and
simlarly, in virtue of its being placed within the wider contexts than itself, it bears the capacity to
signify, to represent (`stand in the place of') those contexts. There is nothing new here; for these
ideas have been presupposed in "primitivist" misinterpretations and museum ethnography as also in
the attempt to understand local aesthetic fields and social practices construed in terms of identity,
gender, authority, the energies tapped into via ritual, and so forth, as if from `within'. Although new
material is introduced here, the intention is that we use it to reflect upon those articulations of
connectedness that have been presupposed; for it is not enough merely to state that `x' stands for
[etc] `y'. Rather, we should make the effort to understand the nature, the mechanics, [etc], of that
relationship: ie how is that articulation made? and how does it work? and it is not that taxing a
matter. For in understanding the processes and contingencies (no matter how labile these may be)
of signification we are also able to distinguish simple contextual associations (in effect a visual
synechdoche) from more complex and inevitably overlapping descriptive (or pictorial), aesthetic,
metaphoric and mnemonic contexts.
* Chappel T, 1977: Decorated Gourds from Northeastern Nigeria, pp 24-26
* Chappel T, 1972: Critical carvers, Man, pp 296-305
Wolfe E, D Parkin & R Sieber, 1981: Vigango: commemorative sculpture . . .
Parkin D, 1982: Speaking ofArt: a Giriama Impression, pp 1-23
Phillips T [ed], 1995: Africa, the art of a continent, entries 2.26a-d, pp 144-145
Roberts M N & A F, et al, 1996: Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History chs 4, Luba memory
theatre, & 5, mapping memory, pp 117-174
In the context of this discussion, see also:
Hodder I, 1982: Symbols in Action, pp 13-36
Oguibe O, 1995: Uzo Egonu, esp the Egonu aesthetic, pp 45-78
Cole H M, 1982: Mbari, ch 5, pp 169-182; & ch 6, pp 183-215
Cole H M, 1969: Art as a verb in Iboland, African Arts, III, 1
Fernandez J, 1973: The exposition & imposition of order..., in W d'Azevedo The Traditional Artist in
African Societies, pp 194-217 (see also his 1971: Principles of opposition and vitality..., in C Jopling,
Art and Aesthetics in Primitive Societies)
Institute of Contemporary Art, 1991, Cheri Samba: a retrospective
Visual and material tropes in west and central African sculpture: `Nails were driven into the
figure [a Kongo nkisi] as an injunction for it to carry out the mission that the client was seeking to
accomplish.' [Mirzoeff 1999, 148] Figures of speech have their visual analogues (indeed, the greater
60
the dependence of written or spoken language on rhetorical figures, the more that text approaches
the conditions of an 'art'); and this is significant in any attempt to enter the intellectual worlds
presupposed and entailed in artworks in Africa. So we advance the discussion by contrasting visual
tropes (especially visual metaphors), which might be said to be about knowledge, with the
preparation of `magical medicines' which reveals an imaginative art of the material metaphor
capable of actualization as energy. This discussion, while it takes off from previous material,
especially about Ebira masquerade and Edo art, introduces Kuba (Mack, Vansina) and Kongo
(Mack, MacGaffey, etc) imagery; and having argued that artifacts are inert but for the lives we
`project' on to them, here we seem to encounter another theory (we have also already encountered
a Kalabari theory of images as `names') in which images are implicated in the covert effects of
energies that, once we have brought them into existence, might also have the ability to act
independently. Does this argue against a theory of images as literally inert?
* Mack J, 1981: Animal representations in Kuba art, The Oxford Art Journal, 4, 2, pp 50-56
Mack J, 1991: Emil Torday and the Art of the Congo
Vansina J, 1972: Ndop: royal statues among the Kuba, in D Fraser & H M Cole [eds], African Art
and Leadership, pp 41-53
Fernandez J, 1995: Meditating on animals - figuring out humans, in A Roberts & C Thompson,
Animals in African Art, pp 8-9
* Mack J, 1995: Fetish? Magic figures in central Africa, in A Shelton [ed], Fetishism, Visualising
Power and Desire, pp 53-65.
* MacGaffey W, 1993: The eyes of understanding, in W MacGaffrey & M Harris, Astonishment and
Power, pp 20-103
MacGaffey W, 1977: Fetishism revisited: Kongo Nkishi..., Africa
MacGaffey W, 1986: Religion and Society in Central Africa, pp 135-168
MacGaffey W, 2000: The cultural traditions of the African forests, in J Pemberton III [ed] Insight and
Artistry in African Divination, pp 13-24 (indeed it would be worth reading as many papers herein as
you can)
Phillips T [ed], 1995:Africa, the art of a continent, entries 4.6-4.11 pp 244-248
Mirzoeff N, 1999: An Introduction to Visual Culture, ch 4, Transculture: from Kongo to the Congo, pp
129-159
Huber H, 1956: Magical statues, Anthropos
Blier S P, 1995: African Vodun, chs 3 & 6, pp 95-132, 205-238
Words and images in central and west Africa: `My own research concerning this subject
[significances of colour in Asante cloth] ... was decidedly unproductive until 1995, when several
weavers and vendors ... either pointed at, referred to, or copied from Ofori-Ansaís chart...' [Ross
1998, 110] In Europe the conjunction of words and visual images is habitual. We see pictures with
captions and have them explained in catalogues, and we take it all for granted, whereas for many of
the African traditions we have been considering, a tradition of dependence upon the visual
conjunction of written words and visual image is either absent or merely very recent. This is not
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somehow to assert, that because people did not see pictures with captions, there was no continuity
or common ground between visual and verbal arts: that would be ridiculous, as we have already
noted in our discussions of performative contexts, Yoruba art philosophy, etc; and yet, the
relationship between visual and verbal forms may well be far from obvious. It may even seem to be
absent in any direct or didactic sense, as we have already noted with the Yoruba laba sango; and
we can ask if all this entails different ways of seeing and understanding visual images. Yet there are
traditions in which artifacts are seen as mnemonic referrals to proverbs and aphorisms, which is
closer to "western" habits than we might have expected. We consider the two best documented
examples, Lega and Asante, while also recalling the Roberts' exposition of Luba sculptural
mnemonics. We conclude our discussion of the relationship between `art' and `language' in the last
group of readings.
* Phillips T [ed], 1995: Africa, the art of a continent, Lega: entries 4.71a-f, pp 300-301; Asante:
entries 5.93107, pp 433-446
Biebuyck D, 1972: the Kindi aristocrats and their art among the Lega, in D Fraser & H M Cole [eds],
African Art and Leadership, pp 7-20
* Biebuyck D, 1973: Lega Culture, pp 54-57, 66-67, 142-157
Biebuyck D, 1977: Symbolism of the Lega stool, Working Papers in the Traditional Arts, 2,
esp pp 26-28
* McLeod M, 1976: Verbal elements in West African art, Quaderni Poro, 1 (NB this is an Italian
journal, but it has appeared only very occasionally, and may not be catalogued as such; but issue
no 1 is in the library somewhere!)
McLeod M, 1984: The Asante
* Ross D et al, 1998: Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity esp ch 8,
Asante cloth names and motifs, pp 107-125
Cole H and D Ross, 1977: The Arts of Ghana
Blier S P, 1998: Royal Arts of Africa, ch 3, the Asante, pp 126-163
The art historian as ventriloquist; or do images really talk?
i: `... if these papers are a reliable index, Africanist art history is in deep, perhaps fatal, conceptual
trouble.' [Davis 1989, 25] ii: `I view art as a system of action, intended to change the world rather
than encode symbolic propositions about it' (Gell 1998, 6). We talk about images as if they could act
and talk, which are literal impossibilities: works of art are inert; they ‘live’ only insofar as we impart a
sort-of life to them (and there are many ways in which this can be done, of course). It is as if we are
seduced by the images we make (remember Pinocchio); and we are also seduced by language into
the commonplace assumption of a likeness (a homology, indeed) between 'art' and 'language', a
likeness that is in reality a metaphor of limited value; and if it is taken literally, it only serves to
diminish art. In this context 'meaning' seems to be just another limitation upon art; and matters are
not made easier by the manner in which all language about art aspires to the condition of art.
Although there is that school of cultural studies that begins with language and makes it the paradigm
of all communication, if we begin with the visual arts, this approach can be seen to be deeply
62
unsatisfactory. Read the second paragraph on p 1 of this course outline.Trying to sort this out is the
final stage in our attempt to understand the place of artworks in social practice in Africa in all the rich
variety of theories and forms, of presuppositions, implications and intentions, of rhetorical figures
and effective energies, of rites and entertainments. (NB The readings are listed in date order.)
* Gell A, 1998: Art and Agency: an anthropological theory, ch 1 the need for an anthropology of art
pp 1-11, esp section 1.2 pp 5-7
* Hoffman R, 1995: Objects and acts, pp 56-59
* Picton, J, 1995: the essential artifact, pp 84-85; and R Hoffman's rejoinder; all in African Arts,
XXVIII, 2 [Q: am I really 'gridlocked through the looking glass?']
Fardon R, 1990: Between God, the Dead and the Wild: Chamba interpretations of ritual and religion,
chs 8, inanimate wilderness and the nature of things, pp 170-185; & 10, God and the dead: locating
the unknown, pp 217-226
Barley N, 1989: The linguistic image in the interpretation of African objects, African Languages and
Cultures, I, 2
Davis W, 1989: review of H J Drewal [ed] 1988: Object and Intellect: interpretations of meaning in
African art, in African Arts, XXII, 4, pp 24-32
Abiodun R, 1987: Verbal and visual metaphors: mythical allusions ... art of Ori, Word & Image, a
Journal of Verbal / Visual Enquiry, 3, 3, pp 252-70, 225-51,
Loughran K S, et al [eds], 1986: Somalia in Word and Image, esp pp 20-32
Barley N, 1983: Symbolic Structures, ch 2-3, pp 10-38
Lewis-Williams J D, 1983: The Rock Art of Southern Africa, at least pp 44-64. (NB also his Believing
& Seeing)
McLeod M, 1978: Aspects of Asante images,in M Greenhalgh & V Megaw, Art in Society
Asiwaju A I, 1974: 'Efe songs as a source of western Yoruba history', in W Abimbola [ed], Yoruba
Oral Tradition and not forgetting the references to Lawal, Ojo, above
Sperber D, 1974: Rethinking Symbolism, esp pp 7-8, 70, 87
This discussion has been built up largely around traditions of practice inherited from the past, and
these traditions are drawn upon in the developments of the 20th century. Will this discussion apply
therein also? Perhaps the very development of pictorial imagery and the seeming ease with which
we can "read" the picture, and, further, the relevance of physiognomic likeness in photographic
portraiture, only exacerbates our difficulties ... ?
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