the arts of africa - Dallas Museum of Art

30 african art in context african art in context 31
Mpumalanga province7 (fig. 14), and a carved wood animal head from a site
east of the Cuanza River in the Liavela area of central Angola8 (fig. 15).
The oldest works of art in the DMA’s collections are a terracotta male
figure from the modern state of Sokoto in northwestern Nigeria that dates
from between 200 BC and AD 200 and a standing female figure, from a pre-
Dogon culture in Mali, that is conservatively dated from the eleventh to
thirteenth century.9 These are followed by cast copper alloy figures and a
carved ivory waist pendant from the Benin kingdom that date from the
sixteenth to eighteenth century. All are made of du rable materials or, in
the case of the pre-Dogon figure, survived owing to a combination of a
durable material (hardwood) and the dry climate of the western Sudan.
As with most African art collections, the majority of the works at the DMA
were made of wood or other organic materials during the late nineteenth
to mid-twentieth century. Had they remained in Africa these objects would
have been destroyed by the moist climate and wood-eating insects inhabiting
the rain forests. The prevailing opinion maintains most extant wooden
sculptures are replacements; that is, they were in use for not more than a
generation or two before they were brought out of Africa. It was customary
to replace ritual objects with new ones.
The history of African art, like the history of Africa itself, remains a work
in progress. The reconstruction of Africa’s art history, especially south of
the Sahara where conventional systems of inscription are absent,10 depends
upon indigenous oral traditions and early European and Arabic documents
from travelers, missionaries, merchants, and colonial officers. Sources of
information also include linguistics, archaeology, and scientific dating
fig 12 The Nok head discovered in the Jos plateau of
central Nigeria was created sometime between 500 bc
and ad 200. © Werner Forman / corbis.
fig 13 Dr. Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey and Mary Leakey
found this carbonized wooden vessel, probably a drinking
cup, at the Njoro River Cave in Kenya in 1938. The carved
vessel is decorated with diamond shapes and dates to no
later than 850 bc.
fig 14 This terracotta head, dating to around ad 500 is
the largest and most complete of a group of seven heads
found at a site in Lydenburg, South Africa. The small
animal that sits atop the head may represent a lion.
fig 15 Zoomorphic head, Central Angola, 8th–9th century,
wood. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium.
© Royal Museum for Central Africa, pre.0.0.14796; photo:
R. Asselberghs.
methods such as radiocarbon dating analysis for organic materials and
thermoluminescence tests on fired clay objects. X-ray procedures, including
computed axial tomography (CT or CAT scan) and magnetic resonance
imaging (MRI), are also being used for this purpose.11
African artists also create with stone, gold, silver, and iron. Materials
found in the local environment—leather, animal hair and skin, cotton, palm
and other fibers, feathers, shells, seeds, and beads—were used to make
objects or to embellish them. New materials and techniques introduced
through foreign trade were incorporated into the design and adornment of
indigenous objects. Materials such as cowrie shells from the Indian Ocean
and mirrors, glass beads, brass upholstery tacks, buttons, silk, cotton,
synthetic textiles, and enamel paint from Europe and Asia enhanced the
appearance of locally made objects, thereby increasing their prestige value
and efficacy.
Individuals, not groups, make art in traditional African societies. Artists
are specialists who make art that is culturally appropriate for their gender.
Traditionally, men work in wood, ivory, stone, and metal, including casting
copper alloys and forging iron. Men who make objects for ritual use may be
initiated into a cult or association to learn its secrets. Women weave baskets
and make pottery wares for domestic and ritual use and model figurative
objects out of clay or other pliable materials. They also decorate the
exterior of their homes and shrines.12 The roles of males and females in art
making, as in other spheres of African social life, are often complementary.
Among the Kuba, for ex ample, men weave the raffia mats or panels that
women decorate with appliqué, cut-pile, and embroidery. Products made
by both men and women working in the same medium, such as weaving or
beadworking, are destined for use in different contexts.
African art is not anonymous. Traditional artists’ names do not appear
with their works in museum installations and exhibition catalogues
because we do not know them. The earliest collectors failed—usually for
reasons of prevailing cultural and racial biases or the methods of the discipline
(e.g., ethnologists study groups not individuals)—to ask, “Who
made this?” There were, as recently as 1960, only a few ethnographers
who inquired about the creators of the objects they collected in the field.
These individuals include Frans Olbrechts, Hans and Ulrike Himmelheber,