SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF AFRICAN WORKS OF ART IN BRIEF
The idea of the geography of trans-location of African works of art sounds so fascinating. Did people move with their art works or they followed peoples or communities to their new locations? I wrote a commentary on African art a while back refuting what Westerners refer to as African art works as not art per se in the strict Western definition of art. I think that the definition of African art is got to be different as what we call African literature is different from other literary works in other continents. The question is, if there is any such thing called African art. To me, true African art came into being when the European came trying to convert African religious artifacts to meet the aesthetic of European appreciation. In that case, Africans were taught Western art particularly in the post Second World War and in some cases when they were colonized by Europeans from the 1500 AD. I will explain this below.
Africans prior to the advent of Europeans and Arabs or outsiders had no works of art but religious artifacts. Remember that the 2D concept was essentially alien but there were isolated cases as found in caves drawing by the San (or what the earlier European called Bushmen - derogatory and politically incorrect today) people of Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Southern Africa. The other groups were the Tuaregs whose art works are found in caves in the Sahara. I have got some pictures of them I took while visiting Zimbabwe. On the whole, Africans did not do it as the San and the Tuaregs but some Bantus draw two dimensional works of art later on as the morals by women we refer to below in Southern Africa.
If you are going to call the Cross of Jesus Christ in the Western churches a work of art, then African pieces of art prior to 1500AD were works of art. Many will question this as Africans arts were not meant to be appreciated as the works of say Italian or Greek artists. They were not for they were just religious pieces and were supposed not to be viewed by anyone or displayed in most of the geographical regions. Religiously, they were holy artifacts used for prayer or as media of communication.
Even common masks used by masqueraders for displays in the dancing arena during religious ceremonies were not used as works of art. You will see that they were not refined as say Chinese or Japanese or Indian or European art works and were essentially voluminous. If they were refined, they did not carry that spirit. It did not mean that they could not be well chiseled. No. They performed their intended tasks better when they were in a sort of a caricatured form. The persons who assumed a carved (mask) called juju in Nigeria and some parts of the Cameroons was transcended into a spirit and was not a man or a work of art as you may talk of a harlequin in the Western museum. With the powers the wearer had owing to wearing the mask, he was able to direct say the spirit of the dead person to the underworld where he or she were to meet souls of other relatives who had long died. If this was not done, the spirit was left wondering in the wilderness like goats without a goatherd.
In some cases, a fetish of a person who had died before was kept unlike say the keeping of skulls or carvings of Buda by some South Eastern Asian communities that were sort of venerated. In the case of some Africans, say in the Bamileke region, (Banjoon or Banjoun) the fetish was treated as if it were a living person. It was housed in a special place and could only be seen and touched by the initiated grandees, chief priests or priestesses. It was given food, wine, smeared with cam-wood paste and even clothed as if it were a person living. The belief was and is still had that the dead person’s spirit was still living in that piece of wood. If a member of the family’s profession was trading and was to go out to the market, one simply offered a sacrifice to that particular fetish that could stand for the late grandmother or father. This was supposed to give him luck and open his way so to say. Since it was a vessel holding the spirit of a late member of the family, it could not be sold, seen or touched by outsiders. Its intrinsic value was immeasurable and that is why the earlier ones that found in the Western museums or private collectors were often looted when Africans were defeated as the case of Ngonso in the Nso Kingdom of Western Africa. Shrouded in secrecy, it was no doubt that early Westerners could travel the breath and width of Western Africa without seeing some or shrines.
A stool of a grandee in central Africa carved from a single hard wood
You will therefore see how this could not have been considered by the natives as works of art. Such were never displayed and you will be surprised to see that some works of art were only seen by Africans scholars in Western museums and they were still novelties to them as Westerners too. When Picasso saw these for the first time as most Westerners, he had the impression that they were African art works. Well, he exploited them and made a fortune out of them. Did he ever sent the proceeds to Africa or did he ever set a museum in Africa where “African art pieces” could be preserved? That is a different topic. You are particularly interested in the diffusion of these works and it should go in tandem with the migration of the Bantu from the Cameroon High lands to the South, East and Western Africa as shown by archaeological evidence and the trace of African languages.
Having made the above points concerning what we can safely call religious art, there were pockets of non religious art works. Doors, utensils, shutters, wooden pillars, war instruments, handles of knifes, machetes, lances, cobble stone works, pipes and terra cottas that had some special decorative art works. Most were of predominant fauna of the locality.
Verso of the above stool
We can also inject the morals in Southern Africa that are common among the Bantu women (Mutus) that are essentially 2D. I cannot tell the origin of these as they were not inherently Africans. Others are in the form of elaborate clothes as the Kenke in Ghana, the highly colorful gowns worn by elders and rich men in the Grassfields of the Southern Cameroons/ Cameroon Republic. They are unique in these regions and do not seem to be exported to other parts of Africa apart from isolated Grassfielders who have immigrated. Non-natives do not copy them perhaps because they are expensive or complicated to be replicated. Another restriction why they are not exported to cross tribal boundaries so to say is owing to climatic differences. These gowns are for colder climates and as woolen suits are for colder climates and will not augur well in the hot and humid primeval forested areas of say the tropics. It would be like thinking of exporting heavy woolen winter clothes in North America to the tropic and expect them to be adopted. They could be adopted as occasionally is the case but they are adapted.
A miniaturized juju in the Cameroon, Western Africa
The case of the Namibian ladies is a classic example. They have adopted the elaborate 19th century European voluminous gowns that were introduced in the Herero communities by the Germans in the colonial days. They are still there hitherto. It could be explained by the fact that Namibia, then German S.W. Africa still has sizable German settlers who find their Teutonic culture as vital to their very survival. The Caucasians do not dress this as Victorians yet some African-Namibian women do.
Then when Europeans came with the idea of aesthetic, their perception of art was different and that is why Picasso would pick these and incorporate in the Western 2D art. Africans would have looked at it as blasphemous as a true spiritual thing was supposed to be venerated not as a good but as an abbot for the soul of the departed relatives. It was not even supposed to be replicated. It was unique as a soul is unique to an individual as one’s character. Again, that is why they were not touched by anyone but the initiated. This may account for the fact that some of these ‘art works’ are unique and what Shona and Ndebele ethnic groups in Zimbabwe have are different from what one may see in the Congos, and among the natives of Senegal or Ivory Coast or among the Beninians in Nigeria.
In the distant past, women were not supposed to even see them. One could be sold into slavery or even lost her life on seeing it by accident. Even when being carved, it was top secret and was not to be seen by the non-initiated.
When Western collectors from Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva, the Museum of Mankind in London, Berlin Museum, and the one in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, etc came they mistook all these works for African art works that were essentially volumetric.
African religious artifacts influenced Picasso.
Some Western Missionaries tried to wipe these out and many went into hiding the moment Africans learned that their works were ‘pagan’ things. Even though some missionaries shunned them, ironically the same missionaries were the ones who helped in the promotion of some art works in the mission stations. There was a demand for them and some Westerners even encouraged Africans to mass-produce them for money, thus the beginning of the prostitution of African sacerdotal art works…that were converted to tourists’ curios. That let to curios and a big industry from the late 1950s in the Congos, East, Southern and Western Africa. In places like Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and South Africa there was the use of soap stones, verdite, etc. and many suddenly found markets in North America, Europe, Japan and Australia. That was no longer spiritual representation, but Africans being influenced by Western tourists who demanded more and more of their works. In this case, Africans were then artists as defined by Westerners. You must have read the rest from the famous work of Ladislas Segy, African Sculpture Speaks and many others.
Dr. Viban Viban Ngo.
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