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African Art - sculpture with a deeper
meaning
By Susan Phillips
Traditional African art is often unusual and abstract.
Sculptures of human figures may have out of proportion elements such as an
over-sized head coupled with a tiny body form.
To understand the art, it must be
remembered that the majority was made for religious purposes. The artist was
not interested in the beauty of the subject in a Western European sense but
instead the work would have a deeper meaning that was based on a religious
belief.
Most traditional Africa tribal reglions are based on one
all-powerful God and ancestor worship being a major part of the belief. As God
could not be represented in an artistic work then statues and carvings were
made of ancestors. Realism was not an important factor or even a consideration.
The most important aspect to the work would be the artists
ability to bring a life-force into the sculpture that came direct from God. In
this way the spirits of the ancestors could occupy the statues and only then
would the artist have created a successful sculpture.
In addition to the ancestral figure sculptures another
important African art form is the mask. Again, the mask was carved for
religious purposes and usually destroyed after use. This is one of the reasons
why so little ancient African art has survived. Of course another reaons is due
to the nature of the materials that were used in the sculptures. Clay and wood
were the most common and unlikely to survive over a long period of time.
The earliest known African sculptures come from Nigeria.
Between the years 1100 AD and 1300AD Nigerian civilization flourished and many
beautiful terrocotta sculptures have been discovered and are suprisingly
lifelike.
African Art has had a considerable influence on Western Art.
Most notable would be the work of Picasso. The inspiration of African masks and
sculptures and the shapes partly inspired 'cubism' and other abstact art forms.
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