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African Visual Arts from an Art Historical PerspectiveAuthor(s):
Monni AdamsSource: African Studies Review, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Sep.,
1989), pp. 55-103Published by: African Studies AssociationStable
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AFRICAN VISUAL ARTS FROM AN ART HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Monni Adams
INTRODUCTION
This overview assesses the study of sub-Saharan art by art
historians in the United States, as a complement to the earlier
examination by Paula Ben-Amos (1987) of African art studies from an
anthropological perspective.1 Academic status for African art
history, focused on sub-Saharan Africa, began in the 1950s, when a
small group of scholars as- signed style categories and broad
social functions to works of West and Central African sculpture.
With the expansion and development of the field, linked to the use
of anthro- pological methods, the emphasis in research has shifted
towards adopting multiple per- spectives of analysis and seeking
African categories in relation to varied artistic production.
Nevertheless, study of sub-Saharan art has achieved only a marginal
status in the disciplines of art history and anthropology. This
essay examines the problems of these relationships, the types of
changing scholarly activities that have characterized the field of
sub-Saharan art, and considers options for the future.
The Double Heritage From the early 20th century, when wood
sculpture from sub-Saharan Africa was first
recognized in European art circles as art, it has been studied
by a miscellaneous group of people, neither trained nor identifying
themselves as art historians. Ethnologists and eth- nology museum
curators, colonial administrators and teachers, anthropologists and
mis- sionaries-all have contributed, and in some cases continue to
contribute, to art scholarship. In spite of the appreciation of
sub-Saharan sculpture as art, it was not ac- cepted within the
European discipline of art historical studies. However, in the US
in the 1950s, African sculpture made its entree into academia. At
that time, private collectors and art museums revived interest in
African art-first aroused in the '20s-primarily be- cause of the
role attributed to it in the rise of modem art style. For this
reason, two pro- fessors at major universities in New York, Robert
Goldwater at New York University and Paul Wingert at Columbia
University, began to offer occasional courses on African art
styles. "African" was used to refer to the sub-Saharan western and
central regions of the continent where the larger wood and metal
sculptures originated. Following categories established in Europe,
only sculptural forms in wood and metal-mainly figures and
masks-were considered "art."
The placement in art departments (and art museums) did not free
the study of sub-
African Studies Review, Volume 32, Number 2, 1989, pp.
55-103.
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56 AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW
Saharan sculpture from its earlier links with ethnology or
anthropology. The great differ- ences in cultural practices meant
that simple questions such as "What is it?" "How is it made?" and
"What is it for?" had to be addressed, and this information had to
come ini- tially from ethnographic accounts, most of it deriving
from European publications. Thus, sub-Saharan art studies came into
being in the United States inextricably bound up with a double
heritage of art and anthropological concerns.2 It is this double
relationship that gives rise to the central problem faced by
sub-Saharan art scholars: that recognition of African art studies
as an integral part of the disciplinary study of art history has
lagged (See discussion in Blier, 1987a).
To account for this lag, I will review first the problematic
relationship with art histo- ry in the '50s and '60s, and second
examine and critically appraise the types of scholarly activity
that characterize the period of the '70s and '80s, when research
results emerged in specialized publications and resembled
anthropological research. The principal reason for the marginal
status of sub-Saharan art studies that emerges from this review is
its fail- ure to satisfy the demands of either of the two
disciplines. Current developments in the field of sub-Saharan art
studies suggest the potential for an improved standing within the
discipline of art history, but the future is uncertain, due to the
radical and rapid changes in the character of art in sub-Saharan
societies.
Locating Sub-Saharan Art Within the Field of Art History The
marginal status of sub-Saharan art study was especially notable in
the '50s and
'60s, when only a few professors were teaching at the university
level. This was not caused by simple neglect, by the obscurity of
the subject as compared with, say, French impressionism. Rather, it
seems to have been a condition that grew out of the methods and
underlying philosophies of traditional art history as an academic
discipline. But the lack of recognition also had to do with the way
sub-Saharan art was taught at that time. It is worth noting that an
art historian is not anyone who "studies art," but a scholar who
has been educated in certain, very specific techniques and
beliefs.
Style and the aesthetics of art historians Analyzing style is a
cardinal technique of art historians. Style, the manner in which
a
work is articulated, including both conventional and unique
features, has long been an ap- proved means of classification of
works of art, based on the assumption that style is unique to a
specific place or period (Schapiro, 1953). The early African art
scholars had several motives for pursuing the subject of style.
Ethnological museums in Europe pos- sessed thousands of objects
from Africa with insufficient documentation to establish pro-
venience. A number of European curators had been able to organize
brief expeditions to sub-Saharan Africa to obtain identified works
for their collection, and these in turn were often used to help
assign an origin to similar works through stylistic comparisons.3
In the US, emphasis on stylistic analysis (Wingert, 1950) was
encouraged by the popularity of formalism in studies of modern art,
the field most sympathetic to African art. We can un- derstand how
scholars of a marginal subject such as sub-Saharan sculpture might
choose to work within the dominant intellectual paradigm of style
as a strategy to bring their sub- ject into respected status in art
history. Style also afforded a unified approach to the di- verse
sculptural forms confronting them.
The most prominent presentation of African art in these decades
was the survey pic- ture book, illustrating a variety of sculptural
styles which could be termed "classic mod- ern." These figures and
masks were produced, for the most part, in the last part of the
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African Visual Arts 57
19th and first third of the 20th centuries and, on the basis of
some earlier ethnographic re- ports, were judged to have had an
important place in the religious and social life of their
communities of origin. However, the categories of style were gross
and rigid, and did not show the subtlety and development desired by
art historians. Typically, in these surveys, a striking figure or
mask was shown devoid of any accoutrements, accompanied by a par-
agraph describing the style and use of the object. The authors,
most of whom were cura- tors of ethnology museums, selected the
formal features of one or two works as typical of a "tribal" style.
William Fagg, then keeper of the African collections at the British
Mu- seum and the most influential authority for the US public,
actively promoted the view that each tribe was a closed cultural
universe, expressing itself in a distinct, recognizable and unitary
"style."4
The language of analysis was another distancing element. The
terminology of stylis- tic analysis in art history was shaped by
qualities particular to painting (e.g., linear vs. painterly) and
to naturalistic sculpture, unsuited to African three-dimensional
forms. However, the ethnologists were concerned with "objective"
description, as if African works were specimens of natural science.
The two approaches had little in common.
Compared to scholarship in European art, the study of
sub-Saharan art suffered from several severe lacks that detracted
from its potential as art history: lack of demonstrated historical
evolution of forms, lack of information about the artistic
personality of the sub- Saharan carver,5 lack of written documents
as a basis for historical or interpretative study, and the
perception that Africa lacked the kind of cultural values that gave
signifi- cance to European art.
The art historian's aesthetics presented a series of tacit
barriers to acceptance of sub- Saharan art as worthy of academic
study. First, art scholars since the Renaissance have honored a
hierarchy of media and artistic traditions in which painting is
privileged for its representation of exalted religious or
historical scenes, as well as for its formal qualities. Lasting
materials and age are also valued. Second, art history in the '50s
and '60s defined a visual work of art as "unique, complex,
irreplaceable, nonreproducible" (Kleinbauer, 1971: 2). Sub-Saharan
sculpture, shown in numerous survey books, seemed to be an array of
types, repeated endlessly by an anonymous person in a perishable
material. Re- producibility, coupled with lack of uniqueness,
innovation or change, suggested the work of a "craftsman." Thus,
sub-Saharan sculpture deserved to be excluded from serious con-
sideration by the art historian whose first task is to select works
(of quality) that fit the category of art.
A third philosophical barrier lay in the assumption that art
requires a self-composed, contemplative, aesthetic attitude on the
parts of artist and viewer. European thinkers had long before faced
the problem of how contemporary man could appreciate the arts of
the past-how, for example, one could appreciate the art of
antiquity in a later time without access to its original religious
and social meaning. This problem received its first resolu- tion by
placing value on style. Others called for an empathetic experience,
that is, that one share in the elevated subject matter or in the
creative gesture of the artist. Others urged simply that sensuous
enjoyment be taken in pure perception.
This barrier may have had several effects. For some viewers it
doubtless permitted the enjoyment of African art, despite its
strangeness, especially as a stripped-down mu- seum object, free of
theoretical baggage. On the other hand, the value placed on order
and elevated subject matter may have contributed to a prejudice
against an art so different from established European canons of
taste and culture. In appreciating European art the viewer allied
oneself with all that was highest in one cultural tradition through
one's own discernment and visual taste. Would the same viewer wish
to ally oneself through Afri-
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58 AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW
can art with African traditions? In addition, this aesthetic
attitude promoted an understanding of art as something
uniquely free of any worldly imperative, as the very opposite of
a tool. Alas, many sub- Saharan sculptures were objects of use-as
thrones, stools, bowls, staffs. Under the in- fluence of the
functionalist theory, prominent since the '30s in anthropology,
sub-Saharan sculpture was seen as something that was "used" in
religious rites and ceremonies. The more the social functions of
sub-Saharan sculpture were discussed in the '60s, the less the
sculpture was defined by the uselessness that, increasingly since
the late 18th century, has marked the category "Art."
Content In the '50s and '60s, art historians in the United
States began to give more attention to
the content of a work of art because of the influence of Erwin
Panofsky (1892-1968), a German art historian teaching in the US. He
(1955) proposed a three-stage method of an- alyzing content through
careful identification of imagery. In the first two steps of "ico-
nography," the scholar determines what the image represents from
nature or practical life, and then, by referring to other works and
documents of the time, he or she posits a con- ventional identity
for the image, that is, who or what the image represented for the
people of the time. The third, iconological level of analysis
involves identifying the symbolic significance of images and motifs
in relation to larger cultural themes or "essential ten- dencies of
the human mind."
According to Panofsky, iconological analysis is achieved by
scrutinizing "documents bearing witness to the political, poetical,
religious, philosophical, and social tendencies of the personality,
period or country under investigation" (1955: 39). The scholar then
links 'he forms in the work of art to the tendencies selected from
the documentary evidence. These links of a symbolical nature may
have been part of a preconceived program or a disguised symbolism,
or they may be unknown to the artist him- or herself. Because the
links between the image or art work and selected tendencies are
indicated on the basis of "synthetic intuition" or intuited
judgment of similarities, this last step in the method lacked
conviction for scholars who placed their faith in objective facts.
The appeal of this method is that it interprets art in relation to
thought, assuming that art is an analogue of discursive
rationality. In practice, the documents that Panofsky and his
colleagues drew on for their interpretations were limited to
higher-level philosophical ideas (linked to the Graeco-Roman or
Biblical traditions). According to Orwicz (1985), the focus in the
'50s and '60s on cultural themes obstructed the development of a
social history of art.6
There were obvious difficulties in applying this art historical
method to sub-Saharan sculpture. The nature of the sub-Saharan
representational system posed difficulties on both the first and
second level of iconographic analysis. Forms were schematically
shaped and motifs from nature or practical life were difficult to
recognize. The isolated object, outside time and place, exhibited
no apparent narrative references or pictorial cues. In survey art
books, a conventional identity was simply assigned-for example, an-
cestor or commemorative figure, fetish, king, deity-without
thorough presentation of supporting evidence or compelling
reasoning. There was no critical evaluation of the largely
secondary sources on the basis of which the images were identified.
With so little knowledge of the culture of origin, iconology could
not be attempted.
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African Visual Arts 59
Strategies of Accommodation
Academic art historians The differences in scope and method
between the studies of sub-Saharan art and Eu-
ropean art that became apparent in the '50s and '60s led art
historians to believe that the study of sub-Saharan art within
their discipline was marginal, if not wholly misplaced. If there
were a place for it in the history of art, it was located with the
artifacts of a distant primitive period. When the widely used
textbook on the history of art by H. W. Janson began including
African art (1969 and subsequent editions), it was placed after
prehistor- ic art and before Egyptian art, yet most of the works he
illustrated date from no earlier than the 19th century (Blier,
1987a). A different strategy for skirting around the problem of
lack of disciplinary fit was the characterization of sub-Saharan
art as a qualitatively different, distinctively "other" art by
freely contrasting it to European art. The art could then be valued
and enjoyed for precisely these qualities of otherness. Otherness
was in- dicated by the term "primitive art," a term applied in the
'50s and '60s to all arts produced outside literate cultures. For
many art historians, this special category of art had a low
status.
Ernest Gombrich, an art historian whose numerous essays (e.g.,
1960) reached a wide public, repeatedly characterized all
"primitive art" as rigid, frontal, timeless, marked by
undifferentiated expression. This type of representation belonged
together with the art of children. Herbert Read, another
influential writer on art (e.g., 1956), took care to sep- arate the
arts of the primitive-inspired by emotions, mainly fear-from the
intellectual efforts of civilized artists. Behind these
observations lies the widespread, negative notion of sub-Saharan
African thought as superstitious practices, lacking the higher
values in- trinsic to European civilization. Motivated by the
unthinking, childlike violence and fear- ful irrationality,
Africans had customs, not culture.
Sub-Saharan art scholars These attitudes about the mind and
culture of the black African, together with the
problems in methodology mentioned above, account for the
disparity in the scholarly world between the recognition of African
sculpture as art and the lack of acceptance of it as a field worthy
of investigation. Winning respect for the culture of Africa was the
first monumental task of art scholars who appreciated the work of
the artist and refused to classify it as the art of childlike or
ignorant savages. It has been said that scholars of sub- Saharan
art simply assembled an eclectic collection of methods drawn from
art history, anthropology and history. However, this process has
not been random. In the '60s and '70s, scholars were inspired by a
tacit mission to counter the perceived negative opinions of African
culture, and this shaped the character of their investigations.
Functionalism in anthropology offered a suitable avenue for
their aspirations (For the sources of this paradigm in art and
anthropology, see Ben-Amos, 1987). Roy Sieber's ob- servations in a
1959 catalogue are typical of subsequent messages. African art, he
says, should be seen as "a positive, integrated cultural
manifestation" (1959, opp. B-6). It is in- volved in sensible and
spiritual goals, it symbolizes security, reinforces the positive
as- pect of the African's world view, and participates in
fulfilling his needs, which are couched in practical terms: wealth,
prestige, health, wives, children, crops, and a glimpse into the
future. In this version of the functionalist message from
anthropology, art schol- ars found a means of showing Africans'
concern for social order and the well-being of the community, such
as European philosophers limn for their own societies. It offered
an ac-
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60 AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW
ceptable combination of attention to objects and a placement of
them as part of an intelli- gible social order. The most obvious
effect of this uplifting mission was that attention turned from the
insistent emphasis on religion (seen as superstition) to include
the in- volvement of art in social life.7
Early Academic Leaders Progress toward something more than
accommodation began in the '60s with the en-
gagement of three professional art historians at major American
universities, with each responsible for teaching and inaugurating
research programs in sub-Saharan art. This ad- vance came about as
a result of changes during the decade in the larger political and
so- cial scene: the rising public interest in the newly independent
sub-Saharan African nations and the civil rights movement, the
response to the rising assertion of public iden- tity by black
Americans. I will describe these academic leaders and the steps
they and subsequent principal figures took in inaugurating changes
in the way sub-Saharan art was studied.
The three professors-Douglas Fraser at Columbia, Robert Farris
Thompson at Yale and Roy Sieber at Indiana-all initiated changes in
sub-Saharan art studies, each in his distinctive way. Timing
maximized the impact of their careers. Prior to the independence of
African nations in 1960, it was rare for a student in the US to
visit Africa in order to study art; independence made sub-Saharan
Africa more accessible to such projects. Therefore, all three
professors required Ph.D. degree students to conduct research in
Afri- ca. All three saw themselves intellectually as art
historians, even as they were aware of stretching the boundaries of
the discipline by adopting some aspects of anthropological theory
and method.8
Sieber (1967) addressed principally the problems of style and
history, and he has di- rected over 30 dissertation projects along
these lines. He encouraged his research stu- dents-among whom were
several Africans-to improve and refine style classifications, to
seek the origins, sequences, dates, and distribution of styles of
areas and tribal units. Drawing on earlier published sources, his
two major publications surveyed the context of uses for materials
and objects which rarely achieve fine art status: textiles and
decorative arts (1972), and furniture and household objects (1980).
Sieber became a connoisseur of the first rank, occupied with
authenticity, attributions, dating and evaluation. With his many
academic and public activities, he contributed significantly to
dissolving the image of the fearful artistic savage and replaced it
with one of people who create art to foster communal values.
Fraser focused on content through a process he called "motif
chasing." His interest in interpreting motifs according to their
function within elite political institutions resulted in his most
influential book (1972, written with former student Herbert Cole),
African Arts and Leadership. Fraser's concern with interpretation
shows most clearly in his book on village planning (1968) and in
his structuralist theories. In African Art as Philosophy (1974), he
and his students interpreted simple contrast of materials, form or
motifs as symbolic statements about ideas or social relations. His
several Africanist graduates con- ducted their primary research on
sub-Saharan architecture.
Thompson made the most radical shifts in perspectives,
particularly in relation to the topics subsumed earlier in the
section on art historians' aesthetics. He began with an in-
novative study (1969) of an individual woman artist (Abatan),
tracing the sequence of style in her figurative pottery. His
questioning (1968, 1973) of Yoruba people in various walks of life
about their aesthetic preferences and interpretations of form in
Yoruba
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African Visual Arts 61
sculpture opened a new and lasting topic for research. Most
radical was his effort to look at Yoruba art from the perspective
of the users, according to the natives' point of view. He carried
this perspective through in his exhibition catalogue Black Gods and
Kings (1971), the first widely influential book to focus entirely
on the arts of one people (admit- tedly a very large group), thus
breaking away from the superficial survey compendium. Thompson
grouped the art objects not according to type, but within the
context of their sponsoring institutions and, most importantly, as
being integrally related to ideas ex- pressed by the Yoruba in
poetry, music and discussions. His catalogue, African Arts in
Motion (1974), in which he pursued typical interests of art
historians in exploring the meaning of postures and stylistic
relationships among various art forms, brought national attention
to the study of African art. His greatest contribution has been to
treat the art forms as products not simply of a rich visual
tradition, but of individuals of spirit, imagi- nation and mind. He
attributes these qualities equally to the artists and to members of
the community who participate in the art events. He has attracted
several highly indepen- dent-minded students and encouraged their
diverse research interests.
Publications of these academic leaders and their students in the
late '60s and early '70s announced a rupture from the stilted
paradigms that dominated the '50s. Two of Sie- ber's former
students, Arnold Rubin (1972; Sieber and Rubin, 1968) and Rene
Bravmann (1970), challenged the notion of unitary tribal styles.
Styles, they said, were not to be seen as bounded entities but were
extended by contacts, migrations, wars and trade routes, all of
which should be investigated historically. Tribal boundaries, many
of which had been set by colonial authorities, were gross
distortions of cultural and historical reali- ties; some art
elements did fit within particular groups while others clearly cut
across such lines (See a review of this topic in Kasfir, 1984). In
another catalogue, entitled Open Frontiers (1973), Bravmann argued
that state building and expansion were the most important
historical forces that opened frontiers, and that the dynamics of
market networks had a direct influence on material objects and art
forms. Rubin took another step toward recognizing the Africans'
point of view in a catalogue entitled African Accu- mulative
Sculpture (1974), published by a major New York art gallery. Hoping
to reduce the stripping of images, he argued that the accumulation
of varied materials (from animal claws to shells to metal or cloth,
combined as ensembles or as additions to sculptures), usually
removed as trivial or offensive because they were so unlike Western
notions of valuable art materials, were meaningful to Africans.
The most explicit plea for attention to Africans' conception of
art came from Cole (1969), following his field inquiries among the
Igbo of Nigeria on the extended process of constructing an Mbari
ritual house. He claimed that art historians' stress on form, indi-
viduality and permanence was at variance with African values which,
as expressed in the art of ritual, emphasized transience and
communal art-making. Shortly thereafter, in Afri- can Arts of
Transformation (1970), he explored what the rituals of masking
meant to those who experienced it. Thus in accord with the
anthropologist Victor Turner (1964), whom he cites, Cole shifted
the plane of analysis to a search for meaning.
Another important breakthrough concerned identification of
imagery (iconography). In a catalogue entitled Spirit Images and
Identities (1976), Leon Siroto, an anthropologist who is also an
expert in the art and material culture of Africa, challenged the
prevalent identification of many human figure carvings as either
ancestors or fetishes. Close atten- tion to the ethnographic
evidence from numerous African communities, he said, con- firmed a
relative scarcity of images that could be designated by the term
"ancestor," if defined according to Africans' concepts. Statues
were more frequently identified as tute- laries or guardian spirits
with a distinct name, identity and powers that were appealed to
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62 AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW
for protection and help.9
Problematic Aspects In the '70s and '80s, the pressure to "do
fieldwork" was intense, due to the feeling
that African societies-already altered during the two
generations of colonial rule-were changing so rapidly under
independence that knowledge about "traditional art" would soon
disappear. Therefore, researchers went to places that seemed to
maintain institu- tions associated with classic modem pieces and
tried to refine style classifications, deter- mine the conventional
meaning and establish the context of use. With the increasing
number of students in the '70s, and particularly because of
Sieber's concern with bringing works other than wood masks and
figure sculpture into the canon, research projects shift- ed to
little-known crafts that were still being practiced. Another
expansion of scope- especially notable in the '80s-was geographic.
An increasing number of scholars ex- tended their research into
Central Africa, especially Zaire.10
The pursuit of fieldwork as a method and the commitment to the
study of crafts wid- ened the disciplinary distance from academic
art historians. Catalogues for the increasing number of exhibitions
continued to appear in the survey format of the '50s, showing an
endless array of types. Articles on field research appeared
principally in a glossy journal (African Arts) filled with
advertisements for art galleries, an acceptable format for art
scholars but a dismaying one to social scientists. Anthropologists
were unimpressed with the art scholars' lack of training in social
structure, linguistics and fieldwork techniques, with their
tendency to collect information travelling from one place to
another, rather than by remaining for an extended period in one
community. Most uninteresting was the reliance on positive
functionalist explanations, long abandoned in anthropology.
Sub-Saharan art scholars inherited from academic art history of
the '50s a reluctance to engage in theoretical discussion. As the
art historian Svetlana Alpers admits: "It is characteristic of art
history that we teach our graduate students the methods, the 'how
to do it' of the discipline (how to date, attribute, track down a
commission, analyze style and iconography) rather than the nature
of our thinking" (1977: 9). Roy Sieber, the leading academic in the
field of sub-Saharan art, expressed doubts about the value of
theory: "I am suspicious of data collected according to theoretical
needs. Rather, more like the ar- chaeologist, I consider the
"excavation" of data as a great responsibility.... The respon-
sibility for objectivity, completeness, and caution is
considerable" (1986: 7,8). As Sidney Kasfir (1986: 12) has noted,
the work of sub-Saharan art scholars was rarely accompa- nied by
theoretical insights that an anthropologist would be expected to
achieve. The atheoretical orientation did not satisfy the standards
of anthropology, which require ex- plicit theory-development and,
increasingly over the past generation, have become self- conscious
about theoretical underpinnings and method (See Ruby, 1982; Geertz,
1983; Clifford and Marcus, 1986). In the course of the '70s and
'80s, modern art historians, in- spired by theoretical debate in
literary criticism, history, philosophy and gender studies, began
to reexamine their methods and boundaries; by the mid-80s Columbia
University offered an advanced degree in art theory.
Changes gradually appeared in the study of sub-Saharan art, but
they have taken place without explicit attention to theory or
critical analysis. These changes were due to the guidance of the
institutional leaders, to the increased opportunities for direct
research among Africans, more varied people entering the field, and
some degree of influence from changing paradigms in anthropology
and academic art history. The major research efforts have remained
in the studies of style, type and usage, and most scholars
continue
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African Visual Arts 63
to concentrate on the classic modern sculptural art of
sub-Saharan West Africa, especially the anglophone regions. An
expanding number of scholars developed more flexible cate- gories
for tracing style history. Diversifying the identification of
subject matter, they began a search for meaning, and ultimately
they perceived the importance of historical studies. Nevertheless,
there was a lack of intellectual debate on theoretical issues and
the results of these shifts of perspectives were not fully realized
in monographs until the '80s. Therefore, the types of scholarly
activity have been presented here in the order in which they
emerged in time: the reliance on style for classification and for
relating objects to other topics, iconography, function and
process; and the search for meaning and historical studies of art,
offering criticism perceived long after the event.
MAJOR PARADIGM OF THE '70s AND '80s: STYLE
Connoisseurship, Type and Style Area The pressing needs felt by
US art scholars were to map styles in little-known areas
and to establish, correct and note the diversity of style (and
use) of types of objects within geographic, ethnic or sub-ethnic
groups in West or Central Africa in order to improve the quality of
connoisseurship (e.g., Rubin, 1967; Cole and Ross, 1977; Bourgeois,
1984; Cole and Aniakor, 1984). The typical method for art scholars
was to make short trips or to travel from one village to another
seeking indigenous classifications for a "tribal" or geographic
region, but a few benefited from extended stays or repeated visits.
Some studies of sculpture (Glaze, 1981) and architecture (Prussin,
1969) reported firm links be- tween a typological style and an
ethnic group. Anthropologists (e.g., Ottenberg, 1975; Brain and
Pollock, 1971) also published on the art of a localized ethnic
group, specifying styles and types. An outstanding differentiation
and localization of sub-styles of figure sculpture among the
several groups subsumed as Dogon, a prized art form neglected by
art scholars, was produced by a dealer, He61ne Leloup (1988), who
used hundreds of pho- tographs to aid her inquiries in the Dogon
region.
In this period, however, the use of style as a means of fixing
provenience became a controversial issue. In 1972, Louis Perrois, a
French scholar at the National Museum of Gabon, applied a method of
comparative morphological analysis to 350 figure sculptures from
the Fang of northern Gabon. (This kind of formal analysis, which
was inaugurated in art historical studies in the late 19th century,
was introduced into sub-Saharan art stud- ies by Frans Olbrechts in
his 1946 book on the art of the former Belgian Congo.) By tak- ing
precise measurements of large and small body parts and of their
relative proportions, as well as style of hairdress, postions of
arms and legs, and the detailed shapes of facial features, navels,
and breasts, Perrois distinguished a "longiform," and "breviform"
style and, on the basis of known place of origin from some
examples, assigned each style to different ethnic subgroups among
the Fang in Gabon along a line from north to south (see also
McKesson, 1987).
The usefulness of morphological analysis in localizing styles
was challenged by stud- ies of artists and their careers. The first
critic was an anthropologist, James Fernandez (1977a), who studied
several Fang carvers in Gabon. He showed that spatial and ethnic
distributions of Fang styles would be skewed by the peripatetic
nature of the carvers who cross ethnic boundaries (and possibly by
the remaining greater number of unexamined carvings). Thus he
rejected the possibility of neat categories of style and area. The
blur- ring of style boundaries either across ethnic lines or within
a well-defined ethnic region was also found in other studies of
carvers' careers (see Himmelheber, 1964; Fischer and
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64q AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW
Himmelheber, 1984; Vogel, 1984). In classifying the local styles
of the Hemba of Zaire, Frangois Neyt (1977), a Belgian
scholar, adapted a concept proposed by the art historian George
Kubler (1962), that one can discern by objective analysis superior
examples which become prototypes or prime objects, and thereby
identify replications or adaptations, which in turn will indicate
his- torical relationships. The danger with the prime object
thesis, as historian Jan Vansina pointed out (1984: 87-9), is
subjectivity in selecting units for measurement and category. He
noted, however, that such an analysis is open for inspection where
intuition is not.
Vansina (1984: 89) favors a search for stylistic groupings
linked by origin in a com- mon workshop, which he considers a more
significant category than ethnic groupings. However, as Kasfir
(1986) has cautioned, in numerous areas workshops do not character-
ize the setting for the carver. An illuminating comment on this
lack among Lagoon peo- ples (COte d'Ivoire) was made by Monica
Visona (1987b): their firmly expressed belief that talent is given
to individual carvers by divine inspiration is a factor that
prevents the formation of workshop groups. Where workshops are
found, tracing the nature and ex- tent of the style and its
radiating influence has become an increasing focus of research
(e.g., Henry Drewal, 1977; Roy, 1987; Rubin, 1987).
A few technical studies have added to the quality of
connoisseurship. X-raying sculptures has revealed inner contents
and anachronistic materials (Sieber and Celenko, 1977). The Royal
Museum of Central Africa at Tervuren, Belgium, has made a major
contribution in supporting wood analysis of African sculpture (See
Roger Dechamps's se- ries of 11 articles on wood analyses from 1970
to 1982, all appearing in Africa-Tervuren; see also Verger-Fbvre,
1980). Increased use of radiocarbon dating of wood sculptures would
be beneficial (See Bedaux, 1988).
Style can be a valuable first step in analyzing a corpus of art
objects from the distant sub-Saharan past. In 1959, Fagg dated a
corpus of ivory bowls and musical horns, found mainly in European
collections, on the basis of imagery. With Ezio Bassani, he
believed that these objects were made in Benin and in coastal
Sierra Leone, commissioned by Por- tuguese traders in the late 15th
and early 16th centuries. (Stylistic comparison with the ivories
suggests similar dating for small stone sculptures found on or near
the surface in Sierra Leone and Guinea, probably carved by the
former inhabitants. See Bassani and Fagg, 1988.) After a
comprehensive survey and classification of these ivories, Kathy
Curnow (1983), an art scholar, has traced prototypes, determined
workshops and individ- ual artists.
Style and Rank An influential art historical effort at
classifying style was initiated by Fraser and Cole
in their book African Arts and Leadership (1972). For the
authors, the style of royal or elite arts was designed to
distinguish them from non-elite arts, and in sub-Saharan Africa it
was characterized by several features: the use of more precious
materials, more com- plex techniques, more variety of forms and
more elaborate compositions. Typically in style and rank studies,
art scholars focused on a particular type of sculpture: Yoruba
beaded crowns (Thompson, 1970), aristocratic Luba stools (Flam,
1971). In contrast, the anthropologist, Christraud Geary (1983),
studied royal arts-the "things of the palace"- remaining in the
Bamum court of Cameroon and placed them within the historical con-
text of the rise and decline of the Bamrnum state, giving detailed
consideration of the media and techniques of the craftsmen and
artists of the court and describing the use of art works within
local institutions and practices, such as the military festivals
and men's soci-
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African Visual Arts 65
eties.
Style and Seriation The best known developmental schema based on
style is the seriation of the Benin
bronze corpus developed by Fagg (1963) and elaborated on by an
anthropologist, Philip Dark (1975), and an archeologist, Frank
Willett (1967). Cast figurative sculptures from this corpus became
known in Europe when they were recovered from the palace at Benin
City in the late 19th century. Both Fagg and Willett favor linking
art traditions known from archaeological finds (approximately 200
BC to 200 AD) at Nok in northern Nigeria via Yelwa to Ife (1
lth-15th c.) and thence to Benin styles. Art historians Rubin
(1970) and Fraser (1972) disagree with the Ife-Benin link on the
basis of style analysis, among other points (See also Denis
Williams, 1974).
Thurstan Shaw (1978), an archaeologist with much experience in
Nigeria, has denied any factual basis for the seriation or dating
and holds little hope for further archaeological work or decisive
results from chemical analysis of the materials (See summary in
Freyer, 1987). Two Benin specialists in Berlin (Tunis, 1981; Tunis
and Tunis, 1984) also cast doubt on the Fagg and Dark chronologies
and offer technical analyses that indicate an early period for
certain works considered stylistically "late." The historian Jan
Vansina (1984: 181-87) has effectively argued against the kind of
single-tree line of reasoning that Fagg and Willett have developed
from Nok to Benin in favor of a model comprising mul- tiple streams
of tradition, some of which may intersect. For several wooden
figures of Kuba kings, Joseph Comet (1982) of the Institute of
National Museums of Zaire was able to improve the identification
and to establish a credible sequence of the 18th century by
seriating size and stylistic details, correlated with Kuba court
traditions (See also Vansi- na, 1972; Adams, 1988a).
Style History Increasingly in this period, style was seen by art
scholars as affected by historical ex-
periences (See Poynor, 1987). Daniel Biebuyck (1969: 2-3; 1986),
an anthropologist and specialist in Zairian art, emphasized that
styles spread across "tribal" or ethnic lines by means of
institutions such as initiation or other religious sodalities. The
move away from the earlier belief in one style being normative for
each "tribe," as suggested by Bravmann and Rubin, revived interest
in distributional studies to illuminate style history. Interest in
borderland styles is especially strong among those who study
peoples of the West African Sahel, an easily traversed region with
ancient traditions of long-distance trade (See Frank, 1987; Green,
1987). Another improvement is that borrowing was perceived as a
complex process. It is not enough to reveal that the populous Baule
borrowed their masks from the small, neighboring Wan communities:
the significant point, as Susan Vogel (1977) dem- onstrates, is
that the Baule restructured the system according to their own world
view (See also Visona, 1987a).
Henry and Margaret Drewal (1985) have provided the most complex
account of style history among the western Yoruba by showing the
effects, on a family-owned corpus of sculpture over five and six
generations, of lineage histories, diviners' and clients' deci-
sions, patron/artist interaction, and the itineracy of artists. As
creators of culture, men and women, they conclude, make decisions
about the character of art objects on the basis of personal
self-interest as much as on the basis of accepted societal norms; a
systematic study of individual decisions would disclose why certain
choices were made and how change came about.
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66 AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW
Vansina's emphasis on oral tradition as a historical source
(e.g., 1965) surely influ- enced US art researchers to take account
of local tradition in their search for style history (See Kasfir,
1982; Jean Borgatti, 1979a). In these decades, however, Vansina's
use of oral tradition buttressed by methodological cross-checking
was challenged; other histori- ans and ethnographers have been more
inclined to see much of orally transmitted infor- mation as
governed by narrative structures and symbolic content that limit
its usefulness in reconstructing history (e.g., de Heusch, 1982;
Willis, 1980; but see Vansina, 1983). As a result of these
challenges to oral tradition and the increased attention to debates
on evidence in archaelogical studies in West Africa, art scholars
are drawing on a wider va- riety of sources: linguistic and
archaeological evidence and field research on local beliefs, ritual
and oral traditions regarding interaction and borrowing (e.g.,
Berns, 1986).
Style Development and the Artist The combination of a focus on
recovering information about the art object and the
assumed collective inspiration by an anonymous sub-Saharan
artist have fostered a ne- glect of the relationship between the
artist's biography and the art he or she produces, a principal
concern of art historians. Studies of wood carving and traditional
carvers in sub-Saharan Africa focusing on style and technique have
in the main been conducted by non-art historians, principally
ethnologists.11 These studies have made it clear that the
traditional carver follows a learned set of procedures, implicitly
among the Dan (See Fis- cher and Himmelheber, 1984) and explicitly
in named stages among some of the Yoruba (Carroll, 1967; Thompson,
1974). John Pemberton (1987), a specialist in Yoruba religion and
art, recently offered a detailed account of carvers and their
styles from various com- pounds in the Igbomina town of
Ila-Orangun; he was able to trace the Ila style tradition back to
the first half of the 19th century (See also H. Drewal, 1980; on
the Dan, Barbara Johnson, 1986, 1987).
Considerable differences in personality emerge in the
anthropological studies; for ex- ample, the Dan carver, as
described by Himmelheber (1960: 136-88) together with his son
Eberhard Fischer (Fischer and Himmelheber, 1984) was sober and
desirous of com- munal esteem, in comparison to the individualistic
gusto of the Gola artists reported by Warren d'Azevedo (1973a); see
also Kasfir, forthcoming). Accounts of the individual carver's
career become more meaningful when placed within the framework of
available career patterns and social organization, such as the
distinctive craft communities in the Sahel, the lineage-family
traditions of the Dan carver, the guild organization of urban
centers and court dependents, or the tourist orientation of former
court-dependent crafts- men (See Kasfir, 1980: 70).
Arts Other than Wood Sculpture Artists of other than wood and
metal sculpture have attracted increasing attention
during the '70s and '80s, and more attention has been given to
the style of individual women artists, such as potters (Wahlman,
1974), textile dyer-designers (Wahlman and Chuta, 1979),
costume-makers (Borgatti, 1979c), calabash decorators (Chappel,
1977). Joanne Eicher, a sociologist of costume, and an Ijo
colleague, Tonye Erekosima (1981), have revealed not only an
innovative technique in textile work among the Kalabari Ijo but
have also detailed its significance in the complex funerary arts of
the region. Studies of non-sculptural arts have focused on
techniques, style, usage, social function and, more rarely, the
changing conditions of patronage and marketing (Perani, 1977). Most
of the detailed work on techniques has been conducted by European
scholars.12 Perhaps the art
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African Visual Arts 67
form most removed from the boundaries of art is body decoration.
Nevertheless, it has become imbued with the kind of values that are
associated with European art: as a mark of civilization (Thompson,
1971; Adepegba, 1976; Rubin, 1988).
The status of the smith among the Mande-speaking peoples of the
West African Sa- helian region has long been problematic since,
although indispensable to the cultivators' work, he is said to be
feared, even despised by them. An art scholar, Patrick McNaugh- ton
(1988), linked this double-edged attitude to the ambivalence felt
concerning the spe- cialized secret knowledge the smith is believed
to possess. In the conceptual contrast between objects functioning
in the everyday, open world of communal values and those in the
potentially dangerous spheres of secret knowledge, he (1982) could
discern the basis for the contrasting styles of clarity and
obscurity that characterize Mande sculpture and costume.
The issue of the relationship of style to media and technique
has not been examined sufficiently (On wood carving, see Willett
and Picton, 1967). There is a tendency to as- sume that metal and
wood techniques invevitably produce different styles. Although it
is true that in some localities these styles diverge (Flam, 1982),
one has only to look at pec- torals in Benin royal art to see that
the carving style in ivory and casting in brass can fol- low
similar lines. To counter Vansina's statement-"the fluid line of
the cast metal could not be achieved in stone or wood" (1984:
83)--one need only look at the sinuous loops of Gelede headdresses
or large Ikenga figures. It is preferable to consider style in
media in terms of historical contacts, social setting and agents'
purposes and not according to a uni- form assumption of technical
constraints. It is likely that where skill is emphasized, art- ists
try to go beyond the constraints of the medium.
As in academic art history, little attention has been given to
design (See review in Adams, forthcoming a). The first systematic
approach came from a mathematician, Don- ald Crowe (1973), who
assessed the degree to which artists of Benin, Cameroon and Kuba
exploited various forms of symmetry (See also Washburn,
forthcoming). One of Robert Farris Thompson's important insights
was to note the multirhythmic, self- interrupting character of
music, textile design, and sculptural forms in sub-Saharan art.
Linked with an analysis of speech and writing styles, Sarah
Brett-Smith (1984) has pro- posed that irregularity in designs on
Bamana mud-dyed cloth is a systematic tactic to ac- knowledge and
yet hide secret knowledge that women possess.
To summarize from an art historical viewpoint, there was
significant improvement in connoisseurship by locating sub-styles,
distinguishing leadership arts, and in drawing greater attention to
the artist. The major change in style studies was the gradual break
away from fixing a particular style within a "tribal" boundary.
Diverse reasons for style similarities were perceived. Some
interesting questions were not asked: Why are small size and
schematic forms the predominant mode of human figure sculpture?
(But see Adams, 1980) Why in certain instances is style precisely
defined by the ethnic group? To whom is maintenance of a style
significant? What is the relationship between style as a system of
order and social order?
PARADIGM: IDENTIFICATION OF IMAGERY
In spite of the importance of figure sculpture in the art world,
little research has been devoted to it by US art scholars. Analysis
of the complex imagery in the metalwork from the former Benin
kingdom in Nigeria has been done mainly by anthropologists (Dark,
1962; Ben-Amos, 1983a). However, the art historian Barbara Blackmun
(1984) under-
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68 AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW
took the long task of recording by computer the abundant imagery
of the large Benin cor- pus of carved ivory tusks, and by
correlating historical documents and court-maintained traditions
with a comparative analysis of the imagery, she distinguished royal
from chiefs' tusks and (1988) traced the changing identity of one
figure from trader to priest over a 200-year period.
The greatest quantity of figural wood sculpture is produced by
the populous Yoruba of Nigeria, who in spite of regional variations
adhere to an easily recognizable style. By the '70s, English
scholars (e.g., Wescott, 1962 and note 7) had already indicated the
iden- tifying features for figures used by the various religious
groups and established that the figures were not deities but
devotees of the various cults. US scholars (e.g., Houlberg, 1973)
contributed refinements to this body of work. Margaret Drewal's
(1986) observa- tion that, in Yoruba cult theory, the identities of
the devotee and deity are joined in the ritual process raises the
point that identification may not be as fixed as in the one-to-one
formula so ingrained in Christian religious art (For identification
in other ethnic areas, see Bastin, 1965; Glaze, 1975).
One problematic area of identification lies in the figure
sculpture of the Dogon. Al- though numerous French scholars have
reported extensively on many aspects of Dogon thought, drawing
principally on the Sanga area, few have thrown light on the figure
sculpture in wood, or the various kinds of small brass castings
(Ezra, 1988). However, J. Laude (1964), a French aesthetician,
attributed identities to various figure sculptures based on Sanga
myths, and since the translation of his essay appeared in 1973,
such attri- butions have been repeated. Kate Ezra (1988), on the
other hand, has emphasized alter- native sources for identification
in the ritual prayers and songs associated with the objects, as
well as practices of the living community. Recently, a Dutch
scholar, Walter van Beek (1988), issued a brief report based on his
extended fieldwork both in and out- side Sanga. He found that
figures, carved in a conventional style, are said to "represent"
the client--even with added details related to the client's
needs-while serving as a tem- porary altar to the deity being
addressed. He denies the statuary's initial character as an
ancestor or as a figure in myth. Is this difference the result of
the passing of old men who knew the meditations of three
generations ago, a reflection of the changing interests of the
populations around Sanga, or a difference in the kind of "Other"
constructed by di- verse researches?
The anthropologist Robin Horton (1963) introduced a new kind of
identification of imagery in his study of Ijo masks as water
spirits, a link with the local ecological setting that
significantly affected art studies of figures and masks. Fernandez
(1966) introduced the notion of dualism into sculptural analysis,
by showing that Fang concepts favoring opposing but balanced forces
were evident in the symmetrical balance in Fang figures as well as
in other aspects of social life. His publication (1977b), based on
a widely circu- lated earlier paper on Fang architectonics
concerning the structure of villages and social and cult
organization, was influential in establishing an awareness of
dualistic distinction in African categories, such as male/female
and bush/village. Vogel (1973) found dualis- tic Baule terms
categorizing their figure sculpture not as ancestor figures but as
auspi- cious spirit mates associated with the village, or as
disruptive spirits from the bush (See also Fischer, 1978;
Ravenhill, 1980).
Much of the fieldwork of art scholars in this period focused on
masqueraders; their main achievement was the diversification of
mask identities. The Drewals (1983) provid- ed major models of
iconography in their work on masks used in the Gelede festival of
the western Yoruba; they identified male and female types and
divided the imagery into five subject matters. Vogel (1977) further
distinguished Baule masks into youthful and adult
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African Visual Arts 69
forms (See also Borgatti, 1979b; Adams, 1987a, 1988b). Phillips
(1979) and Boone (1986) identified the conventional meaning of the
helmet masks worn by Mende women during the initiation of girls as
the epitome of female beauty. However, Frederick Lamp (1985), who
benefited from language competence, reached the third level of
"iconology" in a study of the neighboring Temne, first by linking
the women's mask form-which re- ferred to a butterfly chrysallis-to
the ritual transformation of immature girls into beauti- ful adult
women, and then by relating it as a cosmographic index to the
female domain and regeneration. Ultimately, he identified the
figure wearing the mask as the reincarna- tion of the primordial
founder of the women's metamorphizing ritual. A similar kind of
mask used by Gola women nearby was identified by Warren d'Azevedo
(1973b) as hav- ing a male identity. Lamp's discussion is useful
for an understanding of the shifting nu- ances of gender identity
in the region.
Although most scholars have sought to identify types or
categories of objects, one can detect two other directions in
recent studies. One is toward consideration of art- works, figures
or masks as a group within their original setting (See Northern,
1973). George Preston's (1985) catalogue highlighted his view that
objects within an emsemble, although in seemingly casual array, may
work together to express an idea. This point is finely demonstrated
in Paula Ben-Amos's (1988) analysis of an Edo ancestral alter in
Benin City, on which an assortment of objects are united as a
testimonial to a life well- lived (See also Anderson, 1983;
Kraemer, 1987).
The other direction elaborates the earlier focus on the single
object, not in order to fix a type, but to yield an identification
of a unique work, such as Jack Flam's (1970) de- tailing of the
features of a Bamana female figure, or Joseph Comet's (1982)
identification of individual Kuba king figures. Suzanne Blier
(1985) combined these two directions by first confirming the
identification of a unique head cast in copper as an 18th century
Ife king, Obalufon II, then placing it within a context of
coronation ceremonies, and then suggested the famed Ife bronze and
copper heads supported crowns in such rites. It is es- pecially
interesting that this complexly constructed argument draws heavily
on studies by Yoruba scholars on the history and relegion of Ife,
as well as on archeological data and stylistic analysis.
There has also been the occasional new insight into a visual
motif, such as Margaret Drewal's (1977) essay on the significance
of projections from the top of the head, or a new question from the
bosom of art history, such as the inquiry into portraiture by Jean
Borgatti (1980). Doran Ross (1982) made fresh use of Asante
proverbs to identify indi- vidual motifs in the figurative imagery
of Asante court staffs (On verbal and visual as- pects of Akan
brassweights for gold, see McLeod, 1978, and G. Niangoran-Bouah,
1984- 87). Henry Drewal, thanks to his knowledge of the Yoruba
language and the supporting work of Yoruba scholars, has (in press)
been able to show that the focal female figure of the
Ogboni/Oshi~gb6 council was mistakenly identified as the Earth
Goddess; properly that figure refers to the original founders of
the community and of the Oshuigbd lodge.
Again, some important questions were not asked. Why, for
example, are plants not represented even though names of designs
referring to plants are very important in other modes of expression
and action? In a corpus dominated by the human figure, one would
want to know how the image is related to concepts of the body, or
of the self. Except for Thompson's discussion of postures (1974)
and identification of poses and gestures in Kongo statuary and
behavior (Thompson and Comrnet, 1981), little effort was made to
in- terpret gestures. There were no inquiries into the meaning of
self-absorbed or exaggerat- ed facial expressions, except for a
brief report on the anthropological studies of Thomas and Pamela
Blakely (1987) among the Hemba. Although anthropologists seek
detailed
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70 AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW
information on local conceptions of animal imagery (Ben-Amos,
1976; Ravenhill, 1988), art scholars were often satisfied with
simple identification of the motif.
PARADIGM: PROCESS AND FUNCTION
As already noted, assignment of social functions has long been a
leitmotif in sub- Saharan art writings; Biebuyck (1969) promoted
this perspective in African art studies. In general, figure
sculpture was interpreted as contributing positively to the
maintenance of community order and cohesion. The prominent function
ascribed to the widespread use of masking rituals was social
control, an attribution inspired by the essay "Masks as Agents of
Social Control" by George Harley (1950), a medical missionary in
Liberia, and supported by Sieber's (1962) offering of several other
examples. In this light, masking ritual was seen as a contribution
to social order (But see Magid, 1972).
Art scholars tended to focus on highlights of ritual, such as
the appearance or behav- ior of a masked figure or the moment of
display of a carved figure, but some moved away from these static
vignettes. Zdenka Volavka's (1972) attention to art prior to and
after the moment of display led to a significant realization: that
the final aesthetic effect of Congo nail or mirror fetishes was a
result of a series of decisions by the diviner and the ultimate
owner (See also Bourgeois, 1984: 262; Blier, 1988a). The joint
research of the German scholars Hans Himmelheber (1964) and
Eberhard Fischer (1978) also created an aware- ness of process
within the art sphere by reporting that the formal types of Dan and
Guere (We) masks were not locked into certain functions, since
lowly maskers could rise under certain conditions to fulfill more
important tasks (See also Adams, 1987a). That is, in some cases
functional process can override formal features, once again showing
that the static one-to-one, form-identity relationship expected in
European art is not consistent in sub-Saharan art.
However, an active concern with process is not apparent until
after sub-Saharan art scholars took an interest in artistic ritual
complexes, probably influenced by the populari- ty of the work of
the anthropologist Victor Turner (1964, 1967), who undertook
analysis of ritual in the service of social function. Without
adopting the specifics of Turner's method, that is, analyzing
ritual into transformative phases according to nominal, exegeti-
cal and positional techniques, art scholars expanded their
documentation to include many facets of performance (costume,
dancing), entire sequences of which they now described. This new
emphasis on ritual process is evident in the early '80s in three
focused mono- graphs on community ritual (Glaze, 1981; Cole, 1982;
Drewal and Drewal, 1983). All three spell out the full performance
ritual sequences under the overarching framework of ideal spiritual
and social functions.
In Art and Death in a Senufo Village, Anita Glaze (1981)
provided detailed descrip- tions of sequences in initiation rituals
for youth and for funerary rites. She affirmed a di- vision of
social responsibility between men and women: male leadership
ensures stability and continuance of the social and political
order; female leadership is responsible for con- tinuity of kin
group order. Based on her observation of local practices, she noted
that fig- ure sculpture belongs primarily to the women's sphere and
masquerades to the men's. Because of the descriptive essay style,
it is not clear if these bounded categories are held by the Senufo
community. Her central thesis is that the elaborate funeral ritual
is de- signed to ensure the continuing integration of the community
with the spiritual world, as well as serve an integrative function
within the community and among the multiple groups subsumed as the
"Senufo" community. Her thesis seems credible because these
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African Visual Arts 71
rituals are sponsored not only for important persons but
cyclically in communal rites for all other deceased. However, her
argument would gain authority by presenting dialogue with the
participants as part of the interpretation, or by marshalling a
complex of data on function into a more elaborate argument, instead
of relying on appearances and asser- tions.
Cole's (1982) monograph described the long Mbari house-building
ritual among the Owerri Igbo, emphasizing aesthetic choices and
analysis of form. Cole makes one aware of this difficulty, even in
an anglophone area, in constructing a coherent explanation for this
community effort because, other than "spiritual malaise," the local
people provide only brief and widely varying definitions of Mbari
and its meaning. However, in conclu- sion, he supplied other
interpretations: one is based on Mircea Eliade's model of man-
kind's spiritual need for cyclical renewal, possibly paralleling
the Owerri people's need to repeatedly move their community; in
another, by setting up categories of events and ac- tions in an
ordered way, the community achieves a sense of control over their
future. Al- though his treatment of the interpretive problem makes
one aware that his constructions are those of an outside observer,
ideally, more attention should be focused on formulating
explanations from the specific contents of the African artistic
materials.
That the people of these communities phrase their activities in
religious or spiritual terms is not only familiar from other
reports (e.g., LeMoal, 1980) but seems amply sup- ported by the
evidence. It may be understandable that these studies by art
historians did not take into account real-life processes of
tensions, conflicts or consequences, or of art performance as
social action motivated by multiple interests, because for so long
the art historian's interpretive task was bounded by ideal "higher
values." Since the '60s, howev- er, anthropologists have been more
inclined to recognize the expression of tensions be- tween groups
within a community (See Ottenberg, 1972, 1973). Cohesive and
beneficient "functions" are not always apparent in African ritual.
For example, Siroto (1969) de- scribed a mask festival among the
BaKwele in which competition for leadership was played out in terms
of the compelling artistic quality of performance. Usually as a
result of the competition, the original community broke apart.
Siroto (1972) also explained how the fierce Gon masquerader was
used as a disruptive predatory force to take over small villages.
(See also Hersak, 1986).
The report of a French anthropologist and a Senufo colleague
(Jamin and Coulibaly, 1979), although similar to Glaze's account on
descriptive points, illustrates this recogni- tion by emphasizing
different aspects of funerary rites among Senufo communities near
those studied by Glaze. These authors saw the rites as a kind of
dramatization of the so- cial and economic inequality that must be
hidden in daily life; in addition, the ostenta- tious
"wastage" of wealth conceals the relationship of power that
enables the sponsors to acquire wealth and justifies future
inequalities. They interpreted the gestures of the masker over the
corpse not as the "initiation" or symbolic birth of the ancestor,
as Glaze reported, but as a mocking parody of life in the form of
sexual posturings that breaks af- fective ties between the dead and
the living. The motivation for the rites is psychologi- cal, to
fulfill the "working of mourning." Using different perspectives,
these writers perceived "functions" differently than did Glaze.
In the Drewals' (1983) book on the Gelede festival, one is
brought into the "experi- enced world" of the organizers and
participants via Yoruba song texts, invocations, lexi- cal
analysis, performance style, and interview statements. The explicit
purpose of the festival, according to the sponsors, is to honor
women so that they will not exercise their secret powers to disrupt
the social order. By viewing all aspects of Gelede as honoring
women, the Drewals intended to improve on earlier negative reports
of Yoruba men's atti-
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72 AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW
tudes toward women. It is to the Drewals' credit that their
scrupulous and abundant re- porting, especially in the form of
directly quoted material, enables the reader to pick up more
ambiguous and diverse messages about women than they wish to
communicate di- rectly (See Adams, 1984, 1987b). This study also
recalls the problem with Panofsky's model (Forster, 1972) that
assumes a consensus notion of a single central high culture, in
which an interpretation is offered from the perspective of an elite
or a particular group.
Furthermore, in the light of recent criticism in anthropology
about representations of other peoples (Clifford and Marcus, 1986;
Clifford, 1988), one can fault these authors for conveying an
impression that they have discovered a coherent "system" of action
and have given a complete and transparently realistic picture of
the function and meaning of these artistic endeavors. The usual
reply to the first criticism is that art, in contrast to the
improvisations and contingencies of social life, is a product of
deliberate ordering. How- ever, even in this apparent order, there
may be, as the literary historian Mikhail Bakhtin (1981) has
claimed for literature, multiple voices or "heteroglossia." Today,
recognizing the complexity of cultural domains or "texts," one
looks not only for the dominant "mes- sage," but also the muted and
resistant voices. One should look at a cultural domain as an
assemblage of texts, subject to varying readings, or consider that
the artistic community may be, as Clifford (1988) affirms of
culture, composed of seriously contested codes and representations,
and that the poetic and political are inseparable.
SEARCH FOR MEANING
Symbolic Analysis Prior to the 1970s, Claude Ivi-Strauss's
structural method of analyzing kinship and
myth had led to an awareness of dual categories, mediators,
reversals, and transforma- tions in other cultural material.
Africanist anthropologists analyzed elements of sub- Saharan art
from this perspective (e.g., Fernandez, 1966; Ben-Amos, 1973;
Jedrej, 1980; MacCormack, 1980). This ferment had little effect on
art scholars (But see Adams, 1981a). The only explicit foray into
structuralist method by an art scholar was Barbara DeMott's (1982)
book Dogon Masks. DeMott considered masking ritual as a spiritual
quest, but the main thrust of her book is a search for cognitive
order, or art as thought. Her thesis is that art is structured
according to an underlying conceptual system, discov- ered by
analyzing relations between pairs of cultural phenomenon through
reversals, transformation, and other permutations. First DeMott
reclassified Dogon masks not ac- cording to subject matter, as
Marcel Griaule (1938) did, but according to binary opposi- tions
such as male/female, realistic/abstract, predatory/non-predatory,
and danced/non- danced characters. She then portrayed their
interpenetration in the performance sequenc- es. DeMott adopted
Turner's perspective in noting that the separate categories that
oper- ate in daily life are brought into symbolic union in ritual
not simply as a mental exercise but for the ritual's transformative
effect on the spectators. Most of Cole and Aniakor's book (1984)
Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos is devoted to the iconographic
level, that is, the conventional meaning of objects and imagery,
but in the conclusion, they relate the structural dualisms they
have discovered (e.g., black/white, male/female, youth/age) to
social relations. They avoid a static view of structuralist
paradigms by emphasizing that these binary pairs shift in meaning
according to different contexts. To anchor these inter- pretations
and to avoid the trivial, one must discover the conceptual frame
that shapes the motivation for representations in art.13
Suzanne Blier's (1987b) book on the architecture of the
Batammaliba in Northern
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African Visual Arts 73
Benin offers another approach to symbolic analysis, one that
draws on a combination of rhetorical devices and semiotics. Using
participant observation and over 300 interviews, conducted in the
local language, she illustrated the way the architects and priests
con- struct their material and intangible symbols through such
mental operations as nesting, re- versals, condensation,
skeumorphs, synecdoche, metonyms, directional affiliation, language
classes, color categories, and large-scale metaphors. These
metaphors, such as architecture as cosmos, paradise, temples, and
self-images, are drawn from a long history of concepts in art
historical writings. In this way, she links the African structures
to the kind of grand higher ideals that are associated with art in
European art historical tradition. This work, along with Thompson's
investigations among the Kongo (Thompson and Cor- net, 1981)-which
links gestures, graphics, and sculpture to cosmological thought-and
Allen Roberts's anthropological researches on Tabwa cosmology
(Roberts and Maurer, 1986), challenge the earlier assumption that
only the Dogon developed cosmological thought.
Blier (1988a: 83-4) was the first to essay a critique of art
historical method. She crit- icized the predominant frame of
reference in Panofskian iconological studies that empha- sizes a
search for "the" meaning of a work of art, because this requires
the outside observer to resolve (suppress, exclude) differences and
contradictions in order to arrive at a synthesis. She found that
within different conceptual domains, the Batammaliba en- dowed
their architectural features with variant and divergent meanings
that could not be placed within a hierarchical frame of values. As
yet, there are few symbolic analyses by sub-Saharan art scholars;
most of their efforts are directed toward discovering the con-
ventional (or iconographic) identification the people themselves
attach to the work.
Long association and knowledge of the local language enable
Sarah Catherine Brett- Smith to explore practices and beliefs in
the Kolokani sector of the Bamana people in dia- logic depth and to
avoid reaching outside the cultural context for an explanation.
Brett- Smith is less impelled by the positive-functionalist
imperative or by an idealized art his- torical approach. Hers is a
different voice because she tries to understand local practice
within its own logic, even when it seems to violate our feelings or
values. One could say she constitutes a different "Other" by her
selections and exclusions. In "Symbolic Blood, Cloths for Excised
Women"(1982), she reported a protective function for the cloths,
pro- tection that is needed because of a fear of sorcery, a subject
that like the ritual itself usual- ly falls outside art scholars'
discourse. In this account and in "The Poisonous Child" (1983), an
investigation of the sculptural boli, she raised a series of
logical questions and answered them through a dialogue with local
beliefs, practices, and persons. Quoting her interlocutors at
length in relation to a detailed examination of the object
(including X- rays), she arrived at a complex of meanings in
relation to the constraints and the extremes of competitive
struggles for wealth and power.
Art as a Strategy in Social and Political Affairs The emergence
of a notion of art as a strategy in social and political affairs
was due to the revival of interest since the late 1960s in Marxist
critical thought and to the increas-
ing awareness of gender discrimination. Anthropologists (See
Siroto, above) have been sensitive to the use of art as an
instrument of policy and its effects.14 In an article entitled
"Royal Art and Ideology in Eighteenth Century Benin," Ben-Amos
(1984) specified how art forms were used to create and sustain a
political ideology; for example, imagery on a royal staff evoked
the source of a particular king's power and indicated how he could
ex- ercise it. William Siegmann (1980) analyzed the regional
variations in the use of mask-
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74 AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW
ing as a strategy in Liberia (See also Binkley, 1987).
Christraud Geary (1988b) detailed the political and military
efforts by which rulers of an expanding Cameroon polity ac- quired
artisan groups needed to create a court splendor that qualified as
royal.
A few art scholars expressed awareness of the strategic
relationship of art to the po- litical sphere without demonstrating
the processes involved. Bravmann (1979: 46) in- sightfully linked
the lack of masking among Akan people of Ghana to political
structure, noting that the political and policing functions, often
handled elsewhere through the me- dium of a masking association,
are discharged through the operations of the state system. Adams
(1980a) observed that as a political strategy, royal art
accomplishes paradoxical aims: on the one hand its richness and
splendor attract the admiration and loyalty of the population; on
the other hand, these qualities create an unbridgeable distance
between the royals and the commoners who by rule and circumstance
can have no access to such things. In a more detailed study among
the Bamana of the Segu region in Mali, Mary Jo Arnoldi (1986)
recognized that by defining young men's assertive puppetry
performances as "play" and employing other definitional and
behavioral strategies, the elders diffuse this challenge to their
authority.
It is evident that art scholars are shifting their focus to the
way in which Africans construct their society and their conceptions
of art and of artists. This inevitably raises is- sues, based on
cultural differences, that do not conform to the positive vision
that has so long been associated with art studies in our own
tradition and particularly in sub-Saharan art studies. Many
sub-Saharan Africans are sensitive to the image of their culture
and their past that is presented to the international public. In
humanistic scholarship by Afri- cans, this is particularly clear in
the numerous studies of African philosophy and recently in the
efforts to publish a multi-volume work, The Arts and Civilization
of Black and Afri- can Peoples (Okpaku et al., 1986). This
sensitivity in art scholars and in Africans be- comes a problem
when studies appear that perpetuate stereotypes. This kind of
problem is not likely to fade away.
Concepts of Power The relationship of imagery to concepts of
political power was examined by Ben-
Amos. She (1976) showed that animal imagery in Benin art was
structured according to concepts of power relations among people
and between them and their kings. McNaugh- ton (1979, 1988) has
made the most explicit effort to explain a concept of power in
rela- tion to art among the Bamana, speakers of one of the Mande
language groups. Special knowledge permits the accumulation and
manipulation of energy, nyama, to produce ei- ther good or ill.
Persons thought to possess this kind of power, that is, those who
could perform difficult or dangerous tasks without being harmed,
such as blacksmith-carvers or leaders of men's associations, are
consulted, respected, and feared. According to com- mon belief,
objects associated with such men can be imbued with deadly power
and can be used by the men's associations to take punitive action
against persons who commit an- tisocial acts. Secrecy and ambiguity
are seen as sources of power; for example, masks whose initial form
is secret, hidden under layers of amorphous substances, are
perceived as having greater power. Building on these ideas and his
own anthropological research among a Mande people, Peter Weil
(1988) developed a model of 11 variables that consti- tute a
template that underlies the creation of a wide variety of mask and
masquerade forms created during the 19th and 20th centuries in the
Mande zone. This model indi- cates that the more amorphous, more
powerful masks were involved in major transitional social events.
Weil's model is the most thorough formula for investigating masks
and
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African Visual Arts 75
their powers.
Art and Gender In the midst of great interest in gender in both
art history and anthropology in the
1970s, d'Azevedo (1973b) brought the issue forward in the
article "Mask-Makers and Myth in Western Liberia," by emphasizing
that ritual leadership roles among the Gola in Liberia alternated
between male and female leaders. The first explicit presentation of
gender as an issue in sub-Saharan art studies was made by Glaze
(1975), who has repeat- edly visited the Senufo area for over 20
years, in an article, "Woman Power and Art in a Senufo Village."
Women diviners, she said, were indispensable intermediaries with
the supernatural world; neither male nor female leadership would
make an important deci- sion or undertake ritual acts of importance
without consulting one or several women di- viners. However, Glaze
did not intend to diminish the authority of the male in the socio-
political order. Rather, because conflicts in the real world
threaten the wholeness of the man/woman pair (Glaze, 1986), the
Senufo seek a higher unity through art and ritual, which projects a
transcendent restorative vision of balance between male and female
components (See also Duquette, 1979). As appealing as this argument
is, one would like to see more kinds of "dialogic" evidence to
contruct this as a convincing interpretation. In contrast to this
image of balance, the ethno-archaeologist Ian Hodder (1982) consid-
ered both women and young men in the Baringo district in Kenya to
be dominated by older men, a condition he used to account for the
similarities between women's decora- tions and those of young
warriors.
In the literature, the relationship of women to masking has been
problematic. With the exception of studies of several populations
in Sierra Leone and Liberia, where women wear wooden masks, the
scholarly emphasis has been on masking as a male province. However,
Henry Pernet (1982), a Swiss scholar, proposed that a closer
examination of ethnographic accounts would lead toward a
reassessment of women's place in these ritu- als (See also Adams,
1987a). It is, of course, widely recognized that conceptual systems
of balance and complementarity between the sexes presented in
ritual do not necessarily relate to the status or condition of
women in non-ritual contexts. That a woman is the tit- ular head of
the men's Poro society does not award her a significant role in the
men's de- liberations (Glaze, 1981: 31). In We/Gu6r6 men's masking,
Adams (1988b) found, within a symbolic spiritual message for the
community as a whole, a gender strategy that projects an image of
men's superior powers.
Interest in gender aroused some discussion of sources of
creativity. Adams (1980b) posited that men's creativity, expressed
in the carving of small wooden figures which the men care for and
depend upon for assistance, was inspired by the strategy of women
who cultivate their children in the expectation of ultimate
benefits. However, Ben-Amos (1986), taking the insider's view,
emphasized that the explicit source of inspiration claimed by
artists in Benin City was either divine or in the form of dreams
from the an- cestors who mediate relations with the divine.
Gender issues brought attention to the division of labor which
seems to have been strongly marked in terms of art production. In
any given community, men and women are likely to produce different
kinds of artistic work (See Teilhet, 1978; Ottenberg, 1983).
However, as Aronson (1984) and Adams (in press b) emphasized in an
overview of women's arts, blurring of the boundaries is increasing
because of social and economic change. In her study of Akwete
women's specialized weaving, which is important in re- gional trade
networks, Aronson (1983) considered the women's mythic claim for
the ori-
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76 AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW
gin of weaving in the village of Akwete as the women's way of
legitimizing ownership of the craft so that the weaving in its
improved state would remain localized in their village and under
their control. The tacit aim is to prevent other weavers from
intruding on this profession.
Whether one seeks to delineate aspects of the social or
symbolically defined role of women or to examine gender practice as
power strategy will determine research results. The difference in
level of analysis is especially notable where two or more scholars
study in the same or in closely related neighboring regions. For
example, among the Mende, M.C. Jedrej (1980) sketched the Sande
society as guiding young women through a sym- bolic transformation
into properly socialized persons, while Caroline Bledsoe (1980)
per- ceived it as a means for Sande women leaders to aggrandize
their position. The Drewals (1978) saw the Egungun festival as a
means of distributing authority among titled elders both men and
women, while Pemberton (1978) reported that the leaders told him it
was to demonstrate the superiority of men over women.
PARADIGM: HISTORY OF ART
Due to the emphasis on collecting data on style classifications
and usage by direct re- search in contemporary African communities,
in-depth study of documentary evidence or museum collections was
neglected until the late 1970s. Occasionally, attention was given
to the possible influence of early-contact European imagery on
sub-Saharan art forms (Fraser, 1962; McGaffey and Janzen, 1974;
Garrard, 1984).15
Sieber has been a particularly strong force in the United States
in encouraging histor- ical studies of sub-Saharan art by combining
documentary research with fieldwork. His former student Rene
Bravmann opened an important historical subject by acknowledging
the hitherto ingnored presence of Islam in relation to West African
art. Although Brav- mann's (1974) main thesis, that the commitment
to Islam did not mean the end of figural art traditions, is of
marginal validity, his work encouraged others to engage in
reconstruc- tive historical research on Islamic influence on
artistic efforts (See Cole and Ross, 1977; Silverman, 1986).
However, through analysis of documents and technical details, Timo-
thy Garrard (1980) argued that Akan brassweights had an indigenous
origin, derived from gold-working traditions (See also Ross and
Garrard, 1983).
In general, research has focused on objects of lasting
materials, such as ivory, brass, bronze or gold, because these are
associated with trade with outsiders who kept some kind of records.
As already noted, the Benin corpus of metal and ivory has received
the most attention. Marian Johnson (1980) produced an exemplary
study of gold history by tracing the rise from the mid-19th century
of a cosmopolitan culture among the gold- smiths in Senegal through
their participation at colonial expositions in France. She locat-
ed official documents concerning grandmasters from 100 years ago
and their descendants who continue as smiths, and developed a
catalogue raisonni of this refined art form. An- other historical
review sensitive to the "colonial situation" was produced by
Christraud Geary (1982). She considered brass-casters in the Bamum
kingdom in relation to trade and court policies in an analysis
tightly controlled by 19th- and 20th-century primary documents and
local lineage traditions.
Rather than tracing conditions of the production of art,
Ben-Amos attempted to ar- rive at a concrete historical
interpretation of Benin art forms of the past. Based on atten- tion
to motifs, interviews with persons in Benin City, and early
published sources, she
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