Eight General Characteristics of African Art

1. Abstraction: shape, form, color, and line to create a composition that may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world.

   • In the West, God is shown like us, yet, on the African continent, God is portrayed abstractly.

2. Sculptural primacy: A sculpture expresses cultural, religious, and societal ideas.

   • Using wood, metal, clay, and stone, African sculptors create complicated, symbolic works with many meanings.

   • African societies use these sculptures to decorate and function. They might depict deities, ancestors, spirits, or daily life.

3. Performance art: Movement is seen as a primary art form. In the West, this is known as conceptual art.

   • Africans have a long-standing historical tradition of performance art with movement being the primary form or feature of a work of art.

     • For example, a mask is not just a singular object, but it is worn with a headpiece, an ensemble, drums, sound, people, and music accompanying it.

4. Multiple meanings: A single work may contain an intellectually complex layering of meanings.

   • Meanings are larger than what meets the eye.

   • A level of sophistication can be attributed to the creator who can incorporate the multiple meanings into a single piece.

5. Innovation of form: There exists a continent-wide concern with innovation and creativity.

   • These are NOT static tribes that are timeless, isolated, or trapped within a period.

6. Assemblage: The usage of organic materials that can stand alone; having a life of its own and apart from the art piece.

7. Parallel asymmetries: Two-dimensional works have parallel asymmetries; they are balanced in their composition because they have both asymmetrical and symmetrical elements.

8. Humanism: The use of the human body as an art form.

   • The African continent had established a canon for the human body prior to the Greeks.

Background Information

• African art is interdisciplinary and uses a wide variety of forms, materials, and performances.

  • Formerly thought of as static and primitive, today African

    art is seen as interactive with many cultures and always

    changing.

• Art permeates all important aspects of society. Rituals initiate coming of age, leadership, or family communion and often have elements of contact with ancestors.

• Art objects are often manipulated and interpreted in rituals. Historic accomplishments are orally preserved by poets and historians who use objects to identify with their stories.

• Large leadership centers, as in Zimbabwe, show that Africans sometimes used monumental structures to mark settlements and territory.

• While the African continent is vast in territory and population, there are similarities in the way Africans create their art.

Required Image List

Shona Peoples; Great Zimbabwe/Zimbabwe; 11th-15th centuries

167. Conical tower and circular wall of Great Zimbabwe. Shona peoples (Southeastern Zimbabwe). c. 1000–1400 ce. Coursed granite blocks.

• There were buildings in this complex that were called venerated houses or royal houses.

  • They are thought to have been the homes of the ruling elite or kings and were the sites of political and religious power.

• The Shona are a Bantu ethnic group native to Southern Africa, primarily Zimbabwe where they form a vast majority.

• Valley Enclosures: This enclosure may have contained residences or administrative buildings.

• Hill Complex: Up on a hill, the complex overlooked the Great Enclosure. It contained structures and terraces.

• Great Platform: In the southeast area close to the Great Enclosure, this platform is elevated and made of stone; thought to be the foundation for a wooden structure, possibly a palace or the king’s residence.

• Great Zimbabwe is one of the largest stone structures of Africa built before modernity.

  • The only other larger stone structures are found in ancient Egypt.

• The complex has three distinct areas: the Hill, the Great Enclosure, and the Valley Ruins.

  • The Hill dates to 1250 and contains a cave that is believed to have once housed the elite.

  • The Great Enclosure dates to 1450; the structure has turrets (a small tower on top of a larger tower) and monoliths like the Hill ruin.

  • In the Valley Ruins, a soapstone sculpture of a bird seated on a register was found.

    • The bird has defined talons and has a pronounced breast, emblematic of the Shona King.

• Most of the population lived in earthen and mud-brick structures that have not left any ruins.

• The ruler and their family lived in luxury in the confines of the walled structure known as the Great Wall.

• The Great Enclosure is an elliptically shaped outer wall that is 820 feet long.

  • This wall served as the boundary for the property.

  • The structure stands 32 feet above the savannah where it is found.

  • There is a second interior wall that runs along the outer wall and creates a walkway to the Conical Tower.

• The Conical Tower is 18 feet in diameter and 20 feet high.

• Over one million granite blocks construct both of the walls and the tower.

  • These blocks were quarried from nearby hills.

  • The blocks have no mortar, despite their enormous size.

  • This exemplifies the great precision and architectural skill of the Shona.

• There is no evidence to show that the enclosure was used as a fortress; rather, the walls were used to separate the ruler from his subjects.

  • The massiveness of the walls symbolizes the ruler’s power.

• The conical tower was used to store the harvest.

  • Its shape is like that of a granary.

  • Its location is evident of the ruler’s role as the custodian of the harvest.

• Migrations moved Africans from Western African into the interior; they brought their agricultural practices with them.

• The ruling elite appear to have controlled wealth through the management of cattle which was the cornerstone of the Zimbabwean economy.

  • The community was based on farming, livestock, mining, and trade.

  • By 1500, the influence of the Shona people waned; historians are not sure why.

• Archaeological evidence has revealed glass beads and porcelain from China and Persia, gold and Arab coins, etc. which all speak to the extent of long-distance trade that Zimbabwe participated in with the outside world.

• In 1800s, English colonizers found Great Zimbabwe and were stunned by grandeur and workmanship; they then concluded that Muslims must have constructed this (even though there is no evidence of Muslims in this area).

  • This is a symbol of longstanding prejudice against African cultures.

• Cross-Cultural Comparison

  • In both the Great Enclosure and Saqsa Waman, they are constructed using heavy stoned with no mortar. However, ashlar masonry is not used in Zimbabwe, they are just cut and stacked.

Mali

168. Great Mosque of Djenné. Mali. Founded c. 1200 CE; rebuilt 1906–1907 CE. Adobe.

• The mosque is not just a mosque, but a marketplace that serves to emphasize its location as an epicenter of religious and cultural life.

• It is located in Mali on the floodplain of the River Bani.

• The great mosque of Djenné is the largest mud-brick structure in the world and a symbol for the city and a source of pride for the people of Mali.

• Djenné was founded between 800 and 1250 CE.

  • A center of commerce, learning, and Islam.

  • Arab traders of gold, ivory, and salt found their way through the savannah region of the continent.

  • Had much commercial success and left the legacy of Islam at Djenné.

• The city of Djenné was a political symbol for the residents as well as the French that colonized Mali in 1892.

• There is a yearly festival known as Crepissage de la Grand Mosquée or Plastering of the Great Mosque, in which all of the community participates.

• The mosque is set ten feet above ground level to protect it from damaging floods.

• The Qibla or Prayer Wall is located on the eastern wall, which guarantees that the worshiper is facing Mecca. • Almost two-foot-thick walls insulate from the soaring temperatures of the city that reach upwards of 100 degrees F.

• Three towers or Minarets are traditional with mosque architecture, reach 50 feet in height, and dominate the eastern Qibla wall.

• The projecting beams are called Torons. These are bundles of palm sticks that provide a design detail. They are also structural as it reduces the cracking of the mud brick because of changes in humidity.

• Ostrich eggs at the very top of the pillars symbolize fertility and purity in the Mali region.

• The mosque is composed of adobe (Spanish for mud brick), which is made from dirt, organic matter like mud, sand, straw, dung, and/or rice husks, and water.

  • Materials such as terracotta tiles/ceramic vessel/tube/lid covering roof openings, palm wood projecting torons and roof beams, and mud plaster coating the bricks.

• The façade of the building is plastered to protect the mud bricks from the elements and must be replastered every year (the annual ceremony is called Crepissage or Crepissage de la Grande Mosquée).

• All the interior space has become like narrow aisles due to the thickness of many earthen pillars.

• Mihrab: a niche in the wall of a mosque that points to Mecca.

• Hypostyle: having a roof supported several rows of pillars or columns.

• Nave: central section of the mosque prayer section.

Benin; Nigeria; 11th-19th Centuries

169. Wall plaque, from Oba’s palace. Edo peoples, Kingdom of Benin (Nigeria). 16th century CE. Cast brass.

• The oba, or ruler, dominates the plaque.

  • The name of the depicted oba is unknown

  • The people of Edo believed that he was descendant of a god; he was an absolute ruler.

  • Hierarchical scale, notice Oba’s size compared to his horse.

• The oba is at the center of the plaque with two smaller sword bearer attendants at his side holding his hands and two others protecting him from the sun.

• The oba wears a coral beaded necklace and rides sidesaddle on the horse.

• The plaque originally hung with approximately 900 other brass plaques in the Oba’s palace.

  • The plaques told the lineage of Benin’s obas.

  • Two tiny figures hover above Oba while another tiny figure holds his foot.

• Benin and Portugal were trading partners; Portugal received peppers, cloth, and stone beads; Benin received brass and coral.

  • Britain eventually attempted trade with Benin but ended in seizing Benin’s palace, burning and looting it.

  • Many of the wall plaques were stripped from the pillars and taken back to Britain. This one is at the MOMA.

• The Benin Massacre shocked the British

  • Within five weeks, the British retaliated with 1,200 armed soldiers to punish the Oba.

  • Benin was taken and the Oba exiled. The British seized over 2,500 works including approximately 900 brass plaques.

• Lost-Wax Casting

  • The kingdom of Benin is notable for its artisans’ masterful use of lost-wax casting techniques using recycled brass obtained from brass armbands that were acquired through trade with the Portuguese.

Ashanti Peoples; Ghana; 17th-21st Centuries

170. Sika dwa kofi (Golden Stool). Ashanti peoples (south central Ghana). c. 1700 CE. Gold over wood and cast-gold attachments.

• Osei Tutu united the Ashanti confederacy in 1700

• The unification and later rise of the Kingdom has been tied to the Golden Stool.

  • Tradition has it that Osei Tutu’s chief priest Okomfo Anokye got the various chiefs together and he extended his arms towards the sky. Then, the stool descended from the clouds and landed on Osei Tutu’s lap.

  • After the apparition of the divine stool the chiefs swore their allegiance to Osei Tutu.

  • The Ashanti believe that the Golden Stool has the sonsum (soul) of the Ashanti.

• The Golden Stool empowered and enriched the Ashanti Kingdom, and as a result, their treasury grew.

  • The treasury of Kumasi held over 20,000 pounds of gold dust, fine particles of gold produced by machining or occurring naturally.

• The Ashanti Kingdom's Ruler, Asantehene Prempeh II, adopted the Ashanti National Flag in 1935. It is based on the Golden Stool, the Ashanti people's symbol of unity and sunsum(soul) since the Empire's founding in 1701.

• The Stool has never touched the ground nor has anyone ever sat on it. New kings are lowered and raised over the Golden Stool without touching it.

• The Golden Stool of the Ashanti people is presented on its side, resting on its own stool as a reminder that it is sacred.

  • The wooden stool is covered in cast gold with bells attached.

  • They tip over their stools to keep their sunsum intact.

• In 1901, the British named the region the British Crown Colony until in 1957 and their independence from the British empire; it became Ghana.

  • The British royal Governor, Sir Frederick Hodgson, demanded the stool so he could sit on it.

• War of the Golden Stool

  • The British military might suppress the revolt, but the Ashanti claimed victory because they never turned it over.

  • Hodgson wanted the stool for display at the British Museum in London.

  • Today the stool is housed in the Ashanti royal palace in Kumasi, Ghana.

• Golden Stool is more important to the Ashanti than any ruler.

• Divinely created, the Golden Stool is a functional object that is sacred to the Ashanti.

The Kuba peoples; Democratic Republic of the Congo; 17th-19th Centuries

171. Ndop (portrait figure) of King Mishe miShyaang maMbul. Kuba peoples (Democratic Republic of the Congo). c. 1760–1780 ce. Wood.

• The Ndop or portrait figure of King Mishe miShyaang maMbul, originates from the Kuba peoples in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

• Known for artistic creativity, the Kuba thrive at sculptures.

  • The tradition of ndops or "portrait statues" is of the Kuba rulers.

  • The ndop is rubbed with oil to protect from insects attacking the wood Image.

  • This image is the oldest of the known ndops and one of the earliest wood sculptures of Africa.

• It is a sculpture of King Mishe MiShyaang maMbul.

  • It is an idealized depiction of a nyim, or Kuba ruler.

  • He sits cross-legged on a stool, a typical ndop pose.

  • His position elevates him from his people.

• An enlarged head about 1/3rd of his total height, a traditional standard that means vast intelligence, knowledge, and power.

• A serene facial expression as he holds a peace knife (Ikul) with the handle facing out in his left hand.

• A drum with a severed hand, King Mishe’s ibol (identifying symbol), is in front of the figure.

• King Mishe wears royal regalia: bracelets, armbands, belts, headdress.

  • The shody, his hoe-shaped headdress, links to a similar one worn by a Kuba kingdom founder.

• The Kuba people are 19 unique ethnic groups that acknowledge the power of the same leader (nyim).

• King Mishe was known for his generosity.

• The unique geometric pattern of the ibol is carved in deep relief in front of the base links the figure with the specific individual.

• Rounded contours, facial expression, body position, and regalia are typical features seen in ndop portrait figures.

  • Intricately carved objects represent the prestige of the nyim.

  • The ndops recorded the accomplishments of the nyim.

  • They served as a point of contact with the nyim’s spirit.

  • The Ndop absorbs the ruler's spiritual essence after his death.

  • It serves for future instruction and inspiration for the new king.