https:/.../2020-07-08_arh303_arts-of-africa.mp4

Welcome back, everyone to ARH 303.
Dr. Ann Johns here.

And today, we are going to talk about
the more recent arts of Africa.

And this is, of course, in many ways,
an absurd challenge because

this is a giant and diverse continent,

and there are a lot of different
countries, a lot of different histories,

a lot of different trade histories.

We have the regions that are
around the Mediterranean

that have been very tied to Italy
and Greece and some of those

other regions of the Mediterranean.

We have Madagascar on the --
you can see here in the lower-right,

which is basically across the
Indian Ocean and has ties with

much of Asia.

And then we have regions like --
the region over here, Ivory Coast.

And Sierra Leon some of these areas
that have long had a relationship with

some of the Western European countries -
in particular, Portugal.

And so, this is -- you know, we have
the Saharan Desert in here.

It's a very, very complex area,
so we're going to just look at

some of the highlights and try to
get at some of the essential qualities

of some of this art.

The other things that we have to talk
about, and we'll talk about in more detail

in the next class is that the history of
Africa is the history of Colonialism

and Colonialization and essentially the
large imperial and western countries

coming in and doing land-grabs
in much of Africa.

And so, you can see here on the map
on the right the different countries

that have owned --
you know, have taken these territories.

Huge amount of Africa was
under French rule.

We have, here, the Italians - Mussolini -
right before World War II

and during World War II, tried to
sort of conquer some of this area in here.

And so, the British have been here.
The Germans have been here.

Everybody has been here.
And here, you can see

the British, the French, Portuguese,
Spanish, Italian, and Belgians.

So, everybody in Europe had a stake.

And, you know, some of this is land,
but some of this is because of

commodities. And so, here is an example
of African trade from the early period

of time that we'll be talking about.

The period of time that coincides
in the West with the Renaissance.

And, in fact, that trade that I mentioned
that went back and forth between Portugal

and Western Africa.
This was really one of the highlights

of that period of time.

And you can see that
there's a lot of gold.

Okay? So, that is something that people
have always valued - gold.

And so, this is an important part
of their trade.

Sugar, textiles, weapons, salt - oh yes -
and slaves. Okay?

So the slave trade, a very important
part from the get-go in Africa.

Africa --

In Europe, they started using
African slaves.

They also used slaves from
what we would think of as

Eastern Europe and Western Asia, also.

So, you know, Africa has had a --
you know, for such a

rich and vibrant part of the world,

it has had a, you know,
its share of tragic past

because of all of this.

So, again, we'll be examining this issue
in more detail next time.

Here, we have just one of the more
blatant, I suppose, examples of that.

And this is just a very apt image of
exactly what that colonialism meant.

There was an uprising in Benin and the
British sent their punitive expedition

back in to basically punish the people
who had been uprising in their own land

against the British.

And one of the ways that you can
assert your dominance,

whether it's in terms of imperialism
or colonialism or in any way or in war,

is to take objects.
Okay?

It's to own art.
And so, not only do you own things

that are valuable, but you --

it's a cultural and spiritual dominance
of those cultures also.

And, you know, obviously one that is
traumatizing.

It's not taking lives.

But as we'll see, for many of these
objects, these had spiritual significance.

These had cultural significance.

So, it's not just taking this painting
or this piece of sculpture that

decorated my house, but in fact it is
a sculpture of the baby that I lost

or the wife that I lost or my ancestors.
This sort of thing.

So, you are taking it away.
You are decontextualizing it.

And a massive amount of art from Africa
has spread all over the world,

very much sought after in collections
through these processes.

And so, it's been a very tragic event,
again, for many countries in Africa.

And they end up in museums.

And, again, we're going to talk about
this a little bit more

But here, for example, this is
one of your reading images--

this Kente Cloth here from Asante or
Ashanti Culture, and you can see how --

Okay, here's a Reliquary Guardian.
You know, this has some spiritual --

it's a reliquary, so it hold relics
or acts as a relic of something sacred

with a connection to the past.

We have an initiation mask over here.
So, this is part of the ritual of

a young man entering into
adulthood in society, so

these are all things you can see.
They have a funerary mask.

They have these important functions.

But this is often the way we see them
in museums. Right?

We see them without any sort of
label on them.

And one reason for that is because,
for so long, they were appreciated

just as beautiful objects, which they are.

They are absolutely gorgeous objects,
but it is --

I think most of us would say that
some context of understanding

how these would be used
would make it slightly more palatable

that they were rested away from
their countries of origin.

Your book comes up with the idea --
with the sort of framework

for discussing African art in a way that
makes a great deal of sense to me.

This is something that, again,
as textbooks have tried to add

more global art into them, you know we
really struggle because we don't always--

those of us trained in Western traditions
don't always have the framework for

understanding some of this art.

And what your book has come up with is
four categories that you can apply to

many of the arts that we will talk about
today, and that are included in your book.

And that is the participatory aspect of
much of African art.

And so, we can see here again,
this mask and this ritual

that is going on here being performed
in this society.

There's the idea that this art is --
there's a contemporaneity to it.

And that is that it was produced
in the past, but it continues to be

produced in useful in the present.

So, we see these little figurines here
that represent deceased twins

that then are basically the spirits
of those and are --

People collect them --
they don't collect them as art objects.

They collect them and put them
in a family shrine. Okay?

So, these have been --

these are present in the here and now

in a way that we collect a lot of things
from the past in the West

and in cultures that have these
large museums.

So, that aspect of it makes
a lot of African art different.

A lot of African art is very abstract,
it normally has these sort of

timeless, magical properties that reach
back into the ancestral spirit

and they're not necessarily
an absolute likeness.

And so-- and this has been one
reason why it's been collected so

ferociously is because it has,
much of African art

dies with our current sensibilities
about art.

And then there's the issue of
culture fluency and that is

that a lot of this art is sort of traded
and crosses over into different

parts of Africa, into different tribes,
into different countries,

but also that there are interactions
with the art in non-African regions.

And so, for instance, we have
this little mask that

you'll see in a minute has some
ties to Portugal.

So again participation, here you
can see two different examples

of the way masks are used in
different ceremonies. And,

many of these you now see
are in art museums.

And your book has a really nice
section about some objects

that are taken in England--
in Great Britain,

and how the museum has--
I don't know if it's the British Museum

or another museum, has contacted
locals-- people in London who are

from those regions of Africa
to try to get them to participate

in sort of, you know some activities
and rituals and interaction

with those objects in the museum.
To, in some ways, almost bring them

to life. I mean it's on the one hand
it's difficult to do once these things

have been rested out and as we
note of these, there's a contemporaneity

to these, but nevertheless there is
something when you've seen these photos

of these objects being used in rituals,
you get a sense that

there's a great deal of loss when they're
in museums. And this is not,

this is not just African art of course.
A lot of things that have-- a lot of

objects that have ritual connotations are
in museums and it can be very difficult

to figure out how they're really used
and the way we look at objects

in terms of their formal qualities
may in fact have nothing to do with

how they were created
and how they were used.

And again we have this idea of
contemporaneity and I showed you

the image of a woman who is
here again in this image,

and what these are is these are
from Yoruba culture which has a high

pre-ponderous of twins, genetically
a lot of twins are born.

It's a fairly poor region so oftentimes
the twins do not survive,

they either do not survive birth or they
do not survive childhood.

And so there is a tradition of making
these figures, these Ere Ibeji which are

basically, again, they are stand-ins for
the souls of the twins that have been

lost, and so here are some of
the examples.

These, again, these are not old
necessarily, these are fairly modern--

although now there's a large collector's
market for these things,

but they continue to be used in their,
for their actual way. And there's a whole-

again, there's a contemporaneity to this
but there's also the participatory element

to these in that the mothers go
to the person in the town who would

carve these and then they bring
them back and all the women in the village

follow with these women and cry
and then the figures are set into

a family shrine. So there is this
whole ceremony that goes along with it.

Much of the art is quite
abstract in ways that (sighs)

it's probably relatively tragic for
a lot of African art because

people started to find out more
about African art with some

large exhibitions of African art
in Paris, we'll talk more about this

in a couple classes. Exactly at the
same time that people became interested

in abstract art. So here's an example
of Madame Matisse, Henri Matisse's

wife, he painted her-- he had clearly
been to one of these exhibitions

and had seen some of these masks
from Gabon. You can see

an example here on the right. And,

you know, he's using it now in a way--
well you can say it has some relevance.

Perhaps he suggested that his wife
has a mask-like face, he painted

his wife a lot. I think it is largely that
it was the formal and aesthetic qualities

of these that he was using. And not at all
the, again, this idea of participation

and ritual.

And so you can see here one of these
figures being used again in--

I'm not entirely sure exactly what this
particular ritual is here,

but you can see the figure up here
with the mask being used and then

this circle of events going on
around here. So,

while this is intriguing and beautiful
on its own as a mask, it has lost these

these sort of vibrant ritual, cultural
properties that make it unique.

Not to mention the costume and the
way that everything else that went

with it.

And then this idea of cultural fluency
is something that is also very important

and it's not that we, again, we just
see this in Africa, we have talked about

some of the particularly if we look at
Renaissance painting and that Northern

and Southern Renaissance
and the back and forth, it's interesting.

This is a particularly interesting example
this is a hip pendant of a Iyoba,

or the Queen Mother and that is it
sat on her hip, she had one

on either side and-- so it's
a portrait for one thing.

And it's an ivory piece, it's not little
necessarily for ivory, about ye big.

There's one at the Metropolitan
and its pendant is at the

British Museum I believe. And these
are from, again, this Western part, Benin,

this Western part where there was
trade back and forth with Portugal.

And so one of the things that people
have done is they've looked at the--

so this is a portrait in that it has
modeled figures that may have

something to do with the actual
features of the queen.

Here's its pendant and almost certainly
this is the same woman

shown in both of these, but if
you look at the edge of this,

this is quite remarkable, there's
a series of interlaced we have

Portuguese traders here with their
headdresses and then we have

mudfish, these mudfish out here.
And a lot of this has to do with

the mudfish being the realm of
the sea god that was important

and the Portuguese came by sea
and the sea god also had a--

was thought to be a white god
and so these Portuguese arrive

and they are white and notice
that she is carved out of ivory. And so,

there's a lot of symbolism here
but there's also a lot of suggestion that

there is a cultural exchange
back and forth-- in other words,

it's not them just making art for
the Portuguese, it's this back and forth

in terms of influence
that goes into these.

Yeah, here's the British Museum
matching pendant.

And here's a plaque that shows
the pendants on-- that probably would have

been worn by her son who is the king.

And you can see one of them here,
and again just because they're a pair

we assume that they might have
been worn on each hip.

But again what this tells us is
as beautiful as these objects are,

ivory and so they're precious
and they're small and so

they would have nevertheless been
used in a participatory event

in terms of some sort of ceremonial
event in which the king would have

worn these hip pendants.
So, it doesn't--

if you don't know that, you can still
appreciate this object but it is really

helpful to know this.

Okay, and we are also then going to
be talking about this issue of

of course much of the art that we
talk about is in museums and so

this is an issue in that--
it's wonderful to be able to see it,

it's an issue in that it is not
back in its native land

and it has been somewhat robbed
from its context. So,

we'll talk about that today but
we're going to talk about that

in more detail in the next class.
So in our next segment,

we're going to look at our first
key image, this beautiful

figure that is carved out of wood
on top of a Speaker's staff.