Ancient African Art (8000 BCE - 2000 CE)

By: Kavita Sinha, Jason Seidman, and Phil Hochman

Map of Africa

● 2nd largest, most populated continent

● Includes 54 individual countries● Mediterranean Sea to the north● Suez Canal, Red Sea along the

Sinai Peninsula to the northeast● Indian Ocean to the east and

southeast● Atlantic Ocean to the west

Key Ideas

● Much African art is created around spirituality, the spirit world, and the role of ancestors in our lives

● African artists prefer wood, but notable works are also done in ivory and metal

● African art is rarely decorative, but made for a purpose, often for ceremonies

● African architecture is predominantly made of mud-brick; stone is rare, but can be seen in Zimbabwe and in Ethiopian churches

Issues Present in Art

● Family and Respect for Elders ● Believed both things were key components of life ● Many sculptures are representations of family ancestors

● sculptures carved to venerate their spirits

● Fertility of women and the land

● Highly regarded ● Spirits of the forest or those associated with natural phenomenon were respected

and worshipped ● Sculptures of suckling mothers are extremely common

Major Stylistic Periods

CIVILIZATION TIME PERIOD LOCATION

Nok 500 BCE - 200 CE Nigeria

Great Zimbabwe 11th - 15th centuries Zimbabwe

Ife Culture 11th - 12th centuries Nigeria

Aksum 1200 - 1527 Ethiopia

Benin 13th - 19th centuries Nigeria

Mende 19th - 20th centuries Sierra Leone

Kongo 19th - 20th centuries Congo

Historical Events

● 1000 - 300 BCE Phoenicians and Greeks form settlements along the Mediterranean coast of North Africa to extend trade routes across the Sahara

● 600 - 700 CE Islamic Empire spread across North Africa and Islamic merchants often visited, spreading Islamic culture. Gold taken from West Africa helped Islamic culture flourish ● East Africa was part of maritime trade in the Indian Ocean. The language of

Swahili developed from interactions (conflict) with Arabic-speaking merchants. Port cities such as Kilwa, Mombasa, and Mogadishu arose

● 1400 CE Europeans traveled down the Atlantic Ocean along the coast of Africa. They rediscovered the continent.

Patronage and Artistic Life

● African objects are unsigned and undated (tradition relies on oral records of history)● Artists worked on commission

● lived with patrons until the commission was completed ● Apprenticeship training was the standard ● Artists had guilds that promoted their work and elevated their profession● Men were builders and carvers and could wear masks ● Women painted walls and created ceramics

● In Sierra Leone and Liberia, women wore masks during coming-of-age ceremonies● Both were weavers ● Most collectable art originated in farming communities - bronze and wood sculpture● Nomadic people produced more body art ● Art imported into Europe during the Renaissance more as curiosities than artistic objects

● accepted into European artistic circles in the early twentieth century

Architecture

● Built to be cool and comfortable ● provide relief from the hot African

weather ● Often built using mud-brick walls and thatched

roofs ● Mud-brick was easy and inexpensive to make

● Had to be carefully maintained during rainy seasons

● Timbers were horizontally placed as maintenance ladders

● Usually avoided stonework in architecture and sculpture● makes the royal complex at Zimbabwe

unique

Great ZimbabweGreat Zimbabwe, fourteenth century, Zimbabwe

● Prosperous trading center and royal complex ● Stone enclosure, probably a royal residence

● said to be the capital of the Queen of Sheba ● Constructed of granite slabs ● Oldest stone monument of the Sahara

● Built between 1100 and 1450 CE ● Walls 30 feet high● Conical tower modeled on traditional shape of grain

silos● Control over food symbolized wealth and power● Walls slope inward toward the top

● Provides support since no mortar was used ● Internal and external passageway are tightly bounded,

narrow, and long

Images of Great Zimbabwe

Arial View Internal Passageway

Sculpture● Art is mostly portable - very few large sculptures● Wood is the favored material

● Trees were honored and symbolically repaid for the branches taken from them

● Ivory was used as a sign of rank or prestige ● Metal shows strength and durability/restricted to royalty ● Stone is extremely rare● Figures are usually frontal ● Symmetry is used sometimes ● No preliminary sketches ● Stiffness to all works ● Heads are disproportionately large - intelligence ● Sexual characteristics are enlarged ● Bodies are immature and small, fingers are rare ● Physical reality is avoided ● Important sculpture always created for a purpose ● Nok heads were major works of African sculpture

Nok Head Nok Head, 500 BCE-200 CE, terra-cotta, Nigeria

● May have been part of a full-sized figure● Triangular eyes ● High arching eyebrows parallels sagging underside of

eyes; voids of the irises draws attention● Mouth indicates speech; nose barely modeled - widely

spaced flaring nostrils ● Holes for airing out large ceramics during firing in eyes,

nostrils, mouth● Human head appears cylindrical● Each of the large buns of the hairstyle is pierced with a

hole that may have held ornamental feathers ● May represent ordinary people dressed for special

occasions, or it may portray people of high status ● Some figures had necklaces, bracelets, etc.● Used as ancestor portrayal, grave marker, charms

Contemporary Art● Pioneered in 1950s and 1960s● Colonial period & Years after World War II

● African artists trained in the techniques of European art

● Most contemporary works have ties to traditional African folklore, belief systems, and imagery

● Use of new mediums such as oils and silk screening ● Break from the traditional wooden

masks/sculptures, cloths, and body painting

● Contemporary artists borrow from traditional predecessors of the Western world● Ex. Pablo Picasso

● Julie Mehretu

Julie MehretuRENEGADE DELIRIUM2002

DispersionJulie Mehretu, Dispersion, 2002

● Ink and acrylic on canvas ● Collection of Nicolas and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn● New York● Start seeing abstract works of African art ● Works show the transitional movement of people uprooted

by choice or force to create new identities during a time of globalization and change ● change of African tradition

● Work has a conceptual complexity● Suggests the difficulty of creating and negotiating a

communal space in the contemporary world ● Also suggests a new kind of space - “cyberspace”

● results in room for artistic exploration● Rift divides the painting in half - separation of two worlds

Jackson PollockSimilarities

● Western equivalent to the work of Julie Mehretu● Nonobjective● Abstract● Freedom of expression ● Swooping lines ● No defined figures

Differences

● Pollock leaves no open spaces ● Does not paint over architectural plans ● No predetermined size of painting Jackson Pollock

UNTITLED NO. 31948

Textiles● Made from cotton, animal fibers, grass fibers● Woven cloth made on narrow and horizontal

looms ● Motifs and patterns of cloth produced by a

variety of techniques ● resist dyeing, tie dyeing, direct painting

on the fabric● Cloth indicates status, personal, and group

identity● Often worn to beautify, complement, and

enhance the body ● Adire

● White cotton● Painted with cassava starch and

dropped in indigo dye● Areas covered in starch remain white

Kente ClothKente Cloth, Ashanti Culture, Ghana

● 20th century● Silk● Weaving introduced in Ghana during the seventeenth

century● Light, horizontal looms that produce long, narrow

strips of cloth ● Originally reserved for state regalia ● Man wore a single piece, wrapped like a toga with no

belt and the right shoulder bare ● Women wore two pieces - skirt and shawl

Masks● Masks carved in wood and metal● Costumed dancers don masks and assume the power of the

spirit it represents ● Role of the mask is never decorative, but functional and

spiritual ● Works have powers that are symbolically greater than their

visual representation

Mende Mask of Sierra Leone (Nowo), twentieth century, wood

● Female ancestor spirits● High forehead = wisdom● Used for initiation rites to adulthood● Symbolic of the chrysalis of a butterfly● Shiny black surface ● Small horizontal features ● Elaborate hairstyle decorated with combs

Glossary

1. Ciré perdue: the lost wax process; a bronze casting method in which a figure is modeled in clay and covered with wax and then recovered with clay; when fired in a kiln, the wax melts away, leaving a channel between the two layers of clay which can be used as a mold for liquid metal

2. Fetish: an object believed to possess magical powers3. Finials: knoblike architectural decorations usually found at the top point of a spire,

pinnacle, canopy, or gable; also found on furniture or the top of a staff 4. Jijora: the idea of floating between the concrete and the abstract; not too realistic5. Kente: Ashanti woven textiles6. Nowo: black masks worn by the Mende women to initiate young girls into adulthood7. Scarification: scarring of the skin in patterns by cutting with a knife; when the cut heals,

a raised pattern is created, which is painted 8. Shaman: keeper of the power figure