Kenyan Art n the Fusion Period

Kenyan Art in the Fusion PeriodBy Donna Pido PHD

A Presentation to the Goethe Institute, Nairobi September 19, 2012

What is Art?Any embellishment of ordinary living achieved with competence and having describable form - Anthropologists

• Fine Art• ‘High Art’• Naïve Art• Folk Art• Primitive Art

• Outsider Art

• Applied Art • Decorative Art• Craft• Multimedia

The 19th Century SettingBeginning of the 19th Century – three separate

currentsEuro – painterly, emotional

Indian Ocean Rim – linear, involute, unemotionalAfrican – linear, parsimonius, unemotional

End of the 19th CenturyThe streams begin to converge

20th CenturyConvergence Revolutionizes Everybody’s Art

• Egyp effigy• Rembrandt• Early Picasso• Post o7• HIrschfeld

Late 19th Century and Early 20th Centuries

• Photography moots naturalism in 1842• Euro Artists experiment with alternatives to naturalism - Impressionism

• Europeans ‘discover’ African sculpture but ignore other types of Art in Africa. African-American Music sneaks in and takes over the entire world.

• East Africans are overrun by artistically and culturally snobbish people

• Asians disperse through the British Empire. They keep going in their own way but others notice their art (and their cuisine)

20th CenturyInspiration, Imitation, Interpretation, Adoption,

Adjustment, Acquisition, Exchange

• Europeans respond to esthetic expansion through African and Indian art

• Africans forced to adopt Euro representational styles and interpret them while absorbing more subtle Indian Ocean Rim influences

• Africans acquire vastly broadened range of materials

• Everybody moves beyond what anybody had before fusion took place

Edwrd HIcks• Henri Rousseau Fight between tiget and buffalo1908Painting and sculpture in Ethiopia, Kenya And Uganda from 1980 Kenya Action and Vision Triangle Arts Trust 2Edward Hicks 1829002

What comes next as Kenyan artists go forward?

• Mayiolo• Ndiese• Timanyeti• Mongen• Sijui• Ich kenne nicht• I don’t know

• But it should be fun to watch and find out!