art, African
the visual arts of native Africa, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, including such media as sculpture, painting, pottery, rock art, textiles, masks, personal decoration, and jewelry.
For more general explorations of media, see individual media articles (e.g., painting, sculpture, pottery, and textile). For a discussion of the characteristics, functions, and forms of masks, see mask. The architecture of Africa is treated in a separate article; see architecture, African.
General characteristics
It is difficult to give a useful summary of the main characteristics of the art of sub-Saharan Africa. The variety of forms and practices is so great that the attempt to do so results in a series of statements that turn out to be just as true of, for example, Western art. Thus, some African art has value as entertainment; some has political or ideological significance; some is instrumental in a ritual context; and some has aesthetic value in itself. More often than not, a work of African art combines several or all of these elements. Similarly, there are full-time and part-time artists; there are artists who figure in the political establishment and those who are ostracized and despised; and some art forms can be made by anyone, while others demand the devotion of an expert. Claims of an underlying pan-African aesthetic must be viewed as highly contentious.
Some further general points can be made, however, in regard to the status of precolonial sub-Saharan art. First, in any African language, a concept of art as meaning something other than skill would be the exception rather than the rule. This is not because of any inherent limitation of African culture but because of the historical conditions under which European cultures arrived at their concept of art. The Western separation of fine art from the lowlier craft (i.e., useful skill) came out of a sequence of social, economic, and intellectual changes in Europe that did not occur in Africa before the colonial period at the very earliest. This separation, therefore, cannot be applied without qualification to African traditions of precolonial origin. Philosophers of art in the West might agree that works of art are simply artifacts made with the intention of possessing aesthetic value, and in that sense art, which would include craft work as well as works of fine art, would indeed be found in all parts of Africa (as indeed it is throughout human culture), but even in this case African art must be understood through the investigation and understanding of local aesthetic values rather than through the imposition of categories of external origin. It may be a field of well-hoed yam heaps (as, for example, among the Tiv people of Nigeria) or a display ox castrated in order to enhance its visual effect (as among the Nuer and Dinka pastoralists of the southern Sudan), rather than a sculpted figure, that constitutes the significant work of art in a given area of Africa.
The popular notion of African art in the West, however, is very different, for it is thought to comprise sculpture and very little else—except, perhaps, “local colour.” This misconception has been enhanced by the aforementioned European concept of fine art, but it may have originated in a dependence, during the first period of Western interest in African art, upon collectible artifacts—some of which (pieces of sculpture, for instance) fitted neatly into the category of fine art, while others (such as textiles and pottery) were dismissed as craft work. Painting in Africa was long presumed not to exist to any significant extent, largely because it was to be found on the skins of human bodies, on the walls of houses, and on rock faces—none of which were collectible. Clearly, the aesthetic field in Africa is not so limited.
Another misapprehension is that in the West art is created for art's sake, whereas in precolonial Africa art was solely functional. The motive for the creation of any work of art is inevitably complex, in Africa as elsewhere, and the fact that most of the sculpted artifacts known from Africa were made with some practical use in mind (whether for ritual or other purposes) does not mean that they could not simultaneously be valued as sources of aesthetic pleasure.
It is also often assumed that the African artist is constrained by tradition in a way contrasting with the freedom given to the Western artist. But, although there are traditions of art in which the expectations of patrons demand repetition of a set form in African art, there are also traditions of precolonial origin that demand a high level of inventive originality—for example, Asante silk weaving and Kuba raffia embroidery. There are other traditions in which a standard form can be embellished as elaborately as the artist or patron wishes. The important point is that particular traditions encourage creativity.
Style, tribe, and ethnic identity
A commonplace of African art criticism has been to identify particular styles according to supposedly tribal names—for example, Asante, Kuba, or Nuba. The concept of tribe is problematic, however, and has generally been discarded. “Tribal” names, in fact, sometimes refer to the language spoken, sometimes to political entities, and sometimes to other kinds of groupings; yet the boundaries between peoples speaking different languages or acknowledging different chiefs do not necessarily coincide with their respective tribal boundaries. Moreover, the very idea of tribe is an attempt to impose identity from the outside. That this happened is understandable, given the demands of colonial administration, but this historical contingency cannot help in understanding the dynamic of stylistic variation in Africa. The sense of identity that individuals and groups undoubtedly have with others, which was misunderstood as “tribe” but which is better referred to as “ethnic identity,” is something that derives from the relationship built up through many different networks: whom one can marry, one's language and religious affiliations, the chief whose authority one acknowledges, who one's ancestors are, the kind of work one does, and so forth. Sometimes African art plays a part in this, as when a religious cult or a chief or a guild employs distinctive artifacts as a mark of uniqueness. Sometimes boundaries are based on linguistic differences, but this may be coincidental.
As to differences of style, regularities of form and tradition do occur such that it is possible to attribute particular African art objects to particular places, regions, or periods. Four distinct variables make this kind of stylistic identification possible. The first is geography, in that, all other things being equal, people in different places tend to make or do things in different ways. The second is technology, in that in some areas differences of style depend on the material employed. The third is individuality, in that an expert can identify the works of individual artists, inability to do so usually deriving from lack of familiarity. The fourth is institution, in that the creation of works of art takes place under the influence of the social and cultural institutions characteristic of any given location. But artifacts can be traded and then copied; artists themselves can travel; institutions, complete with associated artifacts, can move or spread from one area to another, sometimes because they are copied by a neighbouring people, sometimes because they are purchased, sometimes as a result of conquest. The end result is a stylistic complexity in African art that defies easy classification. The names previously understood as referring to tribes can continue to be used, however, as convenient shorthand as long as it is realized that they all do not represent equivalent categories. One tribal name may refer to a group numbering no more than a few thousand; another may refer to the language spoken in a given area; yet another may describe an empire comprising peoples of distinct historical identities.
African art in the 20th century
African cultures have never been closed to the rest of the world, but the radical developments forced on the continent as a result of colonialism made the 20th century a period of unusually rapid change. The majority of known “traditional” works are, in fact, products of the colonial period; thus, it is impossible to maintain a rigid distinction between traditional and modern art forms. It is better to think of the 20th century as a period in which the range of options available to the artist increased as new cultural and social institutions developed.
Nevertheless, the continuing development of artistic traditions of precolonial origin is far more widespread in Africa than is commonly realized. Roughly three kinds of development result from African artists' adaptation of European forms. The first occurs when European forms are copied by illiterate or semiliterate artists, or at any rate mediated via the marketplace, as in popular sign painting. The second occurs when the medium of transmitting Western artistic practice is the university or some other institution of higher education, as is the case with contemporary African sculpture and painting. The third occurs when traditional forms are revamped, or pseudo-traditional forms invented, for the benefit of foreign tourists and other visitors; for example, some of the finest ivory sculptures of West Africa were produced in what is now Sierra Leone by Sherbro artists and in the kingdom of Benin for Portuguese traders in the early 16th century. Although the forms and materials employed in these developments are of external derivation, the subject matter and style are manifestly African. It is the artists working under these influences who are forming the arts distinctive of the particular nation-states of modern-day Africa.
Sculpture and associated arts
Although wood is the best-known medium of African sculpture, many others are employed: copper alloys, iron, ivory, pottery, unfired clay, and, infrequently, stone. Unfired clay is and probably always was the most widely used medium in the whole continent, but, partly because it is so fragile and therefore difficult to collect, it has been largely ignored in the literature. Small figurines of fired clay were excavated in a mound at Daima near Lake Chad in levels dating from the 5th century BC or earlier, while others were found in Zimbabwe in deposits of the later part of the 1st millennium AD. These imply an even earlier stage of unfired clay modeling. About the time of these lower levels at Daima (which represent a Neolithic, or New Stone Age, pastoral economy), there was flourishing farther to the west the fully Iron Age Nok culture, producing large, hollow sculptures in well-fired pottery, some of the stylistic features of which imply yet earlier prototypes in wood.
Copper-alloy castings using the cire-perdue (“lost-wax”) technique afford evidence of great sculptural achievements from as early as the 9th century AD, when the smiths of Igbo Ukwu, Nigeria, were casting leaded bronze, which is highly ductile, and smithing copper, which is not. Some three or four centuries later the smiths of Ife, seemingly unaware that unalloyed copper was not suitable for casting (or perhaps wishing to demonstrate their virtuosity), used it to produce masterpieces such as the seated figure in a shrine at Tada and the so-called Obalufon mask in the Ife Museum. In fact, however, zinc brasses were used more than unalloyed copper. The largest corpus of this work is from Benin, where zinc brasses were used almost exclusively. These copper-alloy castings, together with pottery sculptures the traceable history of which goes back even further, are the main evidence for the early history of sculpture in sub-Saharan Africa.
Wrought-iron sculptures are found in a number of traditions, mostly in West Africa, including the Dogon, Bambara, Fon, and Yoruba peoples.
Stone sculpture occurs in several separate centres, employing both hard and soft rock, but there is usually not much evidence of a development through time in a single place. Ivory is a highly prized medium in many parts of Africa. Its fine texture makes it suitable for delicate sculpture, while its rarity leads to its employment in many societies for items of great prestige.
African wood sculptures are carved with similar tools throughout the continent. An ax may be used to fell the tree, but an adz, with its cutting edge at right angles to the shaft, is used for the substantive work of carving. The skill achieved with this tool is astonishing to the Western observer. Thin shavings can be removed with speed and accuracy, creating a surface (especially when the form is convex) that shows slight facets that catch the light and add to the visual interest. More intricate work is done with knives. A pointed iron rod heated in the fire may be employed to bore holes in a mask for attachment to the costume and to permit the wearer to see. The surface of the sculpture is sometimes polished with the side of a knife or sanded down with rough leaves. Details are commonly picked out by a method involving charring with a red-hot knife (as among the Ibibio of Nigeria), or the carving is immersed in mud to darken its surface before oiling (as among the Dan people of Côte d'Ivoire).
West Africa
Scholars divide the visual arts of West Africa into three broad areas: the western Sudan, the Guinea Coast, and Nigeria. This is done partly to enable the outsider to comprehend the diversity of styles and traditions within the region, while recognizing that there are themes common to all of the areas.
Western Sudan
This is the name conventionally given to the savanna region of West Africa. It is an area dominated by Islamic states situated at the southern ends of the trans-Saharan trade routes. The sculpture here is characterized by schematic styles of representation. Some commentators have interpreted these styles as an accommodation to the Islamic domination of the area, but this is probably not an adequate explanation, since Islam in West Africa has either merely tolerated or actually destroyed such traditions while exerting other influences.
Among the better-known sculptural traditions of the western Sudan are those of the following peoples.
Dogon and Tellem
The Dogon inhabit the Bandiagara escarpment in Mali. Dogon sculpture is intimately linked with the cult of the ancestors. Figures are made to house the spirits of the deceased on the family shrine, and masks are used to drive the spirits away at the end of the mourning period. One type of mask, called sirige, has a tall, flat projection above the face (a feature found also in the masks of the neighbouring Mossi and Bobo), which is said to represent a multistory house. The Great Mask, never worn and made anew every 60 years, represents the primordial ancestor who met death while he was in the form of a serpent. Iron staffs topped with human figures are also made, and some personal ornaments are cast in brass.
Also found in Dogon territory are, possibly, the oldest wood sculptures to survive (three have been dated by carbon-14 to the 15th–17th centuries AD). They were found in caves in the Bandiagara escarpment. The Dogon attribute them to an earlier population, the Tellem. These figures, usually of simplified and elongated form, often with hands raised, seem to be the prototype of the ancestor figures that the Dogon carve on the doors and locks of their houses and granaries; investigations have confirmed that the Tellem were ethnically a different people from the Dogon, though the art style appears to have been handed on from one people to the other.
Bambara
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The Bambara live in the region around Bamako, the capital of Mali. Their traditions include six male societies, each with its own type of mask. The Ntomo is for young boys before circumcision. Their masks have a line of vertical projections placed transversely over the human face, representing man as God first created him. The Komo is the custodian of tradition and is concerned with all aspects of community life—agriculture, judicial processes, and passage rites. Its masks are of elongated animal form decorated with actual horns of antelope, quills of porcupine, bird skulls, and other objects. Masks of the Kono, which enforces civic morality, are also elongated and encrusted with sacrificial material. The Tyiwara uses a headdress representing, in the form of an antelope, the mythical being who taught men how to farm (see photograph). The Kore, concerned with the sky and with the bringing of rain to make the crops grow, employs masks representing the hyena, lion, monkey, antelope, and horse. In addition there are masks of the Nama, which protect against sorcerers. Ancestor figures of the Bambara clearly derive from the same artistic tradition as do many of those of the Dogon; so also do their sculptures in wrought iron. Rectangular intersection of flat planes is a stylistic feature common to Bambara and Dogon sculpture.
Djenné-Mopti
Djenné and Mopti are two towns situated on the inland delta of the Niger River in Mali. They are notable as centres of the cloth trade and for their architecture. Moreover, in their immediate vicinity many sculptures in pottery of uncertain age have been found. They may have some association with the empires of Ghana and Mali (7th–13th and 13th–16th centuries, respectively). For all their extensive trade contacts across the Sahara, these medieval empires did not significantly change the basic structure of society in the western Sudan.
Senufo
The Senufo of northern Côte d'Ivoire produce a rich variety of sculptures, mainly associated with the Lo society (known more widely as the Poro), to which all adult men belong and which maintains the continuity of religious and historical traditions, especially through the cult of the ancestors. During initiations, headpieces are worn that have a flat, vertical, round or rectangular board on top, decorated with paint or pierced work. Many wood carvings of male figures depict these headpieces, sometimes on rhythm pounders used by young initiates, who beat the earth to call upon the ancestors to take part in the ceremony and purify the earth. Several types of mask are used. The kpelie, a human face with projections all around, is said to remind initiates of human imperfection. Animal-head masks usually combine characteristics of several creatures—hyena, warthog, and antelope. A type of animal mask called waniugo has a cup for a magical substance on top; these masks blow sparks from their muzzles in a nighttime ritual protecting the village from sorcerers. Among the Naffara group of the Senufo, masks of similar form but with an interior cavity too small for a human head are carried on the top corner of a rectangular, tentlike costume called kagba. This mask is the symbol of the Lo, which only initiates may see. In the Korhogo region, deguele masks appear in pairs at funerals. They are of plain helmet shapes topped with figures whose bodies are carved to resemble a pile of rings. Figures of the hornbill are used in initiation, and groups of birds on a pole are trophies for the best farmer. Figures of male and female twins and of horsemen are used in divination. These represent the spirit familiars enabling the divination process. The diviners themselves are women, forming the Sandogo society. Shrine doors and drums are carved in relief, and small figures and ritual rings are cast in bronze. For many years the Senufo have been producing large quantities of carvings for the Western market.
Guinea Coast
This is the forested region of West Africa, where Islam was not a dominant influence until recent years. Political organizations in the past tended to be small in scale, with government sometimes in the hands of chiefs, sometimes by assemblies of men, sometimes by secret associations manifesting their attributes in masquerade ceremonies. State systems developed toward the eastern end of the region, particularly in areas inhabited by the Asante (in present-day Ghana; see Asante empire) and Fon (Benin) and in the Yoruba Oyo empire and the Edo kingdom of Benin (Nigeria). These states capitalized on trade both with peoples of the savanna and, from the late 15th century onward, with Europeans.
Guinea Coast sculpture displays a greater tendency to naturalistic styles of representation. Some of the best-known traditions of the area are the following.
Bidyogo
In the Bijagós Islands of Guinea-Bissau, the Bidyogo carve rather simplified human figures seated on stools, bowls supported by human figures with human and animal forms on the lids, and staffs with figures on them. They also carve naturalistic masks of wild bulls, which are carried on the prow of the royal war canoe and also used in dances. Their buildings are round and often painted.
Baga
The Baga, 15th- or 16th-century migrants from the Sudan now occupying the coastal region of Guinea, carve anok, or elek, bird heads with human features styled in a manner resembling western Sudanic work. They had rich traditions of mask and figure sculpture, many of which were suppressed with the advent of Islam. The best-known of these is the massive dumba mask, with its great cantilevered head supported on the upper part of a female torso, carved so as to rest on the shoulders of the wearer, who sees out through a hole between the breasts, his body hidden in raffia fibre. This mask appears at the harvest and threshing of the rice crop. Tall drums supported by a human figure are also carved.
Mende
The Mende of Sierra Leone are best known for smooth, black, helmet-shaped masks, representing the Sande society, which is responsible for initiating girls into womanhood. This is the only women's society on the continent known to use masks. Because the mask is “found” beside a stream deep in the forest, where the Sande spirit is said to live, and is supposed not to be an artifact at all, the carver in this case is anonymous. Members of the corresponding male society, Poro, also wear masks, although they are of differing form. The women's Yasse, a divination and healing society, employs slender human figures called minsere. Large, ugly gongoli masks are also used, but entirely for entertainment. In preparing their rice farms, the Mende often uncover figures carved in soapstone and known as nomoli, which they set up in shelters to protect the crop. The figures are similar in style and are thought to be similar in date to ivories carved in the 16th century for Portuguese traders in the adjacent Sherbro area.
Dan-Ngere
The Dan-Ngere complex of styles is named after two extremes of stylistic variation: the smooth, restrained style of the Dan, De, and Diomande and the grotesque style of the Ngere (or Guere), Wobe, Kran, and Bete, a less extreme form of which is found among the Kru and Grebo, who inhabit adjacent regions of Liberia, Guinea, and Côte d'Ivoire. A single carver will produce masks in both of the extreme modes of the range of style. Miniature, easily portable masks, representing and sharing in the power of the larger masks, protect the owner when he is away from home. The carvers also produce the large anthropomorphic rice ladles used by the mother of the heir apparent at the harvest feast; chiefs' staffs; and female figures that seem to be prestige items, as are small figures cast in brass among the Dan and Kpelle.
Asante and Baule
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The Asante region of southern Ghana is a remnant of the Asante empire, which was founded in the early 17th century when, according to legend, a golden stool descended from heaven into the lap of the first king, Osei Tutu. The stool is believed to house the spirit of the Asante people in the same way that an individual's stool houses his spirit after death. The Asante also carve akua-ba (dolls with disk-shaped heads embodying their concept of beauty and carried by women who want to become pregnant) as well as staffs for royal spokesmen, which, like the handles of state swords, are covered in gold foil. The success of the Asante empire depended on the trade in gold not only with Europeans at the coast but also with the Muslim north. Gold dust was the currency, weighed against small brass weights that were often geometric or were representations recalling well-known proverbs. Asante weavers developed a style of great technical mastery, incorporating imported silk (see photograph). Cast-brass ritual vessels, kuduo, used in funeral ceremonies, bear indications of Islamic inspiration. The Asante also cast fine gold jewelry, as do the Baule of Côte d'Ivoire, who separated from them in the mid-18th century.
Baule gold weights are similar to those of the Asante, but the Baule also have types of sculpture that none of the other Akan peoples possess: masks (which, like their low-relief doors, seem to indicate Senufo influence) and standing human figures, apparently sometimes used as ancestor figures. The figures and human masks, the latter reported to be portraits used in commemorating the dead, are elegant—well polished, with elaborate hairdressings and scarification. More roughly finished are the gbekre figures, representing minor divinities in human form with animal heads. Masks are made also to represent the spirits of the bush: antelope, bush cow, elephant, monkey, and leopard. Boxes for the mouse oracle (in which sticks are disturbed by a live mouse, to give the augury) are unique to the Baule, whose carvers also produce heddle pulleys, combs, hairpins, and gong mallets.
Fon
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The Fon kingdom of Dahomey, with its capital at Abomey (now in Benin), was also founded in the early 17th century. The palace is decorated with painted relief panels modeled in clay, representing the different kings and the events of their reigns. The kings are represented also by iron staffs and messengers' staffs with openwork iron symbols on a wooden haft, as well as by a small number of large wooden statues combining human and animal attributes. The thrones of the kings are similar in form to Asante stools but are much taller and are preserved as cult objects. Small figures cast in brass, often in groups, are prestige items employed also to decorate the royal tombs. Brightly coloured appliqué cloth is used on state umbrellas and chiefs' caps. A popular art is calabash carving. The greatest achievements of Fon art, however, are the large sculptures for Gun, the god of iron and war, made from sheets of copper or iron (see photograph).
Nigeria
The northern and southern parts of Nigeria can be considered part of the western Sudan and Guinea Coast, respectively; but, because of the wealth of evidence for an artistic tradition of some 2,000 years, it is convenient to consider Nigeria separately.
Nok
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The earliest known sculpture of large size in the Sudan is that produced in pottery by the Nok culture, which flourished extensively in northern Nigeria from the 5th century BC into the early centuries AD (see photograph). These people were the first known manufacturers of iron in western Africa, furnaces at Taruga having been dated between the 5th and early 3rd centuries BC; they continued, however, to use stone tools. Of well-fired clay, their sculptures represent animals naturalistically; human figures, however, are depicted with heads that are usually tubular, but sometimes conical or spherical, and with simple tubular trunks and limbs. The art of Nok indicates the antiquity of many basic canons of West African sculpture, but the precise relationship between ancient and modern forms is obscure.
Daima and Sao
Not far from the Nok area but very different in style, at Daima near Lake Chad, small, simple clay animal figures were by the 6th century BC being made by a population of Neolithic herdsmen. A little later they began making animals with more extended legs, and sometime after AD 1000 they started to make animals covered with little spikes. The last are similar to examples found on sites of the Sao culture in the Chari valley, Cameroon, where more elaborate human figure sculptures, thought to represent ancestors and probably spirits, have been found. Carbon-14 dates for these sites range from the 5th century BC to the 18th century AD.
Ife and Yoruba
The Yoruba peoples inhabit a large part of southwestern Nigeria. Their art traditions are of considerable antiquity. Excavations at Ife, in central Yorubaland (the site of the creation of the world in some Yoruba myths), have shown that naturalistic sculpture in brass and pottery was being produced sometime between AD 1100 and 1450. The sculptures may represent royal figures and their attendants, and life-size portrait heads in brass were perhaps used as part of funerary effigies. During this time, Ife appears to have had widespread importance, and the naturalism of its art seems to have influenced the basic development of Yoruba sculptural style. Throughout Yorubaland, human figures are represented in a fundamentally naturalistic way, except for bulging eyes; flat, protruding, and usually parallel lips; and stylized ears. The evolution of these characteristics can be observed in a number of pottery sculptures at Ife, which, on stylistic grounds, are considered to be relatively late.
Within the basic canon of Yoruba sculpture, many local styles can be distinguished, down to the hand of the individual artist. Individual cults, too, have their own characteristic requirements of form and ethnography. Staffs for Shango, the thunder god, bear the symbol of a double ax. On his altars are placed carved mortars, for the pounding of food in a mortar sounds like thunder; on the wall behind hangs his leather bag, with a motif based on the extensive gesture of a Shango dancer. Because Shango was king of Oyo, largest of the Yoruba kingdoms, his cult is mainly restricted to areas that were once under Oyo domination.
Typical of Ekiti is the Epa cult, which is connected with both the ancestors and agriculture. The mask proper, roughly globular, has highly stylized features that vary little; but the superstructure, which may be 4 feet (120 cm) or more in height, is often of very great complexity—for example, a king on horseback, surrounded by two tiers of attendant warriors and musicians. The most widely distributed cult is of twins, ibeji, whose birth among the Yoruba is unusually frequent. Their effigies, made on the instructions of the oracle, are among the most numerous of all classes of African sculpture. Carved doors and house posts are found in shrines and palaces and in the houses of important men. Fulfilling purely secular functions are bowls for kola nuts, offered in welcoming a guest; ayo boards for the game, known also as wari, played with seeds or pebbles in two rows of cuplike depressions; and stools, spoons, combs, and heddle pulleys.
To the north is Esie, where about 800 sculptures in soapstone were found by the local Yoruba population some centuries ago. Their origin is obscure; they are by no means certainly Yoruba. The city of Owo, to the southeast of Yorubaland near the frontier with the Edo-speaking peoples, developed an art style—indeed, a whole culture—that is a blend of Yoruba and Benin traditions. Ivory carving is especially important, and wooden heads of rams and of humans with rams' horns are used on ancestral altars. Second-burial effigies, life-size and naturalistically carved in wood, were made during the 20th century but were developed from wickerwork forms such as are still used in Benin and in Igbo towns once under Benin influence. Excavations in 1971 revealed a large number of pottery sculptures that are clearly related to those of Ife but with some Benin features. The site was dated by carbon-14 to about the 15th century AD.
Edo peoples
According to tradition, the kingdom of Benin was founded from Ife, whence, in the late 14th century, knowledge of brass casting may have been introduced into Benin City for the manufacture of commemorative heads for royal altars. These heads have been grouped in stylistic sequence from moderate naturalism through increasing stylization. The brasses also include figures in the round, groups on a common base, and plaques. The rectangular shape of the plaques, their narrative content, and in some cases their attempt at perspective have been attributed to the influence of illustrations in books carried by the Portuguese, who were in contact with Benin from the late 15th century. The technique of brass casting, however, had been introduced at least a century earlier. Bronze bars had been imported, probably from the interior, as early as the 13th century, but these were made into bracelets in Benin City only by smithing and chasing techniques, not by casting. There were certain limitations on the use of brass, and also ivory. Cult objects (such as memorial beads) were made of wood when intended for nonroyal purposes but of brass for the king. Regalia, if made for the king, were of ivory, but otherwise of brass. The regalia of king and chiefs also included coral beads and red cloth, the colour red signifying a mystical threat to the enemies of the kingdom. Wood was used for staffs commemorating ancestors, and these were placed on their altars. Pottery heads were made for shrines in the brass casters' quarter; and life-size groups of royal figures in mud are still made for the cult of Olokun, divinity of the sea and of wealth.
Outside Benin City the Edo peoples live in villages that have many localized cults of nearby topographical features and founder heroes. The ekpo masquerade, occurring to the south and east of Benin, is performed by the warrior age group in ceremonies to purify the village ritually and to maintain health. At Ughoton, to the southwest of Benin, a different type of mask is used, in the cult of the water spirit Igbile. Both the cult and the sculptural style seem to have derived from the Ijo.
A number of bronze castings found in Benin have been classified tentatively as the lower Niger bronze industries. They include pieces from Tada and Jebba in the region now inhabited by the Nupe people, who regard them as relics associated with their own mythical ancestor, and other pieces from various parts of the delta of the Niger River.
Ijo
The Niger delta is occupied by Ijo fishermen, whose masks for the cults of the water spirits are made in the form of aquatic animals, especially hippopotamus and crocodile. The western Ijo use ejiri figures, in which the head of the household is represented upon a highly schematic quadruped that is said to represent the guardian spirit of the family. Similar objects are made by the Edo-speaking Urhobo, to the north of the Ijo, where they are used in a cult of aggressiveness by the warriors. Among the eastern Ijo, shrines for the water spirits have figures that are often large though frequently kept hidden. They also have masks, similar to those of the western Ijo, worn by men of the Ekine society. In addition, there are shrines that contain sculptures for the village heroes and ancestors. In some Kalabari communities, rectangular screens are fashioned by carpentry into a low-relief frontal group in which a commemorated ancestor is flanked by supporting figures—much like the king in Benin plaques, by which the screens may have been inspired about two centuries ago. All Ijo sculpture exhibits a four-square schematic style that contrasts starkly with the relative naturalism of surrounding styles, such as those of Yorubaland or Benin.
Igbo
On both sides of the Niger, but mainly to the east, live the Igbo. Traditionally they have lived in small and often isolated settlements scattered through the forest. Only on the northern and western edges of the area, under influence from Igala and Benin, are hereditary rulers found. In Igbo society there is strong social pressure toward individual distinction, and men can move upward through successive grades by demonstrating their achievements and their generosity. One of the traditional representations of this was the ikenga, that part of oneself enabling personal achievement, with cult figures representing the attributes of distinction.
The lack of overall centralization among the Igbo-speaking peoples has been conducive to the development of a great variety of art styles and cultural practices. The earliest sculpture known from Igboland is from the village of Igbo Ukwu, where the grave of a man of distinction and a ritual store, dating from the 9th century AD, contained both chased copper objects and elaborate castings of leaded bronze. The earliest artistic castings from black Africa, these pieces consist of ritual vessels and other ceremonial objects with intricate surface decoration, often small animals and insects represented in the round.
A very great variety of masks is found among the Igbo. The masks, of wood or fabric, are employed in a variety of dramas: social satires, sacred rituals (for ancestors and invocation of the gods), initiation, second burials, and public festivals, which now include Christmas and Independence Day. Some masks appear at only one festival, but the majority appear at many or all. Best known are those of the Northern Igbo Mmo society, which represents the spirits of deceased maidens and their mothers with masks symbolizing beauty. Among the Southern Igbo the Ekpe society, introduced from the Cross River area, uses contrasting masks to represent the maiden spirit and the elephant spirit, the latter representing ugliness and aggression and the former representing beauty and peacefulness. A similar contrast is found in their Okorosia masks, which correspond to the Mmo of the Northern Igbo. The Eastern Igbo are best known for masquerades associated with the Iko okochi harvest festival, in which the forms of the masks are determined by tradition, though the content of the play varies from year to year. Stock characters include Mbeke, the European; Mkpi, the he-goat; and Mba, which appear in pairs, one representing a boy dressed as a girl mimicking the behaviour of a girl, the other representing the girl being satirized.
Most impressive are the ijele masks of the Northern Igbo, which are 12 feet (366 cm) high. Consisting of platforms 6 feet (183 cm) in diameter, supporting tiers of figures made of coloured cloth and representing everyday scenes, they honour the dead to ensure the continuity and well-being of the community.
Wooden figures are carved for ancestors of both sexes, varying from less than 1 to more than 5 feet (less than 30 to more than 150 cm) in height. Those representing founders of the village are kept in a central shrine and sometimes become patrons of the market. A great many other decorative wooden objects are made, including musical instruments, doors, stools, mirror frames, trays for offering kola nuts to guests, dolls, and a variety of small figures used in divination. Shrines called mbari, which contain elaborate tableaux of painted, unfired earth, are made in honour of the earth spirit in villages near Owerri in southern Nigeria; and in Igbo communities to the west of the Niger, elaborate pottery groups representing a man and his family are made for the yam cult. There seems to be no tradition of pottery sculpture in other Igbo groups.
Ibibio
Among the oldest sculptures of tropical Africa are several hundred ancestor figures, called ekpu, of the Ibibio coastal trade centre of Oron, some of which are thought to date from the late 18th century. They are bearded figures 3 to 4 feet (90 to 120 cm) high and are so individual as to suggest portraiture, despite their schematic style. Oron is one group of Ibibio-speaking villages. As with the Igbo, Ibibio is not a single group but several networks of independent communities, with local unity represented by secret associations and their masquerades. The Ekpo society uses black masks, often of naturalistic appearance and with movable jaws, to maintain social order and propitiate the ancestors; some of these masks represent disease and deformity.
Ekoi
The Ekoi peoples (Anyang, Boki, Ejagham, Keaka, and Yako) are best known for their large, skin-covered masks, which have two or even three faces, and for their smaller headpieces, which represent a head or an entire figure. The headpieces and masks have metal teeth, inlaid eyes, and frequently pegs to represent hair, which, alternatively, may be carved in elaborate coils. They are used by several masking associations. In the northern Ekoi area, around Ikom, are found circles of large stones, akwanshi, from 1 to 6 feet (30 to 180 cm) high, carved in low relief to represent human figures. They are thought to be no earlier than the 16th century.
Fulani
The Fulani are in origin nomadic pastoralists who range from Senegal to the Cameroon grasslands. They are particularly known for their body decoration (see below Personal decoration) and for their engraved milk gourds. In addition, in Mali settled groups of Fulani artists work as goldsmiths, leatherworkers, blacksmiths, weavers, and potters.
Hausa
Northern Nigeria has long been dominated by the Muslim Hausa, who since the 19th century have been ruled by Fulani emirs. For centuries their buildings have been decorated inside with molded and painted low-relief decorations, which have more recently been applied to the exteriors. Both decorative and of a high technical standard are their crafts: leatherwork for saddles, bags, hilts, and sheaths; gold and silver jewelry; ironwork; pottery; weaving and embroidery.
Nupe
The Nupe have been Muslim for some centuries and are best known for their weaving, embroidery, beadmaking, wood carving, and sheet metalwork. They have produced many doors carved in low relief in a blend of decorative designs. Carved and painted masks are made for the elo, a purely secular performance intended only to entertain (nowadays held on the Prophet's birthday). The elo mask has a human face with a motif (sometimes a human figure) rising above it, flanked with stylized horns. The gugu masquerader wears a cloth mask decorated with cowrie shells, but sometimes Yoruba masks are used. The ndako gboya appears to be indigenous; a spirit that affords protection from witches, it is controlled by a small secret society that cleanses communities by invitation. The mask consists of a tall tube of white cotton supported inside on a bamboo pole about 12 feet (366 cm) long.
That Nupe art should have been influenced by the Yoruba is not surprising. Yoruba live among the Nupe, and there are bronzes in the Nupe villages of Tada and Jebba—one of them apparently an Ife work, and another in a more recent Yoruba style. Others of this group, which include the largest castings ever made in black Africa, share features with Benin sculpture and have other elements that are widely distributed in time and space on the lower Niger. Nupe tradition says these sculptures were taken from Idah, the Igala capital, in the early 16th century. Many were probably already ancient, but nothing is known of ancient Igala bronze casting.
Other groups in northern Nigeria
There is a great diversity of sculptural tradition among peoples inhabiting the Niger and Benue valleys, the mountainous regions around the Jos Plateau in the centre of the area, and Adamawa to the east. This is altogether an area of astonishing diversity. Some of the better-known traditions include those of the Igala, Idoma, Afo, Tiv, and Jukun, all of the Benue valley.
Central Africa
Cameroon grasslands
The Cameroon grasslands area can be divided into three stylistic regions. The Bamileke area is composed of a number of separate chiefdoms, the best-known being the Bangwa and the Bacham. Here sculptured human figures are composed of a highly expressive blend of rounded and angular forms. The Bamum kingdom developed roundness of form almost to its extreme, producing figures with big inflated cheeks. Among the Tikar, Bekom, and Babanki, the forms are rounded but not exaggerated. Throughout the grasslands there have been exchanges of art objects and diffusion of the brass-casting technique, confusing the more detailed stylistic picture. In general, however, all of these societies are hierarchical, with sculpture mainly intended to reflect the power and importance of the king.
John Picton
Gabon
Three major groups live in the equatorial rainforests of Gabon: the Fang and related peoples; the Ogowe (Ogooué) group, including the Ashira and Mpongwe; and the Kota.
Fang masks and figures are characterized by schematic simplicity. Typical of Fang work are bieri, boxes containing the skulls and bones of deceased ancestors and carved with figures intended to represent their protective influence. Fang masks, such as those worn by itinerant troubadours and for hunting and punishing sorcerers, are painted white with facial features outlined in black.
The art of the Ogowe tribes, particularly the Mpongwe, is closely tied to death rituals. Their masks, painted white to symbolize death, represent dead female ancestors, though they are worn by male relatives of the deceased.
The Kota create stylistically unique reliquary figures, called mbulu-ngulu, which are covered with a sheet of brass or copper. Like the Fang, the Kota keep the skulls and bones of ancestors in containers, which consist here of a basket surmounted by the carved figure.
Congo (Kinshasa) and Congo (Brazzaville)
The region formerly referred to as the “Congo” consists of the modern republics of Congo (Kinshasa) and Congo (Brazzaville), which are separated by the Congo River. The area falls into two major geographic divisions: the northern half is an equatorial rainforest inhabited by peoples who hunt, farm, and fish; the southern half is a savanna. It is in the villages of this southern region that the most highly developed political, social, and artistic culture has evolved.
In general, the styles of the two nations can be characterized as a combination of symbolism and realism, wherein naturalistic forms—predominantly human and animal figures—are rendered not in precise imitation of nature but in an exaggerated manner. It is this “non-naturalistic reality” that distinguishes the art of this region from West African art.
The sculptural forms are most commonly wood carvings: masks, ancestor figures, fetishes, bowls, boxes, cups, staffs, pots and lids, pipes, combs, tools, weapons, and musical instruments. Similar objects are also carved in ivory, and in some cases copper, brass, and iron are used. In rare instances, stone figures have been found.
Painting is not utilized greatly as a separate medium, but carved pieces frequently are painted. Masks and other pieces are covered with polychrome, the colours applied in wide patches and often in planes and angles upon smooth surfaces. In the huts in which rituals take place, wooden figures are hung on brightly painted walls.
Reeds are woven into decorated mats, used for sleeping and for wrapping the dead, and into baskets and boxes, which are used to contain foodstuffs as well as ritual objects. Basketry patterns and sometimes container forms have been imitated by wood-carvers; textile weavers, too, use decorative motifs derived from basketry.
Pottery making has depended on four forming techniques: molding, ring building, modeling on a board, and, more recently, throwing on the potter's wheel. Pottery forms are influenced by those of basketry and wood carving as well as by vegetal forms such as the calabash; decoration consists of traditional geometric incised or painted patterns. The pots are used for cooking and for carrying and storing food or as ceremonial objects.
Pottery and embroidery are arts practiced by women, whereas sculpture and weaving are male activities.
Stylistic differences within the two major regions of the southern savanna and the northern rainforest can best be seen by subdividing the areas according to the kingdoms that have determined the social, political, and artistic lives of the people. The savanna falls into the lower Congo, Kuba, and Luba cultural areas; and the rainforest into the northern, northeast, and northwest areas.
Lower Congo (Kongo) cultural area
In the lower Congo area three sub-styles can be identified: the areas known as the coastal region, the Kwango River area, and the Teke region.
Seated mother-and-child figures are found throughout the lower Congo region. The human figure is used by the peoples of the lower Congo in the decoration of almost every work—from ceremonial objects and domestic utensils to pieces of furniture and architectural ornament. Although the majority of carved figures are made of wood, many important pieces in metal and ivory have been found. Among them are numerous metal figures clearly influenced by the Portuguese missionaries—statuettes of Christian saints, for example. In addition to the figures, crucifixes were also produced, in brass or bronze (using the lost-wax, or cire-perdue, method of casting).
Ancestor figures and fetishes carved by the Kongo and related peoples, who live along the coast and in the Mayombé forest, are more realistically expressive than the figures of other areas. Every detail rendered, the deceased ancestor is portrayed standing, seated, or kneeling, each attitude revealing the dignity and pride with which he is viewed. The fetishes are less realistically portrayed; although the head is treated in great detail, the arms and legs are stylized, appearing to be of equal size, and often the sex of the figure is not indicated. Whereas the ancestor figure typically appears serene, the countenance of the fetish can be protective or malevolent.
The nkongi, a group of fetishes characteristic of the coast and the Mayombé forest, consist mainly of human figures, but there are some that combine the forms of a dog and a leopard, sometimes with two heads. The nkongi fetish is often completely covered by nails and other sharply pointed metal objects driven into its surface; these objects mark each appeal made to the spirit embodied in it. All fetishes, whether they represent humans or animals, whether made of wood, horn, ivory, or even calabash, must contain a number of magical substances such as blood along with animal, vegetable, and mineral matter. These ingredients, called bilongo, are placed in a cavity, usually in the figure's stomach but sometimes in the back or head. The opening of the cavity is covered by a shell or, in some modern fetishes, by a piece of mirror. The magical substances are believed to invest the fetish figure with power and make it possible for the devotee to establish contact with the spirit (nkisi).
Another object common to the lower Congo area, produced primarily by the coastal peoples, especially the Woyo, is a wooden pot lid carved with pictorial narratives representing proverbs. The pot lid, which covered the meal served by a wife to her husband, illustrates a particular complaint about their marital relationship—a wife's displeasure with her husband, for example; when that lid was used, the husband was obliged to discuss and resolve the problem publicly with the help of mealtime witnesses. This manner of family arbitration was traditional, and each woman was given a variety of carved pot lids on the occasion of her marriage.
The Kwango River area is the home of the Yaka, Suku, Mbala, and Pende, whose masks, figures, and other carved objects show a dynamic stylization. Characterized by geometric patterns formed by the relationship of stylized body parts, Yaka figures lack the organic integration of naturalistic forms produced by the neighbouring Kongo. The turned-up nose is a characteristic of Yaka figures and masks. Large, life-size carved figures stand at the entrances of Yaka initiation huts, the inside walls of which are covered with painted bark panels. Tudansi masks, worn by the young men at their initiation into manhood and decorated with polychrome and raffia collars, are topped with animal figures. The dramatically painted kakungu mask worn by the leader of the initiation rite represents a gaunt face with exaggerated nose and cheeks. This mask is thought to embody terrific powers and is kept in its own hut. Similar to the Yaka tudansi mask is the hemba mask of the nearby Suku, which is only slightly less grotesque. Carved Suku figures show more rounded forms than do the Yaka.
Mbala figures have three different types of faces: elongated, wide, and lozenge-shaped. The features (especially the forehead and chin) project forcefully, and the head is surmounted by a crestlike coiffure. Mbala mother-and-child figures are much more powerfully rigid in style than others in the Congo region.
Pende masks, made in a realistic style, are among the most dramatic works of all African art. Like the Yaka, small Pende masks fit over the head, helmet-style. Representing the mysterious powers to which boys are introduced at initiation, Pende masks are worn in comic entertainments performed during the ceremonies. The masks have facial forms that repeat the angular pattern established by the heavy triangular eyelids, and they are topped by a bushy coif of raffia. Smaller versions of these masks are made as amulets in ivory or wood. The Pende fashion their figures in a style identical to that of their masks. One type of figure, called tungunlungu, representing the female ancestry of the tribe, is placed in front of the chief's house.
The Teke live on the banks of the Congo River. They are best known for their fetishes, called butti, which serve in the cult of a wide range of supernatural forces sent by the ancestors, who are not worshiped directly. Each figure has its own specific purpose not related directly to its appearance. When a figure is carved for a newborn child, part of the placenta is placed in the stomach cavity of the figure while the rest is buried inside the father's hut (where the family's fetish figures are kept). The figure serves to protect the child until puberty. Figures of identical appearance serve also for success in hunting, trading, and other activities, each figure's specific purpose being known only to the owner. Teke figures are characterized by an angular, geometric form with linear ornamentation. Teke face masks, flat disks painted in bright polychrome, are highly schematic forms bearing no naturalistic associations.
Kuba cultural area
The art of the Kuba is one of the most highly developed of all African traditions, and significant cultural accomplishments are part of their heritage. Mucu Mushanga, their 27th king, was credited with the invention of fire, and he was the first to make clothing out of bark cloth. Shamba Bolongongo (c. 1600), the 93rd king, who introduced weaving and textile manufacture to his people, was also the first ruler to have his portrait carved in wood. Shamba Bolongongo's portrait established a tradition of such portraiture among the Kuba people. The kings typically sit facing forward with legs crossed, the left in front of the right; the right hand, with fingers extended, rests on the right knee, and the left hand holds the royal dagger. Geometric patterns cover the stomach and are continued on the back of the figure. The sculptures also include objects significant to each particular king, identifying his own personal accomplishments. Developing from the court style was a popular style, which utilized geometric forms instead of the well-modeled, full-volumed forms of the court figures. Kuba fetishes, emphasizing only essential organs, are highly schematic. The popular style can also be found in the utensils and textiles produced by the Kuba.
The Kuba metalsmith worked with copper, iron, and brass, making weapons and tools to be admired as well as used. In some cases, one metal was inlaid with another. Mashamboy and other masks—made of raffia and decorated with shells, beads, and even bells and feathers—were traditionally used to dramatize the founding of the royal dynasty and its matrilineal system of descent.
Luba cultural area
Although the history of the Luba people (southeastern Congo [Kinshasa]) is one of violence and warfare, their artistic style is characterized by harmonious integration of organically related forms. Female figures are carved more often than male figures. Some are freestanding, almost always in a frontal position with their hands on their breasts; others are kneeling, sitting, or standing figures whose upraised hands serve as supports for bowls, seats, and neck rests. A popular form consists of a kneeling or sitting female figure holding a bowl. Such mendicant figures are used to appeal to spirits for health and aid for pregnant women; neighbours, seeing the figure in front of a woman's hut, will fill it with gifts to help her avoid hardship in pregnancy. The female figures are modeled in rounded forms and have what is called dodu—that is, a stylistic tendency toward plumpness.
One well-known Luba sub-style has been called the “long-face style” of Buli. It contrasts strongly with the roundness of other Luba figures. The faces are elongated, with angular, elegant features.
The Songe, who conquered and were conquered by the Luba, created a sculptural style of intense dynamism and vitality. The style of their fetishes, carved from wood or horn and decorated with shells and polychrome, is not as realistic as the classic Luba style, and their integration of non-naturalistic, more geometric forms is impressive. The Songe also produce ceremonial axes, made of iron and copper and decorated with interlaced patterns. One group is known for its kifwebe masks, which combine human and animal features painted in red, black, and white.
In the 19th century the Chokwe and Lunda conquered the Luba kingdom; today these hunters and farmers live in an area that includes part of northern Angola as well as southern Congo. Their styles are often indistinguishable from one another. The forms they create are monumental and weighty, and both male and female figures are carved in an impressively vigorous style. Also made by these peoples are chairs decorated with figures posed in genre and legendary scenes. Zoomorphic motifs are found on all objects—even utensils such as combs and knives. In ceremonial rites of initiation, men wear painted bark cloth masks and net costumes.
Northern cultural area
The Lega, who inhabit the area between the Luba and the northernmost peoples, have produced figures and masks, mostly carved from ivory in a schematic style. These objects are used, together with a vast assemblage of artifacts and natural objects, in the initiation to successive grades of the Bwami association.
Northeast cultural area
In the northeast area live the Mangbetu and the Zande. Mangbetu sculpture—in wood, ivory, and pottery—is often characterized by the elongated skull forms produced by binding the heads of young children. Zande sculpture seems largely of Mangbetu derivation.
Northwest cultural area
The Ngbaka and Ngbandi are the peoples whose sculptures are of major significance in the northwest area. There is no single Ngbaka sculptural style: at times the figures are fleshy and rounded; at other times they are considerably more angular. Small animal figures are used as fetishes in hunting. The masks used in circumcision ceremonies are roughly executed. Both the Ngbaka and the Ngbandi make clay images to be used in funeral rituals. The Ngbandi are also known for wooden fetishes and figures. Small carved ivory or wood figures were worn by Ngbandi warriors, who carried shields made of decorated woven fibre. It is often impossible to distinguish the few Ngbandi masks from those of the Ngbaka.
John Picton
East Africa
Southern Republic of The Sudan
Agriculture and cattle raising are widespread in this part of The Sudan, though the former is often despised and is engaged in with great reluctance. Among peoples such as the Nuer and Dinka, cattle are a source of aesthetic satisfaction. The prize ox could indeed be regarded as their sculpture.
There is little scope for differentiating local styles of surviving wood carvings, all of which are highly schematic in form. Some of the larger ones, 3 feet (90 cm) or more in height, are attributed to the Bongo and appear on the graves of important people. The Bongo also made smaller figures, used in murder trials to identify criminals by oracular divination. Other peoples, especially the Bari, also made figures, of uncertain significance.
The Shilluk made life-size representations of their first king, Nyikang; clay figurines of bulls; clay pipe bowls and figurines in hyena form; and masks, typically fashioned of a piece of gourd with applied facial features made of cattle dung and fishbone teeth.
Some peoples decorate their houses with wall paintings and reliefs; the Burun, for example, paint animal murals reminiscent of rock paintings. The Nuba make mural paintings and fine pottery of clay or cow dung, sometimes embellished with finely painted geometric patterns. The southeast Nuba are particularly famous for the body painting of their young men. Artistic taste appears in weapons, such as throwing knives, and in domestic utensils, elaborate coiffures, and personal ornaments.
Horn of Africa
The Amhara people of Ethiopia have inherited a Christian art and architecture with its roots in Coptic and Byzantine traditions. The Somali, on the other hand, are Muslim, also with rich traditions of decorative art.
The Konso and other peoples of southern Ethiopia carve wooden tomb posts about 6.5 feet (200 cm) high surmounted by carved heads and shoulders, representing deceased nobles or warriors. The Arusi, also of southern Ethiopia, make tombstones of like height, ornamented with engravings filled in with red or black, sometimes showing the deceased in rough relief. Similarly shaped gravestones occur in Somalia, sometimes plain, sometimes adorned with decoration.
The pastoral way of life of the people of this area affects the applied arts; for example, pottery is used less often than wood or coiled basketry for making containers and dishes for food and liquids. Baskets may be waterproofed and are often patterned in many colours and ornamented with cowrie shells and leather bands. Weaving and leatherwork sometimes reach a high standard; handsome jewelry is made from silver and amber; wooden spoons and combs may be elaborately carved. The Somali have circular shields that are made of antelope hide and have embossed designs; and their swords, daggers, and spears combine utility with artistry.
Region of Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika
A pottery head and torso from Luzira in Uganda (now in the British Museum) is generally regarded as the oldest work of art known from this region, though its age is in fact unknown. Surviving from the treasure of Chief Rumanika of the Karagwe (on the western shore of Lake Victoria), seen by the explorer Henry Morton Stanley in 1876, are wrought-iron figures of two bulls and an eland, a bird of copper foil, and other metal objects that may have formed part of the chief's regalia. Compared with copper and its alloys, iron is little used as an art medium in Africa, and these iron figures are the only such known from East Africa.
The Kerewe of Ukerewe Island in Lake Victoria carved large wooden figures, about 3 feet (90 cm) high, which appear to have been effigies of deceased chiefs. Other examples of wood sculpture, including figures and masks, are known, some showing possible influences from the Luba of Congo (Kinshasa). In general, however, this is an area in which other artistic mediums clearly dominate.
The peoples around Lake Victoria, notably the Ganda and Tutsi, have brought the decorative arts to a high peak of excellence. Mats and screens used on house walls are twill plaited or sewn in patterns of black against a pale, straw-coloured ground. Fine baskets, with a variety of motifs in the same colours, come from the same area, as well as fine black pottery burnished to a high lustre. The domestic equipment is made in great variety and is of high artistic merit. Also made are shields, painted or straw-covered and patterned in black or natural colour. Bark cloth robes are printed or painted in black on a rust-red ground colour.
Coastal East Africa
The area of the Eastern Bantu-speaking peoples covers Kenya and part of Tanzania, including the Swahili coast. The trade between East Africa, Arabia, and India in the past 1,000 years has had some effect on the decorative art traditions of the region. Swahili art includes wood carving (especially of doors), silversmithing and other metalworking, and finely plaited polychrome mats. Farther inland, direct Arab cultural contact is less obvious. Like the Konso, the Giryama of Kenya produced grave posts surmounted by schematic heads. Notable among the remaining peoples who produce sculpture are the Kamba, who have spontaneously developed a style of wood carving, embellished with coiled-wire jewelry ornament, now sold in gift shops; formerly their art was applied to engraving gourds and inlaying stools with coiled-wire patterns.
Clay figures were made throughout the region for a variety of purposes, including initiation ceremonies at which they had the didactic role of visual aids in traditional education. Murals occur on the mud walls of houses—sometimes decorative, sometimes for ritual and magical purposes. Pottery is normally simple in form and decoration; gourds ornamented with engravings or covered with beadwork are widespread. Stools may be elaborately made, as by the Kamba; shields painted with distinctive polychrome designs occur especially among the Kikuyu and Masai. Traders' beads and coiled brass or iron wire are the raw materials for elaborate personal ornaments in a variety of designs and colour combinations.
Southern Africa
Makonde
The Makonde, living on either side of the Tanzania-Mozambique border, are the most prolific wood-carvers in the area. Masks are more numerous than figures and may be face masks, worn only over the face, or helmet masks, worn over the entire head. Makonde carvers have also developed a new style of spirit-figure carving in ebony (not a wood that is used traditionally).
Mbunda and others
In Zambia the Mbunda, Luvale, and Chokwe make masks; those of the former are made of wood, and those of the latter two are made of painted coarse bark cloth on a wicker frame. Each type is worn with a netted string costume or a fibre skirt. As with the Makonde, the masks may be worn at makishi dances (held at the new moon), in initiation ceremonies, or for public entertainments.
Small figure carvings are made in Zambia, mostly in the west. Decoratively carved food dishes, stools, headrests, mbira lamellaphones, and snuff bottles come from Zambia, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, together with distinctive baskets and clay pipe bowls carved in animal form, excellent pottery, and fine brass, copper, and aluminum wire intricately wound and plaited to embellish ax handles, hilts and sheaths, and snuff bottles.
Southern Bantu
The Zulu and related peoples of the southern Bantu made wooden figures that are mostly undistinguished and may have been executed under European influence. Attractive small clay models of cattle, made by children, occur here, as they do through much of eastern and southern Africa. Much artistic feeling is revealed in such decorative arts as basketry, pottery, the carving of wooden vessels, stools and headrests, ceremonial weapons, spoons, pipes, and personal ornaments consisting of beadwork in great variety. The Ndebele of the Transvaal not only paint the walls of their houses, which is customary, but also decorate their enclosure walls in a variety of coloured geometric patterns.
Other visual arts
Pottery
Most peoples of sub-Saharan Africa use pottery, many making it themselves. Today, although traditions of pottery making survive in many rural areas, town dwellers switching from firewood to other sources of fuel are also turning to industrially manufactured wares. The preindustrial traditions involve the molding of fairly coarse-textured clay by hand, either building the clay up in rings or by some variation of the hammer-and-anvil techniques found in preindustrial technologies worldwide. The pots so formed are then fired in open bonfires at a relatively low temperature. The variety of form and design is almost endless.
Pottery techniques are also used in a few places for sculpture, as, for example, in the grave memorials of the Asante in Ghana; they are also presumed to have been the means used to form the pottery sculptures of antiquity, such as those of Ife and Nok, in Nigeria, and of Djenné and Mopti, in Mali. In most modern cases, potters are women.
Textiles
In both East and West Africa, cloth traditionally was woven of locally grown and hand-spun cotton. In West Africa today most cotton is factory-spun (producing a more regular and easier-to-weave fibre), while in East Africa weaving traditions have virtually disappeared in the face of competition from ready-made fabrics. Woolen yarn is woven in rural Berber areas of North Africa and by Fulani weavers of the inland Niger delta region of West Africa. Silk is also woven in West Africa. Hausa, Nupe, and Yoruba weavers in Nigeria use a locally gathered wild silk; Asante and Ewe weavers in southern Ghana use imported silk, a practice begun by Asante weavers unraveling imported fabrics in the 17th century. Fibres prepared from the leaves of the raffia palm are woven into cloth principally in central Africa, especially Congo (Kinshasa), though also in parts of West Africa.
Throughout most of the continent, men are the weavers, though in some areas (Nigeria, The Sudan) women also weave. If in any place both sexes weave, each uses a different type of loom. The looms are of two basic types, according to whether one or both sets of warp (the lengths of yarn mounted on the loom) are leashed to a heddle. Each type has more than one version, especially the single-heddle, of which there are various upright and horizontal versions in different regions of Africa.
Textiles are designed either as part of the weaving process—in which case colour, texture, and weave structure are significant—or by a range of techniques employed on the already woven cloth.
Weaving the yarn
The cultures that have developed the greatest skill and creative variety in woven design are undoubtedly the Asante and Ewe, with the Fulani and other weavers of the middle Niger, on each side of Timbuktu, following closely in expertise. Three types of woven pattern are common: In the first, yarn of different colours is used for the warp, creating stripes along the length of the cloth. The variety of patterns is almost infinite; most are decorative embellishments of what would otherwise be a plain, naturally coloured textile, but certain patterns can have additional significance, indicating, for example, a corpse, a rich person, or a girl about to be married. This kind of patterning is most developed in West Africa.
In the second type of pattern, the loom is set up in such a way as to allow the weft (the yarn interwoven with the warp) to predominate in the finished cloth, so that the use of different colours gives patterns across the width of the cloth. This type of patterning is typical of North African and of certain types of West African cloth. The third type of patterning employs an extra weft. This second yarn is woven in a different way from the basic weft, using a technique known as float weaving. This type of pattern is also common in West Africa.
A further design element is provided by the unusual way in which the double-heddle loom has evolved in West Africa. The construction of the loom is so narrow that it weaves strips of cloth of considerable length; these strips are then sewn together edge to edge to make the finished textile. (The strips range from 0.5 inch (1 cm) in one tradition of Hausa weaving to less than a yard (90 cm) in another: cloth about 4 inches (10 cm) wide is typical of much of West Africa.) This process can create a repeated pattern of stripes or a juxtaposition of varied patterns.
Embellishing the woven cloth
The most widespread technique of embellishing already woven cloth is dyeing—particularly with indigo but also with other dye colours, all of which are obtained from local vegetable and mineral sources as well as in ready-made, industrially produced form. Another pattern-making technique is known as resist-dyeing, in which parts of the cloth to be embellished are either tied, stitched, or painted with starch to prevent the dye's colouring those parts. Women of the Soninke (Senegal), Guro and Baule (Côte d'Ivoire), and Yoruba peoples have developed contrasting styles in the use of this technique.
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Other techniques of embellishing woven cloth are embroidery and appliqué. Embroidery is especially common in two areas. In the first, the savanna stretching across West Africa, male embroiderers give pattern to the wide-sleeved gowns (historically of Saharan origin) typical of that region. The embroidery of the Hausa and Nupe are the best-known examples. In the second area, Congo (Kinshasa), women of the Kuba people in particular embroider raffia cloth dyed and woven in complicated geometric motifs (see photograph). Appliqué, mostly for flags, banners, and tent hangings, is practiced mostly along the Nile and in the savanna region immediately south of the Sahara. It often takes the form of Islamic texts cut out in cloth of one colour and sewn to cloth of a contrasting colour. An exception to this practice was the Fon kingdom of Dahomey (present-day Benin), in which banners displayed the attributes of successive kings (see photograph). In many places appliqué is presently employed in the preparation of masquerade costumes. A related technique is the stitching of glass beads onto a cloth backing, for example, to make royal regalia and sometimes other ceremonial objects. Those practicing this technique are the Yoruba and the Kuba and the various peoples of the Cameroon grasslands.
Other fabrics
Textiles are not traditionally woven throughout sub-Saharan Africa; in some areas other fabrics are used. The stitching of beads to hide is found among some peoples of East and southern Africa—as, for example, in the clothing of Masai women in Kenya. Animal hides are also treated to produce leather, the working of which is an art associated with many of the Islamic peoples south of the Sahara (for example, the Tuareg and the Hausa), each with its distinctive style. In Uganda bark cloth is prepared by felting and dyeing certain tree barks, which are often then painted or stenciled. The use of vegetable fibres for matting and basketry is universal throughout this region, with particular peoples noted for their styles of pattern and design.
Personal decoration
The adornment of the human body involves all aspects of the arts as practiced in Africa. The body may be altered in ways that are permanent, especially by scarification, or the cutting of scars. Among the Yoruba, scarification indicates lineage affiliation. Among Nuba women in The Sudan, it is sometimes a mark of physiological status: patterns indicate such stages as the onset of menstruation and the birth of the first child. Sometimes the body is scarified for the aesthetic value of the patterns, as among the Tiv of Nigeria.
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The body may be altered in ways that are semipermanent, in the sense that a person is not normally seen in public without certain effects, although they can be removed or adjusted in private. Royal regalia are an example, as are the heavily beaded ornaments worn by Masai women. The body may also be altered in ways that are essentially ephemeral. For example, some young Nuba men celebrate their youthful vigour in extensive body painting (see photograph). Hairdressing is done sometimes for its aesthetic value (as among the Yoruba), sometimes to signal age status (East African pastoral peoples such as the Pokot and Samburu). Perhaps the most striking example of body decoration is that of the pastoral Fulani of Nigeria. It reaches its height in the annual gerewol, a beauty contest between men whose faces are painted and who wear metal bracelets, bead necklaces, and head ornaments. The women regularly wear elaborate hairstyles (often featuring golden rings around separate locks of hair), together with a profusion of jewelry. The varieties of dress and jewelry found throughout the continent are invariably matters of aesthetic concern whatever social purposes may also be served.
Painting
Painting in some form or another is found throughout most of the sub-Saharan region. Besides the paintings and engravings on rock surfaces (see below) and the many traditions of body painting, there are the painting and decorating of houses and other buildings. In any given area numerous art forms may exist, often as completely independent traditions with little obvious relationship to one another in style or content. The purposes fulfilled are equally varied, as seen in personal decoration. Other forms of graphic design are noteworthy as well: the most obvious is calabash (or gourd) decoration, notable traditions of which exist among the Fulani and in Kenya among the Kamba.
There is also the painting of sculpture, whether masks or other forms. Sometimes this is the final stage of the work of the carver, but, as often as not, sculptures are painted and repainted by their owners. For example, mask headpieces among the Kalabari Ijo of Nigeria provide a temporary embodiment of spirits, and the painting of the masks before each performance is part of the ritual by means of which the spirits are summoned.
Paintings and engravings on the surfaces of rocks are found extensively in the Sahara and in southern Africa. The Saharan works were evidently done by successive populations, as is indicated by the different styles and subject matter. Most of the southern African work was probably done by ancestors of the San hunter-gatherers of the region.
The Sahara
The earliest known African rock art consists of more than 30,000 engravings and paintings on rocks in the Sahara. At the time most of these works were executed (from about the beginning of the 5th millennium BC into the 2nd), the area was open savanna, supporting animals no longer found in the desert but represented in the art. Representation of the changing fauna makes it possible to divide the art into a succession of periods, the divisions being confirmed by changes in style and in the economy and artifacts possessed by the artists.
The earliest engravings (in southern Oran and in Tassili-n-Ajjer, Algeria, and in Fezzan, Libya) reflect a hunting economy and represent such wild animals as the extinct buffalo Homoioceras antiquus (formerly called Bubalus, hence the name Bubalus period assigned to these earliest engravings) and the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, giraffe, ostrich, and large antelope. The human figures are armed with clubs, throwing-sticks, axes, and bows.
Carbon-14 dating indicates that there was human occupation (if not drawing) in Tassili-n-Ajjer from the mid-6th millennium BC. Paintings seem to begin a little later than the engravings. These paintings, in which some 30 styles have been distinguished, often represent men and women with globular heads or apparently wearing masks.
There follows, both in painting and in engraving, the Cattle period, in which the depiction of domestic cattle indicates that pastoralism had by then become the basis for human life. The bow is the principal weapon. Bones of domestic cattle and of Homoioceras were found together in a deposit dated by carbon-14 to the mid-4th millennium BC, thus dating this transitional phase of the art. The style of engraving is less naturalistic than in the Bubalus period, the poses stiffer; in contrast, the paintings are more naturalistic, with compositions and a sense of space if not strictly of perspective. The Cattle period ended with the introduction of the horse about 1200 BC.
The Horse period is divided into three sub-periods. The first is the Chariot sub-period, in which the elephant was the only pachyderm still depicted, cattle continued to be represented, and mouflons, or wild sheep, and domesticated dogs appeared. The earliest chariots were carefully rendered with a single shaft and a horse on each side; later chariots consist only of a shaft with two wheels, and human figures are reduced to two isosceles triangles set apex to apex. Spears and shields are introduced and, later, daggers. The distribution of these representations of chariots conforms remarkably to the trans-Saharan trade routes of the more recent past and can be seen as the earliest evidence of them. The Horseman sub-period reflects a change from horse driving to horse riding, though chariots continue. Next, the camel was introduced, possibly as early as 700 BC and certainly by Roman times, producing the Horse and Camel sub-period. Cattle had by then become very rare.
Because continuing desertification led to restricted distribution of the horse (represented mainly in Mauritania), the Camel period reflects only present-day fauna: camel, antelope, oryx, gazelle, mouflon, ostrich, humped cattle, and goat. At first the spear was the only weapon depicted, but later the sword and firearms, weapons that are still in use, were added. The style is highly schematic. The Camel period has continued up to the present time, for their owners, in some cases the nomadic Tuareg, still paint and engrave on rocks, as well as on the occasional truck or airplane, representations of camels in the Sahara.
John Picton
Southern Africa
In southern Africa, rock paintings and engravings occur in abundance. Most surviving paintings were probably made during the past two millennia. The tradition seems to be much older, but no southern African site with either paintings or engravings has been satisfactorily dated to before the Common Era. The San were still making such paintings in the 19th century, but some of the surviving examples may be the work of Khoisan and Bantu speakers. The way of life represented is mainly that of Neolithic, or New Stone Age, hunters (which is also more or less the way of life of the San), living off a fauna that has not changed in the area since the middle of the Late Pleistocene Epoch. Many of the paintings depict a peaceful existence; others, perhaps from the 17th century onward, reveal the pressures created by incoming Bantu and Europeans, with scenes of cattle raiding and subsequent fighting between groups (which are recognizable by their stature, dress, and weapons).
The paintings are in three main styles: monochrome, bichrome, and polychrome. The last style has a restricted distribution in the southeast of southern Africa, an area to which the eastern San were confined by incoming Bantu in the early 17th century; yet works in this style are the finest achievements of the art, showing foreshortening and carefully composed groups. Ostrich eggshells, engraved with linear patterns, are the only recent graphic art form produced by the San, who discontinued rock painting and rock engraving during the 19th century.
Margret A. Carey
John Picton
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