African People Who Preferred to Create Sculptures Masksand Body Art Were Usually

Statuette in Terracotta (c.1,000 BCE)
Nok civilization of Nigeria.

PREHISTORIC ART
For more information about
Paleolithic, Mesolithic or Neolithic
artefacts, see: Stone Historic period Fine art.
For details of later eras, see:
Statuary Age and Iron Age Art.

Introduction

The aim of this article is to identify African tribal fine art in its social context rather than to discuss aesthetic entreatment, stylistic zones, and the formal qualities of fine art objects. European fine art frequently uses symbols that are immediately meaningful to educated people - symbols of Christ, the saints, historical episodes. A knowledge of the meaning behind these symbols plays an important office in understanding and appreciating painting and sculpture.

The same is truthful for African sculpture and other art forms: information technology is essential to discover whether a mask or a sculptured effigy is fabricated to entertain, frighten, promote fertility, or just to exist fine art for art's sake. We need to know whether a mask portrays a chief, a god, a slave, a were-creature, or a witch; whether a mask is worn on the head or over the face, carried, or secretly conserved in a cult-firm. Although African art is presented here as an integral element of economic, social, and political institutions, in the final analysis the prime element is aesthetic. Despite the splendors of "classical" African art - like the sculptures of Nok, Ife, Benin - the chief concern here is with the arts that continue to flourish in the chiefdoms, villages, and nomadic tents. (Note: For North African funerary art, and temple design, see: Egyptian Architecture.)

Aboriginal CIVILIZATIONS
For examples of artworks of
other civilizations, see:
Art of Aboriginal Persia
Chinese Art
Chinese Pottery
Japanese Art
Art of India

Arab republic of egypt
For details of the architecture
and other artforms from
ancient Arab republic of egypt, see:
Egyptian Art.
Egyptian Pyramids.

Art OF ISLAM
For a brief review of the influences
and history of Muslim visual arts
see: Islamic Art.

DIFFERENT FORMS OF ARTS
For definitions, meanings and
explanations of dissimilar arts,
encounter Types of Art.

Prehistoric African Rock Art

The earliest known prehistoric art of Africa - such every bit the Blombos Cave Engravings (c.70,000 BCE), the Diepkloof Eggshell Engravings (c.60,000 BCE), or the Apollo 11 Cave Stones (25,500-23,500 BCE) - was probably the piece of work of yellowish-skinned Bushmen, the aboriginal peoples of southern Africa. (For a guide to symbols used at Blombos, please run into: Prehistoric Abstract Signs 40,000-10,000 BCE.) Bushmen are the oldest known natives of S Africa, although exactly when they appeared, and how far their history dates back, remains a mystery. It is not even certain if it was their ancestors who were responsible for the pictographs and petroglyphs which have been found at various prehistoric sites in the country. The Bushmen were driven back into the desert areas, not only by the white homo, merely too by the Hottentot invaders. The Hottentots are also a yellow-skinned race, then closely resembling the Bushmen that, according to some experts, it is inadvisable to separate them. At that place remains however, an enormous difference between their creative achievements. None of whatsoever consequence can be attributed to the Hottentots, but the one-time Bushmen have to their credit some of the finest and oldest art in the globe, at sites all over Southern Africa.

The general character of Bushman rock art is naturalistic, and many of the images can be seen as pictographs, in that they express ideas and are not "art for art's sake." The big majority of the figures are men and animals, merely there are a few other objects which are probably symbolic, although their meaning is not always clear; In some regions the pictures are painted in color; elsewhere just engravings or chippings occur. The departure is due to the natural conditions of the country, although information technology is generally assumed that engravings are more primitive than paintings. The Prehistoric Colour Palette used by Bushmen artists in their cave painting consisted of earth pigments. Ruby-red and dark-brown from bole or heematite; yellow from iron ochre; white from zinc oxide; blackness from charcoal or soot; bluish from fe and silicic acid. The blue is particularly unusual and does not occur in the cave paintings of Europe. The fine lines found in Bushman paintings were drawn with sparse hollow rods sharpened and used similar quills.

Note: The primeval art of the African continent - excluding the controversial Stone Historic period quartzite figurine from Kingdom of morocco known as the Venus of Tan-Tan (200,000-500,000 BCE) - consists of the engravings in the Blombos Caves on the Cape declension of South Africa, dating from seventy,000 BCE, followed past the animal figures from the Apollo 11 Cave in the Huns Mountains of southwestern Namibia, dating from around 25,000 BCE.

African rock paintings and engravings were, curiously, discovered before than European ones: those in southern Africa as early every bit the mid 18th century, those in the N in 1847 when they were constitute by a group of French soldiers who reported engravings of elephants, lions, antelope, bovids, ostriches, gazelles, and homo beings armed with bows and arrows. The all-time-known site of desert paintings in the due north is the Tassili plateau, agile from the age of Mesolithic art, which was explored and described by Henri Lhote in the 1950s. This is a mountainous area - 2000 sq miles (5180 sq km) of rock and shifting sand - now inhabited past but a few Tuareg shepherds. Thousands of years ago, when the paintings were made, the land was fruitful, covered with forests and crossed by rivers alive with fish.

The way of the pictures is naturalistic, animated, and entirely different both from the conventionalised Libyan-Berber style, and from the early on naturalistic, grouping of the Atlas. They seem to exist much more than closely related to South African Bushman art. Of item interest are several polychrome paintings in the Tassili mountains representing graceful human figures with dappled cattle close by. To the south-w of this region, the French Ahagger trek discovered in 1935 some other site with the aforementioned kind of polychrome wall-paintings, showing various animals, but chiefly cattle. A few human figures are distinguished by extraordinarily blithe and often graceful movements. The piece of work is carried out entirely in spaces, so that they are genuine paintings and not linear drawings. On the same site, however, there are also a number of prehistoric engravings like to the type in the Atlas region. In that location is a potent similarity between the Ahagger paintings and Bushman art, and, in improver they have a hitting resemblance to the art of Ancient Egypt.

Some of the Saharan paintings describe Negroes and a hunting mode of life (dating from the prehistoric Roundhead catamenia), while others (from the Cattle period, 4000 BCE - 800 CE) evidence pastoralists, figures with copper-coloured pare and straight hair who resemble the Fulani cattle-herders of the w African savanna. Art historians have suggested, and ethnographical research partly confirmed, that these works of Neolithic fine art were created past proto-Fulani groups: they contain elements that stand for to features of Fulani myths taught during boys' initiation rites, such as the hermaphroditic moo-cow from whose chest sally the heads of domestic animals, and the graphic portrayal of what resembles a Fulani initiation field (a circle with the sunday in the center and heads of other cows, representing different phases of the moon, spaced around it).

The rock pictures in the Atlas region of Algeria were commencement investigated in 1913. They are almost all engravings: just 2 pictures painted in ochre were discovered and these vest to before periods. Three principal art groups may exist distinguished. There are first the very early on naturalistic drawings of animals which are at present either extinct in this area, or vest to a very remote geological period. The huge impressive design of a panthera leo at Djattou is a skillful example. Next come a group of somewhat less naturalistic drawings, of slightly more recent date. Finally, at that place are the comparatively late Libyan-Berber designs, described as in part rather crude animal outlines, in office designs that are of a purely geometric and schematic character.

Classical African Sculpture

Thanks mainly to archaeologists, African bronzes and terracottas no longer belong to an "unknown" by. Detailed comparative studies aided by radiocarbon dating take located them in historical contexts and continuing traditions. One of the best-known examples of an early sculptural tradition is that of "Nok", a characterization covering a range of terracotta sculpture of human and animal figures found widely distributed across northern Nigeria. They first came to light in tin mines nearly the village of Nok in Zaria province and accept since been dated to the 4th or 5th century BCE. Some art historians take detected similarities between the stylized human figures and the naturalistic animals of Nok and the undated rock sculptures of Esie, the Nomoli figures of Sierra Leone, and the Afro-Portuguese ivories carved at Sherbro. Merely a more convincing suggestion is that the Nok mode - the main features of which are a spherical or conical head, and eyes represented as segments of a sphere with the upper lid horizontal and the lower chapeau forming a segment of the circle - has many features in common with that of Ife, the religious and onetime upper-case letter of the Yoruba people.

One thing is sure: the traditions of African art have not been without development. Radiocarbon dating and oral traditions suggest, for example, that the naturalistic style of sculpture at Ife lasted for about every bit long every bit bronze-casting in Benin. All the same, the rich Ife fashion shows an unvarying canon from the 10th to the 14th centuries, while in Benin, from the 15th to the 19th centuries, the progression from a moderate naturalism to a considerable caste of naturalization is very marked.

For a comparing with sculpture from the Americas, delight see likewise: Pre-Columbian art (upwards to 1535 CE).

Less is known virtually the arts and civilizations of Sao (Lake Chad) and Zimbabwe, just plenty to show that they are indigenous African cultures: at that place is no longer need to invoke Egyptian, Phoenician, or Portuguese influences. Archaeologists have shown, for example, that the walls and towers of Zimbabwe were raised past African builders and from African sources of inspiration. Nor is there any uncertainty about the Africanness of the Cross River akwanshi of southeastern Nigeria and neigh wearisome Cameroon - rock figures that resemble no other works of art in any medium in the whole of Africa. They are phallic in shape, with a general stylistic progression from phallus to homo course. Some are lilliputian more dressed and decorated boulders just they are distinguished by profuse surface decoration centred on the face up, breasts, and navel.

Other less well-known examples of "classical" African fine art are the bronze sculptures of Nupe and Ibo, in Nigeria. The bronzes of Ibo Ukwu were discovered in 1938 when a cistern was dug in the village. The site proved to be a repository for elaborately decorated objects - vessels, mace-heads, a belt, and other items of ceremonial habiliment. A grave excavated nearby contained a crown, a pectoral, a fan, a fly-whisk, and beaded metallic armlets, together with more than than 10,000 beads. Radiocarbon tests concur in dating these objects to the end of the 1st millennium, which makes this the earliest bronze-using civilisation of Nigeria. The bronzes are extremely detailed castings with elaborate surface decorations, just they differ from other African traditions of casting, such as those of Benin and Ife. Moreover, the high standard of wealth they reveal has no parallel in "democratic" Ibo-land where there are no centralized chiefdoms or wealthy aristocracies equally amidst the Yoruba and Benin.

Touch on of Hunting

Like Oceanic fine art, one of the most striking aspects of African fine art is that information technology is always very much an intimate role of social life, manifest in every aspect of Africans' piece of work, play, and behavior. The fashion and symbolism of paintings, figures, and masks, therefore, depend on their political, economic, social, and religious contexts, an exam of which often provides valuable insights into the meanings of African art. The Bushmen of the Kalahari desert, for example, hunt in an inhospitable surroundings, leading a life dominated by their accented dependence on immediately available resources for survival. There is an intense relationship betwixt the hunters and the hunted, between life and rain. The Bushmen'south anxieties are expressed in their myths, their ceremonies, and their rites, and they are represented also in their paintings and engravings. Bushman stone paintings not only depict the animals they hunt, rain rituals, and the hunters themselves, but the animate being species that take greatest mythical meaning. Another group, the Kalabari Ijo, are fishermen who too depend on hazard - the luck of the tides, the shifting shoals of fish. Their art also directly reflects their way of life, their anxieties, and their myths. Living in isolated, self-contained communities in the mangrove swamps of southeastern Nigeria, they believe in water spirits, "Lords of the creeks" who alive in a fabled underwater globe, who are, like the sculptures that stand for them, anthropomorphic or zoomorphic, or a mixture of the 2. The essence of the spirits is contained in the masks and sculpted headdresses worn by the fishermen at masquerades. The types of animals depicted in the masks are selected not for their economic importance but for their symbolic meanings and roles in Ijo myth and ritual.

The Art of the Nomads

The numerous nomadic peoples of Africa are prevented by the very nature of their way of life from owning beefy or heavy works of art. In many cases they prefer literature, the about portable form of fine art - bucolic poems, epics, tales, and satirical pieces which vividly limited a nomadic aesthetic. The Fulani of due west Africa are a case in bespeak. They have a positive disdain of the working of forest, iron, and leather; any cultural objects made from these materials which they possess are made by Negro groups on whose lands they graze their cattle. Even Fulani who have settled in villages prefer to give artistic expression to architecture, elaborate wearing apparel, and ornaments. Authentic Fulani art is therefore rare, and restricted to details of dress, amulets, caput-dresses, girls' anklets, ceremonial tools, and containers, and the body itself. Indeed, the Fulani take developed a veritable aesthetic of personal appearance, involving diverse forms of body fine art including body painting and face painting, too every bit piercings and tattoos. From childhood they learn to decorate and paint themselves, fashion their hair into wonderful shapes and patterns, cultivate splendid styles of walking; mothers even massage the skulls of their babies to reach ideal shapes. During annual ceremonies, which are both sadistic tests of manhood and male beauty contests, youths use all the arts of personal decoration - the body is oiled, painted, and ornamented. The men line up before the judges, "like sumptuous images of gods", their faces painted in red and indigo patterns, their hair busy with cowries and surmounted past tall headdresses. On both sides of their faces hang fringes of ram'due south beards, chains, chaplet, and rings. Old women loudly berate those youths who do non come up to the highest standards of Fulani beauty.

Wooden Sculpture

The greatest contribution Africa has made to earth culture is its fine tradition of sculpture, although it was hardly known outside the "dark" continent until towards the end of the last century. Then, works that had previously been considered only as colonial trophies and weird museum objects attracted the attention of European artists keen for new experiences. Andre Derain (1880-1954), Maurice De Vlaminck (1876-1958), Picasso (1881-1973), and Matisse (1867-1954), were in plough overwhelmed past the expressive and abstract qualities of the figures and masks that turned up in Paris from the afar Congo and the French Sudan. Juan Gris even made a paper-thin copy of a funerary figure from Gabon. The interest of these painters led to a mostly heightened sensitivity to the qualities of African sculpture, although for many years it was a sensitivity that could only react to the pure course and mystery of the sculpture from ignorance of its office or symbolism.

Today we are improve informed, although whole corpora of African fine art remain mysterious entities since they were collected long ago, as curiosities, from people who had lost awareness of their uses or symbolic meanings.

Among the Dogon of Mali there are a number of famous old sculptures, known as tellem, about which neither the Dogon nor archeology tin tell u.s.a. annihilation (although innumerable art historians go along to make more or less inspired guesses). Tellem figures usually take uplifted arms and are mostly female or sometimes hermaphrodite. Others include animals or anthropomorphic figures carved along the lines of the original curved pieces of wood. With sculptures of this kind nosotros are restricted to formal comparisons of manner and subjective aesthetic appreciation. To this class belong the Fang masks and Kota figures, once the new-plant "idols" of Derain and Epstein. The plaque behind the head of the Kota effigy has been described, confidently, as "rays of the sun", "horns of a goat", "a crescent moon", and a "Christian cross".

Bambara Farmers and their Art

The bulk of Africans are not kings, priests, witchdoctors, and sorcerers, simply farmers who spend the greater parts of their lives producing grain or cultivating root crops. Their aesthetic life is closely linked to this fact of their existence. Some of the greatest sculptural traditions of Africa are represented by masks and figures produced to assure the fertility of the fields and the survival of their cultivators. The Bambara, a Mandinka group of more than one meg people living in Mali, have become noted for their metalwork, basketry, leatherwork, weaving, dyeing, and woodcarving. Bambara masks are associated with four major cult associations: the n'domo, komo, kove, and tyi wara. These societies bring out their masks during both dry out and wet seasons; they "help" with the sowing, weeding, and harvesting of the Bambara's staple crop, millet, and celebrate the coming and going of rain.

The n'domo mask, with its vertical horns, symbolizes growing millet - the corn will stand up strong and cock similar the horns of the mask. The horns are eight in number and ascension up direct in a row, like stretched fingers above the pinnacle of the caput and on the same plane as the ears. The horns represent, in a schematic mode, the various episodes of the Bambara creation myth, the eight horns in the ideal mask representing the eight primordial seeds created by God for the building of the universe. The basic meaning of the horn symbolism derives from the assimilation of these organs to the growth of grain and the human being liver - Bambara farmers say that animal horns are to animals what the liver is to humans and what vegetable shoots are to the world.

The symbolism and rites of other Bambara societies and masks are also closely related to the prosaic activity of farming. The komo mask represents the hyena, the great laborer of the soil and guardian of life. The tyi wara mask represents a fabulous being, half man, half animal, who in the past taught men how to subcontract. During the sowing and growing seasons the tyi wara antelope mask represents the spirits of the forest and h2o, and assures fertility to the fields and to man.

Annotation: In 2007 Swiss scientists excavating a site in Central Mali uncovered sherds of aboriginal pottery dating back to 9500 BCE, making information technology the oldest known ceramic ware in Africa. For more, please see: Pottery Timeline.

The Art of the African Kingdoms

Fine art is universally a ways of glorifying persons of rank. The presence of objects elaborately carved in such precious materials every bit aureate, silver, or ivory normally indicates the presence of a ruling class, surplus wealth, and the wherewithal to employ specialized craftsmen. In Africa, near lost-wax bronze castings, for example, require a highly specialized production technique and although it is not an art entirely restricted to kingdoms, it receives its greatest elaboration where the principal or a wealthy caste tin can afford to maintain a group of specialized artists. In Republic of benin the privilege of working statuary was reserved for a special corporation who lived in a special quarter of the town and who came under the control of the Oba - the ruler. Amongst the Bamileke, artists were thought of and treated as servants, even slaves, of their chiefs in whose palaces they lived and through whom they sold their piece of work. In these situations African art is not the issue of "instinct" - capturing the soul of an animal or object through a "archaic ecstatic imagination" - but the product of training, apprenticeship, and a shut noesis of tradition.

The artist in an African chiefdom worked portraits, insignia, and emblems to portray the king and his royal relatives as special, monumental figures, and to brand them outlive the brusk periods of their lifetimes by commemorating them in art. And then kings are shown as powerful and beautiful, without blemish and usually without expression, bedecked with royal symbols. The chiefs themselves wear splendid cloths and ornaments, sit down on high, ornate stools, and sleep on elaborately carved beds. Artistic production under royal command is also used to emphasize the need for the royal caste to control its subjects, and princes oftentimes use art objects to terrify citizens.

In Africa, also as in Europe, the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a master or an oligarchy oftentimes results in a local renaissance of the arts. Ashanti and Dahomey are skillful modernistic examples, where brilliant courts, receptive to multiple influences, produced distinctive and sumptuous art styles. In Dahomey the king concentrated on the working of silver, brass, and the production of appliqué work in his courtroom. Wall sculptures busy the palace, depicting historical and allegorical scenes and battles. Amidst the Ashanti, trade in aureate and slaves brought neat wealth to the kings who made the working of aureate a courtroom monopoly. Their goldsmiths formed a respected and privileged degree and produced ceremonial objects and portraits, the most famous of which is the gold mask from the treasury of King Kofi Kakari (Wallace Collection, London). Pocket-sized weights cast in brass were also produced in guild to counterbalance gilded dust.

Kuba-Bushong Fine art

1 of the richest artistic zones in Africa covers the basins of the Kwango, Kasai, Katanga, and n-western Angola. This is an intermediary zone between forest and savanna occupied past farmers whose ancestors were the subjects of powerful kingdoms - the Luba, Tshokwe, Lunda, and Kuba. In each the artists were closely tied to the court and the imperial cults. Among the Luba, for example, statues of kings and queens, brace stools, headrests, scepters, maces, and artillery were produced to reverberate the might and glory of the rulers. Amidst the Kuba the dominant Bushong group inspired an aristocratic culture that imbued social life with a passion for dazzler and decoration. Kuba art and decoration flourished in all aspects of daily life - in building, metalworking, basketry, and weaving. Creative endeavor became a fashion of life for many: even rulers were often artists and sculptors. Art was used to glorify Bushong kings, statues of whom are masterpieces of Kuba sculpture and accept been fabricated since the 17th century. All show the king seated, his legs crossed, habiliment-ing emblems of sacred kingship. They are small, barely more than than twenty in (50 cm) high. Their faces are expressionless, their eyelids half closed; the artists have achieved remarkable appearances of timeless repose and deep gravity. Like all good kings they are fat and adorned with bracelets, anklets, belts, and necklaces. While the statues take a similar general form, they are not identical and private details have been given to their faces. Yet they are hardly lifelike portraits: rather, conventionalized representations of kings with distinguishing characteristics. The main aim of the sculptor was to suggest the essence of kingship, an essence that is transferred from one king to the next.

Cloak-and-dagger Societies Mask Art

Chiefs and wealthy individuals are not the but patrons of art. In Africa of import objects may be deputed by lineage groups and, in societies without chiefs, works of fine art are most frequently held in common by members of associations of of import men which perform governing also as religious functions. The qualifications for membership of such cult associations, age grades, or hugger-mugger societies differ from gild to society. Sometimes all adult males are included; sometimes membership is restricted to individuals with special abilities or to those who possess particular statues or other sacred paraphernalia.

Perhaps the about famous "underground society" is that of the Poro, the membership of which is most densely concentrated among the Mande- and Kpe-speaking peoples of Liberia and southern Sierra Leone although it also spreads, usually under different names, into Guinea and the Ivory Coast. Closely connected with the men's Poro are the Sande or Bundu women's associations which take the course of lodges amongst the women of specific chiefdoms. Both male and female person societies maintain cycles of ceremonies continued with the recruitment and initiation of members. The principal actors in the ceremonies are the uninitiated youths, all the adult men of the Poro, the adult women of the Sande, and the sacred elders representing the ancestors. They are joined by the masked impersonators of the nature spirits who are allied with the founders of the country.

Throughout the area of the Paro and Sande we detect generally two types of mask: the sleek, naturalistic masks associated with the name Dan, and the violently contrasting, roughly finished "Great Masks". There are too subsidiary masks used to enforce law and order and to educate the youths during the para initiation rites. Dan masks are well-balanced and harmonious. Their dazzler derives from their naturalistic but highly simplified form. There are too miniature copies of the large masks, three to 4 in (7.5 to 10 cm) long, which are worn by those initiated into the cloak-and-dagger societies.

The Great Mask of the Poro is a fierce, abstract representation of the demon of the forest. Its stylized face up is supposed to represent a long-expressionless, well-nigh mythical ancestor of great wisdom - the culture hero who introduced the Poro to the land of men. The Mask is the symbol and oracle of the priest, who, every bit judge and clan leader, is allowed to keep the mask on behalf of the Poro. Using information technology he can obtain the sanction of the ancestors to punish criminal and civil offenders. When important disputes are to exist settled, the priest carries the Mask to the coming together of the elders and places it on the footing under a
white material. Any human judgment reached is considered tentative until the Mask has indicated its approval.

The use of the Peachy Mask in such a manner usefully provides divine ratification: judgment is considered to come up from the spirit earth, via the Mask, not from homo beings. The Mask takes responsibility, for example, for the death from poisoning of someone who has undergone the sasswood ordeal. At important council meetings the Mask attends to ensure the presence and approval of ancestors. During violent quarrels the priest puts on the Mask and stops the litigants with his give-and-take. Lesser Masks,are also used to act as messengers or policemen.

The Great Mask itself is characterized by protuberant eyes, faced with perforated china or metal disks, cherry felt lips, and a long beard hung with palm nuts or chaplet. Its typical thick patina comes from black, dried blood from sacrifices and the reddish remains of chewed kola nuts spat into the mouth of the Mask by the priest.

During the bodily Poro initiation rites the Great Mask appears mysteriously 4 times, merely to utter a undercover phrase at which all fall prostrate to the ground. Minor masks, known as ge, are used to subject field and brainwash the initiates. The masks act as officials controlling the women and children exterior the village, or piece of work equally scavengers rounding up food by begging, borrowing, and stealing from citizens.

In appearance Ge masks are hideous, combining animal and human features. They are said to be artistic attempts to represent the conventionalities that spirit ability has both animal and spiritual attributes - the combination of traits, plus distortion, suggesting that there are certain unexplained phenomena more strong than the forces possessed by animals and humans separately.

During the long initiation rites the women are led to believe that their children are swallowed past the masks, and scarification is said to be caused past the masks when they ingest the boys and later give nascence to them. After their rebirth from the stomachs of the masks, the initiates sit on mats with blankets over their faces and in ii days the masks teach them everything all over once more - how to walk, eat, and defecate. Near the end of the session the Keen Mask, with its deep growling vox, takes the boys to the waterside where they are washed and given new names.

Girls are also initiated into the Bundu or Sande societies. At their coming-our ceremony they are anointed with oil, their hair is beautifully coiffed, and they article of clothing rich clothes and jewelry. They parade to the accompaniment of songs, dances, and acrobatic performances, all performed by the masks. The Sande mask is shining black and the women bearers are hidden behind a cloth costume and raffia veils. The grade and symbolism of the mask vary little. The most conspicuous fea-tures are the spiral neck, the complicated ornament of the hairstyle, and the small-scale triangular face.

See: American Indian art, for a comparing with American masks.

Fine art and Kinship

The almost important feature of many African societies, and the source of political action within them, is kinship, in the grade of corporate lineage organizations. Art often serves as an adjunct and symbol of the powers of lineage and clan. Among the Bakwele, lineage elders meet together in times of crisis and attempt to circumvent the problem through the use of masks. Amid the Fang and the Tiv tribes, where political power is transmitted through lineages, masks and statues are symbols of the rights of lineage heads to succeed and are used in the administration of social affairs. Similarly, amongst the Lega of eastern Zaire where chiefship does not exist and the lineage system functions without political leaders there are men of prestige who gain influence through their age, their personal magic, and their possession of art objects. The Lega take included carvers able to produce original and skillfully-made work in a variety of materials; their masks and figurines are used by the bwame association in its dramatic and ritual performances. The objects used in initiation ceremonies present a complex of symbols that help translate the essence of Lega club and thinking from bwame elders to initiates. They are corporately owned by lineages and as they pass from paw to manus they act as symbols of the continuity of Lega lineages and as the link betwixt the dead and living members of the patrilineal family.

In Republic of ghana matrilineal lineages play an important part in maintaining the well-beingness of the Akan community, fifty-fifty when this customs, as in the case of the Ashanti, is a centralized kingdom. Everybody traces his descent through his mother and belongs to his mother's lineage which consists of all the descendants of a common ancestress. The shrine of the lineage is in the form of a stool to which the caput of the lineage offers food for the ancestors. In the main rite in the installation of an Ashanti chief, the new chief is lowered and raised three times over the sacred stool of the founder of his lineage. So the Ashanti stool is a symbol of the ancestors and of the lineage. It consists of a rectangular pedestal with a curved seat supported by carved stanchions. In the Kumasi stoolhouse there are x blackness stools preserved in memory of ten Ashanti kings. The Gilded Stool, traditionally believed to take been brought from the sky by the first rex's priest and councillor, is a mass of solid gold with bells of copper, contumely, and gold attached to it.

Religious Art

Although our increased knowledge of African societies means that social and artful functions are now assigned to many works of art previously considered equally items for religious use but, much African art substantially has a religious and symbolic role. Members of the Yoruba, for instance, are the most prolific African carvers and the largest concentration of their sculpture is religious fine art devoted to the cults of the diverse orishas or gods. Elsewhere, masquerades and other ritual performances use masks and carved figures to enact bones myths.

Dogon art is explicitly religious in character: information technology depicts the ancestors, the commencement mythical beings, the atavistic blacksmith, the horseman with the ark carrying skills and crafts, and mythical animals. Their cosmological system and its relation to the content of their fine art has been explored in marvelous detail past a team of French anthropologists and art historians. And then in guild to comprehend the significant of the Dogon One thousand Mask we have to understand the meaning of the Dogon creation myth and the periodical Sigi festival, which regulate Dogon religious life. The Grand Mask is the double of the mythical ancestor; in making the new mask the carver deceives the soul of the ancestor and persuades it to enter into its new domicile. When the M Mask is exposed to public view only the base pole is visible, since the caput is buried in a pile of stones. Other Dogon masks are less sacred although their performances may reverberate special signs and symbols and parts of the creation myth.

Much of the cosmological idea of many African societies centers on twinness and androgyny. Amidst the Bangwa, a Bamileke people of Cameroon, twins and their parents are revered, twin births being considered perfect births representing a primordial and androgynous world when dual births were the rule. A woman who produces twins is feted by the whole hamlet and elaborate sculptures are carved in the twins' honor. Both parents are given special attending and they are initiated into a religious association which plays an of import role at fertility ceremonies and funerals. Bangwa sculpture has drawn inspiration from these twin parents and there are a number of statues of women and men carrying twins or wearing the symbols of twinship. Peradventure the best known of all Bangwa sculptures is a dancing figure, wearing a cowrie necklace and carrying a rattle and bamboo trumpet of the kind worn by mother-of-twin priestesses when calling the gods.

Among the Yoruba, twins are as well given special attention and there is a tradition of making images of them if one or both of them should die. These Ibeji figurines are nourished and cared for similar real children, since each is believed to contain the soul of a dead twin. Everything done for a live child is done for the ibeji: it receives gifts and new clothes. Regular sacrifices are also made to it in an effort to forestall the soul of the deceased from harming his living twin or mother. The carrying of the ibeji also prevents the mother from becoming infertile.

Ibeji figurines are homogeneous in form - small-scale, standing statuettes, nude in nearly cases although some are carved with an frock-similar garment. Usually the proportional size of the head to the body is larger than that of the model; the genitals are carved, and the finished object colored - the caput often stained a different colour from the body. The face is oval with prominent eyeballs, the brow convex, the nose broad, the ears stylized. The lips are mostly prominent, carved to course a kind of shelf because mothers feed them similar their other babies. The arms are heavy and long, the hands stylized and joined to the thighs. Ibeji accept a variety of scarification marks and hairstyles.

The Art of Witchcraft

Throughout Africa, witchcraft has some remarkably mutual features, the term itself ordinarily referring to malign activities attributed to homo beings who actuate supernatural powers in club to harm others. Most witches work past dark; they have the ability to wing and encompass long distances in a flash. During peregrinations the body of the witch remains behind, the other self traveling invisibly or in animal form. They are fond of human being mankind, making their victims ill and consuming their bodies after burial.

Then illness and death can exist imputed to supernatural causes, and fine art objects, in association with magical techniques and ritual, are used to gainsay them. These objects are commonly known every bit fetishes, a discussion that should really be reserved for a kind of "machine" - the discussion "fetish" comes from "fetico", the Portuguese word which ways 'an object made by the hand of man made by diviners or sorcerers and composed of various materials and medicines in society to describe upon the immanent life-forces of these substances'. In fact the additive textile may be more of import than the bones sculpture and consists of miscellaneous objects-crabs, animal basic and horns, teeth, feathers, parts of birds, buttons, cloth, and pieces of iron. Even if at get-go sight this conglomerate of objects seems haphazard and mundane, the accoutrements of a fetish all accept symbolic value and significant for their owners and the persons affected past them.

The best-known fetishes were originally found in the Zaire region: some very early pieces are extant. In 1514 the Christian king of the Congo, Alfonso, is reported to take lamented the idolatry then prevailing amongst his subjects, declaring, "Our Lord gave, in the rock and wood you worship, for to build houses and kindle fire". Hundreds of types of fetishes have since been nerveless among the Bakongo and neighbouring peoples; they are known every bit Nkisi and all have the same general property of magical figures: they are able to inflict serious illnesses upon persons believed to exist the cause of supernatural impairment to others. In spite of its fame, this fine art grade has not been studied in great detail.

Throughout Africa, art objects are used in the divination of the supernatural causes of disease. Amidst the Bamileke, the traditional anti-witchcraft society, the kungang, is called together during times of crunch and epidemic to purify the country and decimate witches through the bureau of their powerful fetishes. Kungang figures are carved with smashing skill; they normally have exaggeratedly swollen stomachs to indicate the dreadful dropsy which is one of the supernatural sanctions of the fetish. They also symbolize a more than sympathetic magic: the bent arms represent the attitude of a begging orphan or a friendless person; the crouching position is the stance of a lowly slave. The kungang figures are believed to exist imbued with powers accumulated over generations: these powers are full-bodied in a thick patina formed from the claret of chickens sacrificed during anti-witchcraft oathing rites. Almost of them have a small panel in their tummy or back which tin exist opened for the insertion of medicines.

Art for Fine art's Sake

African art is multi-functional: it serves every bit a handmaiden of government, religion, and fifty-fifty economic science. Information technology too serves to entertain. W African masquerades, in particular, belie the generalization that in traditional African cultures there is no such matter as art for fine art'south sake. Fifty-fifty when performances are associated with ritual and belief, aesthetics and theatricality are never ignored. In many Westward African societies, masquerades appear during the second burying ceremonies performed for all expressionless adults. In virtually cases the aim of the performance is not simply to imbue religious awe or to seek ancestral protection, although these play a part, merely to entertain the mourners and bring glory to the memory of the dead man and his successor. In all these dances it is the mask that matters, and for this reason the personality of the dancers is entirely subordinate to that of the mask. For the fellow member of the masquerades the masks should be equally spectacular equally possible, and nothing - not even a monkey'southward skull or a European doll - is unacceptable on a mask which normally becomes much more elaborate once it has left the hands of its sculptor. Dyed plumes are added to the top and striated horns to each corner. Cockades are fabricated from the fine hair of a ram's beard, and raffia is plaited and added to the chin in the course of a bear or attached to the front and back of the head of the masks. Skin-covering may be used, as amid the Bangwa and Ekoi, to achieve textural rather than symbolic effects. Other Bangwa masks are beaded, while most of them are colored brightly with vegetable dyes or modern polychrome paints.

A consideration of the decoration of the Ibo mbari houses will demonstrate that an art grade cannot merely be categorized equally "primarily religious" or even "primarily aesthetic". Here, elaborate stucco embellishments are created in award of the goddess Ala at the kickoff of the yam farming cycle. During a period of seclusion, specially selected persons create a profusion of sculptures and reliefs which are and then displayed to the general public. During this menses they sing songs in honour of the earth goddess and subsidiary gods. The mbari objects are diverse and may correspond gods, man beings, hunting scenes, women and men copulating, and women giving nascency. The main figure is Ala who is sculpted and painted last, sometimes with her 2 children. Associated with her are phallic figures, constructed for the invocation of human and farm fertility. Mbari is not only religious art but also a source of pleasure. Many of the figures are comic; some are obscene. Unnatural practices are illustrated with glee; women brazenly display their private parts. Gross indecencies are explained on the ground that a mbari should reveal every phase of human being considering information technology is a concentration of the whole of homo life, including its taboos. Ibo art, similar all African fine art, is marvellously eclectic. In the mbari, Christ on his cantankerous stands aslope Ala the earth goddess. Tradition is renewed by the artist'southward private inspiration and the employ of external influences. Profound moral purpose and pure entertainment combine to make mbari a dynamic and immediate art class.

Source: Nosotros gratefully acknowledge the employ of material in the in a higher place commodity from "A History of Art" (1983), edited past Sir Lawrence Gowling.

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Source: http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/ancient-art/african.htm

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