DISCUSSION 5 ARTS

Introduction Susan Vogel

This is not an exhibition about African art or Africa. It is not even entirely about art. Art/Artifact is an exhibition about the ways Western outsiders have regarded Afri­ can art and material culture over the past century. A central issue is our classification of certain obJects of Af­ rican material culture as art and others as artifacts. Our categories do not reflect African ones, and have changed during this century. An examination of how we view African objects (both literally and metaphorically) is important because unless we realize the extent to which our vision is conditioned by our own culture- unless we realize that the image of African art we have made a place for in our world has been shaped by us as much as by Africans- we may be misled into believing that we see African art for what it is.

In their original African setting most works of art (I use our phrase for the moment, but more on that later) were literally viewed differently from the way we see them. Masks were seen as parts of costumed figures moving in performance, or seen not at all. Figures often stood in dark shrines visible to only a few persons, and then un­ der conditions of heightened sensibility. Other objects were seen only swathed in cloth, surrounded by music, covered with offerings or obscured by attachments. Most sculpture could be seen only on rare occasions. As Arthur Danto says here, the primacy of the visual

sense over all others is particular to our culture: African objects were made to belong to a broader realm of ex­ perience. If we take them out of the dark, still their movement, quiet the music, and strip them of additions. we make them accessible to our visual culture, but we render them unrecognizable or meaningless to the cul­ tures they came from.

To understand these objects better we must consider the intersection between the ways we see them literally and the metaphorical vision our culture has of them.

Most visitors are unaware of the degree to which their experience of any art in a museum is conditioned by the way it is installed. As the enshrinement of Afncan sculp­ tures 1n the Michael Rockefeller wing at the Metropolitan Museum in the· early part of this decade subliminally communicated the aesthetic and monetary worth of Afri­ can art, so do anthropological, art historical or other kinds of installations color the viewer's estimation of what he sees. The conditioning begins with the selec­ tion of what is to be displayed. Because today the forms and materials of art are frequently the same as those of non art objects. the setting or context in which art is dis­ played may be its most evident defining characteristic A pile of tires in front of a museum is to be viewed as art where the same pile in a gas station clearly 1s not The very presence of an African stool in an art exhib1-

lnslallalion v,ew of Alan Kaprow·s Yard (1961) reconstructed in 1984 for !he Whitney Museum of American Art's exh1b1t1on Blamt The Explosion of Pop, M nimahsm and Performance 1958-1964 ·

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0 I

rencies placed 1n ..,ifldOw boxes 10 11""1 lhc - a N"50. ol cxnext. NOiJa:,o,e Nt6nbcfllil-.nolNau.rHislO<y

lion makes assertions about African material culture. The museum exh,b :,on 1s not a transparent ens through

seem which to view art however neutral the presentation may

Museum nsta lations have naturally reflected the ph,­ loaophies anct attitudes of their organizers from the time they first began One o f the first Wes:em settings for Af­ ncan ot>tects was the • cur10SJty room .. French German and English SClentists and amateurs had formed collec­ tions of exotic, natural and manmade wonders since the Aenaiasance Most cunos,ty rooms made no allusion to lhe <>nginal cuhural context of ob1ects, and 1mpl1ed httte l11Slhet1c 1111ent or competence on the part o: thetr ma,<­

ers An/Artifact exh1b1ts such a room recreated from The ft1mp1011 Institute s first presentat,on of ts ethnographic e1:le clan in lhe 1870s (p. i03 ). Such "cuno511y- co ec­ lons rarely leparated botanical. zootog1ca1. and geolog­

lpeeii1•,s from cultural artifacts. and often mixed obtects from different places

"Curioeity rooms"were often private, but during the ~ of lhe nineteenth century, museums of nat-

u ra h story opened to the public in ma ican and Eurooean c,1,es With a strongly educational miss,on from the outset, these museums presen•ed cf:dactic exh1b1t1ons using their specimens to I r • pre- va1 ng lheones, as they do tOday It was the midt~ en­ tieth century- relatively late rn the h StOJy of estem co ,ect,ng-before A !ncan sett.ptures made much o! an a ppearance in ar. museums Onoe th y d:d ! became necessary to determine which ob1ects w re property art and shall d t>e dJsplayed m art museums and 'hidl were an,facts tha· belonged m na!ura h1s•o:y museums.

The category of A fncan Ob,ects def ned s art has stead '/ expanded lhroughou• V-rtua ya' of the African art \\'Of w once c1ass1f1ed as art, acts The prob

-1ng berween the :wo ca•egor es s nn:NFm resistan• lo clear-cut SOIU!ions and con !y those who collect and exhib I Afncan no th • Pnm1trve arts

The aues 10n arose from severa c es It ong1nated 1n tho f ct thal during t

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lntroduc11on

1890s, when the first African museum collections were being formed in Europe and America, the almost univer­ sally held definition of art excluded non-naturalistic tra­ ditions. Early African collections were generally made in the field and included large numbers of utilitarian ob­ jects, biological and geological specimens, and other things of a purely scientific interest. Separating the small number of sculptures from this mass, was made more problematic by the fact that the continuum of ob­ jects runs unbroken from freestanding figures, for exam­ ple, to figures that are incorporated in staffs or musical instruments, to staffs or instruments with fine nonrepre­ sentational decorations, to rudely formed, purely func­ tional staffs and instruments. The material-usually wood-provided no obvious demarcation between fine and applied arts.

No help came from the African peoples who pro­ duced the objects. They did not distinguish between art and other manufactured objects, and rarely had a word that could be translated as "art." Early writers made much of this fact which was still being regularly men­ tioned at the time of the "Primitivism" exhibition in 1984. Because the creators of these objects were not making a claim for their status as artists or for their works as art, and since their products generally failed to correspond to the art made in Europe at the time, most objects were classified as ethnographic specimens and sent to an­ thropology museums.

In natural history museums African artifacts were used to illustrate different aspects of culture. At the end of the last century, many thinkers considered African and oth­ er "Primitive" cultures to be living fossils, contemporary ancestors that had preserved early stages in the evolu­ tion of culture. African artifacts were seen as providing a precious glimpse into the past of human development, the dawn of consciousness, and the roots of art- as the word "primitive" implies. Cultural evolution was believed to have reached its zenith in late nineteenth century Eu­ rope. Though the theory of an evolution of culture has been a minority point of view in the twentieth century, most natural history museums still deal mainly with " low cultures" and exotic cultures and exclude "high cul­ tures" and familiar ones such as those of the United States and Western Europe. (I do not wish to imply that the museums today regard their subjects as primitive, but simply to point out that their focus on the study of certain culture areas was established at a time when those were prevailing attitudes, and that they still study essentially the same areas.) -ln all cases, anthropology museums have continued to use their collections as sources of information about culture.

Art museums have tended to view their collections from the opposite perspective using information about the cultural setting to understand the work of art. The different orientations of the two kinds of museums is im­ mediately visible in the ways they have acquired and displayed their collections. Anthropology museums have

prized large field collections which combine extensive documentation with duplication. Because they sought what was typical of the culture rather than what was unique, they often exhibited (more in the past than today) vast series of closely similar objects. often arranged typologically (i e. weapons, masks, cups).

In contrast, art museums have not traditionally been concerned with documentation, but have preferred the unique object, valuing originality and invention - the qualities that separate art from craftsmanship 1n Western definitions. Art museums have accordingly purchased works one by one (or acquired collections that were formed that way) and have avoided redundancy.

During the four or five decades that art museums have been dealing with ethnographic art, however, the separation between the anthropological and the art his­ torical approaches has narrowed. Anthropologists are increasingly sensitive to the aesthetic dimension of the objects in their care, as art historians have become alive to the vast amount of anthropological information that they can use to understand art. This has tended to make their respective museums' installations resemble each other more than ever before.

The crowded presentation of the old fashioned natural history museum grew out of a desire to show many typi­ cal examples, but it also reflected the generally clut­ tered aesthetic of the period. It is interesting, however. to note that one of the earliest exhibitions of African sculpture in an art gallery presented it much as art mu­ seums do today-isolated for aesthetic contemplation , completely removed from its cultural context or any sug­ gestion of use.

Installation view ol Stieglitz· 291 Gallery. New York City 1914 1915

A photograph of Alfred Steiglitz' 291 Gallery exhibition of African art in 1914 already shows an African art puri­ fied of its functional look. The Fang sculpture seen standing on a pedestal is a reliquary guardian originally attached to a box of ancestral bones for the purpose of warding off intruders. Here it appears cleansed of bark and bones, and the dowdy aura of the ethnographic

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was known in greater 01 lesser degree lo that ong nal audience who understOOd 11 .., lh varying nuances ot emphas,s

For e)aMple, a mens soc ty ma might be regard­ ed as en:er~:ning and P0SSbly int1m1dat f'8 by unm1t1at­ ed youths initiated men wou d •dent ty •h • as an expression of their power and wou d und rstand ·s deeper sp rnua and soc,a meaning grad as .hey rose through levels ot 1rutiat10n omen nd members of d fferent clans court eIS or commoners mtg vtew rt re­ spectively as ugly and menacmg a g nous man fes,a­ tion of their group, or as awesome su An art st could fix ma nly on the deta s of manuf ct re and the sk of the a rust Those ,'ho d d ~ belong o origi- nal audience slJCh as Africans from a n boring area might see the sculpture as unknown and or m ght m,stakenly interpret 11 in terms ol t trad '<ms

m d " rmg

Only • e ong:nal Ud ence cow:i e of art in tts fut ness anct

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lntroduchon

ious. Further, that experience changed over time. The villagers who today watch a masquerade performance may perceive in it things the originators never foresaw, and may only dimly understand certain symbols that have become remote since the masquerade was creat­ ed. This was probably always true as generation suc­ ceeded generation. (In some measure, of course, the same can be said of all art made in a time or place dif­ ferent from the viewer's.) How, then, are we to see Afri­ can art? The only context available to most Westerners is the museum. If the original African experience was variable and can be only imperfectly simulated outside its culture, then a museum presentation can only be arbitrary and incomplete.

When at the end of the nineteenth century African art came to the attention of the West, it was mounted- both in the art world and in ethnological circles- the way Greek, Roman, Chinese, and other antiquities were dis­ played at the time: that is, figures set off by square or rectangular pede~tals; masks and heads on necklike blocks; some masks hung on the wall like relief sculp­ tures. (Masks, of course, are not relief sculptures; they are the front of a composition that included the wearer's whole head- a realization that complicates rather than elucidates the display problem for a museum.) Recog­ nizing that the methods we adopt to display African sculptures are arbitrary and remote from the ways in which they were meant to be seen forces us to reexam­ ine our displays.

The Freedman, 1863. John Ouincy Adams Ward. Bronze. H 20 ,n The Met• ropololan Museum of A11 Grit ol Cha~es Anthony Lamb and Barea Seeley Lamb in memory ol theor grandfather Charles Rollinson Lamb, 1979 (1979.394). Photograph tly Jerry L. Thompson.

How would African art be shown if it had reached us for the first time in the 1980s? Museums are conserva­ tive institutions and have changed their displays very lit­ tle in the past half century or more-aside from reduc­ ing the density of exhibi ts and increasing the labels. The presentation of the art of our own time, however. has changed considerably.

Partly under the influence of African and other "Primi­ tive" arts, twentieth century sculptors have tended to create works that stand in the viewer's space; earlier works usually carried their own space with them, in their own scale. A small bronze horseman stood on a small bronze patch of earth, for example; a monumental mar­ ble figure stood by a huge marble tree trunk. In con­ trast, African and Modern sculptures were generally not meant to be isolated from the viewer by a frame or base, but to invade, to share his environment. African figures do not create their own scale or space. but in­ trude into ours and establish their size in relation to the human body. They are large or small, they dwarf us or make us giants by cohabiting our space. If our refer­ ence were the art of our own time, and not that of a century ago, we might want to show African sculpture without barriers or mounts.

In the exhibition is a repousse brass head made in

the royal court of Abomey (p. 53). It is either an unfin­ ished work. or all that remains of a complete figure. ,n

The IVches, 1959 Alexander Calder Pa,nted steel 106 x 107 ½ x 87 in Col­ lecbon ol Whitney Museum o l Amencan Alt New YOik Coty Grit of Howard and Jean upman 82 44 Pho1ograph by Jerry L Thompson

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M Constan1111 Brancu&1 Bronte H 6 v. L 9 •1 In The Me1ropoj1tan Museum ol Art The A !rad Slieg:;u CO:ioctl()t\. <• 70ffl

,ts present state 11 could not have been a significant or useful ob1ect in Abomey, and would almost certainly not have t>een <J1splaycd How must we display 11? The cur- atonal 1mpu se 1s to mount 11 upright on a block. but since 11 has become meaningless in terms of ,ts original culture, and has now become an artifact of our culture, could we validly show 11 simply lying on its side? That would give 11 a certain resonance with works of Western art (notably Brancusi's Sleeping Muse") and would be a statement about the place this African head occupies in our inventory of cultural ob1ects

The,e" no songle nght way to, us to exhobot the head kom Abomev o, any Atncan obtect---0nly ways that a,e mon,"' less ollum,natong. beaut,tul, insuuchve a,biua,yfarthful to this or that school of thought We exhibit them to, ou, """ IMposes on onstitut,ons that a,e deeply embedded rn our own culture. There ,s nothing strange or wrong about that. 11 ,s simply a given.

In the exh1b1t1on 1s a large interesting look h COiored bundl~ of rope with regular kno;s vis'i~f~ ~~ey =(bip~;nSg).Palnd some thick black encrustation on '• . aced under the spo111gh1s of an art

museum II looks hke a work of modem art though it is smaller than most It Is In tact a huntmg net made by the Zande people ol Zaire and co ected tor the Amen- can Museum of Natural H story by H rberl Lang in 191 o For the Zande its purpose and meaning v.ere straightforward-to catch nunats en communal hunts that brought meal 10 the village How vc: symboucally or metaphorically the zande conceptualized hunting no expressive intent ,s apparent n lhts art,facl (In Oanto s

Iformulation us meaning was ns purpose ) Furthermore, ,ts present conhgurat10n ,snot intended one, to be

115usetut o, even to be cxamoned by lhe Zande '' .ould . have to be untu,ted The ,ntngu ng b c cncruSlat,on ,s acc,dentat, pe,haos ta, f,om t sh p Iha! brought ,there

d

In evaluating the hunting n t ls Zllnd makers an users would probably hav been concerned with work- mansh1p, the 1oughness and un form t ss of the rope, the regularity ot t knots the open1ngs-a11 qua lies n Most Alncan languages have

900d, useful, well mad U1 •ut

nd th nm •ss of ry 10 ts lune .oning

rOfd Iha! means

SUi:tatJ~. Thls ne:

lntroe!uctoon

would probably have merited that word . But it would probably not have been considered interesting to look at. Though it bears a spurious resemblance to works of Modern art, the net cannot itself be considered a work of art.

Also in the exhibition is a needle case made by the Lozi people of Zambia which consists of a series of fine­ ly wrought iron needles with twisted end s and polyhed­ ron terminals pushed randomly into a lightly wrapped fi­ ber case (p. 185). We can admire the efficiency of the case which protects the points of the evidently precious needles, the variety of their forms and d ecoration, and we can also see an expressive dimension in the irregu­ lar way they have been thrust into the case. But that would be a false reading of this object because, like the rope net, it is not in its intended configuration. The needles were meant to be used singly; their present po­ sition and grouping is as temporary and accidental as that of any pincushion or pile of tomatoes in the kitchen. The Lozi might have been interested in the various kinds of ornamentation on the needle's tips, and of course in how sharp they were. I doubt they would have wasted time on other visual aspects of this obJect.

A great wooden bowl from Wum in the Cameroon Grasslands is also a functional object-probably intend­ ed to hold elements of chiefly regalia during displays­ but it is also a masterful sculpture (p. 58). The body of a male figure wraps ingeniously around the bowl and cra­ dles it on his knees; his arms merge progressively into the bowl itself until his hands loose all volume and be­ come only lines incised into the bowl's surface. The breadth of his shoulders and knees, out of all proportion to his slender torso, suggest energy, protection, stabili­ ty. The artist who carved this bowl made a functional object whose expressive form takes it beyond the net, or the needle case into a realm our culture calls art.

But the people of Wum almost certainly classified it in quite a different way. They saw in this sculpture a useful object, a symbol of their kingdom, an heirloom; an expression of the continuity and security of their state. Ordinary people probably differed about the artistic quality of the work, for its forms are unusual and exag­ gerated. Kingdoms had more than one such bowl , all equivalent in function and expressive of the same val­ ues Some surely recognized this one for the superior expression that it is, though our information on such questions is woefully thin.

Whether the Wum bowl is art, whether the hunting net, or the Lozi needles are art or artifact is strictly our prob­ iem. Toe makers of humble African nets~ needlesJtools anctmats that we term arfifacl.S..hav~ not sQ!Jlehow ~ Ptred to sophisticaTion and the .status of act-and failed._ T~never for a minute JQst sight of the tact the\! t~ were simply useful, wellmade objects. TIJg_guestion_and t~es are ours.

Alncan cultures do not isolate the category of objects we call art, but they do associate an aesthetic experi-

ence with objects having certain qualities. The aestbel!c e~perience is universal- with or without a word that de­ scribes it. Africa is only one of a great number of world cultures that created and recognized art while lacking a word like our "art". As Blier points out, before the six­ teenth century the English word "art" referred primarily to the idea of practical skill. 1 The Latin root ars has its source in the word artus meaning to join or fit together Both the Italian term arte and the German word kunst were linked to the idea of practical activity, trade, and knowhow. Arthur Danto's definition below (p. 32) is well suited to the art of our own time, but does not entirely answer the African situation. "To be a work of art," he argues, "is to embody a thought, to have a content, to express a meaning ...."

In African cultures numerous natural and manmade objects embody complex meanings including, for exam­ ple, certain leaves, animals. shells, and metals. Motifs woven into textiles and mats, incised on the human body, or painted on walls are named and significant. The shapes formed by sacrificial blood or wine poured on the earth carry meanings. The basket of bones. the pan of sacrificial materials. the lump of clay at the cen­ ter of a shrine may be the most highly significant ele­ ment there, even when flanked by sculpted figures. Like the baldaquin, the monstrance and the altar itself 1n a Catholic church, African sculptures often embellish shrines whose most complex meanings are embodied ,n nonaesthetic objects like the Catholic host. Danto's defi­ nition holds true of African works of art, but fails to sep­ arate them from much else in the culture It leaves out the aesthetic dimension.

Though African languages do not have a word for art. they have many words that indicate artistry; words for embellished. decorated, beautified, out of the ordinary Sometimes there are two words for the same type of ob­ ject: one for the natural or plain example, another for the embellished or manmade one. (A naturally occurring separation between the front teeth has one name, and is beautiful, but less so than the cosmetic separation produced by filing. which has another name ) Many Afri­ cans make a distinction between the product of artistry. and the routine object on the basis of the beauty of the object, and the care and skill that went into making ,t beautiful. I do not know how they would classify the de­ liberately rough, ferocious or ugly sculptures made by artists (that we w ould consider art) that do not fit into the definition I have concocted here. Where their defini­ tion corresponds to a dictionary definitton of art is in the sense of skill and the requirement that there be some­ thing deliberate, and manmade about the beauty of the object. In traditional African thinking, art is a sign of cul­ ture and man's ability to fashion the merely useful to his

desire.

Notes 1 Suzanne Blier. "Art Systems and Semantics Tho Question of Styi,stic T8JConomy ,n west Afnca" lortheom,ng ,n the Amer,can Journal ol SemlOl,cs ( t988l

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