The African art is one everybody falls in
love with at first sight. It is not just beautiful, but it carries with it a
message that only few persons outside of Africa understand.
Until recently,
the designation "African" was usually only bestowed on the arts of
"Black Africa", the peoples living in Sub-Saharan Africa. The
non-black peoples of North Africa, the people of the Horn of Africa, as well as
the art of ancient Egypt, generally were not included under the rubric of
African art.
Recently,
however, there has been a movement among African art historians and other
scholars to include the visual culture of these areas, since all the cultures
that produced them, in fact, are located within the geographic boundaries of
the African continent. The notion is that by including all African cultures and
their visual culture in African art, laypersons will gain a greater
understanding of the continent's cultural diversity. Since there was often a
confluence of traditional African, Islamic and Mediterranean cultures, scholars
have found that drawing distinct divisions between Muslim areas, ancient Egypt,
the Mediterranean and indigenous black African societies makes little sense.
Finally, the arts of the people of the African diaspora, in Brazil, the Caribbean
and the southeastern United States, have also begun to be included in the study
of African art.
Westerners had
long misunderstood African art as "primitive." The term carries with
it negative connotations of underdevelopment and poverty. Colonization and the
slave trade in Africa during the nineteenth century set up a Western
understanding hinged on the belief that African art lacked technical ability
due to its low socioeconomic status.
African art
demonstrates the power of supremely well organized forms; produced not only by
responding to the faculty of sight, but also and often primarily, the faculty
of imagination, emotion and mystical and religious experience.
The study of and
response to African Art, by artists at the beginning of the twentieth century
facilitated an explosion of interest in the abstraction, organization and
reorganization of forms, and the exploration of emotional and psychological
areas hitherto unseen in Western art. By these means, the status of visual art
was changed. Art ceased to be merely and primarily aesthetic, but became also a
true medium for philosophic and intellectual discourse, and hence more truly
and profoundly aesthetic than ever before.
African art takes
many forms and is made from many different materials. Jewellery is a popular
art form and is used to indicate rank, affiliation with a group, or purely for
aesthetics. African jewelry is made from
such diverse materials as Tiger's eye stone, haematite, sisal, coconut shell,
beads and ebony wood. Sculptures can be wooden, ceramic or carved out of stone
like the famous Shona sculptures, and decorated or sculpted pottery comes from
many regions. Various forms of textiles are made including chitenge, mud cloth
and kente cloth. Mosaics made of butterfly wings or colored sand are popular in
West Africa.
Exploring the
wonders of African arts and culture is extremely exciting and rewarding, you
won’t regret it.
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