One of the Earliest Forms of African Art That Still Continues Today Is

Statuette in Terra cotta (c.1,000 BCE)
Nok civilisation of Nigeria.

PREHISTORIC Art
For more information about
Paleolithic, Mesolithic or Neolithic
artefacts, encounter: Stone Age Art.
For details of afterward eras, see:
Bronze Age and Atomic number 26 Age Art.

Introduction

The aim of this article is to place African tribal art in its social context rather than to talk over aesthetic entreatment, stylistic zones, and the formal qualities of art objects. European art often uses symbols that are immediately meaningful to educated people - symbols of Christ, the saints, historical episodes. A knowledge of the meaning backside these symbols plays an of import part in understanding and appreciating painting and sculpture.

The same is true for African sculpture and other art forms: it is essential to discover whether a mask or a sculptured figure is made to entertain, frighten, promote fertility, or merely to exist art for fine art's sake. We need to know whether a mask portrays a primary, a god, a slave, a were-animal, or a witch; whether a mask is worn on the caput or over the face, carried, or secretly conserved in a cult-house. Although African art is presented hither equally an integral element of economic, social, and political institutions, in the last analysis the prime chemical element is aesthetic. Despite the splendors of "classical" African art - like the sculptures of Nok, Ife, Republic of benin - the primary concern hither is with the arts that continue to flourish in the chiefdoms, villages, and nomadic tents. (Note: For Northward African funerary art, and temple design, see: Egyptian Compages.)

ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS
For examples of artworks of
other civilizations, run across:
Fine art of Ancient Persia
Chinese Art
Chinese Pottery
Japanese Art
Art of India

EGYPT
For details of the architecture
and other artforms from
aboriginal Egypt, see:
Egyptian Art.
Egyptian Pyramids.

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

Unlike FORMS OF ARTS
For definitions, meanings and
explanations of different arts,
see Types of Art.

Prehistoric African Rock Fine art

The primeval known prehistoric fine art of Africa - such every bit the Blombos Cavern 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 work of yellow-skinned Bushmen, the ancient peoples of southern Africa. (For a guide to symbols used at Blombos, delight run across: Prehistoric Abstract Signs 40,000-10,000 BCE.) Bushmen are the oldest known natives of Southward Africa, although exactly when they appeared, and how far their history dates dorsum, remains a mystery. Information technology is not even sure if it was their ancestors who were responsible for the pictographs and petroglyphs which accept been plant at various prehistoric sites in the country. The Bushmen were driven back into the desert areas, not merely past the white human being, merely also past the Hottentot invaders. The Hottentots are also a xanthous-skinned race, then closely resembling the Bushmen that, according to some experts, information technology is inadvisable to separate them. There remains however, an enormous departure between their creative achievements. None of whatsoever consequence can be attributed to the Hottentots, but the old Bushmen have to their credit some of the finest and oldest fine art in the world, at sites all over Southern Africa.

The general character of Bushman rock art is naturalistic, and many of the images can be seen equally pictographs, in that they express ideas and are not "fine art for art'southward sake." The large majority of the figures are men and animals, but in that location are a few other objects which are probably symbolic, although their pregnant is not always articulate; In some regions the pictures are painted in colour; elsewhere just engravings or chippings occur. The difference is due to the natural conditions of the state, although it is generally assumed that engravings are more than archaic than paintings. The Prehistoric Colour Palette used by Bushmen artists in their cave painting consisted of globe pigments. Scarlet and brown from bole or heematite; yellowish from atomic number 26 ochre; white from zinc oxide; black from charcoal or soot; blue 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 thin hollow rods sharpened and used like quills.

Note: The earliest art of the African continent - excluding the controversial Stone Age quartzite figurine from Morocco known as the Venus of Tan-Tan (200,000-500,000 BCE) - consists of the engravings in the Blombos Caves on the Cape coast of South Africa, dating from 70,000 BCE, followed by the animal figures from the Apollo eleven Cave in the Huns Mountains of southwestern Namibia, dating from around 25,000 BCE.

African rock paintings and engravings were, curiously, discovered earlier than European ones: those in southern Africa as early every bit the mid 18th century, those in the North in 1847 when they were found by a group of French soldiers who reported engravings of elephants, lions, antelope, bovids, ostriches, gazelles, and human beings armed with bows and arrows. The best-known site of desert paintings in the north is the Tassili plateau, active from the age of Mesolithic fine 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 - at present inhabited past only 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 style of the pictures is naturalistic, animated, and entirely dissimilar both from the conventionalised Libyan-Berber style, and from the early naturalistic, group of the Atlas. They seem to be much more closely related to South African Bushman art. Of item involvement are several polychrome paintings in the Tassili mountains representing graceful human figures with dappled cattle shut by. To the south-westward of this region, the French Ahagger expedition discovered in 1935 another site with the same kind of polychrome wall-paintings, showing various animals, but importantly cattle. A few human being figures are distinguished by extraordinarily animated and oftentimes 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 similar to the type in the Atlas region. There is a strong similarity between the Ahagger paintings and Bushman fine art, and, in addition they accept a striking resemblance to the art of Aboriginal Egypt.

Some of the Saharan paintings depict Negroes and a hunting mode of life (dating from the prehistoric Roundhead period), while others (from the Cattle period, 4000 BCE - 800 CE) show pastoralists, figures with copper-coloured peel and directly pilus who resemble the Fulani cattle-herders of the west African savanna. Art historians take suggested, and ethnographical enquiry partly confirmed, that these works of Neolithic art were created past proto-Fulani groups: they incorporate elements that correspond to features of Fulani myths taught during boys' initiation rites, such as the hermaphroditic cow from whose chest emerge the heads of domestic animals, and the graphic portrayal of what resembles a Fulani initiation field (a circumvolve with the sun in the center and heads of other cows, representing different phases of the moon, spaced around it).

The stone pictures in the Atlas region of Algeria were offset investigated in 1913. They are virtually all engravings: only two pictures painted in ochre were discovered and these belong to earlier periods. Iii principal art groups may be distinguished. There are first the very early naturalistic drawings of animals which are now either extinct in this area, or belong to a very remote geological catamenia. The huge impressive design of a king of beasts at Djattou is a good example. Next come up a group of somewhat less naturalistic drawings, of slightly more than recent date. Finally, there are the comparatively late Libyan-Berber designs, described as in office rather rough animal outlines, in function designs that are of a purely geometric and schematic grapheme.

Classical African Sculpture

Thanks mainly to archaeologists, African bronzes and terracottas no longer belong to an "unknown" past. Detailed comparative studies aided by radiocarbon dating have 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 roofing a range of terracotta sculpture of man and fauna figures institute widely distributed beyond northern Nigeria. They first came to light in tin mines near the village of Nok in Zaria province and have since been dated to the quaternary or 5th century BCE. Some art historians have detected similarities between the stylized homo 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. Only a more convincing proposition is that the Nok style - the principal 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 lid forming a segment of the circle - has many features in common with that of Ife, the religious and one-time capital of the Yoruba people.

One thing is certain: the traditions of African art have non been without development. Radiocarbon dating and oral traditions advise, for case, that the naturalistic style of sculpture at Ife lasted for well-nigh equally long equally bronze-casting in Benin. However, the rich Ife manner 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 degree of naturalization is very marked.

For a comparison with sculpture from the Americas, please come across also: Pre-Columbian art (upwards to 1535 CE).

Less is known most the arts and civilizations of Sao (Lake Chad) and Zimbabwe, but enough to bear witness that they are ethnic 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 almost the Africanness of the Cross River akwanshi of southeastern Nigeria and neigh deadening Cameroon - stone figures that resemble no other works of fine art in whatsoever medium in the whole of Africa. They are phallic in shape, with a general stylistic progression from phallus to human form. Some are little more than dressed and decorated boulders but they are distinguished by profuse surface ornamentation centred on the face, breasts, and omphalus.

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 metal armlets, together with more x,000 beads. Radiocarbon tests agree in dating these objects to the end of the 1st millennium, which makes this the earliest bronze-using culture of Nigeria. The bronzes are extremely detailed castings with elaborate surface decorations, only they differ from other African traditions of casting, such every bit those of Republic of benin and Ife. Moreover, the high standard of wealth they reveal has no parallel in "autonomous" Ibo-land where at that place are no centralized chiefdoms or wealthy aristocracies as among the Yoruba and Republic of benin.

Touch on of Hunting

Like Oceanic art, ane of the most hit aspects of African art is that it is always very much an intimate part of social life, manifest in every aspect of Africans' work, play, and behavior. The style and symbolism of paintings, figures, and masks, therefore, depend on their political, economical, social, and religious contexts, an examination of which often provides valuable insights into the meanings of African art. The Bushmen of the Kalahari desert, for example, hunt in an inhospitable surround, leading a life dominated past their absolute dependence on immediately available resources for survival. At that place is an intense human relationship between the hunters and the hunted, between life and pelting. The Bushmen's anxieties are expressed in their myths, their ceremonies, and their rites, and they are represented besides in their paintings and engravings. Bushman rock paintings not only depict the animals they hunt, rain rituals, and the hunters themselves, merely the animal species that accept greatest mythical meaning. Another group, the Kalabari Ijo, are fishermen who too depend on chance - the luck of the tides, the shifting shoals of fish. Their art also directly reflects their manner of life, their anxieties, and their myths. Living in isolated, self-independent communities in the mangrove swamps of southeastern Nigeria, they believe in water spirits, "Lords of the creeks" who live in a fabulous underwater globe, who are, similar the sculptures that represent them, anthropomorphic or zoomorphic, or a mixture of the 2. The essence of the spirits is independent in the masks and sculpted headdresses worn by the fishermen at masquerades. The types of animals depicted in the masks are selected non for their economical importance just for their symbolic meanings and roles in Ijo myth and ritual.

The Art of the Nomads

The numerous nomadic peoples of Africa are prevented past the very nature of their way of life from owning bulky or heavy works of art. In many cases they adopt literature, the almost portable form of fine art - bucolic poems, epics, tales, and satirical pieces which vividly express a nomadic artful. The Fulani of west Africa are a case in point. They have a positive disdain of the working of woods, iron, and leather; whatsoever 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 compages, elaborate apparel, and ornaments. Authentic Fulani art is therefore rare, and restricted to details of dress, amulets, head-dresses, girls' anklets, ceremonial tools, and containers, and the body itself. Indeed, the Fulani have developed a veritable aesthetic of personal advent, involving various forms of torso art including torso painting and face up painting, too equally piercings and tattoos. From childhood they learn to decorate and pigment themselves, fashion their hair into wonderful shapes and patterns, cultivate fantabulous 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 upwards before the judges, "like sumptuous images of gods", their faces painted in red and indigo patterns, their hair busy with cowries and surmounted by tall headdresses. On both sides of their faces hang fringes of ram'southward beards, chains, beads, and rings. Old women loudly berate those youths who do not come up up to the highest standards of Fulani beauty.

Wooden Sculpture

The greatest contribution Africa has made to world 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 equally colonial trophies and weird museum objects attracted the attention of European artists peachy for new experiences. Andre Derain (1880-1954), Maurice De Vlaminck (1876-1958), Picasso (1881-1973), and Matisse (1867-1954), were in plow overwhelmed past the expressive and abstract qualities of the figures and masks that turned up in Paris from the distant Congo and the French Sudan. Juan Gris even fabricated a cardboard re-create of a funerary figure from Gabonese republic. The interest of these painters led to a generally heightened sensitivity to the qualities of African sculpture, although for many years information technology was a sensitivity that could only react to the pure form and mystery of the sculpture from ignorance of its office or symbolism.

Today nosotros are better informed, although whole corpora of African fine art remain mysterious entities since they were collected long agone, every bit curiosities, from people who had lost sensation of their uses or symbolic meanings.

Amidst the Dogon of Mali there are a number of famous old sculptures, known as tellem, about which neither the Dogon nor archaeology can tell united states of america anything (although innumerable art historians continue to make more or less inspired guesses). Tellem figures usually have uplifted arms and are generally female or sometimes hermaphrodite. Others include animals or anthropomorphic figures carved along the lines of the original curved pieces of forest. With sculptures of this kind we are restricted to formal comparisons of style and subjective aesthetic appreciation. To this course belong the Fang masks and Kota figures, once the new-found "idols" of Derain and Epstein. The plaque backside the head of the Kota figure has been described, confidently, every bit "rays of the sun", "horns of a caprine animal", "a crescent moon", and a "Christian cross".

Bambara Farmers and their Fine art

The majority of Africans are not kings, priests, witchdoctors, and sorcerers, but farmers who spend the greater parts of their lives producing grain or cultivating root crops. Their artful life is closely linked to this fact of their existence. Some of the greatest sculptural traditions of Africa are represented past masks and figures produced to clinch the fertility of the fields and the survival of their cultivators. The Bambara, a Mandinka group of more than than one meg people living in Republic of mali, have become noted for their metalwork, basketry, leatherwork, weaving, dyeing, and woodcarving. Bambara masks are associated with 4 major cult associations: the north'domo, komo, kove, and tyi wara. These societies bring out their masks during both dry and wet seasons; they "help" with the sowing, weeding, and harvesting of the Bambara'south staple crop, millet, and celebrate the coming and going of rain.

The northward'domo mask, with its vertical horns, symbolizes growing millet - the corn will stand up strong and erect like the horns of the mask. The horns are eight in number and ascension up direct in a row, like stretched fingers in a higher place the top of the caput and on the same plane every bit the ears. The horns represent, in a schematic way, the various episodes of the Bambara creation myth, the eight horns in the platonic mask representing the 8 primordial seeds created past God for the building of the universe. The bones pregnant of the horn symbolism derives from the absorption of these organs to the growth of grain and the human liver - Bambara farmers say that animate being horns are to animals what the liver is to humans and what vegetable shoots are to the earth.

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 bully laborer of the soil and guardian of life. The tyi wara mask represents a fabled being, one-half man, one-half brute, who in the past taught men how to farm. During the sowing and growing seasons the tyi wara antelope mask represents the spirits of the woods and h2o, and assures fertility to the fields and to man.

NOTE: In 2007 Swiss scientists excavating a site in Central Republic of mali uncovered sherds of ancient pottery dating back to 9500 BCE, making it the oldest known ceramic ware in Africa. For more, please see: Pottery Timeline.

The Art of the African Kingdoms

Fine art is universally a means of glorifying persons of rank. The presence of objects elaborately carved in such precious materials every bit gold, silver, or ivory unremarkably indicates the presence of a ruling class, surplus wealth, and the wherewithal to apply specialized craftsmen. In Africa, most 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 beget to maintain a group of specialized artists. In Benin the privilege of working bronze was reserved for a special corporation who lived in a special quarter of the town and who came under the command of the Oba - the ruler. Among 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 work. In these situations African fine art is non the result of "instinct" - capturing the soul of an creature or object through a "archaic ecstatic imagination" - but the product of grooming, apprenticeship, and a shut knowledge of tradition.

The creative person in an African chiefdom worked portraits, insignia, and emblems to portray the rex and his royal relatives as special, awe-inspiring figures, and to brand them outlast the short periods of their lifetimes past commemorating them in fine art. So kings are shown every bit powerful and cute, without blemish and usually without expression, bedecked with royal symbols. The chiefs themselves habiliment first-class cloths and ornaments, sit down on loftier, ornate stools, and sleep on elaborately carved beds. Artistic product under royal control is also used to emphasize the need for the royal degree to control its subjects, and princes frequently apply art objects to terrify citizens.

In Africa, as well as in Europe, the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a master or an oligarchy often results in a local renaissance of the arts. Ashanti and Dahomey are good modern examples, where vivid courts, receptive to multiple influences, produced distinctive and sumptuous art styles. In Dahomey the male monarch concentrated on the working of argent, brass, and the production of appliqué work in his court. Wall sculptures decorated the palace, depicting historical and emblematic scenes and battles. Amidst the Ashanti, trade in gold and slaves brought great wealth to the kings who made the working of gold a courtroom monopoly. Their goldsmiths formed a respected and privileged caste and produced ceremonial objects and portraits, the about famous of which is the gilt mask from the treasury of Male monarch Kofi Kakari (Wallace Collection, London). Pocket-sized weights bandage in contumely were likewise produced in order to weigh gold dust.

Kuba-Bushong Art

One of the richest artistic zones in Africa covers the basins of the Kwango, Kasai, Katanga, and northward-western Angola. This is an intermediary zone betwixt forest and savanna occupied by 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 royal cults. Among the Luba, for example, statues of kings and queens, caryatid stools, headrests, scepters, maces, and arms were produced to reflect the might and glory of the rulers. Amid the Kuba the dominant Bushong grouping inspired an aristocratic culture that imbued social life with a passion for dazzler and ornamentation. Kuba fine art and decoration flourished in all aspects of daily life - in building, metalworking, basketry, and weaving. Artistic endeavor became a style of life for many: even rulers were often artists and sculptors. Fine art was used to glorify Bushong kings, statues of whom are masterpieces of Kuba sculpture and have been made since the 17th century. All bear witness the male monarch seated, his legs crossed, wearable-ing emblems of sacred kingship. They are small, barely more than 20 in (fifty cm) high. Their faces are expressionless, their eyelids half closed; the artists take accomplished remarkable appearances of timeless repose and deep gravity. Like all adept kings they are fatty and adorned with bracelets, anklets, belts, and necklaces. While the statues have a similar full general grade, they are non identical and individual details have been given to their faces. Withal 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 rex to the next.

Undercover Societies Mask Art

Chiefs and wealthy individuals are not the simply patrons of art. In Africa important objects may be commissioned by lineage groups and, in societies without chiefs, works of art are most frequently held in common by members of associations of of import men which perform governing besides every bit religious functions. The qualifications for membership of such cult associations, age grades, or secret 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 detail statues or other sacred paraphernalia.

Perchance the about famous "clandestine society" is that of the Poro, the membership of which is well-nigh densely concentrated among the Mande- and Kpe-speaking peoples of Liberia and southern Sierra Leone although it also spreads, ordinarily under different names, into Guinea and the Ivory coast. Closely continued with the men's Poro are the Sande or Bundu women'south associations which take the class of lodges amidst the women of specific chiefdoms. Both male and female societies maintain cycles of ceremonies continued with the recruitment and initiation of members. The main 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 past the masked impersonators of the nature spirits who are centrolineal with the founders of the land.

Throughout the area of the Paro and Sande nosotros find mostly 2 types of mask: the sleek, naturalistic masks associated with the proper noun Dan, and the violently contrasting, roughly finished "Great Masks". There are also subsidiary masks used to enforce law and guild 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. At that place are besides miniature copies of the large masks, three to 4 in (vii.5 to 10 cm) long, which are worn by those initiated into the undercover societies.

The Bang-up Mask of the Poro is a vehement, abstruse representation of the demon of the woods. Its stylized confront is supposed to correspond a long-dead, almost mythical ancestor of great wisdom - the civilization hero who introduced the Poro to the land of men. The Mask is the symbol and oracle of the priest, who, as judge and clan leader, is allowed to keep the mask on behalf of the Poro. Using it he can obtain the sanction of the ancestors to punish criminal and civil offenders. When of import disputes are to be settled, the priest carries the Mask to the meeting of the elders and places it on the footing under a
white material. Whatever homo judgment reached is considered tentative until the Mask has indicated its approving.

The use of the Great Mask in such a way usefully provides divine ratification: judgment is considered to come from the spirit world, via the Mask, not from human beings. The Mask takes responsibility, for instance, for the decease 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 tearing quarrels the priest puts on the Mask and stops the litigants with his discussion. Bottom Masks,are also used to act as messengers or policemen.

The Nifty Mask itself is characterized past protuberant optics, faced with perforated prc or metal disks, cherry-red felt lips, and a long bristles hung with palm nuts or beads. Its typical thick patina comes from black, dried blood from sacrifices and the reddish remains of chewed kola basics spat into the mouth of the Mask by the priest.

During the bodily Poro initiation rites the Cracking Mask appears mysteriously four times, merely to utter a secret phrase at which all autumn prostrate to the ground. Modest masks, known as ge, are used to subject field and educate the initiates. The masks act as officials controlling the women and children outside the village, or work as scavengers rounding up food past begging, borrowing, and stealing from citizens.

In appearance Ge masks are hideous, combining brute and human being features. They are said to exist artistic attempts to correspond the belief that spirit power has both animate being and spiritual attributes - the combination of traits, plus baloney, suggesting that in that location 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 exist acquired past the masks when they ingest the boys and later give nativity to them. After their rebirth from the stomachs of the masks, the initiates sit on mats with blankets over their faces and in 2 days the masks teach them everything all over again - how to walk, eat, and defecate. Well-nigh the end of the session the Great Mask, with its deep growling voice, takes the boys to the waterside where they are washed and given new names.

Girls are likewise initiated into the Bundu or Sande societies. At their coming-our anniversary they are all-powerful with oil, their pilus is beautifully coiffed, and they wear rich dress and jewelry. They parade to the accessory 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 textile costume and raffia veils. The form and symbolism of the mask vary picayune. The most conspicuous fea-tures are the spiral neck, the complicated ornament of the hairstyle, and the pocket-sized triangular face.

Come across: American Indian art, for a comparison with American masks.

Fine art and Kinship

The most important feature of many African societies, and the source of political action within them, is kinship, in the form of corporate lineage organizations. Art frequently serves equally an adjunct and symbol of the powers of lineage and clan. Among the Bakwele, lineage elders meet together in times of crisis and effort to circumvent the trouble through the use of masks. Amidst 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 proceeds influence through their age, their personal magic, and their possession of art objects. The Lega have included carvers able to produce original and skillfully-fabricated work in a variety of materials; their masks and figurines are used by the bwame clan in its dramatic and ritual performances. The objects used in initiation ceremonies present a complex of symbols that assistance translate the essence of Lega order and thinking from bwame elders to initiates. They are corporately endemic past lineages and as they pass from hand to mitt they act equally symbols of the continuity of Lega lineages and as the link between the expressionless 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, even when this community, as in the instance of the Ashanti, is a centralized kingdom. Everybody traces his descent through his mother and belongs to his mother'due south 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 head of the lineage offers food for the ancestors. In the main rite in the installation of an Ashanti main, 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 ten blackness stools preserved in retentiveness of ten Ashanti kings. The Golden Stool, traditionally believed to accept been brought from the heaven past the first king's priest and councillor, is a mass of solid gilded with bells of copper, brass, and aureate attached to it.

Religious Fine art

Although our increased knowledge of African societies means that social and aesthetic functions are now assigned to many works of art previously considered as items for religious use only, much African art essentially has a religious and symbolic part. Members of the Yoruba, for case, are the almost prolific African carvers and the largest concentration of their sculpture is religious art devoted to the cults of the various orishas or gods. Elsewhere, masquerades and other ritual performances use masks and carved figures to enact basic myths.

Dogon fine art is explicitly religious in character: information technology depicts the ancestors, the get-go mythical beings, the atavistic blacksmith, the horseman with the ark carrying skills and crafts, and mythical animals. Their cosmological arrangement and its relation to the content of their art has been explored in marvelous detail by a team of French anthropologists and art historians. So in social club to comprehend the meaning of the Dogon Grand Mask we have to sympathize the significant of the Dogon cosmos myth and the journal Sigi festival, which regulate Dogon religious life. The 1000 Mask is the double of the mythical antecedent; in making the new mask the carver deceives the soul of the ancestor and persuades it to enter into its new home. When the Grand Mask is exposed to public view but the base pole is visible, since the caput is cached in a pile of stones. Other Dogon masks are less sacred although their performances may reflect special signs and symbols and parts of the creation myth.

Much of the cosmological thought of many African societies centers on twinness and androgyny. Amid the Bangwa, a Bamileke people of Cameroon, twins and their parents are revered, twin births being considered perfect births representing a primordial and androgynous earth when dual births were the rule. A woman who produces twins is feted by the whole village 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 fatigued inspiration from these twin parents and there are a number of statues of women and men carrying twins or wearing the symbols of twinship. Mayhap 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.

Amongst the Yoruba, twins are also 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 like real children, since each is believed to incorporate the soul of a expressionless twin. Everything done for a alive child is done for the ibeji: it receives gifts and new clothes. Regular sacrifices are besides made to it in an attempt to forbid the soul of the deceased from harming his living twin or mother. The conveying of the ibeji as well prevents the mother from becoming infertile.

Ibeji figurines are homogeneous in course - minor, continuing statuettes, nude in most cases although some are carved with an apron-like garment. Usually the proportional size of the head to the torso is larger than that of the model; the genitals are carved, and the finished object colored - the caput often stained a different color from the torso. The face is oval with prominent eyeballs, the forehead convex, the olfactory organ broad, the ears stylized. The lips are generally prominent, carved to form 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 have a diversity of scarification marks and hairstyles.

The Art of Witchcraft

Throughout Africa, witchcraft has some remarkably mutual features, the term itself usually referring to malign activities attributed to homo beings who actuate supernatural powers in social club to harm others. Near witches work by night; they have the ability to wing and embrace long distances in a flash. During peregrinations the torso of the witch remains behind, the other self traveling invisibly or in fauna form. They are fond of homo mankind, making their victims ill and consuming their bodies subsequently burial.

And so illness and death can exist imputed to supernatural causes, and fine art objects, in clan with magical techniques and ritual, are used to gainsay them. These objects are usually known as fetishes, a word that should really exist reserved for a kind of "machine" - the word "fetish" comes from "fetico", the Portuguese word which means 'an object made by the hand of man made by diviners or sorcerers and equanimous of various materials and medicines in order to draw upon the immanent life-forces of these substances'. In fact the condiment material may be more of import than the bones sculpture and consists of miscellaneous objects-crabs, animal bones and horns, teeth, feathers, parts of birds, buttons, cloth, and pieces of iron. Even if at first sight this conglomerate of objects seems haphazard and mundane, the accoutrements of a fetish all have symbolic value and meaning for their owners and the persons affected by them.

The best-known fetishes were originally plant 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 among his subjects, declaring, "Our Lord gave, in the stone and forest you lot worship, for to build houses and kindle fire". Hundreds of types of fetishes have since been collected 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 be the cause of supernatural harm to others. In spite of its fame, this art class has non been studied in great item.

Throughout Africa, art objects are used in the divination of the supernatural causes of disease. Among the Bamileke, the traditional anti-witchcraft society, the kungang, is chosen together during times of crunch and epidemic to purify the country and decimate witches through the agency of their powerful fetishes. Kungang figures are carved with great skill; they unremarkably have exaggeratedly bloated stomachs to indicate the dreadful dropsy which is one of the supernatural sanctions of the fetish. They also symbolize a more sympathetic magic: the bent artillery 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 concentrated in a thick patina formed from the blood of chickens sacrificed during anti-witchcraft oathing rites. Nearly of them accept a minor panel in their stomach or back which can be opened for the insertion of medicines.

Art for Art'due south Sake

African art is multi-functional: information technology serves as a handmaiden of authorities, religion, and even economic science. It likewise serves to entertain. West African masquerades, in particular, belie the generalization that in traditional African cultures there is no such thing as art for art's sake. Even when performances are associated with ritual and belief, aesthetics and theatricality are never ignored. In many Due west African societies, masquerades appear during the second burial ceremonies performed for all dead adults. In most cases the aim of the performance is non merely to imbue religious awe or to seek bequeathed protection, although these play a part, just 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 member of the masquerades the masks should be equally spectacular as possible, and zero - non even a monkey'southward skull or a European doll - is unacceptable on a mask which usually becomes much more elaborate one time information technology 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 form of a bear or attached to the front and back of the head of the masks. Pare-covering may exist used, as among 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 mod polychrome paints.

A consideration of the decoration of the Ibo mbari houses will demonstrate that an art course cannot merely be categorized as "primarily religious" or even "primarily artful". Here, elaborate stucco embellishments are created in accolade of the goddess Ala at the beginning of the yam farming cycle. During a menses of seclusion, peculiarly selected persons create a profusion of sculptures and reliefs which are and then displayed to the full general public. During this catamenia they sing songs in honour of the earth goddess and subsidiary gods. The mbari objects are diverse and may represent gods, human beings, hunting scenes, women and men copulating, and women giving nascency. The main effigy is Ala who is sculpted and painted last, sometimes with her two children. Associated with her are phallic figures, constructed for the invocation of human and farm fertility. Mbari is non simply religious fine 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 footing that a mbari should reveal every phase of human being existence because information technology is a concentration of the whole of human being life, including its taboos. Ibo art, like all African fine art, is marvellously eclectic. In the mbari, Christ on his cantankerous stands aslope Ala the world goddess. Tradition is renewed past the artist'due south private inspiration and the use of external influences. Profound moral purpose and pure entertainment combine to make mbari a dynamic and firsthand art form.

Source: We gratefully acknowledge the apply of material in the above 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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