I did not go looking for textiles, they came looking for me. I originally went to southern Madagascar in the late 1980s with the intention of studying funerary monuments, which from the nineteenth century had become ever more visible and elaborate. But in the village that graciously hosted me, women soon drew me into helping them card and spin cotton, which the neighboring village then dyed and wove into burial cloth. It became apparent that as much— or more—energy, artistry, and money went into weaving and shrouds than into tombs. Yet, when I proposed the dissertation topic of handweaving to my supervisor, a French archaeologist, he was aghast. Why this frivolous topic? He, like many others, would continually try to steer me to Malagasy funerary monuments, made by specialists—by men—of stone or carved wood. A microcosm of early African art history—with its notorious preference for sculpture—perhaps compounded by the fact that in Madagascar weavers are most always women. Female and frivolous, associations that scholars show fed into the academy’s longstanding rejection of textiles, dress, and fashion as serious subjects of inquiry. What set me free, and many in my generation, was the collective volume Cloth and Human Experience (Schneider and Weiner 1989). Its mostly feminist-anthropologist authors shed blinding light on the great social and aesthetic significance of cloth around the world and women’s creative agency in making and activating it. The volume’s chapter on Madagascar by Gillian Feeley-Harnik ultimately helped win over my supervisor to my cause. Typical of the time, few chapters focused on dress, and my own dissertation was in the mold of “the anthropology of cloth,” exploring the making, gifting, and ritual use of handweavings. Still far in the distance in the 1980s, as Victoria Rovine (2015) has observed in hindsight, was seeing fashionability in Africa; only in recent years has she, and many colleagues, replaced the noxious F-words with a set of I-words: innovation, impetus, intention, individual .... Thus, if some quarters were debating whether African textiles were worthy of study, others simply got on with it. Textiles rank among “the most potent field of an indigenous aesthetic,” as John Picton, an early pioneer in the field, concludes (this issue, p. 82). And researchers, for this and many other reasons, simply could not ignore them. In the 1970s and ‘80s, the pages of African Arts offered a steady stream of articles, mainly by female scholars, on particular traditions, many of which have come to form the familiar African textile canon: resist-dyed indigo, kente, ikats of the Dida, Kuba raffia, kaasa blankets, Akwete brocades, Sokoto robes. Articles included, too, newly invented traditions such as tapestry and screen printing, born of cooperatives. Major monographs and surveys appeared, with a volume of Textile History (Idiens 1980) dedicated to “traditional African weaving and textiles.” (For detailed overview of the historio
{"title":"African Textiles, Fashionable Textiles: A Historiography","authors":"Sarah Fee","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00715","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00715","url":null,"abstract":"I did not go looking for textiles, they came looking for me. I originally went to southern Madagascar in the late 1980s with the intention of studying funerary monuments, which from the nineteenth century had become ever more visible and elaborate. But in the village that graciously hosted me, women soon drew me into helping them card and spin cotton, which the neighboring village then dyed and wove into burial cloth. It became apparent that as much— or more—energy, artistry, and money went into weaving and shrouds than into tombs. Yet, when I proposed the dissertation topic of handweaving to my supervisor, a French archaeologist, he was aghast. Why this frivolous topic? He, like many others, would continually try to steer me to Malagasy funerary monuments, made by specialists—by men—of stone or carved wood. A microcosm of early African art history—with its notorious preference for sculpture—perhaps compounded by the fact that in Madagascar weavers are most always women. Female and frivolous, associations that scholars show fed into the academy’s longstanding rejection of textiles, dress, and fashion as serious subjects of inquiry. What set me free, and many in my generation, was the collective volume Cloth and Human Experience (Schneider and Weiner 1989). Its mostly feminist-anthropologist authors shed blinding light on the great social and aesthetic significance of cloth around the world and women’s creative agency in making and activating it. The volume’s chapter on Madagascar by Gillian Feeley-Harnik ultimately helped win over my supervisor to my cause. Typical of the time, few chapters focused on dress, and my own dissertation was in the mold of “the anthropology of cloth,” exploring the making, gifting, and ritual use of handweavings. Still far in the distance in the 1980s, as Victoria Rovine (2015) has observed in hindsight, was seeing fashionability in Africa; only in recent years has she, and many colleagues, replaced the noxious F-words with a set of I-words: innovation, impetus, intention, individual .... Thus, if some quarters were debating whether African textiles were worthy of study, others simply got on with it. Textiles rank among “the most potent field of an indigenous aesthetic,” as John Picton, an early pioneer in the field, concludes (this issue, p. 82). And researchers, for this and many other reasons, simply could not ignore them. In the 1970s and ‘80s, the pages of African Arts offered a steady stream of articles, mainly by female scholars, on particular traditions, many of which have come to form the familiar African textile canon: resist-dyed indigo, kente, ikats of the Dida, Kuba raffia, kaasa blankets, Akwete brocades, Sokoto robes. Articles included, too, newly invented traditions such as tapestry and screen printing, born of cooperatives. Major monographs and surveys appeared, with a volume of Textile History (Idiens 1980) dedicated to “traditional African weaving and textiles.” (For detailed overview of the historio","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"1-5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44461095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
My work is described, conventionally, as “abstract.” However, given that there is a very precise, knowable set of resources at the back of it, I would describe it rather as schematic: not like a map, but like a reaction to or interpretation of a map. It is about ownership, a way to finding myelf, where I am. In that sense my work enhances a viewing of Kumasi and Ghana … my work is the outcome of a series of engagements be - tween practices, forms and visual environments that are specific to me in Ghana (Kwami 2013: 355–60).
{"title":"Textiles in the History of the History of African Art","authors":"J. Picton","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00723","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00723","url":null,"abstract":"My work is described, conventionally, as “abstract.” However, given that there is a very precise, knowable set of resources at the back of it, I would describe it rather as schematic: not like a map, but like a reaction to or interpretation of a map. It is about ownership, a way to finding myelf, where I am. In that sense my work enhances a viewing of Kumasi and Ghana … my work is the outcome of a series of engagements be - tween practices, forms and visual environments that are specific to me in Ghana (Kwami 2013: 355–60).","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"82-91"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43469406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The first major exhibition of African art at the Kimbell in twentyfive years, The Language of Beauty in African Art encouraged visitors to consider how African language is used to describe concepts of beauty in African art.1 More than 200 works, representing fiftysix subSaharan countries, were gathered from over sixty collections around the world. Seven years in the making, the exhibition was organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and curated by Constantine Petridis in collaboration with Jennifer Casler Price, the Kimbell’s curator of Asian, African, and Ancient American Art. Price commented that the exhibition focused on “looking at African art through the aesthetics of the indigenous people” rather than through a lens rooted in Western art history.2 The exhibition occupied eight galleries in the Renzo Piano Pavilion and focused on spe cific cultural themes and artistic conventions. Gracing the entrance were largerthanlife photographs of Igbo Maiden Spirit maskers (photographed in 1935 by G.I. Jones near Awka, Nigeria), setting the stage for exploring concepts of ugliness and beauty in African art. An Acoustiguide mobile app featured Director Erik M. Lee introducing the exhibition, with commentary by Yaëlle Biro on the history of Western appreciation of African art. For all its successes, The Language of Beauty in African Art at the Kimbell highlighted the challenges museums face when displaying African art in the formal museum environ ment. Renzo Piano’s architectural color scheme of gray concrete walls, oak floor, and diffused natural light made for a warm gallery atmo sphere, with casework and label copy echoing Piano’s color palette. While didactics promoted indigenous perspectives, the display environ ment maintained its postmodern aesthetic. The first section, “Whose Beauty?” consid ered how African art has been displayed and interpreted in and outside of Africa. A male figure identified as the Chokwe royal ances tor, Chibinda Ilunga, introduced visitors to the duality of meanings in African language, while recognizing the sculpture’s utotombo, or craftsmanship, as well as its cibema, or beauty and goodness (Fig. 1). Another display of Kota reliquary figures exemplified the Western fascination with figural abstraction and aes thetics of African art rather than its indigenous functions. The “How Objects Speak” section included prestige works, decorative cups, headrests, and stools. From this gallery, visitors had an open view into the next section, which explored the “Moral Meanings of Beauty.” An impressive Baga shoulder mask (d’mba) commanded the space as a monumental symbol of the beautiful, maternal power of women along with personal adornments inscribing status and moral distinction (Fig. 2). A collection of helmet masks (sowei) evidenced the high est “Standards of Beauty” for women; their
{"title":"The Language of Beauty in African Art curated by Constantine Petridis","authors":"Edleeca Thompson","doi":"10.1162/afar_r_00712","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00712","url":null,"abstract":"The first major exhibition of African art at the Kimbell in twentyfive years, The Language of Beauty in African Art encouraged visitors to consider how African language is used to describe concepts of beauty in African art.1 More than 200 works, representing fiftysix subSaharan countries, were gathered from over sixty collections around the world. Seven years in the making, the exhibition was organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and curated by Constantine Petridis in collaboration with Jennifer Casler Price, the Kimbell’s curator of Asian, African, and Ancient American Art. Price commented that the exhibition focused on “looking at African art through the aesthetics of the indigenous people” rather than through a lens rooted in Western art history.2 The exhibition occupied eight galleries in the Renzo Piano Pavilion and focused on spe cific cultural themes and artistic conventions. Gracing the entrance were largerthanlife photographs of Igbo Maiden Spirit maskers (photographed in 1935 by G.I. Jones near Awka, Nigeria), setting the stage for exploring concepts of ugliness and beauty in African art. An Acoustiguide mobile app featured Director Erik M. Lee introducing the exhibition, with commentary by Yaëlle Biro on the history of Western appreciation of African art. For all its successes, The Language of Beauty in African Art at the Kimbell highlighted the challenges museums face when displaying African art in the formal museum environ ment. Renzo Piano’s architectural color scheme of gray concrete walls, oak floor, and diffused natural light made for a warm gallery atmo sphere, with casework and label copy echoing Piano’s color palette. While didactics promoted indigenous perspectives, the display environ ment maintained its postmodern aesthetic. The first section, “Whose Beauty?” consid ered how African art has been displayed and interpreted in and outside of Africa. A male figure identified as the Chokwe royal ances tor, Chibinda Ilunga, introduced visitors to the duality of meanings in African language, while recognizing the sculpture’s utotombo, or craftsmanship, as well as its cibema, or beauty and goodness (Fig. 1). Another display of Kota reliquary figures exemplified the Western fascination with figural abstraction and aes thetics of African art rather than its indigenous functions. The “How Objects Speak” section included prestige works, decorative cups, headrests, and stools. From this gallery, visitors had an open view into the next section, which explored the “Moral Meanings of Beauty.” An impressive Baga shoulder mask (d’mba) commanded the space as a monumental symbol of the beautiful, maternal power of women along with personal adornments inscribing status and moral distinction (Fig. 2). A collection of helmet masks (sowei) evidenced the high est “Standards of Beauty” for women; their","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"91-93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46926681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
On November 17, 1892, Colonel Alfred Amédée Dodds of the French Army raided the palace complex of Abomey, capital of the Kingdom of Danxomè, with a force of 2,164 Marines, engineers, sharpshooters, artillery units, Foreign Legionnaires, Senegalese light cavalry, and volunteers from the neighboring kingdom of Xogbónù (Alpern 1998: 193). Having conducted successful colonial cam paigns in Réunion, Senegal, and French Indo china, Dodds sought to bring the Danxomèan Kingdom under French control amid Europe’s manic scramble for Africa. Facing Dodds was King Gbéhanzin, a fearsome ruler and cunning military strategist, who had resisted French depredations since his enthronement in 1889. Anticipating Dodd’s attack on Abomey, Gbéhanzin torched the city’s palaces and retreated northward. Despite armed resistance and sporadic incursions mounted by Gbéhan zin over the next two years, Dodds’s taking of Abomey spelled the end of the second FrancoDanxomèan War (July 4, 1892–Jan uary 29, 1894), and with it, three centuries of uninterrupted Danxomèan rule.1 The fall of Abomey also precipitated the consolidation of one of the last autonomous African kingdoms into the Third Republic’s sprawling West African empire and cemented France’s position as a colonial powerhouse at the dawn of the twentieth century. Shortly after Dodds’s men hoisted the Tricolor above Abomey’s smoldering ruins, they discovered multiple caches of hastily buried jewelry, fabrics, thrones, statues, weapons, portable shrines, palace doors, and ritual paraphernalia (Beaujean 2019: 239). Rampant pillaging ensued, and what Dodds and his men could not take with them, or what they deemed worthless, they destroyed. Less than a year later, a newly promoted General Dodds made the first of two donations of pillaged Danxomèan objects to the Musée du Trocadero in Paris. A second gift in 1895 increased the Trocadero’s “Dodds Collection” to twentysix objects. Over the next century, Gbéhanzin’s royal possessions were exhibited and otherwise held at the Musée du Tro cadero and the Musée de l’Homme before being transferred to the new Musée du quai Branly–Jacques Chirac in 2004. On December 24, 2020, following decades of campaigning and negotiations by Béninois heads of state, African art scholars, artists, and cultural activ ists, President Emmanuel Macron signed into law Restitution Bill n° 20201673, formalizing France’s intention to return the twentysix works taken from Abomey by Dodds in 1892 (Castex et al. 2020). On November 10, 2021, France repatriated the objects in one of the most significant acts of object restitu tion to date. After more than a century of exile, the Danxomèan court treasures were displayed on Béninois soil in Art du Bénin d’hier et d’aujourd’hui: de la Restitution à la Révélation (Art of Bénin from Yesterday and Today: Restitution to Revelation). Opening in Cotonou on Febru ary 20, 2022, the landmark exhibition paired the objects seized by Dodds with more than one hundred w
1892年11月17日，法国陆军上校阿尔弗雷德-阿姆萨梅·多兹率领2164名海军陆战队员、工兵、神枪手、炮兵、外籍军团士兵、塞内加尔轻骑兵和来自邻国Xogbónù王国的志愿者突袭了Danxomè王国首都阿波美宫殿。面对多兹的是格姆萨辛国王，一个可怕的统治者和狡猾的军事战略家，自1889年登基以来一直抵抗法国的掠夺。预料到多德会对阿波美发动进攻，格姆萨汗津烧毁了城市的宫殿，向北撤退。尽管在接下来的两年里，格姆萨辛发动了武装抵抗和零星入侵，但多德占领阿波美宣告了第二次法丹战争(1892年7月4日至1894年1月29日)的结束，同时也宣告了三个世纪以来不间断的丹克萨辛统治的结束阿波美的陷落也加速了最后一个非洲自治王国的巩固，使其成为第三共和国庞大的西非帝国，并巩固了法国在20世纪初作为殖民大国的地位。多德的人在阿波美冒烟的废墟上悬挂三色旗后不久，他们发现了许多匆忙掩埋的珠宝、织物、宝座、雕像、武器、便携式神龛、宫殿门和仪式用品(Beaujean 2019: 239)。随之而来的是猖獗的掠夺，多德和他的手下带不走的东西，或者他们认为没有价值的东西，他们就毁掉了。不到一年后，新晋升的多兹将军将掠夺的丹索索物品捐赠给了巴黎的mussame du Trocadero。1895年的第二份礼物将特罗卡德罗的“多德收藏品”增加到26件。在接下来的一个世纪里，gbsamhanzin的王室财产在2004年被转移到新的mussame du quai branli - jacques Chirac博物馆之前，在mussame du Tro - cadero和mussame de l 'Homme展出或保存。2020年12月24日，经过巴西国家元首、非洲艺术学者、艺术家和文化活动家数十年的宣传和谈判，法国总统埃马纽埃尔·马克龙(Emmanuel Macron)签署了《2020 - 1673年归还法案》，正式宣布法国打算归还多德于1892年从阿波美掠走的26件作品(Castex et al. 2020)。2021年11月10日，法国归还了这些文物，这是迄今为止最重要的文物归还行动之一。在经历了一个多世纪的流亡之后，丹索姆兰宫廷的宝藏在bsaminis的土地上展出，展览名为Art du bsaminin d 'hier et d 'aujourd 'hui: de la Restitution la rsamination(从昨天到今天的bsaminin艺术:从恢复到启示)。这次具有里程碑意义的展览将于2022年2月20日在科托努开幕，将多兹缴获的物品与34位巴西当代艺术家的100多件作品结合在一起。正如b尼米斯·塔隆(Patrice Talon)在展览目录的序言中所说，Art du b尼米斯的灵感来自于一句谚语:“旧绳的尽头编织着新的绳”(c 'est au bout de l 'ancienne corde qu 'on tisse la nouvelle) (Talon 2022: 6)。策展人秉承着公理的再生逻辑，将b尼米斯艺术创作的三个时代编织在一起。从Sossa Dede和其他19世纪danxominois宫廷工匠的工艺开始，展示进入20世纪的作品，包括Cyprien Tokoudagba, Amidou Dossou和Ludovic Fadaïro，并以新兴的bsaminois艺术家的作品达到顶峰，包括s nami Donoumassou， Éliane Aïsso和Moufouli Bello。这次展览是由巴林的旅游、艺术和文化部赞助的，而规划和安装则是由两个独立的巴林组织与法国设计机构Les Crayons合作完成的。当代艺术展区的策展工作由国家美术馆负责，由lassa Awunou Roufai和Yassine Lassissi指导，而danxom艺术展区则由Edmond Toli、Alain Godonou和jos Pliya领导的巴林国家遗产和旅游促进机构负责。艺术展在科托努滨海宫(Palais de la Marina) 2300平方米的“Salles des Fêtes et du people”开幕，从2月20日持续到2022.2年5月5日。展览从周四到周日免费向公众开放，每个月的最后一个周六举行晚间招待会。游客们欣赏格姆萨辛国王和Glèlè国王的雕像。皇家艺术部，Art du bsamin。
{"title":"Art du Bénin d'hier et d'aujourd'hui: de la Restitution à la Révélation curated by Léa Awunou Roufai and Yassine Lassissi (contemporary art) and Edmond Toli, Alain Godonou, and José Pliya (Danxomèan art)","authors":"Degenhart Brown, J. Adandé","doi":"10.1162/afar_r_00711","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00711","url":null,"abstract":"On November 17, 1892, Colonel Alfred Amédée Dodds of the French Army raided the palace complex of Abomey, capital of the Kingdom of Danxomè, with a force of 2,164 Marines, engineers, sharpshooters, artillery units, Foreign Legionnaires, Senegalese light cavalry, and volunteers from the neighboring kingdom of Xogbónù (Alpern 1998: 193). Having conducted successful colonial cam paigns in Réunion, Senegal, and French Indo china, Dodds sought to bring the Danxomèan Kingdom under French control amid Europe’s manic scramble for Africa. Facing Dodds was King Gbéhanzin, a fearsome ruler and cunning military strategist, who had resisted French depredations since his enthronement in 1889. Anticipating Dodd’s attack on Abomey, Gbéhanzin torched the city’s palaces and retreated northward. Despite armed resistance and sporadic incursions mounted by Gbéhan zin over the next two years, Dodds’s taking of Abomey spelled the end of the second FrancoDanxomèan War (July 4, 1892–Jan uary 29, 1894), and with it, three centuries of uninterrupted Danxomèan rule.1 The fall of Abomey also precipitated the consolidation of one of the last autonomous African kingdoms into the Third Republic’s sprawling West African empire and cemented France’s position as a colonial powerhouse at the dawn of the twentieth century. Shortly after Dodds’s men hoisted the Tricolor above Abomey’s smoldering ruins, they discovered multiple caches of hastily buried jewelry, fabrics, thrones, statues, weapons, portable shrines, palace doors, and ritual paraphernalia (Beaujean 2019: 239). Rampant pillaging ensued, and what Dodds and his men could not take with them, or what they deemed worthless, they destroyed. Less than a year later, a newly promoted General Dodds made the first of two donations of pillaged Danxomèan objects to the Musée du Trocadero in Paris. A second gift in 1895 increased the Trocadero’s “Dodds Collection” to twentysix objects. Over the next century, Gbéhanzin’s royal possessions were exhibited and otherwise held at the Musée du Tro cadero and the Musée de l’Homme before being transferred to the new Musée du quai Branly–Jacques Chirac in 2004. On December 24, 2020, following decades of campaigning and negotiations by Béninois heads of state, African art scholars, artists, and cultural activ ists, President Emmanuel Macron signed into law Restitution Bill n° 20201673, formalizing France’s intention to return the twentysix works taken from Abomey by Dodds in 1892 (Castex et al. 2020). On November 10, 2021, France repatriated the objects in one of the most significant acts of object restitu tion to date. After more than a century of exile, the Danxomèan court treasures were displayed on Béninois soil in Art du Bénin d’hier et d’aujourd’hui: de la Restitution à la Révélation (Art of Bénin from Yesterday and Today: Restitution to Revelation). Opening in Cotonou on Febru ary 20, 2022, the landmark exhibition paired the objects seized by Dodds with more than one hundred w","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"78-90"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48776383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This catalogue, dedicated to the permanent collection of African art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia, is innovative in both approach and form and makes a distinct contribution to the genre of museum catalogues centered on African art in major museum collections. The Arts of Africa emphasizes scientific analysis and conservation, providing a perspective that has not been applied to a booklength, compre hensive treatment of an African art collection in a major US museum. Objects that were the subject of analysis by the conservation depart ment cover a wide geographic and temporal expanse, from a depiction of the Last Supper from eighteenthcentury Ethiopia to a Twins SevenSeven work. Instead of treating objects as exemplars of particular types, the emphasis on conservation as a mode of inquiry consid ers the specific objects within the collection. The conservation perspective brings into focus a central argument and structuring principle of the book: the biographies of objects do not end with their entry into the museum. Instead, the works continue to acquire meaning in their interactions with new audiences and their transplantation into a new environment. The publication is notable for these efforts to make the museum a selfconscious presence, an element of the objects’ stories. Accordingly, the conventional photographs of isolated objects are complemented by photographs representing objects within the life of the museum, including in the context of educa tional programs, in the galleries, and in the conservation lab. The Arts of Africa was published to mark the end of a multiyear, crossdepartmental, Mellon Foundationfunded initiative that aimed to apply expertise in the fields of cura tion and conservation to the study of African art objects. It is the second publication from the VMFA’s African art collection; the earlier catalogue (Woodward 2000) was consider ably shorter—94 pages, compared to the 296 pages in this volume. While The Arts of Africa is accessible to nonspecialist audiences, the most seasoned expert will surely appreciate the unique perspectives on even the most canoni cal works. For example, the inclusion of rarely seen views of objects, like the back of a flour sack painting by Congolese artist Tshibumba KandaMatulu, provide literally new per spectives to complement the methodological contributions. The book consists of an introduction, six chapters, and three appendices. Chapters 1 and 2 cover the early history of African art at the VMFA and the establishment of the museum’s permanent collection. Chapter 3 outlines the changing conceptions of the goals of conservation for African art, addressing ethical as well as aesthetic concerns. By far the largest section of the book, chapter 4 details findings of the conservation initiative in relation to specific objects in the collection. Chapters 5 and 6 contextualize the collection of the VMFA within larger trajectories of the display and collect
该目录是弗吉尼亚州里士满弗吉尼亚美术博物馆的非洲艺术永久收藏目录，在方法和形式上都是创新的，为主要博物馆藏品中以非洲艺术为中心的博物馆目录类型做出了独特贡献。《非洲艺术》强调科学分析和保护，提供了一种尚未应用于美国大型博物馆对非洲艺术藏品进行全书、全面处理的视角。保护部门分析的对象涵盖了广泛的地理和时间范围，从18世纪埃塞俄比亚的《最后的晚餐》到双胞胎七七的作品。强调保护是一种调查模式，而不是将物品视为特定类型的样本，而是考虑藏品中的特定物品。从保护的角度来看，这本书的一个核心论点和结构原则成为焦点：物品的传记不会随着它们进入博物馆而结束。相反，作品在与新观众的互动和移植到新环境中继续获得意义。该出版物以这些努力而闻名，这些努力使博物馆成为一个有自我意识的存在，成为物品故事的一个元素。因此，传统的孤立物体照片与代表博物馆生活中物体的照片相辅相成，包括在教育项目、画廊和保护实验室的背景下。《非洲艺术》的出版标志着多年跨部门、，梅隆基金会资助了一项旨在将收藏和保护领域的专业知识应用于非洲艺术品研究的倡议。这是VMFA非洲艺术收藏的第二本出版物；早期的目录（Woodward 2000）被认为更短——94页，而本卷只有296页。虽然非专业观众可以接触到《非洲艺术》，但即使是最经典的作品，经验最丰富的专家也肯定会欣赏到其独特的视角。例如，包含了罕见的物体视图，比如刚果艺术家Tshibumba Kanda Matulu的面粉袋画作的背面，提供了全新的视角来补充方法论的贡献。本书由引言、六章和三个附录组成。第一章和第二章介绍了VMFA非洲艺术的早期历史以及博物馆永久藏品的建立。第3章概述了非洲艺术保护目标的概念变化，涉及伦理和美学问题。到目前为止，这本书最大的一部分，第4章详细介绍了与藏品中特定物品有关的保护举措的发现。第5章和第6章将VMFA的藏品置于西方非洲艺术展示和收藏的更大轨迹以及非洲艺术领域的当代趋势中。VMFA非洲藏品的创始策展人Richard B.Woodward以博物馆获得的第一件非洲艺术品开始了介绍，这很恰当。自1977年收藏库巴王国的Bwoom面具以来，作品数量已增至1000多件。Woodward指出，这些作品是许多不同故事的素材积累，用Bwoom面具来说明他的观点。从在表演中使用到在购买过程中丢失配套服装，面具为塑造其传记的“人、思想、历史、技术和商业的无形网络”提供了证据（第1页）。同样由伍德沃德撰写的第一章讲述了VMFA非洲艺术的早期历史，该机构最初是一个小型的地区博物馆，其展览以维尔吉尼亚艺术家为中心。非洲艺术在1941年的一次展览中首次出现在欧洲现代主义的陪伴下，展出了小沃尔特·P·克莱斯勒（Walter P.Chrysler，Jr.）收藏的作品。与欧洲作品一起展出的还有两座雕塑，一尊科塔圣骨箱雕像和一个雅卡面具。就在第二年，博物馆看到了一场更为重要的破坏女性经济独立性的展览。这是一个富有成效的角度，但蒙博托的性别政治，以及他统治的所有其他方面，不能被简化为对殖民历史的回应。Senga和Kongo宇航员的作品也可以提出类似的论点：当他们重新审视冷战时代或蒙博托政权时，他们这样做可能不仅是出于对殖民主义后遗症的质疑，而且也是为了试图展现殖民主义中未完全包含的历史性。
{"title":"The Arts of Africa: Studying and Conserving the Collection, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts by Richard B. Woodward, Ash Duhrkoop, Ndubuisi Ezeluomba, Sheila Payaqui, Ainslie Harrison, Casey Mallinckrodt, and Kathryn Brugioni Gabrielli","authors":"Michael S. Baird","doi":"10.1162/afar_r_00714","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00714","url":null,"abstract":"This catalogue, dedicated to the permanent collection of African art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia, is innovative in both approach and form and makes a distinct contribution to the genre of museum catalogues centered on African art in major museum collections. The Arts of Africa emphasizes scientific analysis and conservation, providing a perspective that has not been applied to a booklength, compre hensive treatment of an African art collection in a major US museum. Objects that were the subject of analysis by the conservation depart ment cover a wide geographic and temporal expanse, from a depiction of the Last Supper from eighteenthcentury Ethiopia to a Twins SevenSeven work. Instead of treating objects as exemplars of particular types, the emphasis on conservation as a mode of inquiry consid ers the specific objects within the collection. The conservation perspective brings into focus a central argument and structuring principle of the book: the biographies of objects do not end with their entry into the museum. Instead, the works continue to acquire meaning in their interactions with new audiences and their transplantation into a new environment. The publication is notable for these efforts to make the museum a selfconscious presence, an element of the objects’ stories. Accordingly, the conventional photographs of isolated objects are complemented by photographs representing objects within the life of the museum, including in the context of educa tional programs, in the galleries, and in the conservation lab. The Arts of Africa was published to mark the end of a multiyear, crossdepartmental, Mellon Foundationfunded initiative that aimed to apply expertise in the fields of cura tion and conservation to the study of African art objects. It is the second publication from the VMFA’s African art collection; the earlier catalogue (Woodward 2000) was consider ably shorter—94 pages, compared to the 296 pages in this volume. While The Arts of Africa is accessible to nonspecialist audiences, the most seasoned expert will surely appreciate the unique perspectives on even the most canoni cal works. For example, the inclusion of rarely seen views of objects, like the back of a flour sack painting by Congolese artist Tshibumba KandaMatulu, provide literally new per spectives to complement the methodological contributions. The book consists of an introduction, six chapters, and three appendices. Chapters 1 and 2 cover the early history of African art at the VMFA and the establishment of the museum’s permanent collection. Chapter 3 outlines the changing conceptions of the goals of conservation for African art, addressing ethical as well as aesthetic concerns. By far the largest section of the book, chapter 4 details findings of the conservation initiative in relation to specific objects in the collection. Chapters 5 and 6 contextualize the collection of the VMFA within larger trajectories of the display and collect","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"95-96"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42293622","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
| african arts SUMMER 2023 VOL. 56, NO. 2 The creation of masquerading artifacts like masks, hats, stilts, flywhisks, African bells with ring strikers (castanets), and costumes from the inception of the culture in Ghana has been a matter of strict philosophical discourse, especially within the conceptualization of forms in a blend of mostly European and, rather less, from African perspectives. To date, the masquerade artists and the leaders of Winneba have maintained a blend of European and African frames of reference in conceptualizing their ideas and costumes. The Effutu Municipal Assembly notes that Winneba was traditionally known as “Simpa,” “which was derived from the name of the leader of the Effutus, ‘Osimpa’, who led the Effutus of the Guan ethnic stock from the Northern part of Ghana to the present location” (2015: 3). The name “Winneba” originated from European sailors, who were often aided by the favorable wind to sail along the bay; the constant use of the words “windy bay” turned into the name Winneba. The town was one of the first communities in the country to meet European traders; it served as a port where foreign goods were discharged and transported to the interior and to major commercial areas such as Agona Swedru and Akim-Oda. Because of its role as a harbor town and a place of early European settlement, it became the administrative capital of the then Central Province of the Gold Coast (Ghana). The cocoa boom in forestry areas led to the relocation of major trading companies in the 1940s to Agona Swedru, and this affected the growth of Winneba. The township incurred even greater loss when the port of Tema was completed and port activities in Winneba were thus shut down. With this, most commercial activities also shifted from Winneba to Tema and Accra (Effutu Municipal Assembly 2015). Winneba is primarily a fishing community that uses dinghies for fishing. The Effutu people in Winneba have rich cultures, including the Kakamotobi masquerading festival, Aboakyer deer hunt, and others. The fishing community is gradually turning into a cosmopolitan area, which has taken a toll on the citizens (Micah 2014). Davies (2010), discussing Phyllis Galembo’s fascination with masquerades in Ghana, reveals that the Kakamotobi masquerading festival began as a party. Galembo’s masquerade photographs support the historic antecedents of Effutu’s masquerade culture:
{"title":"Artifacts from the Perspective of Effutu Masquerade Performance: An Aesthetic Album","authors":"V. Micah, Evans Kwadwo Donkor, Owusu-Ansah Ankrah","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00709","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00709","url":null,"abstract":"| african arts SUMMER 2023 VOL. 56, NO. 2 The creation of masquerading artifacts like masks, hats, stilts, flywhisks, African bells with ring strikers (castanets), and costumes from the inception of the culture in Ghana has been a matter of strict philosophical discourse, especially within the conceptualization of forms in a blend of mostly European and, rather less, from African perspectives. To date, the masquerade artists and the leaders of Winneba have maintained a blend of European and African frames of reference in conceptualizing their ideas and costumes. The Effutu Municipal Assembly notes that Winneba was traditionally known as “Simpa,” “which was derived from the name of the leader of the Effutus, ‘Osimpa’, who led the Effutus of the Guan ethnic stock from the Northern part of Ghana to the present location” (2015: 3). The name “Winneba” originated from European sailors, who were often aided by the favorable wind to sail along the bay; the constant use of the words “windy bay” turned into the name Winneba. The town was one of the first communities in the country to meet European traders; it served as a port where foreign goods were discharged and transported to the interior and to major commercial areas such as Agona Swedru and Akim-Oda. Because of its role as a harbor town and a place of early European settlement, it became the administrative capital of the then Central Province of the Gold Coast (Ghana). The cocoa boom in forestry areas led to the relocation of major trading companies in the 1940s to Agona Swedru, and this affected the growth of Winneba. The township incurred even greater loss when the port of Tema was completed and port activities in Winneba were thus shut down. With this, most commercial activities also shifted from Winneba to Tema and Accra (Effutu Municipal Assembly 2015). Winneba is primarily a fishing community that uses dinghies for fishing. The Effutu people in Winneba have rich cultures, including the Kakamotobi masquerading festival, Aboakyer deer hunt, and others. The fishing community is gradually turning into a cosmopolitan area, which has taken a toll on the citizens (Micah 2014). Davies (2010), discussing Phyllis Galembo’s fascination with masquerades in Ghana, reveals that the Kakamotobi masquerading festival began as a party. Galembo’s masquerade photographs support the historic antecedents of Effutu’s masquerade culture:","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"48-63"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48641216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
| 93 living and the dead. These objects commanded astonishment in their form and power, tran scending all notions of ugliness and beauty. The exhibition opened with a symposium and lectures by curator Petridis, Babatunde Lawal, and Frederick John Lamp. Friday and Wednesday evening lectures included talks by Christa Clarke, Zoë Strother, and Elyan Jeanine Hill. The Kimbell also hosted guided tours, workshops, films, book readings, and a special Juneteenth celebration. While displays did not include audiovisual interactives, patrons seemed genuinely interested in the objects and frequently revisited galleries. That said, the missed opportunity to engage visitors with additional audiovisual content could have enlivened an already dynamic collec tion of art, capturing a wider range of visitor demographics. Without question, The Language of Beauty in African Art at the Kimbell was one of the most important exhibitions of traditional African art in recent years. The scope and quality of objects was only surpassed by attention to detail in descriptions of cultural meanings through didactics and audio tours. The thematic approach in the arrangement of objects provided more focused comparisons of crosscultural styles and techniques. Placing emphasis on language, and verbal expressions used to describe physical and moral beauty, allowed for deeper learning about the meaning of the art for African peoples. The Kimbell’s website featured discussions between Jennifer Casler Price and Constan tine Petridis, a video on the making of the exhibition, and a virtual tour. The catalogue includes contributions by Yaëlle Biro, Herbert M. Cole, Kassim Kone, Babatunde Lawal, Constantine Petridis, Wilfried van Damme, and Susan Mullin Vogel. (Constantine Petridis, ed. The Language of Beauty in African Art. The Art Institute of Chicago. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022. 356 pp. 315 color, 30 b/w ill., $65.00).
|93生者和死者。这些物体的形状和力量令人惊叹，颠覆了所有关于丑陋和美丽的观念。展览以策展人Petridis、Babatunde Lawal和Frederick John Lamp的研讨会和讲座拉开帷幕。周五和周三晚上的讲座包括Christa Clarke、ZoëStrother和Elyan Jeanine Hill的演讲。金贝尔酒店还举办了导游、工作坊、电影、读书会和六月一日的特别庆祝活动。虽然展览不包括视听互动，但顾客似乎对这些物品真正感兴趣，并经常光顾画廊。也就是说，错过了用额外的视听内容吸引游客的机会，本可以活跃本已充满活力的艺术收藏，捕捉更广泛的游客人口统计数据。毫无疑问，金贝尔美术馆的《非洲艺术中的美的语言》是近年来非洲传统艺术最重要的展览之一。物品的范围和质量只有在通过教学法和音频之旅对文化含义描述的细节关注之后才能超越。物体排列的主题方法提供了跨文化风格和技术的更集中的比较。强调语言，以及用于描述身体和道德美的口头表达，可以更深入地了解艺术对非洲人民的意义。金贝尔的网站上有詹妮弗·卡斯勒·普莱斯和康斯坦丁·佩特里迪斯之间的讨论、展览制作视频以及虚拟之旅。目录包括Yaëlle Biro、Herbert M.Cole、Kassim Kone、Babatunde Lawal、Constantine Petridis、Wilfried van Damme和Susan Mullin Vogel的贡献。（康斯坦丁·佩特里迪斯主编：《非洲艺术中的美的语言》，芝加哥艺术学院，纽黑文：耶鲁大学出版社，2022年。356页，315色，30页插图，65.00美元）。
{"title":"Colonial Legacies: Contemporary Lens-Based Art and the Democratic Republic of Congo by Gabriella Nugent","authors":"Pedro Monaville","doi":"10.1162/afar_r_00713","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00713","url":null,"abstract":"| 93 living and the dead. These objects commanded astonishment in their form and power, tran scending all notions of ugliness and beauty. The exhibition opened with a symposium and lectures by curator Petridis, Babatunde Lawal, and Frederick John Lamp. Friday and Wednesday evening lectures included talks by Christa Clarke, Zoë Strother, and Elyan Jeanine Hill. The Kimbell also hosted guided tours, workshops, films, book readings, and a special Juneteenth celebration. While displays did not include audiovisual interactives, patrons seemed genuinely interested in the objects and frequently revisited galleries. That said, the missed opportunity to engage visitors with additional audiovisual content could have enlivened an already dynamic collec tion of art, capturing a wider range of visitor demographics. Without question, The Language of Beauty in African Art at the Kimbell was one of the most important exhibitions of traditional African art in recent years. The scope and quality of objects was only surpassed by attention to detail in descriptions of cultural meanings through didactics and audio tours. The thematic approach in the arrangement of objects provided more focused comparisons of crosscultural styles and techniques. Placing emphasis on language, and verbal expressions used to describe physical and moral beauty, allowed for deeper learning about the meaning of the art for African peoples. The Kimbell’s website featured discussions between Jennifer Casler Price and Constan tine Petridis, a video on the making of the exhibition, and a virtual tour. The catalogue includes contributions by Yaëlle Biro, Herbert M. Cole, Kassim Kone, Babatunde Lawal, Constantine Petridis, Wilfried van Damme, and Susan Mullin Vogel. (Constantine Petridis, ed. The Language of Beauty in African Art. The Art Institute of Chicago. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022. 356 pp. 315 color, 30 b/w ill., $65.00).","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"93-95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45354682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lucie Kamuswekera’s1 embroideries are not popular paintings, but they are very close to them, even if the latter are usually no longer found in Congolese homes. Born in 1944, Lucie Kamuswekera, who prefers to be known as Artiste Lucie2 (Fig. 1), belongs to the generation of Congolese for whom these paintings reflected the memories and experiences lived between the 1950s and 1990s. In her embroideries, she mostly revisits the iconotheque of popular painting by visualizing the experiences of women, but sometimes raises issues of worldwide relevance, like the COVID pandemic (Fig. 2). Explicitly, the artist’s mission is to give relevance to past and present experiences, to reinscribe them in the collective life and reestablish intergenerational links. In Congolese urban culture, the reception of the image is performative. Like a mask in a ritual, her embroideries intervene in social life and relationships. They carry a knowledge—which Lucie Kamuswekera considers currently lost—but above all they make present and therefore active the incorporated xperience whose intergenerational transmission was disrupted by three decades of armed conflict in the Kivu provinces. As a widow and grandmother, she fully assumes the role of guaranteeing generational continuity that her society grants to women. She inscribes her art in a dynamic continuity of sharing memories in images and words. She uses embroidery, a technique learned at the colonial school, to actualize male pictorial discourses on experiences lived during the second half of the twentieth century. She devotes part of the income from the sale of her embroideries to running a workshop where she shelters and trains four orphans (three girls and one boy), formerly street children, because she wants the art of embroidery to survive. For the reasons we have outlined, we need to introduce the reader to Congolese popular painting and its academic analyses. In the 1970s and 1980s, Congolese popular painting, also known as urban painting, became very popular among the city dwellers of the largeand medium-sized cities of the country then called Zaire. In a quarter of a century, a few thousand painters produced tens of thousands of paintings that were hung on the walls of hundreds of thousands of houses inhabited by families of small traders and craftsmen, workers and employees, teachers, etc. In the West, we would label them the middle class. The local popularity of these works began in the second decade after independence. Urban inhabitants found peace and modest prosperity after a decade of civil wars following independence in 1960. The authoritarian government imposed in 1968 by President Mobutu crushed the political opposition (Van Reybrouck 2015). Largely, urban populations accepted this as the price of a return to normal life. Mobutu’s policies of cultural and economic nationalization were initially well received and promoted the development of a national culture in urban areas. Music played a leading role i
{"title":"Present Pasts of Colonial Modernity: Embroideries by Lucie Kamuswekera","authors":"B. Jewsiewicki, Maartin Hendriks","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00708","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00708","url":null,"abstract":"Lucie Kamuswekera’s1 embroideries are not popular paintings, but they are very close to them, even if the latter are usually no longer found in Congolese homes. Born in 1944, Lucie Kamuswekera, who prefers to be known as Artiste Lucie2 (Fig. 1), belongs to the generation of Congolese for whom these paintings reflected the memories and experiences lived between the 1950s and 1990s. In her embroideries, she mostly revisits the iconotheque of popular painting by visualizing the experiences of women, but sometimes raises issues of worldwide relevance, like the COVID pandemic (Fig. 2). Explicitly, the artist’s mission is to give relevance to past and present experiences, to reinscribe them in the collective life and reestablish intergenerational links. In Congolese urban culture, the reception of the image is performative. Like a mask in a ritual, her embroideries intervene in social life and relationships. They carry a knowledge—which Lucie Kamuswekera considers currently lost—but above all they make present and therefore active the incorporated xperience whose intergenerational transmission was disrupted by three decades of armed conflict in the Kivu provinces. As a widow and grandmother, she fully assumes the role of guaranteeing generational continuity that her society grants to women. She inscribes her art in a dynamic continuity of sharing memories in images and words. She uses embroidery, a technique learned at the colonial school, to actualize male pictorial discourses on experiences lived during the second half of the twentieth century. She devotes part of the income from the sale of her embroideries to running a workshop where she shelters and trains four orphans (three girls and one boy), formerly street children, because she wants the art of embroidery to survive. For the reasons we have outlined, we need to introduce the reader to Congolese popular painting and its academic analyses. In the 1970s and 1980s, Congolese popular painting, also known as urban painting, became very popular among the city dwellers of the largeand medium-sized cities of the country then called Zaire. In a quarter of a century, a few thousand painters produced tens of thousands of paintings that were hung on the walls of hundreds of thousands of houses inhabited by families of small traders and craftsmen, workers and employees, teachers, etc. In the West, we would label them the middle class. The local popularity of these works began in the second decade after independence. Urban inhabitants found peace and modest prosperity after a decade of civil wars following independence in 1960. The authoritarian government imposed in 1968 by President Mobutu crushed the political opposition (Van Reybrouck 2015). Largely, urban populations accepted this as the price of a return to normal life. Mobutu’s policies of cultural and economic nationalization were initially well received and promoted the development of a national culture in urban areas. Music played a leading role i","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"30-47"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41332137","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
| african arts SUMMER 2023 VOL. 56, NO. 2 In 2019, the Standard Bank Gallery hosted a major exhibition of artworks produced by Black South African artists from the twentieth century (Fig. 1). Titled A Black Aesthetic: A View of South African Artists (1970–1990), the show was curated by Same Mdluli, at the time the newly appointed director of the Standard Bank Gallery, and this was her first major curatorial intervention as director. A Black Aesthetic was anchored by the University of Fort Hare’s storied collection of twentieth-century Black art, which was initially historicized by Edward J. de Jager (1992) in his well-known Images of Man publication (Fig. 2). Among others, scholars like James Macdonald (2020: 94) were congratulatory of the overall “success” Mdluli achieved through the various “curatorial imperatives” pioneered in this show. However, what interests me is how the exhibition inspired what Thuli Gamedze (2019) described as “a significant art historical exchange” between Mdluli and the prominent art critic Athi Mongezeleli Joja. This public debate between Mdluli and Joja was itself a milestone on several fronts. Unlike the controversy that circled the exhibition Black Modernisms in South Africa (1940–1990) held at the Wits Art Museum in 2016, wherein the exhibition curator Anitra Nettleton, Professor Emeritus at the University of Witwatersrand, was accused of perpetuating problematic race dynamics that privilege White intellectuals as “saviors” of Black heritage (Fikeni 2016), A Black Aesthetic exposed the intellectual disharmony that persists among the contemporary vanguard of Black professionals within South Africa’s visual arts space. Joja (2019a) penned a thorough and disapproving evaluation of the exhibition, and although he praised the show for its relevance and scale, he concluded that it lacked “the quality and rigour that would inspire critical curiosity and verve.” Joja (2019a) further lamented the “insipid article” contributed by Zakes Mda (2019) and Mdluli’s (2019a) own essay in the thick and beautifully printed catalogue (Fig. 3), which in his view, left “a lot to be desired” (Joja 2019a). In her terse defense against Joja, Mdluli1 evoked David Nthubu Koloane’s (1998) iconic essay “Art Criticism for Whom?” published over two decades prior. Mdluli (2019b) appropriated Koloane’s voice, quite cunningly, to discredit Joja’s review by expressing that “Koloane’s reflection on art criticism is thus important as a basis for framing why certain views on visual arts are often grossly misplaced” (my emphasis). According to Mdluli, Joja’s sentiments revealed an “idleness in arts writing” that was potentially “detrimental to demystifying the perception that art is elitist.” The reasons why Mdluli was not amused by Joja’s justified critique of her show, fascinating as it was, are immaterial here. What interests me is how Mdluli adopted the position that Joja’s criticism—although she did not point to him directly—fell within the ambit o
{"title":"Beyond the “Popular” versus “Serious” Criticism Binary: Towards New Histories of Black Art Criticism","authors":"Pfunzo Sidogi","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00710","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00710","url":null,"abstract":"| african arts SUMMER 2023 VOL. 56, NO. 2 In 2019, the Standard Bank Gallery hosted a major exhibition of artworks produced by Black South African artists from the twentieth century (Fig. 1). Titled A Black Aesthetic: A View of South African Artists (1970–1990), the show was curated by Same Mdluli, at the time the newly appointed director of the Standard Bank Gallery, and this was her first major curatorial intervention as director. A Black Aesthetic was anchored by the University of Fort Hare’s storied collection of twentieth-century Black art, which was initially historicized by Edward J. de Jager (1992) in his well-known Images of Man publication (Fig. 2). Among others, scholars like James Macdonald (2020: 94) were congratulatory of the overall “success” Mdluli achieved through the various “curatorial imperatives” pioneered in this show. However, what interests me is how the exhibition inspired what Thuli Gamedze (2019) described as “a significant art historical exchange” between Mdluli and the prominent art critic Athi Mongezeleli Joja. This public debate between Mdluli and Joja was itself a milestone on several fronts. Unlike the controversy that circled the exhibition Black Modernisms in South Africa (1940–1990) held at the Wits Art Museum in 2016, wherein the exhibition curator Anitra Nettleton, Professor Emeritus at the University of Witwatersrand, was accused of perpetuating problematic race dynamics that privilege White intellectuals as “saviors” of Black heritage (Fikeni 2016), A Black Aesthetic exposed the intellectual disharmony that persists among the contemporary vanguard of Black professionals within South Africa’s visual arts space. Joja (2019a) penned a thorough and disapproving evaluation of the exhibition, and although he praised the show for its relevance and scale, he concluded that it lacked “the quality and rigour that would inspire critical curiosity and verve.” Joja (2019a) further lamented the “insipid article” contributed by Zakes Mda (2019) and Mdluli’s (2019a) own essay in the thick and beautifully printed catalogue (Fig. 3), which in his view, left “a lot to be desired” (Joja 2019a). In her terse defense against Joja, Mdluli1 evoked David Nthubu Koloane’s (1998) iconic essay “Art Criticism for Whom?” published over two decades prior. Mdluli (2019b) appropriated Koloane’s voice, quite cunningly, to discredit Joja’s review by expressing that “Koloane’s reflection on art criticism is thus important as a basis for framing why certain views on visual arts are often grossly misplaced” (my emphasis). According to Mdluli, Joja’s sentiments revealed an “idleness in arts writing” that was potentially “detrimental to demystifying the perception that art is elitist.” The reasons why Mdluli was not amused by Joja’s justified critique of her show, fascinating as it was, are immaterial here. What interests me is how Mdluli adopted the position that Joja’s criticism—although she did not point to him directly—fell within the ambit o","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"64-77"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49523551","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
REMEMBERING MY ADOPTIVE FATHER As I stood with a tumbler filled with gin in my right hand, heightened nerves and trepidation overcame me. I was standing in front of the final burial and resting place of my Nigerian adoptive father. It was summer of 2022—the first time I was able to travel to Calabar and see my adoptive family since his passing in 2020. COVID was of course to blame, as it prevented me from traveling. Prior to this, I fondly recall phone calls (and messaging via WhatsApp) from my home in Ohio (USA) with my adoptive mother and the rest of the family about his passing. Yet even with my amplified anxiety as I stood there, I was also oddly calm and at peace. The comfort of my adoptive mother and brothers standing beside me helped subdue the restlessness I felt. I was about to pour libation to my adoptive Papa with the support of my Nigerian family. This was not the first time I poured libation in the name of the ancestors of the Ekpe/Mgbe society. However, even though I had done it before at the request of my teachers, I am never at ease about it. Even though I was well trained on how to do it, following the proper protocol and lengthy steps, there was always a power about the process that I feared and did not completely understand. However, when my elder teachers asked me to do it, and for the sake of my adoptive father, such thoughts left as quickly as they came. Right before I started the offering my mind scrolled to one of the lessons my adoptive father taught me: to respect the knowledge my Ekpe/Mgbe teachers taught me and have confidence when it was time to demonstrate it. The moments after I successfully offered and poured the libation, relief came over me as I felt something hard to put into words. Upon finishing, my adoptive mother and bothers embraced me, smiled, and were content. After, we sat in the room beside my adoptive father’s resting place chatting and catching up about the things that make one whole. At that moment I was so grateful to the Oqua family for asking me to honor our Papa and the family in their presence, as a member of the family. This was one of the many times I was deeply touched and clearly changed, and although the lasting impact is hard to articulate, the best I can offer is that it made me feel at home. While I was touched and changed, a reciprocal experience was also shared by all present. I was given a great opportunity to honor a beloved mentor through the warm feeling of acceptance by my adopted family. In return, the family had their ancestor honored through libation by someone who would normally be ignorant of and clumsy in this act of religiosity. The success of the libation demonstrated the power and fruition of their ancestor’s teachings to a member of the next (and in this case, a foreign) generation; my adopted father’s knowledge and good deeds continue to live on.
{"title":"Touched and Changed: Self-Reflexivity and Reciprocity in Fieldwork","authors":"Jordan A. Fenton","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00705","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00705","url":null,"abstract":"REMEMBERING MY ADOPTIVE FATHER As I stood with a tumbler filled with gin in my right hand, heightened nerves and trepidation overcame me. I was standing in front of the final burial and resting place of my Nigerian adoptive father. It was summer of 2022—the first time I was able to travel to Calabar and see my adoptive family since his passing in 2020. COVID was of course to blame, as it prevented me from traveling. Prior to this, I fondly recall phone calls (and messaging via WhatsApp) from my home in Ohio (USA) with my adoptive mother and the rest of the family about his passing. Yet even with my amplified anxiety as I stood there, I was also oddly calm and at peace. The comfort of my adoptive mother and brothers standing beside me helped subdue the restlessness I felt. I was about to pour libation to my adoptive Papa with the support of my Nigerian family. This was not the first time I poured libation in the name of the ancestors of the Ekpe/Mgbe society. However, even though I had done it before at the request of my teachers, I am never at ease about it. Even though I was well trained on how to do it, following the proper protocol and lengthy steps, there was always a power about the process that I feared and did not completely understand. However, when my elder teachers asked me to do it, and for the sake of my adoptive father, such thoughts left as quickly as they came. Right before I started the offering my mind scrolled to one of the lessons my adoptive father taught me: to respect the knowledge my Ekpe/Mgbe teachers taught me and have confidence when it was time to demonstrate it. The moments after I successfully offered and poured the libation, relief came over me as I felt something hard to put into words. Upon finishing, my adoptive mother and bothers embraced me, smiled, and were content. After, we sat in the room beside my adoptive father’s resting place chatting and catching up about the things that make one whole. At that moment I was so grateful to the Oqua family for asking me to honor our Papa and the family in their presence, as a member of the family. This was one of the many times I was deeply touched and clearly changed, and although the lasting impact is hard to articulate, the best I can offer is that it made me feel at home. While I was touched and changed, a reciprocal experience was also shared by all present. I was given a great opportunity to honor a beloved mentor through the warm feeling of acceptance by my adopted family. In return, the family had their ancestor honored through libation by someone who would normally be ignorant of and clumsy in this act of religiosity. The success of the libation demonstrated the power and fruition of their ancestor’s teachings to a member of the next (and in this case, a foreign) generation; my adopted father’s knowledge and good deeds continue to live on.","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":" ","pages":"1-9"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48908204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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