Arts - Africa - The Myth Of Primitivism, Functionalism, Structuralism, And "one Tribe, One Style", Beyond Sub-saharan African Art
Between 1520 and 1521, the famous German painter and engraver Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) purchased two African ivory carvings in the Netherlands. He was so impressed by their craftsmanship that he noted in his diary:
all sorts of marvelous objects for human use much more beautiful to behold than things spoken of in fairy tales.
… And in all the days of my life, I have seen nothing which rejoiced my heart as these things—for I saw among them wondrous artful things and I wondered over the subtle genius of these men in strange countries. (Fagg, p. 9)
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Although stylized carvings from the kingdoms of Sapi, Benin, and Kongo were popular in Europe in the sixteenth century, scholarly interest in African art in general did not begin until the nineteenth century, when European colonization of Africa increased the number of examples arriving in European museums. But by this time the European attitude to the arts of other cultures had changed drasticall…
The pre-nineteenth-century European distinction between "art" (the nonutilitarian) and "craft" (the utilitarian) also contributed to the prejudice against African art, given its use in ritual ceremonies. This distinction turned African sculptures and masks into ethnological specimens and a gold mine for anthropologists interested in the relationship between art and soci…
Admittedly, the influence of African sculpture on modern art has virtually eliminated the evolutionist prejudice against its conceptual form. Yet it has encouraged a scholarly bias for figure sculpture and masks from West, Central, and Equatorial Africa, marginalizing the equally significant artistic expressions in other media within and outside the region. Until the turn of the twenty-first centu…
As is well known, European colonization of a good part of Africa between the late nineteenth century and the mid-1970s resulted in the imposition of European values. It also disrupted the social order, precipitating metamorphic changes. Having discredited African art as "primitive" and as "fetishes," colonial administrators introduced a new art education program, stress…
As mentioned above, many Africans have not totally abandoned their cultural heritage despite conversion to Islam. This is also the case with Christianity. During the colonial period, many converts venerated their ancestors secretly. Those living in the urban areas frequently returned to their villages to participate in initiation ceremonies and annual festivals featuring masks. Thus artists traine…
It is easy to understand why art historians ignored modern and contemporary African art for a long time. First, they were preoccupied with the so-called classical African art, which had influenced the birth of modern European art. Second, some of them assumed that the belief system that inspired the best of African creativity was on the wane due to the negative impact of colonialism, Western educa…
In the early twenty-first century contemporary African art is no longer confined to the works of black artists; it now includes those produced by artists of European, Arab, and Asian descent. That it has come of age is evident in the creative ways it often combines ancient African elements with new and frequently Western materials, forms, and techniques to reflect the peculiarity of the continent&…
Adams, Monni. "African Visual Arts from an Art Historical Perspective." African Studies Review 32, no. 2 (1989): 55–103. A comprehensive overview of the literature up to the 1980s. African Art Studies: The State of the Discipline. Papers Presented at a Symposium Organized by the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of Afric…
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