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The notion that artists in Africa are anonymous figures reproducing fixed tribal styles is similarly misleading and outdated.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.