Shrine head, 12th-14th century, Yoruba,Terracotta, Minneapolis Institute of Art.

The Yoruba are from Nigeria.  This is from the Kingdom of Ife, in Western Nigeria, neighbors of Benin.  Ife was a center of religious, political, and economic power from 1100-1400.  We do not know who this woman was, but she was likely royalty.  This is an example of a memorial portrait head.  And this sculpture in terracotta is clearly a portrait by a very great, but also unknown artist.  The woman’s peaceful almond shaped eyes may have indications of eyeliner.  Even today, the Yoruba believe eyeliner empowers the wearer.  Her neck is creased as if fat, a sign of prosperity among the Yoruba.  The vertical lines running over the woman’s face are likely indicative of scarification, although royalty in the Ife kingdom wear veils and the lines may represent a veil.  Ife artists made striking heads in bronze and terra-cotta that were placed in palaces and shrines. 

Ancient Ife art was often found by locals centuries after its initial use and abandonment and then reused in various ways. Some was interred at sacred sites and displayed annually for rituals. Few have been found in their original contexts. 

LOST WAX CASTING - example in box

"Lost Wax" casting techniques in Africa were and are still used to make jewelry, weights to measure gold in the marketplace, and statues at the royal court.

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The Benin Warrior and Crowned Head of an Ooni  was made this way.  Lost wax casting has been practiced in West Africa at least since the 10th Century and was used for bronze and brass.  

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Technique:

The artist models in bees wax.

A mold of clay is applied to the exterior of the model.

A small opening is left in the mold.

The mold is heated by fire to melt the wax, which drains away - leaving a negative of the model.

The mold is attached to a crucible containing brass or other metal and is heated to molten (1900°F for brass).

The crucible is emptied into the mold.

Once the metal has cooled, the clay mold is broken away.

CROWNED HEAD OF AN OONI 12th or 15th century, Ife, The Detroit Institute of Arts, "Treasures of Ancient Nigeria" exhibition Poster

By about the 9th century, in tropical Africa, sophisticated lost was casting techniques had evolved., and by the 12th century, the most naturalistic style known for any tropical African era had appeared. Wood carvings were certainly made in the latter period too, but no examples have survived. In Benin sculpture the head is usually greatly exaggerated, reflecting the view prevalent in much of Africa that it is the center of being and the source of power and intelligence. The Benin and Yoruba became the most accomplished in the art of figural cast sculptures. The power of these kingdoms depended upon agriculture and the defense of armies. Bronze can be thought of as a symbol of power.

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Benin bronze head, 17th century, Library of Congress Historic Image

This lost wax casting dates to the Medieval Period. 

Regalia and symbols of status are emphasized above all other aspects of the subject depicted.  This is seen in the beaded headress and collar.

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The Benin people comprise a state in the country of Nigeria that neighbored the Ife.  Today the Benin represent about 4 million people.  There was a tradition that dates back to the late 14th century in which when a king died his head would be cast and then put on display in an ancestral shrine.  This shows a warrior chief.  The king controlled all artists and no one except the king could commission a bronze wax casting.  If a hunter got ivory, he gave half of it to the king for his ivory carvers. 

Queen Mother Pendant – Benin 16th C, Ivory, Edo people

Images of women are rare in Benin culture.  This pendent is believed to have been produced for the King, or Oba Esigie, to honor his mother Idia.  Oba Esigie may have worn the pendent at ceremonies commemorating his mother, although similar pendents are worn today at ceremonies celebrating renewal and purification.  

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Ivory was Benin's most important commodity and was traded to the Portuguese.  White, the color of ivory, is associated with the god of the sea, Olokun, who is the source of wealth and fertility.

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The pendent is an idealized portrait with inlaid metal and scarification marks on the forehead.  She wears coral beads on her neck and a tiara with mudfish and Portuguese men.  Mudfish represent the king's dual nature of human and divine because they can live on land as well as water.  The Portuguese, who came from the water, represented spirits who brought wealth and power to the oba.  

Goree Island, Senegal, in the 1860s, Charles Maurand, engraving.

Goree is a small island off Dakar, Senegal.  From the 15th to the 19th century, it was the largest slave-trading centre on the African coast. Ruled in succession by the Portuguese, Dutch, English and French, its architecture is characterized by the contrast between the grim slave-quarters and the elegant houses of the slave traders. 

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This was where the West Africans brought the people they captured and purchased from other West, Central, and East Africa cultures.  Until the abolition of the trade in the French colonies in the mid1800s, the Island was a warehouse consisting of over a dozen slave houses. 

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Charles Maurand (1824-1904) was a lithographer, woodcutter, illustrator, who worked in France and the USA until 1881.

Bamgboye of Odo Owa, Epa Cult Mask, Yoruba, circa 1920-1930, wood. Detroit Institute of Art. 51 × 19 1/2 × 20 1/2 inches.

The Yoruba live in Nigeria.  They are one of the largest ethnicities in sub-Saharan Africa.  The Epa festival is an annual festival the Yoruba people have.  During this, men wear tall masks and dance.  They see from the mouth of mask.  The upper superstructure celebrates the central figure at the top.  There are 4 different masks that are always worn.  These are carved from the same piece of wood.  They always ente the procession in the same order.  Second is the rider, warior, king, Jagun, Jagun.  The rider wears a wide brimmed hat.  He is the defender of enemy attack.  He is often depicted as having two faces and riding his horse, Jagun Jagun.  In each hand he holds a staff or spear that are held by smaller male figures.  The horse is decorated and has long reins.  Small female figures are at the sides of the horse carrying objects.  There is also a drummer among the smaller figures who stands behind the horse.  

Masked Ceremonial Dogon Dancers, Sangha, Dogon Country, Mali. Photograph by Gavin Hellier, circa 2006.

The Dogon live in the West African country of Mali, inland from the great bend of the River Niger. The Dogon (a word also used for the wild grass that no drought can keep from growing) live in seemingly primitive conditions.

Dogon art revolves around religious values, and is not publicly displayed.  They are known for their ceremonial masks which are traditionally made by men and father’s teach their sons as a rite of passage.  Masks are made for ceremonial dances and traditional funerals and used to lead the dead to their family compound.  Only men wear the masks.  The traditional funeral is expensive and so it may take years for a family to save enough to perform burial rites called a dama.  This consists of a masquerade that essentially leads the soul of the departed to their final resting places through a series of ritual dances and rites. Dogon damas include the use of many masks which they wear by securing them in their teeth. Each Dogon village may differ in the designs of the masks used in the dama ritual. Every village may have their own way of performing the dama rituals.

The Dogon worship their ancestors who have made possible the development of their society. But they also consider the dead to be dangerous and a misfortune is often seen as a vengeance of the dead. The Dogon believe that when a man dies. his vital energy is released and becomes a threat to the living. Funeral ceremonies, usually lasting three days, redistribute the dead man's vital energy among the living and maintain the harmony between the natural and supernatural worlds. "The masks are awakened, " as the Dogon say, and the dead man's friends mime the actions of his life in dance. Only when the proper dances have been performed with the proper masks can the dead man rest and society feel safe. Women are excluded from participation in public funerals.

Baby Gorilla Named Bobo is Being Held by a Local Youngster, photo by Eliot Elisofon, 1951.

Eliot Elisofon (1911-1973) was a TIME/LIFE photographer.  His caption tells us that this photo was taken after a hunt and the child just gave the gorilla baby a name: Bobo.  The photo is from his time in the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

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Eliot Elisofon began his career as a commercial and fashion photographer. In 1937 he sold his first photo to LIFE and soon joined their staff. 

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Before WWII many Americans envisioned Africa from gross exaggerations seen in movies like Tarzan the Ape Man.  Elisofon sought to change that.  His photographs redefined Africa for Americans and brought them a sense of detail and beauty that they had never seen before through the pictures in LIFE magazine. 

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In the late 1940s Elisofon converted an ambulance into a studio and drove from South Africa to Egypt.  He became interested in Africa as a combat photographer traveling with General Patton in Tunisia.  He became the first American photographer to travel extensively to document Africa for American audiences. 

CONTEMPORARY ART OF SENEGAL, by Abdoulaye NDiaye

Abdoulaye Thiossane N’Diaye is a world-renowned contemporary Senegalese artist.  The name ‘Thiossane’ means ancestry and tradition in Wolof, and appropriately suggests the themes of his life and work.  

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Abdoulaye N’Diaye was born in the village of Saam, Senegal to a family of traditional ‘griots.’  Griots are oral historians, musicians, and storytellers. He studied at the Senegalese National School of Fine Arts in Dakar, where he first gained recognition as a sculptor, then later as an actor.  He is also a musician and playwright, and is an important figure in the contemporary arts of Senegal.

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As an artist/painter, Mr. N’Diaye works in a number of different media, including oil, gouache, chalk and pencil, and his completed works include tapestry designs, paintings, large wall murals, and illustrations for history texts. 

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His best known composition is the tapestry that set the theme for the Senegalese National Contemporary Art Exposition that toured Brazil, Mexico, the United States, and Canada from 1978 to 1981.  His themes and images spring from the very foundations of his culture: legendary figures, historical events, traditional spirits, folktale characters, legendary beings and the stories surrounding them, mystical events and traditional rituals, religious themes from Christianity, Islam, and indigenous religions of Senegal.

Still from the Film Stereoscope by William Kentridge, drawing, circa 1989-1999.

A stereoscope is an old-fashioned a device for viewing a stereoscopic pair of separate images, depicting left-eye and right-eye views of the same scene, as a single three-dimensional image.  This drawing was part of an animated film, Stereoscope, and is part of a series featuring Soho Eckstein, a Johannesburg businessman from post-aparthied South Africa.  Soho Eckstein is William Kentridge’s alterego.  He is a morose, heavyset Johannesburg businessman -- powerful, conflicted, guilt-ridden and devastated by the events that swirl around him.  In this drawing, he stands in a concrete room, in water up to knees.  The water pours through his suit as though his whole body is crying.  It is the impact of politics on the man.  There is a strong blue line that splits the upper part of the drawing in two and runs to Eckstein’s head, like a sign from his conscience.  The man has to cope with the history of South Africa.  As Kentridge wrote, the man must find a line, “between choosing a more solitary life or being promiscuously social.” “Blue lines are simply a literal drawing of different lines of communication”. 

This is from the eighth animated short that William Kentridge, who is from Johannesburg, made beginning in 1989. His subject is the tragedy of apartheid; his art consists of the splintering charcoal images that he draws, shoots frame by frame on film, erases and redraws.