I.

Introduction

African Art and Architecture, the art and architecture of the peoples of the African continent, from prehistoric times to the 21st century.

II.

Origins and Sources

Art in Africa has found expression in a range of media from architecture, sculpture, and pottery, to music, dance, textiles, body adornment, and epic poetry. Each of these has its own complex and in many cases unresearched local history of stylistic development.

Tracing the history of African art and architecture is made problematic by the fragmentary state of the evidence. Archaeology in Africa has made great strides in recent decades but remains under-financed and often hindered by unauthorized digging at key sites. Until the mid-19th century, most European contact with sub-Saharan Africa was in many areas limited to coastal regions, although the accounts of the kingdoms of Benin and Kongo provided by 16th- and 17th-century traders and missionaries mainly from Portugal are useful exceptions. Arab scholars are also a source of some valuable information, particularly concerning the medieval African empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay, but also with regard to the East African coast. While a few symbolic writing systems were developed in areas of sub-Saharan Africa in the pre-colonial period, they were not used to preserve historical records. Except in Christian Ethiopia, and a few areas where Arabic chronicles exist, local conceptions of history were preserved by oral transmission, often by a specialized group of griots, or bards. The combination of these various sources, together with inferences drawn from late 19th- and 20th-century data, has allowed scholars to identify what appear to be some of the major building blocks of a history of art in each of the regions of sub-Saharan Africa, but it is clear that many questions remain to be answered.

Although the nature of the complex history of interactions between Egyptian art and architecture and artistic traditions elsewhere on the African continent is controversial and will only be clarified by continuing archaeological research, the development of Nubian civilization is an important aspect of a wider engagement between sub-Saharan Africa and the Mediterranean world that belies the familiar cliché of isolated tribal cultures. The Coptic Christian culture that developed subsequently in both Sudan and Ethiopia struggled to maintain these links, although the Islamic conquest of northern Africa in the 8th century left the Ethiopian Church effectively cut off from the rest of Christendom for long periods. The trans-Saharan trade routes, already centuries old, provided the means for the introduction of Islam to West Africa, beginning a long process of expansion and conversion that still continues. The impact of Islam on the artistic traditions of sub-Saharan Africa has been less profound than might have been expected: African Islam has generally been accommodating to much local practice and indeed in West Africa some Muslim groups treasure and employ images of their holy men.

An African response to the earliest European presence in West Africa is apparent in the depiction of European merchants and soldiers in the cast brass plaques made in the 16th century in Benin, as well as the finely carved ivory salt cellars and hunting horns brought back by sailors from Kongo, Benin, and the coast of Sierra Leone. Increasing European involvement on the African continent over the following centuries has had a far-reaching impact that continues to be felt today. It would, however, be a denial of the creative agency of African artistic responses to changing circumstances to see this impact as wholly negative.

III.

Europe and the Art of Africa

Western engagement with the rich variety of African artistic creativity has inevitably been selective, and conditioned by troubled episodes in African history, notably slavery and colonialism. Scholarship dealing with art and artefacts in Africa has often struggled to move beyond the legacy of outdated stereotypes that position Africa as a region of unchanging tradition in contrast to the dynamic modernity of Europe or America.

The appreciation of African sculpture by European artists in the early decades of the 20th century, part of the wider phenomenon of “primitivism” in Western art, led to a reappraisal of selected African artefacts as inherently aesthetic rather than as ethnographic objects. In Paris, artists such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Amedeo Modigliani saw the formal solutions to the representation of the human face and figure in certain African masks and sculptures as a means of breaking away from the constraints of European classicism. In Berlin and Munich, Emil Nolde, Néstor Kirchner, and other Expressionists were interested less in African forms than in the romantic idealization of the “primitive” that they read into them. In most cases this interest did not extend to any consideration of local meanings, still less to the artists who had created the works. Nevertheless, the fashion for collecting and displaying African art set at this period continues to influence the activities of collectors, dealers, and to a lesser extent scholars, today.

IV.

Interpreting African Art

A contrast is often drawn between the functional nature of African artefacts and the more purely aesthetic nature of Western art. While it is true that relatively little of the output of African artists until recently was intended to be primarily the focus of aesthetic contemplation, an appreciation of aspects of form and design in objects, buildings, poetry, and performance is widespread. A growing number of studies have demonstrated the sophisticated and discriminating vocabulary of aesthetic discourse that exists in many African languages, and concepts of art and creativity are present in virtually all African cultures.

The notion that artists in Africa are anonymous figures reproducing fixed tribal styles is similarly misleading and outdated. As elsewhere, artists work within a social context and as part of a tradition that allows for personal innovation. In some cases, artists have a complex status, often derived from their role in handling and transforming powerful and potentially dangerous entities such as iron and even certain words. Often these ideas are combined with a social structure where artists form distinct groups controlling mythical lore and intermarrying only with members of other craft specialist groups. This is most notable among the widely dispersed Mande-speaking peoples of Mali and neighbouring countries. Craft specialists organized into guilds, primarily for economic reasons, existed elsewhere without similar beliefs. Some artists were full-time specialists of this type, others worked occasionally to fulfil commissions, while among many people, such as the Fang of Gabon and the Tiv of Nigeria, there were few, if any, specialist artists. Where art was a specialist occupation, it was generally transmitted via some form of informal apprenticeship from father to son or from mother to daughter. In most cultures there was an established division of labour by sex, so that blacksmithing and other types of metalwork, woodcarving, and narrow-loom weaving are virtually always male occupations, while pottery, murals on houses and shrines, and broad-loom weaving usually are or were women’s work.

Until recently, the notion of tribal entity was seen as the key to categorizing African people into neatly bounded groups each identified by a common language, belief system, social organization, and art style. This approach ignores the multiple patterns of mutual influence and interaction both within and between linguistic groups. Ethnic identity, moreover, is merely one of a number of identities that individuals and groups have adopted in response to certain situations, particularly in colonial and post-colonial times. Thus, far from reflecting a fixed identity, artefacts and art styles play a role in the ongoing formation of identities. Also, although they may be retained as a form of simplified reference, terms such as “Dogon sculpture” or “Yoruba masquerade” should be understood as indicating areas where particular configurations were clustered rather than as signifying discrete areas unified by a common style.

Masks are often depicted as the classic art form of Africa. The mask as it is normally seen in the West, however, as a museum piece in a glass display case or hanging on a wall, is a single element artificially isolated from the context for which it was intended—namely as part of a costume combining wood with paint, fibre, and a cloth dress, all usually made by different people, and animated by a performer who dances, often with others, interacts with the audience and accompanying musicians, plays out a role, and improvises new variations. The headpiece itself can have a range of greatly different significances depending on the precise local understanding of the spiritual agency involved in its performance. African masquerades are a highly complex and diverse range of cultural practices, few of which correspond closely to ideas associated with mask-wearing in the West.

V.

Rock Art

The Sahara and large areas of southern Africa are two major regions in Africa where substantial amounts of rock art are found, though they occur also extensively in East Africa and less frequently in West Africa as well. Although dating rock paintings and engravings is extremely difficult, it is clear that they are the oldest African art form to have survived, with some Saharan examples thought to date from at least 4000 bc, while radiocarbon dates as early as 24,000 bc have come from one site in Namibia. Simple engravings of cross-hatched lines on a piece of ochre and of roughly parallel lines on a bone have been excavated from Blombos Cave in South Africa. They date from between 75,000 and 100,000 years ago. They appear to be the earliest attempts at decoration anywhere in the world and perhaps mark the beginning of art.

Much of the area now covered by the Sahara was significantly more fertile in the past and supported wildlife such as elephants, lions, buffalo, ostriches, and antelopes, as well as a human population who depicted aspects of their lifestyle in rock art. The main groups of Saharan art are engravings in the Atlas and Fezzan regions, and both engravings and a wealth of paintings in Tassili. A combination of stylistic analysis, consideration of overlaps between images of various styles, and external data such as known dates for the introduction of domestic animals and of certain weapons has been used to divide the engravings into four major periods. The earliest engravings depict in a detailed and naturalistic style predominantly wild animals, such as elephants, rhinoceros, giraffes, and the now extinct buffalo Bubalus antiquus. Men are shown armed with throwing-sticks, bows, and clubs, but not spears. This is now known as the Bubaline period and is thought broadly to correspond to a hunting lifestyle. The following period, known as the Cattle period, is marked by smaller engravings up to 1.20 m (4 ft) in length, in which men with cattle are predominant, although wild animals are still depicted as well. The earliest art from the Horse period, probably dating from the 1st millennium bc, depicts men driving horse-drawn chariots, while later there is a shift to images of men on horseback. Spears and small round shields are the main weapons of this period. In the Camel period, dating from the beginning of the Christian era and continuing into the 20th century, the engravings depict many wild animals still found in the Sahara, as well as men with camels. The images become increasingly schematic. Weapons shown include swords and, in later images, firearms. Although details of this scheme continue to be modified the broad outline is accepted by most authorities. It is important to note, however, that archaeology in the Sahara region is still very limited and that it is not yet possible to associate securely these stylistic periods with known groups of peoples, or to establish much else about how they lived.

In southern Africa, by contrast, scholars have the benefit of more clearly established links between the art and the lifestyle of surviving hunter-gatherer peoples in the area, such as the San and the !Kung. Drawing on ethnographic research among these peoples and on late 19th-century accounts of the now-extinct southern San, they have reinterpreted what were previously seen as naive depictions of hunting magic as complex images based on shamanistic trance dances. Not all scholars, however, accept this interpretation.

Both rock painting and engraving are widespread in South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe, and examples are also known in Tanzania and Uganda. Excavations at the Apollo 11 Cave in the Huns mountains of Namibia have uncovered drawings of a feline, an antelope, and what may be a giraffe, on broken slabs of rock in a stratum that has been securely dated to between 23,500 and 25,500 bc.

Although this site is far earlier than most in southern Africa (which seem to date from the last 2,000 or so years), it has been argued that there is sufficient continuity in style and subject matter to indicate a continuity of tradition. The paintings and engravings made by the San and other hunter-gatherer groups are seen as a record of their rich spiritual life, being metaphorical depictions of trance states, of hallucinatory visions, and of animals such as elands that had complex and multiple symbolic resonances, and images that blend the shamans with the animal potency that they are tapping through their dances.

VI.

West Africa

West Africa is the home of many of the sculptural traditions for which African art has become internationally known: the most prominent are the carvings of the Baga of Guinea, the Baule and Senufo of Côte d’Ivoire, the Mende of Sierra Leone, the Dogon and Bamana (Bambara) of Mali, the Fon of the Benin Republic, and the Yoruba and Igbo of Nigeria. It is also an area notable for an extensive range of other art forms, from architecture to weaving.

A.

Nok

Among the oldest surviving art of West Africa are a number of distinct traditions of sculpture in terracotta. Sculptures that have been uncovered, mostly accidentally in the course of mining or farming, across a wide expanse of central Nigeria, are grouped together under the name “Nok”. However, since there are regional stylistic variations and a date range that stretches from the 5th century bc to the 5th century ad, it is likely that more than one culture was involved in their production. The sculptures are mostly fragments of human and animal figures built up by the coil method of pottery-making, and some seem sometimes to have been attached to pots. The human figures range in size from about 10 cm (4 in) to over 120 cm (4 ft), and have elaborate hairstyles, wear jewellery, and in some cases appear to be dressed in cloth wrappers.

B.

Mali and Niger

Other equally spectacular terracotta sculptures have been uncovered on a large burial site at Bura in the Niger Republic (dated to between the 3rd and the 11th centuries ad), and at ancient Jenne (c. 13th century ad) in Mali. At Bura a large burial site has yielded hundreds of heads and full-length figures attached to funerary jars, as well as the fragmentary remains of a large horse and rider. The sculptures from Jenne include equestrian images, and standing and seated figures of both men and women, many with elaborate jewellery and scarification marks. Since the vast majority of these were unearthed in the course of unauthorized digging, little is known about their context or original use. The region of the present-day state of Mali and the south of Mauritania was governed by a succession of large empires. The kingdom of Ghana, whose capital was at Kumbi Saleh (Koumbi Saleh) in Mauritania, was mentioned in the 8th century ad by the Arab geographer Al-Fazari, while the wealth of Mali became known to both Europe and the Arab world with legends of the vast sums of gold spent by King Mansa Musa on his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324. Archaeological investigation of these cultures is now in progress, although much evidence has already been lost. Jenne is also known today for its immense mud-built Friday Mosque. Built in 1906-1907, it is the third of a series of grand mosques dating from the 13th century, and one of the most impressive achievements of African architecture.

Although Islam has been a constant presence in Mali for many centuries, many of the local peoples outside the towns have resisted conversion, at least until very recently. The Dogon who live along the Bandiagara escarpment are known for their elaborate cycle of masquerades performed over many years. Their figurative sculpture in wood and metal has been interpreted in terms of a complex symbolic cosmography and Creation myth, though growing doubts exist about the authenticity of this evidence. (Marcel Griaule, regarded as a pioneer in ethnological fieldwork and who focused particularly on the Dogon of Mali, was paying for information and much of it was seemingly invented to satisfy his enquiries.) A number of older figures in a similar style, together with fragments of textiles and other objects dating from the 11th century, have been found in burial caves above Dogon villages and are attributed by some scholars to a people known as the Tellem. The Bamana live in the countryside around the Malian capital Bamako. Among their numerous art forms are large wooden sculptures, mostly of women, used in the initiation and annual ceremonies of associations called Jo and Gwan. Elegant carved wooden antelope headdresses, called chi wara, were used in dances by associations that honoured the strongest farmers. The Bamana are also noted for their bogolanfini cloth, made by a unique method in which patterns are outlined in a dark mud dye on locally woven narrow-strip cloth.

C.

Akan

The Akan-speaking peoples of Ghana also made terracotta sculpture, using small clay human images to represent the deceased and his or her retainers in the funeral rites of important men and women. The system of organizing the production of court regalia for the Asante king, the Asantehene, through a series of villages of specialist craftsmen around the capital, was replicated on a smaller scale by lesser chiefs throughout the Asante Empire in the 19th century. Certain regalia, however, could only be obtained with royal approval at the capital, Kumasi, and the distribution of court art was an important element in the maintenance of central power. The key symbol of royal and chiefly authority at all levels was the stool, of which there was an extensive range of forms. The Golden Stool is believed to have been brought down from heaven to the 17th-century Asantehene, Osei Tutu, who established the new kingdom. Both cast-gold jewellery, and gold-foil-wrapped wooden carvings are important court regalia, as are fine silk kente cloths originally woven with thread unravelled from imported European fabrics. Their Twi language is rich in proverbs, which form a major source of inspiration for the imagery of aspects of Asante art, such as the small cast brass weights used for weighing gold dust, and the images that topped the staffs of court officials.

Other Akan peoples include the Fanti, known for the appliqué cloth flags and painted cement posuban shrines used by men’s societies called asafo. In Côte d’Ivoire the Baule are rare among Akan peoples in staging masquerades, and are also notable for the small wooden images made to represent other-world spirit lovers.

D.

Igbo Ukwu

The art history of the southern part of Nigeria is distinguished by the presence of a number of traditions of lost wax (or cire perdue) casting of copper alloys, of which the arts of Igbo Ukwu (c. 9th to 10th centuries ad), Ife (12th to 15th centuries ad), and Benin (from c. 15th century ad) is the most prominent. The precise nature of the links between these traditions, and those of other casting centres in the region, is a complex problem that has yet to be satisfactorily resolved, although some oral traditions among brass casters in Benin claim a direct link to Ife. Metallurgical analysis indicates that the metalworkers of Ife and Benin were primarily reliant for their raw materials on copper and brass imported across the Sahara and, in the case of later Benin brasswork, on the coastal trade with Europeans. The much earlier Igbo Ukwu sculptures are in leaded bronze, some of which is of local origin.

At Igbo Ukwu, now a small village of no obvious significance east of the River Niger, two major sites were excavated by the archaeologist Thurstan Shaw in 1959-1960 following an accidental discovery by villagers, initially in 1939. At the first site an array of cast-bronze objects in a highly distinctive style appeared to have been placed on a clay platform, possibly a shrine. Among them were pendants in the shape of human and elephant heads, vessels in the shape of calabashes and shells, ornate staff heads and knife scabbards, and a casting representing a pot on a pedestal surrounded by a network of ropes. All had finely worked surface decoration that included details of such insects as flies, beetles, and grasshoppers. The second site was the grave of an important man. Buried with him were pottery, ivory tusks, woven mats, and thousands of glass beads, together with a number of copper and bronze objects—a breast–plate, a crown, a leopard skull on a staff, two rings of coiled copper nails that appeared to have been attached to a round stool on which the body was seated, and two brackets to support his arms. Certain details, such as the patterns of facial scarification on the representations of human heads, have led to suggestions that the grave may be that of a distant forerunner of a senior titled man known as the Eze Nri still found among the Eastern Igbo.

More recent Igbo art is characterized by a wide variety of masquerades, ikenga shrines to male achievement, and figurative wooden sculpture made for shrines devoted to local deities. In many masquerades a dual system of imagery distinguished white-faced masks, depicting “beautiful maiden” spirits, from darker, more powerful masks related to ideas of male power. In the Owerri region whole villages combined to build mbari, large houses adorned with elaborate arrays of mud-sculpted painted figures, as sacrifices to Ala, the Earth goddess. Among the arts of Igbo women were pottery, weaving on the upright loom, wall painting, and uli body decoration.

E.

Ife and the Yoruba

Ife is regarded as the ancestral home of the Yoruba people of south-western Nigeria. The legend of Oduduwa, who sent out his 16 sons from Ife to found the major city-states, provides a charter for the institution of kingship throughout the Yoruba kingdoms. Archaeological discoveries at Ife, together with chance finds and objects recovered from the palace and various shrines, have revealed a rich tradition of sculpture in bronze, stone, and terracotta. Dated from between the 12th and 15th centuries ad, they include a score of life-size bronze heads in a portrait-like naturalistic style, as well as terracotta heads, ornamented ritual pots, and free-standing bronze figures. Some of the terracotta figures of about three-quarters of life size were excavated from shrines in courtyards paved with carefully arranged patterns of potsherds set on edge. The bronze heads are thought to represent past kings, and have holes at the neck, suggesting that they were intended to be fastened to a wooden figure. Small holes roughly following the hair-line seem to have been intended to attach the crown. By analogy with recent customs in some Yoruba towns, it has been argued that the heads may have been used as effigies of the dead king at second burial ceremonies. A seated figure cast in copper in the Ife style was found far to the north at the village of Tada, together with bronze figures, three of humans, two of ostriches, and one of an elephant. Local belief associates these with Tsoede, the legendary founder of the Nupe kingdom, but they more probably indicate Ife’s links to long-distance trade routes.

Although Ife remains an important ritual centre, by the 16th to 17th centuries, the key states in the region were the expanding military empires of Oyo and Benin, the rulers of both of which claimed descent from Oranmiyan, a son of the founder of Ife. Oyo was the largest of a number of rival Yoruba polities until its defeat by the Fulani Islamic jihad in the 1830s. There is considerable local and regional variation in aspects of the art of Yoruba-speaking peoples, notably in woodcarving styles, textile design, the distribution of masquerades, and the prominence of various deities in cult practice. Gelede, which aims to control the potentially dangerous spiritual powers of women, predominates among the south-western Yoruba in the Ketu and Egbado areas; the egungun ancestral masquerade is popular with the Oyo; while the epa cult is practised in Ekiti, in the north-east. In each of these a range of carved wooden headdresses with cloth costumes is used in performances that combine visual arts with songs, music, and dancing. The other well-known wood sculptures of the Yoruba, such as doors with high-relief carving, figurative veranda posts, dance staffs, divination equipment, and free-standing figures, are also used as part of an array of artefacts in other media, such as architecture, textiles, pottery, leatherwork, beadwork, and metalwork, to construct an appropriate representation of royal prestige or religious cult practice. Some of these artefacts were sacred objects of deep religious significance, while others (such as the veranda posts) were primarily simply beautiful objects adorning the houses of kings and wealthy chiefs. Scholars have been able to identify and document the work of numerous important sculptors, such as Areogun of Osi-Ilorin (c. 1880-1954) and Olowe of Ise (c. 1875-1938).

F.

Benin

The Kingdom of Benin (which should be distinguished from the modern-day country formerly known as Dahomey) is located in the tropical rainforest belt of southern Nigeria, to the west of the River Niger. When Europeans first reached the area in the late 15th century, they found a complex and expanding warrior kingdom with which they were able to establish trade and diplomatic links on an equal basis. Some idea of its splendour is given in accounts provided by Dutch traders who visited the capital early in the 17th century. Olfert Dapper, in Description de l’Afrique published in 1686, reported that the palace area was as large as the Dutch town of Haarlem. “It is divided into many magnificent palaces, houses, and apartments of the courtiers, and comprises beautiful and long square galleries, about as large as the Exchange in Amsterdam, but one larger than another, resting on wooden pillars, from top to bottom covered with cast copper, on which are engraved the pictures of their war exploits and battles.”

Brass-casters in Benin worked exclusively under royal patronage, providing the palace with the plaques that depicted many aspects of warfare, and court and ritual customs, as well as images of European merchants and soldiers. Other important brass sculptures included commemorative heads for royal ancestral altars, free-standing figures of human beings and of animals, bells, and a shrine to the hand (called ikegobo). The brass-casters were but one among many hereditary guilds of artists, ritual specialists, and other suppliers of services to the court. Other groups included the royal ivory-carvers, who produced the carved tusks that were displayed upon the brass heads on ancestral altars, as well as ivory regalia restricted to the king himself. A pair of ivory leopards inset with copper spots were placed either side of the king on state occasions. Leopards were an important symbol of the royal power, indicating the control of the king of the town over the king of the forest.

A sense of history is very important in relation to Benin art. Each important innovation in form or materials is attributed to a named member of the dynasty of kings that stretches back to about the early 14th century ad, while some of the royal traditions are thought to date from the previous dynasty, the Ogiso. From a different perspective scholars of the development of brass-casting in Benin have combined local oral history with metallurgical analysis, stylistic change, and European records to propose a division of the commemorative heads into early, middle, and late periods.

The court at Benin, although now subject to the national government, still maintains a system of royal patronage, with groups of artists supplying the palace with the regalia necessary for the performance of an annual cycle of festivals believed to be essential for the continued prosperity of the Benin people. Away from the court are numerous shrines at which painted mud sculpture and chalk-ground drawings are used in the worship of local deities.

VII.

East Africa

East Africa, the area from Sudan and Eritrea southward to Zambia, Malawi, and the island of Madagascar, is a vast region encompassing a diverse range of peoples, environments, and historical experiences. It includes semi-nomadic pastoralists, ancient kingdoms, coastal trading ports, and even a few isolated communities of hunter-gatherers. Aspects of this diversity are apparent in the extremely wide range of art and architecture that has developed in the region.

A.

Nubia

The art history of the succession of Nubian cultures that evolved along the Nile valley in the northern area of the modern state of Sudan is closely intertwined with developments in Egypt, but despite these mutual influences it retained distinctive characteristics. Archaeologists have uncovered artefacts including fine pottery and gold jewellery from royal graves designated as A-Group and dated to between 3100 and 2800 bc. Alongside smaller-scale cultures, known as C-Group (2000-1500 bc) and Pan-Grave (2200-1700 bc), the powerful kingdom of Cush developed around 2000 bc. Its capital was at Kerma, and it is characterized by rich and elaborate royal tombs in huge circular burial mounds. The conquest of this kingdom by the Egyptians between 1550 and 1500 bc began a long period of Egyptian rule during which Egyptian gods, art, and funerary practices became established in Nubia. The balance shifted in the 8th century bc, when a Cushite king conquered Egypt, establishing the 25th Dynasty, which ruled until the invasion of Egypt by the Assyrians around 660 bc. From around 270 bc a new Cushite kingdom arose. Its capital was at Meroe, and pyramids and temples dedicated to a mixture of Egyptian and local gods were built. Following the gradual decline of Meroe in the 3rd and 4th centuries ad, Christianity became the established religion of Nubia for a long period until it was displaced by Islam in the 14th century ad. Despite close links with the Church in Egypt and Ethiopia, the art of Christian Nubia retained a distinctive stylistic sequence best displayed in the murals depicting bishops, saints, kings, and queens, at the cathedral of Faras (8th to 11th centuries).

B.

Ethiopia

There were close ties between the culture of the south of the Arabian Peninsula and communities on the coast of northern Ethiopia from which the kingdom of Āksum arose during the 1st century ad. Disc-and-crescent symbols thought to be related to the Moon goddess are found on the crests of monumental stone stelae from the pre-Christian period. These stelae, some of which stand 21 m (almost 70 ft) high, reproduce in stone the form of Aksumite wood- and stone-framed buildings. The Axumite king Ezana was converted to Christianity in the 4th century ad, while the religion and its tradition of monasticism were spread among the people over the next two centuries following the missionary activity associated with the Nine Saints from Syria. Perhaps the most remarkable manifestation of Ethiopian Christianity is the series of 11 churches carved out of the rock at Lalibela. Attributed to the 12th-century monarch of the same name, they are conceived as a symbolic recreation of the holy city of Jerusalem.

Very little is known about the art of the first millennium of Ethiopian Christianity, but from about the 13th century onward a complex history of stylistic and iconographic development may be traced through successive phases of icon and mural painting and liturgical manuscripts. Processional crosses and elaborate regalia are also important objects of religious art. Other art forms include weaving and the production of magic scrolls combining protective texts and religious/cosmographic imagery. Within the borders of the modern state of Ethiopia there are also numerous other peoples with long-established artistic traditions, including woodcarving, of which the best known are the grave figures of the Konso, and a wide range of textiles.

C.

The Arab Influence

Since ancient times East Africa has been linked to the maritime trade of the Indian Ocean. By around ad 800 a series of interconnected coastal communities had been established at centres such as Mogadishu, Lamu, (since 2001 a UNESCO World Heritage Site), Mombasa, and the islands of Zanzibar and the Comoros. From Lamu southward the interaction of settled Arab traders with the local Bantu-speaking populations resulted in the development of a distinctive Swahili language and culture. Mosques and merchants’ houses were built from local materials—mangrove poles and carved blocks of coral. Elaborately carved doors adorned the plain white façades of houses, while interior rooms had banks of moulded plasterwork niches. Around some of the older mosques are numerous tombs cut from blocks of coral, with tall octagonal or cylindrical pillars, some of which are inset with imported ceramic plates. It is likely that this represents a degree of continuity with pre-Islamic funerary practice. The imagery on carved doors, which reached their greatest complexity in Omani-ruled Zanzibar in the 19th century, included Koranic inscriptions, Indian-derived lotus motifs, date palm motifs, and depictions of fish, as well as a variety of leaf and scroll designs.

D.

Pastoralists and Farmers

The Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania are the best known of a large number of pastoralist peoples, most of whom combine a semi-nomadic lifestyle with some reliance on settled farming villages. Others include the Somali, the Dinka and Nuer of southern Sudan, and the Turkana and Iraqw of Tanzania. Poetry is often said to be the primary art form of the northern Somali nomads, but the visual arts are represented by finely carved wooden headrests, basketry, and a variety of decorated wooden vessels. The Turkana are also notable for their headrests and wooden drinking vessels as well as their beadwork.

European glass beads, imported for centuries along the eastern coast of Africa, are a major component in elaborate systems of body art among people such as the Maasai, Turkana, Samburu, and Pokot. In combination with aspects of dress, hairstyle, jewellery, and sometimes body paints, particular combinations of beadwork may serve both to distinguish Turkana from Samburu and, more significantly, to mark differences in sex, age, and status within each group. Male dress and hairstyles may mark progress from uninitiated youth, to warrior, to elder, in addition to specific successes in war or hunting. Women’s styles may indicate stages of initiation, marriage, number and status of children, or widowhood. These are not, however, sets of static signs, but rather a shared understanding of the role of dress and ornament that allowed for changing local fashions, innovations in colour combinations, and variation in the supply of beads. In some cases local farming women, such as the Okiek in Kenya, have been shown to have imitated the designs of the Maasai, while reinterpreting, or in Maasai terms misinterpreting, the details of their colour combinations.

As this last example indicates, clear boundaries do not always lie between the art of pastoral peoples and that of their settled farming neighbours. Most of the farming communities of East Africa are Bantu-speakers who moved into the region early in the 1st millennium ad. Many of the ethnic identities now asserted are relatively recent products of change during the colonial period or the disruption caused by trading caravans in the 19th century. There are relatively few long-established courts to sustain local oral histories. Both movements of peoples and movements of prestige artefacts such as carvings make unravelling the art histories of particular localities problematic.

However, in addition to arts such as pottery and basketry, a wide range of wood sculptures have been made in the region. Probably the most widely distributed form was the post-shaped funerary sculpture, found in a variety of styles among such apparently unconnected groups as the Konso of Ethiopia, the Bongo of Sudan, the Zaramo of Tanzania, the Giryama of Kenya and their neighbours, and the Vezo, Mahafaly, and Sakalava of Madagascar. In some cases these sculptures were erected on the graves of important people; in others they served as memorials, standing in groups away from the dangerous space of the graveyard itself. Figurative high-backed stools were among numerous prestige carvings made for chiefs and other important individuals in groups such as the Nyamwezi, the Tabwa, and the Jiji, in the vicinity of Lake Tanganyika, as well as a variety of figurative staffs for both chiefs and ritual specialists. Masquerades were associated with male initiation among many peoples, with particularly large repertoires of characters found among the Chewa of Malawi and the Makonde of Tanzania and Mozambique. The rich and varied culture of the island of Madagascar bears a number of traces of the impact of Austronesian peoples among its original inhabitants. In the visual arts these include certain features of their weaving technology, including the use by some groups of back-strap tensioned looms, and of ikat dyeing.

VIII.

Central Africa

Central Africa may be defined as the area from Cameroon and the Central African Republic southward to the borders with Namibia and Zambia, taking in Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Angola, and Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Bantu family of languages, spoken by the vast majority of the inhabitants of this region, has been traced back by linguistic historians to an area in the vicinity of the present Nigeria/Cameroon border in c. 3000 bc. This date and those that follow are based on estimates of the amount of recognizable vocabulary the languages have retained from an inferred and unrecorded Proto-Bantu language. In the absence of written documents from the distant past, these are all there is to go on. From perhaps around 2000 bc a gradual expansion of Bantu-speaking peoples southward and eastward began, prompted in part by population increases made possible by the development of agricultural techniques. By around 500 bc, a date confirmed by radiocarbon dating from archaeological excavations, they had spread through the rainforest belt and were expanding into the savannahs south of the River Congo, while to the east cereal-growing Bantu farmers were reaching the great lakes region of eastern Africa. At about this time also, iron-working was developed, providing more efficient weapons and agricultural tools, as well as a new focus for ritual elaboration.

Although centuries of innovation and counter-innovation have led to the development of an almost infinite variety of forms of social organization, from large kingdoms to autonomous lineages, certain organizational concepts and principles attributable to the earliest Bantu communities were still apparent in the colonial period. Among the most important of these was the House, consisting of a leading man, his wives and some other relatives, clients, and friends, which formed the most basic social unit in short-lived patterns of alliance with neighbouring houses. In the course of expansion, Bantu-speakers encountered scattered groups of hunter-gatherer peoples. Many of these were displaced or incorporated, but others survive in complex interdependent relationships with their farming neighbours. Aspects of the ritual practices and artistic forms of some of these earlier populations have been retained in many Bantu cultures.

A.

Cameroon Grassfields

The area known as the Cameroon Grassfields is a densely populated region of open savannah in the west of the state of Cameroon. The rich variety of art that developed in the Grassfields was primarily associated with aspects of social and political hierarchy in which the king, or Fon, was at the head of a ranked system of male lineage elders in each of the numerous small independent kingdoms. Secret societies that incorporated all senior men were also important patrons for the arts. The royal palace was the focus of artistic activity and itself an elaborate and extensive structure decorated with carved pillars, and in some cases patterned stone floors. Among the artefacts making up the royal treasury and expressing the wealth and historical memory of the kingdom were: royal ancestral statues; a variety of masks; thrones and stools, often covered with beads; ivory horns; figurative brass and pottery pipes; royal insignia, including fly whisks, jewellery, caps, and staffs; large ceremonial food vessels; resist-patterned indigo-dyed cloths; embroidered and appliquéd gowns; and musical instruments, including carved drums. Some of the more important of these, such as the royal ancestral figures, were closely linked to the regulatory societies based in the palace. The imagery of Grassfields art—human figures, from royal ancestors to palace servants, depicted with animals, such as leopards, elephants, buffalo, and snakes, that were multifaceted symbols of kingship—contributed to its role in constructing and memorializing royal power. Between 1900 and 1920, Njoya, the king of Bamun, developed a script in which he and his courtiers wrote a detailed history of his kingdom and its customs.

B.

Kongo

The Kongo people live in the narrow strip of the Democratic Republic of the Congo that stretches between the Republic of the Congo and Angola to the Atlantic coast, and overlap the borders into the neighbouring countries. Although a long period of Capuchin missionary activity followed the first Portuguese contacts with the Kongo kingdom in ad 1483, its impact on local religious practice and artistic expression was limited. A few cast-brass crucifixes dating from between the 17th and 19th centuries survive in museum collections. Local conceptions of spiritual power are exemplified by the well-known minkisi sculptures. A nkisi (the singular form of the word) was a composite ritual procedure designed to achieve a specific end, often but not always involving the use of objects including figurative sculpture along with assemblages of powerful medicines. A particularly potent form, the nkisi nkondi, bristled with the nails and iron blades driven into the wooden figure to provoke it into acts of revenge against wrongdoers. Dress and body decoration such as elaborate scarification patterns were important markers of status and beauty for Kongo women. Many of these are reproduced on the small finely carved images of nursing women, known as phemba. From the late 19th century to about 1920, the graves of wealthy Kongo traders were marked by carved soapstone figures in a wide variety of poses including maternity images and postures thought to be associated with chiefly status.

C.

Kuba

“Kuba” is the name given to a kingdom that brings together a number of distinct peoples living in the area between the Kasai and Sankuru rivers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. An elaborate culture of court ceremonials and art developed around the king, to which all the 17 or so peoples contributed, although regional variations can be observed in details of their art. The ultimate royal art is the series of wooden ndop figures representing each of the Kuba kings who may be identified by the small emblem or attribute carved at the feet of the seated figure. When the king was absent from his capital, the king’s wives would invoke the necessary presence of royalty in the palace by rubbing the figure with oil. It is thought that most of the surviving king figures date from the mid-to-late 18th century. The court was the focus of an elaborate series of masquerades and dances for which a complex repertoire of costumes, carved and beaded wooden headdresses, and regalia was produced. An important feature of Kuba art was the elaboration of named patterns, best known on cut-pile embroidered raffia cloths, but also found in a variety of other objects, including carved wooden cups and boxes, metalwork, the woven mats used for housebuilding, and designs for women’s body decoration.

D.

Reliquary Figures of Gabon

The Fang and Kota peoples of Gabon are the most prominent of a number of neighbouring peoples who used sculptures incorporating containers holding the relics of important ancestors. Among the Fang standing male or female figures, or in some cases heads alone, were placed on top of cylindrical bark boxes containing the skulls and other relics of lineage ancestors. Although the Fang took part in large-scale and complex migrations throughout the 19th century, a number of regional styles existed within what appears to have been a shared tradition of ancestral veneration. The figures protected the relics from strangers or the uninitiated, served as a focus for complaints or appeals directed to the ancestors, and were sometimes danced with or manipulated like puppets in the course of initiating young men into the ancestral byeri cult. A small number of masks that were associated with a judicial society known as ngil were collected from the Fang in the late 19th century. The reliquary figures of the Kota served a similar function to those of the Fang but were distinct in form, being flat-faced oval heads above lozenge-shaped bodies, the wooden figures sheathed in a thin layer of copper or brass. Juan Gris was so impressed with their form that he made a cardboard copy of one to hang on his studio wall.

E.

Lega

The art of the Lega of the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is primarily associated with an organization called Bwami. All adults are initiated into the lowest level of the local society, but only those who can gather the necessary support, both in the form of personal wealth, and of backing from existing members and their own family, are able to progress to the more powerful and prestigious senior grades. Artefacts played a complex role in this process. Much of the vast body of lore and proverbs that a candidate had to recite is associated with specific initiation objects, which include small human and animal figures and masks of wood and ivory as well as collections of natural objects. The senior initiates, who are the custodians of these essential artefacts, have to be both convinced of the knowledge and suitability of the candidate and well rewarded with gifts before they bring them to the ceremony. Animal skins and regalia in the form of staffs, hats, and bead jewellery are important markers of status within the Bwami society.

F.

Luba

Between the 17th and the late 19th centuries, the cultural influence of the Luba extended over a wide area of the south-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, although it seems likely that the region was never united in a single empire. Art was a key aspect in the unification of a number of chiefdoms that shared an epic myth of sacred kingship introduced by the legendary hunter Mbidi Kiluwe. The most important items associated with each Luba king included stools supported by a kneeling woman, the royal bow stands and spears, both usually carved with female figures on the shafts, and staffs of office. Many of these were considered too sacred for public display and were kept in carefully guarded rooms within the palace. An association of court historians used small rectangular carved boards called lukasa, with arrangements of beads stuck to the surface, as mnemonic devices for retelling Luba history. Diviners used an array of beaded and leather regalia and medicine-charged figures in the course of their work. Finely carved headrests reflect the importance of elaborate hairstyles as indicators of socially constructed beauty as well as personal status. A number of caryatid stools and bowl figures in a distinctive style from the Hemba subregion of the Luba have been attributed to a single workshop, named after the village of Buli, where some were collected.

G.

Mangbetu and Azande

The Mangbetu and Azande inhabit the north-eastern corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the border regions of Sudan. Mangbetu ideas of female beauty stressed an elongation of the forehead produced by tight wrapping and emphasized by an elaborate crested hairstyle. This distinctive style was associated with the prestige of the Mangbetu royal court and was widely imitated by neighbouring peoples, including the Azande. It was represented on a wide range of artefacts (including free-standing figures, pots, knife handles, ivory horns, and anthropomorphic harps) produced by both the Mangbetu and their neighbours. Recent research has suggested that the popularity of human figures in Mangbetu art owes much to the interest shown by European officials and collectors who purchased vast quantities of artefacts in the region in the first two decades of the 20th century. Among the other notable art forms of the region were mural painting, decorated barkcloth, metalworking, and the construction of large meeting-halls.

H.

Chokwe

The Chokwe live in eastern Angola and in areas of the south-west of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and western Zambia. Chokwe notions of kingship and sacred power were greatly influenced by the legendary culture hero Tshibinda Ilunga, a hunter of Luba origin, who is thought to have founded an imperial dynasty among the Lunda, to whom the Chokwe themselves paid tribute until the late 19th century. The Chokwe produced many small, finely carved wooden sculptures of chiefs and royal wives, including some depicting Tshibinda Ilunga as a hunter wearing a chief’s hat, holding a staff and gun, and in some examples accompanied by tiny protective spirits. Items of chiefly regalia that were carved with seated or standing figures of chiefs included snuff and tobacco mortars, sceptres, pipes, and headrests. Chiefs’ stools were ornamented with brass studs and supported by caryatid figures, while chairs were carved with arrays of figures, some in scenes of initiation. Masks made from wood, resin, cloth, and feathers were used in the course of initiating young men.

IX.

Southern Africa

Southern Africa is the region encompassing the countries of Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho, and South Africa. The rock art produced by the southern San and other hunter-gatherer communities is the oldest surviving record of artistic activity on the African continent, while associated forms such as the decoration of ostrich eggshells and leather bags also seem to be of considerable antiquity. Apart from their distinctive pottery style, little is known of the art of the Khoikhoi, nomadic pastoralists who have lived in areas of the southern High Veld for some 2,000 years. Recent archaeological and linguistic research has complicated the earlier picture of a large-scale incursion of Bantu-speaking people bringing with them an already developed package of new technology, most notably the techniques of iron-working and crop cultivation. Nevertheless, by about the 3rd or 4th centuries ad, a gradual southern migratory drift had brought settled iron-using farming communities to the eastern Transvaal and the area south of the Zambezi. Although they remained reliant on agriculture for the majority of their nutritional needs, herds of cattle became increasingly important in mediating exchanges such as bride wealth payments and took on a wide cultural significance. As elsewhere in Africa, much of the art history of the region remains obscure, but key objects and sites such as the Lydenberg heads and Great Zimbabwe may now be understood within a historical process rather than as isolated phenomena.

A.

The Lydenberg Heads

Seven terracotta heads, known as the Lydenberg heads, were uncovered from the site of an early mixed farming village in the Lydenberg valley, eastern Transvaal. Radiocarbon dating indicated that the area was occupied in the 6th century ad. Pits contained animal bones, pottery shards, beads, and metal ornaments, while slag indicated that iron was produced in the village. No similar heads have been found elsewhere but large numbers of smaller modelled figures from other sites indicate a tradition of pottery sculpture. The heads themselves are hollow, with bands of incised decoration around the wide necks, and modelled features. Only two are large enough to have served as helmet-masks, while the others have small holes on either side of the neck, which may have served to attach them to some structure. The two large heads have small animal figures on the crown. Traces of white pigment suggest that the heads were once painted. The use of small pottery figurines in initiation contexts is widespread in southern Africa but archaeologists can at present only speculate on the possible uses of these heads.

B.

Mapungubwe

By the end of the 1st millennium ad, there is clear evidence of the emergence of larger-scale settlements in the Limpopo river basin. Although cattle-herding remained the economic basis of these communities, new features suggest evidence of a social hierarchy and of involvement in long-distance trade. The largest of these sites was on a sandstone hill known as Mapungubwe. Rough stone walling was used and stratified deposits indicate successive building and rebuilding of houses on and around the hill between the 11th and early 12th centuries. It has been suggested that Mapungubwe was the capital of a state, the hill itself being the elite residential and ceremonial area. Evidence of artistic activity at Mapungubwe is apparent in the rich burials, where large quantities of gold jewellery, including a small gold-plated model of a rhinoceros, were found. Other craft specialization included ivory-working and weaving. Beads and more complex cotton cloth were imported from Arab traders on the coast. Recent research has suggested that similar large-scale communities also developed at about the same period in eastern Botswana.

C.

Great Zimbabwe

Great Zimbabwe, today a large complex of stone walls and ruins, was once thought to be isolated evidence of Arabian or Egyptian presence in the African interior. It is now understood to be the capital of a large indigenous state centred on the high plateau between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers. More than 50 smaller madzimbahwe, towns with stone walls thought to be regional centres, are known. Great Zimbabwe is believed to have been the major court and ritual centre, occupied for about 200 years after the construction of the earliest plaster houses in about ad 1130. Drystone walls linked now-vanished houses and demarcated internal boundaries, rather than serving any defensive role. Among the objects excavated from the site were eight grey-green soapstone birds and a number of fragments of decorated soapstone dishes, as well as quantities of ceramics and imported beads.

Owing to the early activities of treasure hunters in some key areas, archaeological evidence to assist in the interpretation of the site is limited, but efforts have been made to apply insights drawn from the later ethnography of the Shona people, in particular aspects of their mythology and spatial organization. Thomas Huffman, the leading proponent of this approach, has argued that the circular Great Enclosure was probably an initiation centre for young women, while the whole layout of the town, with its towers, stone pillars, and stone walls with vertical grooves, can be understood as a symbolic arrangement of male and female space.

The reasons for the decline of the Zimbabwe polity remain unclear. However, the tradition of stone architecture and similar approaches to ritual appear to have been maintained by its successors to the north, the Mutapa, and the Torwa. The capital of the latter has been identified with extensive ruins at Khami, dated to between the 15th and late 17th centuries.

D.

Farmers and Pastoralists

The last 200 years of southern African history have been marked by long periods of turmoil and large-scale population movements, initiated by the disruption caused by the establishment of the Zulu kingdom (see Mfecane), and continued by the activities of colonists and settler governments. In response to new pressures, previously flexible local linguistic and ethnic identities became rigid and codified, most notably as a result of deliberate policies of classification imposed in South Africa and pre-independence Namibia. Against this backdrop, styles and forms of art should be seen as active elements in the construction and maintenance of cultural identities rather than as passive reflectors of existing groupings. Regional and local variations also both underlie and cross-cut larger boundaries.

Although the masks and ancestral sculptures that have dominated Western interest in African sculpture are rarely found in this region, there are a number of rich traditions of woodcarving among peoples such as the Zulu, Venda, Tsonga, Shona, and Tsotho, who produce small figurative carvings as well as such objects as headrests, staffs, pipes, doors, and ceremonial vessels. Pots, in particular beer pots made by women, were often finely decorated. In the 20th century greater access to imported beads and new fabrics led to an expansion of the varied traditions of decorative beadwork in a huge variety of styles associated with a long-standing aesthetic of body decoration. In areas such as Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal, where local courts remain important in contemporary politics, beadwork and new forms of “traditional” dress for ceremonial occasions have remained highly significant. Among several groups in Botswana and South Africa, ideas about female control over domestic space have been expressed through a range of women’s mural painting, which newly available paints have often stimulated to novel forms. In the case of the best-known example, the Ndebele, mural painting developed in the 1930s and 1940s as a new means of expressing ethnic identity on the isolated farmsteads to which they had been scattered following their defeat by the Boers (see Afrikaners) in 1882, before being co-opted and promoted by the tourist authorities of the apartheid government.

X.

Art in Africa Today

Throughout most of Africa, the 20th century was a period of rapid change, which brought many losses as well as gains. Many local religious, social, and political institutions, such as cult groups, age grades, and royal courts, which provided artists with their main sources of patronage, were displaced or at least strongly modified by such cultural incursions as Christianity, formal education, wage labour, and the modern nation state. As people actively engaged with these changes, which have led to the movement of young people from the countryside into the towns, many of the older artistic practices were discarded as no longer relevant, or were only continued in much-reduced forms. However, where traditions are still seen to meet present needs—for example, in the transition of young people to adult status—they have continued to be practiced into the 21st century, albeit adapted to fit into school holidays and meet contemporary aspirations. At the same time new artistic practices have developed and older ones have successfully adapted and expanded. In some cases newly felt ideas of ethnic identity stimulated by competition or repression within nation states have promoted an expansion and transformation of elements drawn from the past. In some areas tourists and art dealers have provided new patronage for carvers and other artists, although they have also accelerated the decline of many traditions by acquiring and exporting thousands of older works.

The development of painting and sculpture in the European tradition was an important 20th-century phenomenon. There were two major strands to this development, one based on formal education in art schools, the second drawing on a variety of European-promoted workshops.

Since colonial regimes in the first part of the century saw little need to provide art education for their subjects, the pioneers of this development were a small number of men who were able to secure funds to study in Europe. Among them was the Nigerian Aina Onabolu (1882-1963), who returned determined to press the government to establish art-teaching in schools. Although art tuition at Achimota College in Ghana and Makarere College in Uganda began as early as the 1920s, the more significant advances were not made until the 1950s. There had been individual art teachers in Nigeria earlier, notably Kenneth Murray, whose collection of traditional art formed the core of the national museum, but art departments were established in Nigeria at Zaria College in 1953, and at Yaba College, Lagos, in 1955, while art schools opened in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1957 and in Dakar, Senegal, in 1960.

The philosopher-poet, Léopold Sédar Senghor, who became the first president of independent Senegal, was anxious to counteract the French government’s well-intentioned policy of making Frenchmen of all its subjects throughout the world, proposed the philosophy of négritude, asking what it meant to be a black person. Under the influence of this philosophy, students trained in the Dakar school of fine art at first drew their motifs from traditional African forms of masks and figure sculptures. Many of their works were translated into tapestries which, it has been suggested, encouraged the adoption of more simplified forms.

Students at some of the other institutions quickly began to query the European emphasis in the curricula and to demand greater local relevance. At Zaria College a small group formed a society to promote the exhibition of African-inspired works and the recognition of local traditions. Its members, who form the highly influential older generation of artists in Nigeria today, included Bruce Onobrakpeya (1932- ) and Uche Okeke (1933- ). The latter went on to teach at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he and his students developed what became known as the Uli school, drawing on motifs used by Igbo women for mural painting and body decoration.

The problem faced by the so-called “Zaria Rebels” still confronts many African artists today, namely whether they should or could construct a distinctively African dimension through their work, while still contributing to and striving for acceptance within the mainstream of contemporary art. One widespread response, echoing Okeke’s philosophy of natural synthesis, has been to seek inspiration in local scripts and symbols, for example the Amharic texts and magic scrolls incorporated in the works of the Ethiopian artists “Skunder” Boghossian (1937-2003) and Wosene Kosrof (1950- ). In Sudan, meanwhile, the fluid forms of Arabic calligraphy have been explored by Osman Waqialla (1925- ) and El Salahi (1930- ). Elsewhere, artists have combined formal innovation with an exploration of the possibilities of local pigments and materials such as earth and bark pigments and mud-dyed cloth. However, others, such as the South African painter David Koloane (1938- ), have argued that, like all artists, those in Africa are entitled to experiment in whatever form or media they choose without being restricted by any preconceived notions of African identity. Nonetheless, many African artists, like the Sudanese sculptor Amir Nur (1939- ), have felt obliged to seek to earn a living in the West.

Although there were a few women among the first generation of academically trained artists, notably the Sudanese painter and art teacher Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq (1939- ), most found it difficult to sustain their careers and it is only in the past few years that a growing number of female artists have begun to achieve recognition. Outstanding among these is Sokari Douglas Camp (1958- ), a Nigerian who trained in California and London, and who is now based in the latter city, from where she receives commissions from all over the world for her sculpture of welded sheet metal.

The second major current of developments has its source in a number of informal workshops, missionary craft schools, and other individual teaching projects sponsored by interested Europeans. The best known of these were the Oshogbo workshops (southern Nigeria) and the soapstone-carving group set up at the National Gallery in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) in the early 1960s. Many of the promoters of these schemes saw their role not as teaching students about art, but as tapping some supposedly inherent mystical creativity that would be tarnished if the artists were exposed to Western art history. In the case of Oshogbo, only a few of the original artists, such as Twins Seven Seven (1945- ), are still active but there is a thriving school of their successors working in a similar style, mostly for the tourist market. In Zimbabwe there are now vast numbers of sculptors, some of whom have achieved considerable international acclaim. Among them are a few, such as Tapfuma Gutsa (1956- ), who are successfully experimenting with a wider range of forms and materials. In South Africa apartheid continued to limit art education for black Africans, resulting in a very different history of informal craft and art centre-based training, albeit one that has produced a very diverse and interesting range of artists. In recent years a number of influential artists’ workshops have been held in South Africa and neighbouring countries, bringing local artists together with black Africans working abroad and other European and American artists.

Throughout Africa large numbers of artists are working in a variety of new forms and traditions that have developed in the colonial and post-colonial period. Some of these, such as the Makonde and Kamba carvers of East Africa, are for expatriate and tourist patronage while others, such as sign-painters, mural painters, makers of funerary monuments in cement, carvers of decorated coffins, and portrait photographers, work primarily for local customers. A few artists from among the latter have been selected and promoted by European collectors and art dealers and have adapted their styles in response. Among the best known of these is the painter Cheri Samba (1956-) of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, whose work draws on a tradition of popular painting developed in the 1960s. Although the work of these artists is often interesting in itself, many commentators have criticized aspects of their promotion as reviving images of an exotic and primitive Africa.