Africa is a continent of more than fifty countries and thousands of peoples, each with its own arts. In Art History I you met Nok, Ife, Benin and Great Zimbabwe. This lesson looks at arts made from the 1800s into the 1900s, many of them by peoples of West Africa, and at how they were used.
Many African masks and figures were not made to stand still in a room. They were made for performance and ceremony: a mask was worn with a full costume that hid the dancer, and it appeared with music, song and dance at farming festivals, initiations, funerals and celebrations. The carving is only one part of a whole event. The carvers were trained specialists, often blacksmiths or members of carving families, and they worked within traditions while adding their own skill and invention.
Key idea
Looking closely: a Ci Wara headdress
Describe. A tall, slender carved wooden antelope with long, upward-curving horns, an arched neck and a zigzag openwork mane, standing on a small base. Analyze. The forms are reduced to lines and open spaces, so it looks light and graceful from the side, where it was meant to be seen. Repeated zigzags run through the mane. Interpret. Among the Bamana people of Mali, Ci Wara is the mythical being, part antelope, who taught people to farm. At planting and harvest, young men danced wearing these headdresses fixed on basketry caps, with costumes of fiber, imitating the leaps of antelopes, in male and female pairs, to honor good farmers and the work of the fields.
Common mistake
Kente and the Djenné mosque
Kente cloth of the Asante people of Ghana (and of their Ewe neighbors) is woven by men on narrow horizontal looms in strips about 10 centimeters (4 inches) wide, which are then sewn edge to edge into a large cloth. Patterns of color and block designs have names, often tied to proverbs, historical events or ideas; some were once reserved for royalty. Wearing a particular pattern can say something about the wearer or the occasion.
Architecture can be a shared performance too. The Great Mosque of Djenné, rebuilt in 1907, is the largest mud-brick building in the world. Wooden beams stick out of its walls; they strengthen the structure and serve as scaffolding. Because rain wears the mud away, the whole town replasters the mosque every year in a festival, with music and races to bring the mud. It is a World Heritage Site.
Why it works
Worked example: Object or event?
- The costume that hid the dancer.
- The movement of the dance, the music and the songs.
- The audience and the occasion that gave the mask its meaning.
Answer: The costume, the performance and the occasion.