The history of African art and architecture
spans a vast period, beginning as early as 25,500 bc and continuing to the present. Among
the earliest surviving examples of African art are images of animals painted on
rock slabs found in caves in Namibia. Animal images painted on or cut into rocks
and canyon walls in the Sahara date from 6000 to 4000 bc. Later Saharan rock art depicts
ritual activities, herding, and food preparation. The earliest known African
sculptures (500 bc to ad 200) are sculpted clay heads and
human figures from central Nigeria. Many surviving examples of African art date
from the 14th to the 17th century. However, most of the African art known today
is relatively recent, from the 19th century or later. Very little earlier
African art has survived, primarily because it was made largely of perishable
materials such as wood, cloth, and plant fibers, and because it typically met
with intensive use in ceremonies and in daily life. Scholars of African art base
suppositions about earlier art mainly on art of the last two centuries, but they
can only guess at the earlier traditions from which the recent art
developed.
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African rock art |
African art does not constitute a single
tradition. Africa is an enormous continent with hundreds of cultures that have
their own languages, religious beliefs, political systems, and ways of doing
things. Each culture produces its own distinctive art and architecture, with
variations in materials, intentions, and results. Whereas some cultures excel in
carving wood, others are known for casting objects in metal. In one culture a
decorated pot might be used for cooling water, while in another culture a
similar pot is used in ritual ceremonies.
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Mbayi Mbayo Club, Nigeria |
The major types of art produced in Africa are
masks, statues, furniture, textiles, pottery, baskets, beadwork, and metalwork.
Most objects that are sculpted or shaped—masks and statues, for example—are
created chiefly by men and depict human or animal forms. Where two-dimensional
art exists, as in textile design or painted decoration on houses, it is
generally produced by women.
II |
|
THE CULTURAL ROLE OF AFRICAN
ART |
African art, unlike most European art,
generally serves a function. The art may satisfy an everyday household need,
adorn the body, or fulfill a social or religious role. These objects of use also
have artistic value because skilled artisans have designed and created them with
a strong concern for visual beauty and symbolic meaning. Art objects that serve
basic household needs include baskets, water vessels, eating utensils, carved
headrests, and stools. Ritual objects include masks used in ceremonies and
statues that commemorate and guard the remains of important ancestors. Personal
adornment may take the form of decorative body scars, jewelry, or staffs and
other objects that identify a person’s social status. African art objects rarely
serve only one purpose. A piece of jewelry, for example, may adorn the body,
indicate prestige, and at the same time be the focal point of a ritual that
protects the wearer from negative forces.
African cultures design many utilitarian
objects—such as furniture, dishes, and utensils—with decorative schemes in mind.
Among the most common decorative objects made for everyday use in Africa are
baskets, handmade pottery, carved wooden vessels, eating utensils, stools, and
headrests.
A1 |
|
Baskets, Pottery, and
Utensils |
|
Wooden Kuba Cup |
Baskets, which serve as useful containers
for carrying and storing goods, can be woven or coiled from a number of
materials that come from plants. These include sisal from the agave plant, bark,
grass, raffia from palm fibers, and reeds. Woven baskets, most often made by
men, can hold clothing and personal items such as medicines or makeup. Women
usually make baskets by the coil method—winding fibers into coils and then
binding the coils together with additional strips of fiber. Some baskets are
bound so tightly that they can hold water. Zulu and Ndebele women from southern
Africa use binding strips made of colored fiber to create intricate patterns in
their coiled baskets. Inspiration for these patterns comes from nature—the
joints of sugarcane plants, for example—and from spearheads and other handmade
items.
Most pottery is used for storing and
serving liquids and other foods, although some is made for ritual use. Making
pots is generally a woman’s task, but in western and central Africa there are
male potters as well, and who makes what generally depends on the pottery’s
purpose. Among some peoples in Nigeria, for example, women make pots that are
for household use, while men make pots used in rituals. Both produce delicate,
thin-walled pots, but they use different methods. As when making baskets, women
usually employ a coil technique, rolling long strips of clay into coils, which
they then stack to form the pot. They sometimes shape a pot by stacking the
coils around a mold. Men also use molds, but they form their pots from flat
slabs of clay rather than from coils. The Igbo people of Nigeria have
traditionally decorated both household and ceremonial pots with grooves,
bosses (small knobs), and raised designs. Similar decorations appear on
double-bowled pots used for offerings in community shrines.
Spoons and other eating utensils are
typically made of wood and may carry elaborate, carved decoration. Decorative
vessels used as containers for food or water, or as drinking dishes, may be made
of wood or clay. Household objects such as these may also impart prestige,
indicating their owner’s rank or status. For example, in the 19th century the
Kuba of central Africa carved wooden vessels in the shape of human bodies or
heads from which they drank palm wine in the palace, in men’s clubhouses, and at
funerary rituals. Kings and chiefs distributed these cups to gain the loyalty of
their followers.
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Luba Caryatid Stool |
Stools and headrests are the traditional
forms of furniture in Africa. Stools, like other household items, can have both
everyday and spiritual functions. Carved out of wood, some stools are very
elaborate in design, especially when intended for a ceremony. The Luba people of
central Africa produce caryatid stools, in which a male or female figure
carved out of wood supports the stool’s seat. These stools appear only at the
king’s investiture (taking office) ceremonies. On most Luba stools, a
kneeling female caryatid represents the owner’s important female ancestors.
Among the Ashanti of Ghana, a subgroup of the Akan people, there are both sacred
and domestic stools. The most sacred stool of all is the Golden Stool, which is
a symbol of the Ashanti nation. No one is allowed to sit on the Golden Stool;
instead, it is enshrined on its own chair. The Ashanti valued their domestic or
personal stools highly because they believed a person’s spirit was absorbed into
the stool each time that person sat on it. When not in use, the stool was placed
on its side so that no one else could use it. A typical Ashanti stool consists
of a curved seat with an intricately carved support that indicated the owner’s
social status.
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Shona Headrest |
Wooden headrests, used instead of a
pillow to support the head and neck during sleep, have been an important
household item in much of Africa. Often carved elaborately, they look like
miniature stools with a curved platform for the base of the head atop a
decoratively carved support. Because they elevated the head, headrests also
protected the elaborate hairstyles of men and women during sleep. Among the
Shona of southern Africa, headrests carved with geometric designs served an
additional function: facilitating communication with ancestor spirits. In Shona
belief, a man who dreamed was visiting his ancestors. Today, only Shona
diviners (people with special spiritual powers) use headrests for this
purpose.
Belief in the supernatural has
traditionally played an important role in many African societies (see
African Religions). This belief incorporates elements of magic (belief in
the mystic potency of certain persons or objects), animism (belief in the
existence of spirits of several kinds), and religion (belief in the existence of
gods and goddesses who must be appeased through rituals). Rituals are meant to
exert control over the uncertainties of life by harnessing positive forces from
ancestors, gods, or other spirits and by limiting negative forces. The
performance of these rituals calls for special objects, including masks,
headdresses, and statues. Many ritual objects are believed to house powerful
spirits or to provide a means of communication with such spirits.
Masks are worn during festivals,
celebrations, and ceremonies whose purposes are to cleanse, honor, entertain,
initiate, or bless. A mask serves both to disguise and to protect the wearer,
who is most often male, as he performs in dances or theatrical skits. Most masks
are carved of wood, although some are made of cloth and other materials. They
may be decorated with paint, beads, cloth, or raffia.
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Traditional Dance, Zimbabwe |
.
Masks can be divided into two categories:
facemasks, which cover only the face, and helmet masks, which cover the entire
head. The Baule, a subgroup of the Akan of western Africa, have several types of
masks, each associated with a specific function. Baule masks are worn to protect
the community from dangers, celebrate a harvest, honor and entertain important
visitors, or commemorate people who have died. A judge ruling on a criminal case
may wear an aggressive wooden helmet mask with horns to impress and terrify
wrongdoers. A smaller facemask with female features is used in performances that
entertain and honor members of the community.
People in all cultures adorn their bodies
in some way, typically with jewelry, hairstyles, or clothing. In Africa people
also adorn their bodies with tattoos, scars, and other body art; they may also
reshape their earlobes or lips. Adornment can serve as an expression of beauty
and also as an indication of a person’s title, age, social status, or membership
in an exclusive group. It may also protect against danger or assure health or
success in war.
Baule Mask
Scarification is the practice of cutting
the skin and introducing irritants into the wound to produce a permanent scar.
Although rarely practiced today, scarification has a long tradition in many
African cultures, and these traditional markings continue to appear on carved
statues and pottery figures. Most scars were made on the face, back, chest, or
around the navel. Scarification could indicate status or ethnic affiliation, or
it could offer protection against harmful spirits. For example, among the Somba
people of Benin and Togo, in western Africa, scarification indicated a person’s
stage in life. An individual received his or her first marks at the age of 14,
signifying the transition from childhood to adulthood.
In Africa, both men and women adorn
themselves with jewelry, which can include earrings, necklaces, armlets, rings,
pendants, belts, and bracelets. Jewelry may be made of gold, brass, leather, or
ivory, and it may be embellished with beads, feathers, or seeds. Among the
Masai, a nomadic people of eastern Africa, belts, beaded earrings, and ostrich
feathers indicate the stage a man has reached in life. In the past, a Masai man
who had not yet killed a lion would wear ostrich feathers.
Both men and women dye cloth and stamp
or weave designs into textiles used for clothing. Like jewelry, textiles may be
used to indicate social status or group membership. Among the Akan of western
Africa, only royalty were allowed to wear a fabric known as Kente cloth. The
earliest surviving examples of Kente cloth date from the 16th century; they
consist of woven strips of blue- and-white silk sewn together. This cloth
signified the wearer’s status and through its patterns might also allude to a
proverb or a historic event. Today, a more brightly colored version of Kente
cloth is popular among all social classes.
IV |
|
ARCHITECTURE IN
AFRICA |
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Hausa House in Nigeria |
The way of life in Africa’s rural
settlements determines the types of dwellings built. Settled farming societies
have different requirements than herding societies, which are usually nomadic.
Other rural societies in Africa are based on farming, hunting, and gathering in
various combinations.
Of the many types of traditional rural
dwellings, relatively permanent houses grouped in villages are found only in
agricultural settlements. A typical farming village consists of a number of
family compounds along with structures that serve the larger community. Each
family compound may have separate structures for cooking, eating, sleeping,
storing food, and protecting animals at night. Structures may be round,
rectangular, or semicircular. Communal structures, for holding meetings and
teaching children, are located in a prominent place in the village.
The Dogon people of southern Mali
cultivate grain on a plateau at the top of the Bandiagara cliffs near the Niger
River. They construct villages on the steep sides of the cliffs. Their
rectangular houses are built of sun-dried mud brick and stone. The roofs are
thatched, and the dwellings rest on ledges along the cliffs. The Dogon store and
protect their harvest in granaries that have beautifully carved wooden doors and
decorative locks. Figures carved on many granary doors represent sets of male
and female twins, which symbolize fertility and agricultural abundance.
The Zulu of southern Africa, who cultivate
grain and raise livestock, have traditionally built houses shaped like beehives.
They arrange these houses in a circular, fenced compound, and they keep their
cattle in the middle of the compound. Zulu houses are made of thatch that covers
a framework of wooden strips and is bound together with a rope lattice.
Nomadic herders need homes that they can
easily build and take apart when they move their herds to different ground. The
Masai of eastern Africa, for example, construct homes using a framework of
sticks that they seal with cattle dung.
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Thatch House in Nigeria |
Many rural societies in Africa adorn the
outsides of houses with painted designs or with relief (raised) patterns
worked into a soft clay surface. The job of decorating houses generally belongs
to the women. Frafra women of northern Ghana decorate the walls of houses and
other buildings with geometric patterns that communicate information about the
social status of a building’s owner. Ndebele women in Zimbabwe and the
northeastern part of South Africa paint the mud walls of their houses with
geometric patterns based on the shapes of windows, steps, and other building
features and everyday objects. Traditionally, Africans have used natural clays
as paints, but today brightly colored acrylic paints are popular.
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Sankore Mosque |
Towns and city-states may have buildings
that are larger and more elaborate than those in rural settlements. These
buildings serve the purposes of government, trade, or organized religion. In
general, towns and city-states have developed where trade has brought people
together or where conquest has merged neighboring ethnic groups. Consequently,
these settlements were built for diverse groups of people rather than for family
units.
A good example of a diverse community is
Whydah (Ouidah), a coastal city in the former Kingdom of Dahomey (now southern
Benin). In the 17th and 18th centuries slave trade with the Americas turned this
city into a major trading and commercial center. The presence of foreign traders
greatly influenced the architecture in Whydah, where indigenous mud-brick
buildings stand next to buildings in South American styles. These styles were
transported from Brazil to Africa in the 19th century by returning slaves of
African ancestry.
As a result of trade across the Sahara,
many towns developed along the southern edge of the desert, especially in Mali.
Mosques, palaces, and houses met the needs of the inhabitants: Arab traders,
rulers, and common people. Tombouctou (Timbuktu) in Mali is one of the
best-known settlements in this area, but the city of Djenné was even more
important. Djenné served as a center of Islamic learning and as a commercial
center for the trade of gold, slaves, and salt. It boasts one of the oldest
mosques in the region.
The Great Mosque of Djenné was built in
the 13th and 14th centuries to provide Islamic traders with a center for prayer.
The Djenné mosque consists of a main structure of baked mud with vertical
buttresses (wall supports) that rise to pinnacles; on the roof is a flat
terrace lined with palm fronds and wooden or ceramic spouts that drain water
from the terrace. The eastern facade of the structure has three hollow
minarets (towers from which worshipers are called to prayer) rhythmically
interspersed between 18 buttresses. The Djenné mosque has come to represent
Islamic style in this region and has been imitated in many of the mosques along
the Niger River valley in Mali.
Palaces to house the king and his court
were often built out of the same materials and in the same basic forms as
ordinary houses, although palaces had thicker walls, more elaborate designs, and
larger spaces. Some palaces were so large they resembled towns inside of towns.
In what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the palaces of Kuba kings
were mazelike in their complexity. They were typically situated on a mound in
the center of town so that the king could see the entire town from the palace. A
palace had two main sections: one for the king and one for his wives and
children. Mats woven with beautiful designs formed the palace walls. Because of
their fragility and impermanence, these mats required constant maintenance.
Architects kept plans and records of palace and town layouts so that public
buildings, streets, plazas, private compounds, and the palace itself could be
re-created if the capital had to move.
In Nigeria, the Yoruba built more
permanent palaces of sun-dried mud bricks. These palaces consisted of a series
of courtyards, with each courtyard flanked by four rectangular units. Mud bricks
formed the outer walls of each unit, and an overhanging roof shaded a veranda on
the courtyard side. At the entrance to every Yoruba palace was a set of double
wooden doors, intricately carved with abstract designs and images of human and
animal figures. The Olowo Palace in Owo, southeastern Nigeria, had as many as
100 courtyards. Each courtyard had a specific function and was dedicated to a
particular deity. The largest, said to have been twice the size of an American
football field, was used for public assemblies and festivals. Some courtyards
were paved with quartz pebbles or broken pottery. Pillars supporting the veranda
roofs were carved with statues of the king mounted on a horse or shown with his
senior wife.
In 17th-century Ghana, art and
architectural traditions of the Ashanti Kingdom proclaimed the godlike powers of
the king. For example, much of the art associated with the king was made of
gold, a symbol of endurance, the soul, and the giving and safeguarding of life.
The king represented the soul and vitality of the nation, and gold reinforced
this image of him. The Ashanti king’s palace had several oblong courtyards
surrounded by rectangular buildings. The walls of the palace compound and the
shrines included inside were decorated with curving, abstract designs modeled
out of mud and painted. Although the Ashanti never converted to Islam, Muslims
living nearby probably influenced these decorations. Indeed, the patterns recall
those of Hausa houses in northern Nigeria, where Islam is strong.
Ancestors of the Shona in Zimbabwe, the
Karanga, built the ancient city-state of Great Zimbabwe. Great Zimbabwe
flourished from the 12th to the 15th century, most likely as a center of trade.
Some of this trade was with Arabs and Asians who arrived on the nearby east
African coast by ship. The surviving ruins of numerous large stone structures
testify to Great Zimbabwe’s wealth and power. A massive wall known as the Great
Enclosure rings the largest complex of buildings, which probably served as the
palace. The Great Enclosure was skillfully crafted from locally quarried stones,
without the use of mortar or cement, and rises as high as 10 m (32 ft), with
walls up to 5 m (17 ft) thick. At the top, two rows of cut stones are arranged
in a double chevron (V-shaped) pattern. Most of the buildings inside the
wall were built of interwoven reeds and branches, known as wattlework,
and were reinforced with mud bricks and sheltered by a thatched roof. (The use
of wattlework as a building technique continues today.) Remains of enclosures
for livestock, along with pottery figurines of cattle, show that the inhabitants
were probably animal herders at one time, and continued to raise livestock after
they became traders.
One of the most distinctive structures
in the Great Enclosure is the Conical Tower, which is 9 m (30 ft) tall and built
of stone. It may have provided a symbolic representation of the king’s power. At
a short distance from the Great Enclosure, another set of structures called the
Hill Complex may have been used for defense or for religious purposes.
VI |
|
INFLUENCE OF AFRICAN ART ON WESTERN
ART |
In the 20th century, African art has
greatly influenced much Western art and the concepts of beauty that underlie it.
For centuries, however, exposure to African art had little effect on European
art. The concepts behind African art—its function in ritual and its emphasis on
abstract patterning rather than representation—made it so foreign to European
sensibilities that many Europeans did not consider it art at all. In the 20th
century, a search for new artistic forms led European artists to look anew at
the abstract forms of African art.
|
Ivory Salt |
Prior to the 20th century,
anthropologists and others who were interested in African cultures viewed the
objects these cultures produced as interesting cultural artifacts, but they did
not consider them as art. The earliest documented entry of a piece of African
art into a European collection occurred around 1470, with a work that a
Portuguese collector acquired from the kingdom of Kongo. By the late 19th
century, many more Europeans were collecting objects from sub-Saharan Africa.
They housed them in ethnographic museums, alongside examples of flora and fauna,
as artifacts of exotic cultures.
B |
|
Influence on Modern
Art |
|
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon |
Wider recognition of the artistic value
of African artifacts began in the early 20th century. Western artists at that
time sought to break free from established artistic conventions, and in doing so
they rediscovered African sculpture. Their enthusiasm for African art was based
on form; Western artists had only vague and romanticized ideas about the
cultures that had produced the art.
Modern European art movements such as
cubism, expressionism, and fauvism exploded with a new freedom of form that drew
strongly on African art. The abstract character of African art refreshed and
inspired pioneers of modern European art such as painters Pablo Picasso, André
Derain, and Amedeo Modigliani and sculptors Constantin Brancusi, Alberto
Giacometti, and Henry Moore.
Spanish artist Pablo Picasso’s Les
demoiselles d’Avignon (1907, Museum of Modern Art, New York City) is
probably the best-known Western painting inspired by African art. It features a
group of female figures whose angular forms and large facial features resemble
African masks. Although Picasso denied any African influence on this painting,
his friend and colleague André Derain wrote that he introduced Picasso to
African art in 1905, and Picasso himself later spoke of the strong impression
African art had made on him.
African art also inspired many
20th-century American artists. In 1902 American artist Meta Warrick Fuller
created Talking Skull, a sculpture based on reliquary figures from the
Kota of Gabon. More recently, American sculptor Martin Puryear borrowed the
forms and traditional techniques of African basketry and carpentry, adapting
them to the more formal and abstract aims of modern Western art. In the 1990s
American artist Renée Stout based her sculptures on figures created by the Kongo
people of central Africa.
The study of the history of African art
presents a number of challenges. Most surviving objects are of relatively recent
origin because so much African art is made of perishable materials, such as wood
or grasses. It also is subjected to vigorous use, in contrast to most Western
art, which is displayed in houses or museums. Moreover, researchers have no
scientific tests that can accurately date objects of relatively recent origin.
In many cases, they must rely on records provided by those who collected the
art.
Because early ethnographers
(scientists who study human cultures) collected works of African art as cultural
artifacts rather than as art, they generally failed to record the names of
individual artists, precise dates for the objects, or information on why or how
the objects were used. Nor did they concern themselves with the aesthetic or
cultural values that Africans associated with these objects. As a result, the
topics that routinely concern historians of Western art—the style and
development of specific artists, the chronology of artistic trends, or the more
subtle aspects of those trends—are considerably more difficult to research in
studying African art.
It was not until the end of the 19th
century that Western perceptions about African art began to change. A British
expedition in 1897, which destroyed and looted the city of Benin, brought back a
number of artifacts, and in the early 20th century other expeditions were
launched to acquire objects from central Africa. These objects are now on
display in museums in the West, although an effort to have them returned to
Africa was underway at the turn of the 21st century. As collections of African
art have grown, Westerners have gradually come to a fuller understanding of
African art, its cultural functions, and its aesthetic values.