Modern Africa Art ARTH 441/540

Instructor: Dr. Onoyom Ukpong Meeting: Tuesdays, 3 – 6.00 pm., Room 014 Hayden Hall

Office Hours: Mondays and Wednesdays 1:30-3:30:00 noon, Faculty Commons

E-mail Enquiries: onoyom_ukpong@subr.edu

Ukpong/Modern African Art/SUBR/Fall 2008 Page 1 of 6

Introduction

Certain crucial questions arise about modern African art, its evolution, proliferation, legitimacy and status quo. From the left come skepticisms about

the presence of modern properties in African art almost as frequently as questions arise about the absence of “essential properties” from art of the continent. Still, answers to these questions remain far-fetched, in the most

part. We are not certain of what the answers are—not because we have not asked but because we have not relied on recent answers that would lead to

finding out about the very nostalgia for the past that influences creation of modern African art. The African peoples’ quest for retention of aspects of their ancestral traditions has nurtured modern African art from its birth to

adolescence. Along this evolutionary track have ancient characteristics of premodern African art found home in most of the continent’s modern art. The consciousness of this cultural continuity distinguishes the modern African art

from its Western genres of the same art-historical period.

Despite the William Fagg declaration of the West African region as culturally diverse and resourceful in global cultural studies, Africa’s modern traditions remain largely understudied, worsened by the preconceived alien notion of

validating these traditions solely from the Western perspective of interpretation of a visual art, rather than from the African viewpoint of artistic consciousness. This calls to question what visual art is to do for the people whom it is created

to work for. Consequently, most of Western researchers and philosophers study modern African art aiming to validate it on the basis of how it should look like

rather than what it is created to look like and the purpose it is meant to serve. Others are oblivious of the cross-cultural exchange factor that brought about the emergence of modern African art and thus hold inaccurate knowledge of its

stylistic legitimacy, maturity and autonomy.

While Janson, Arnason, Adams, Benton and diYanni characterize specific modern African art traditions as having evolved too slowly compared to

Western art traditions in corresponding art-historical period, the question of authenticity and reception of modern African art in the Western World becomes

a subject of immense controversy. Thus, the philosophical ground of its rejection rests questionably on purported “absence of essential properties” from within what is typically modern African art. If the reassurance of our want of

an answer to the question of absence of these properties from modern African art is desirable, then we can rely on literary work by the following institutional

heavyweights on African art: William Fagg, Beier, Willett, and Kasfir. But there are others in their company: Ottenberg, Mazrui, Visona, Ekpo Eyo, Sieber, Adepegba, Nzegwu, Okoye, and Ukpong.

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Format

The seminar is structured in three sets of reading: the retroactive [analytic study of traditions in the weekly assigned readings], the active [critical writing

about art issues in the readings], and the passive [the scheduled oral presentation].

The first set of readings guides seminar participants through a geographic survey of and historical facts about Africa; to its ethnographic and political

histories; and to its peoples and their artistic consciousness from in the 1800s to the 1950s. It introduces works of art resulting from art practices in the post-missionary and post-colonial Africa. As we read the readings, we will attempt

to: 1) identify art patrons and interest groups that influenced art creation, 2) develop a series of working assumptions of post-colonial African art styles in their hybridity, 3) study scenes and events that brought about stylistic shifts,

particularly events that forced and nurtured the default notion of cultural civilization by Westernization.

In the second set of readings we will: 1) study, in tableaux, post-World War II traditions in Africa and their stylistic diffusion into postmodern traditions from

the continent, 2) assess these traditions in the context of the places of their creation and use, and 3) determine whether or not the upsurge of social and

structural adjustment programs in post-independent African nations caused new traditions of art to flourish in the 1970s, especially in Nigeria. In the foregoing respects, we will be reading the assigned readings guided by the

question of how truly influential these national social and structural programs were on art practice exposition seen in the period.

The third set of readings is adjunct to the first and the second and is meant for seminar participants to read and gain knowledge of art institutionalization in

select West African nations: Nigeria, Ghana, and Sierra Leone, Cote D’iVoir, Senegal, Mali, and parts of Cameroon. Participants will then choose to pursue their individual research topics, developing these into finished papers for oral

presentations and submission on the last day of seminar: December 2, 2008.

Grading

Attendance and participation: 20%

Seminar formal oral presentation: 20%

Seminar paper: 60%

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Schedule Week 1: Introduction

8/16 Introduction to seminar scope and format, and to the weekly assigned readings and expectations. Although some materials in the first set of readings are selected from major historical and

anthropological scholarships, they are art-related and resourceful for participants to use in challenging the subject and to connect

the dots between African art and its purpose, and between the work of art and the scenes and event that influenced their creation.

Week 2: Trans-Saharan Connections

08/26 Seminar Meeting: Scheduled discussion on the following assigned readings.

Readings: 1) Visona, 19-23, 32-39 2) Akak, Eyo. The Palestine Origin of the Efik. Calabar: Akak and

Sons, 1986. 3] Sieber, Roy and R. Walker. African Art in the Cycle of Life. Washington DC: National Museum of African Art, 1987. p. 24-25,

46-51, 128-131.

Week 3: Art, and the Political Institution 09/02 No Meeting, Labor Day:

Readings: 1) Blier, S. The Royal Arts of Africa: The Majesty of Forms. New Jersey: Prentice Hall

Inc., and Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1998. 2) Ukpong, O. Contemporary Southern Nigeria Art in Comparative

Perspective: Reassessment and Analysis 1935-2002. Binghamton:

2006, 251-257.

Week 4: Art, Mythology, and Cosmology 09/09 Seminar Meeting: Discuss the following assigned readings.

Readings: 1) Visona, 130-144 2) Richards, Polly. “Masques Dogon in a Changing World.” African Arts 38, no. 4 (Winter 2005): 46-53, +93.

Week 5. Art, Representation, and Religion 09/16 Seminar Meeting: Discuss the following assigned readings.

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Readings: 1) Hackett, Rosalind. Art and Religion in Africa. London: Cassell, 1996.

2) Adepegba, C. Nigerian Art: Its Traditions and Modern Tendencies. Ibadan: Jodad Publishers, 1995.

Week 6. Sunjata and Keita: Bridging the Contemporary and the Traditional 09/23 Seminar Meeting: Discuss the following assigned readings.

Readings: 1) Conde, Djanka, ed. Sunjata. A West African Epic of the Mande

Peoples. Trans. David C. Conrad. Hackett Publishing Co, 2004. [Textbook. Not on electronic reserve]

2) Gugler, Josef. African Film. Re-Imagining a Continent. Bloomington: Indiana Univiversity Press, 2003. p. 36-42.*

3) Sieber, Roy and Roslyn Walker. African Art in the Circle of Life.

Washington D.C: National Museum of Art, 1989, 116-126.

Week 7. Bridging the Contemporary and the Traditional continued 09/30 Seminar Meeting: Discuss the following assigned readings.

Readings: 1) Brown, Evelyn. Africa’s Contemporary Art and Artists. New York: Harmon Foundation Inc., 1996.

2) Brooks, Dorothy. “The Influence of African Art on Contemporary European Art.” African Affairs: Journal of the Royal African Society

55 (1956): 51-59. Week 8. Art, Marking, and Sculptural Installation

10/07 Seminar Meeting: Discuss the following assigned readings. Readings: 1) Kasfir, Sidney Littlefield. Contemporary African Art. London:

Thames and Hudson, 1999. p. 155-165. 2) Nzegwu, N. Issues in Contemporary African Art. Binghamton:

ISSA, 1998, 19-46 3) Ukpong, O. Contemporary Southern Nigeria Art in Comparative

Perspective: Reassessment and Analysis 1935-2002.Binghamton: 2006, 100-140

Week 9. Art, Marking, and Sculptural Installation continued 10/14 Seminar Meeting: Discuss the following assigned readings.

Readings: 1) McClusky, Pamela. Art from Africa. Long Steps Never Broke a Back.

Seattle Art Museum, 2002. p. 79-113. 2) Nzegwu, N. (1998), 67-68. 3) Ukpong, O. (2006): 201-207.

Ukpong/Modern African Art/Fall 2008 Page 5 of 6

Week 10. Conceptual Art

10/21 Seminar Meeting: Discuss the following assigned readings. Readings: 1) Ottenberg, S. New Traditions from Nigeria. With a foreword by

Isidore OKpewho.Washington: The Smithsonian Institute Press, 1997.

2) Hopkins, David, After Modern Art: 1945-2000.

Questions to guide discussion: In what ways are styles of works featured in Ottenberg (1997) similar to ancient art styles? Can themes of works in this Ottenberg text be distinguished from themes of works

produced in the western world? How opaque are the visual elements of the works?

Week 11. Conceptual Art continued

10/28 Seminar Meeting: Discuss the following assigned readings. Reading: 1) Ottenberg, S. New Traditions from Nigeria. With a foreword by

Isidore Okpewho. Washington: The Smithsonian Institute Press, 1997.

Questions to guide discussion: Given conceptual works seen in Ottenberg (1997), how true is it to say that there is acute stylistic

departure from premodern to modern; and how consistent is this departure with the post-World War II reconstruction of art styles? Are

these works comparable to those produced in other West-African countries, how and how not?

Week 12. Research Projects Begin 11/04

Students pursuing individual projects begin choosing topics and

compiling a working bibliography; those working on the collaborative project will make an initial trip to a museum or art gallery and take

notes, map out their research plans, define scope of research, divide into research groups and assign tasks.

Week 13. 11/11 No Meeting

Ukpong/Modern African Art/Fall 2008 Page 6 of 6 Week 14. Status Reports

11/18 Seminar Meeting: Students working on individual research projects will have completed an outline of their scope of work. Students

working on the collaborative project will inform me of the status of the work they have done so far.

Week 15. Individual and Collaborative Research 11/25 No Meeting, Thanksgiving Day Week: Students will continue

on their research projects Week 16. Deadline for Submission of Seminar Paper

12/02 Research Paper Due

Additional resource.

There is no required textbook for this seminar. However, the following texts are recommended:

Hopkins, David, After Modern Art: 1945-2000 Taylor, Brandon, Contemporary Art: Art Since 1970.

Barnet, Sylvan. A Short Guide to Writing about Art [7th ed]. London: Longman, 2003.

Goldblatt, D., and Lee Brown. Aesthetics: A Reader in Philosophy of the Arts. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2005.

Identify books and essays on sub-Saharan art (general and specific kinds) in

the university library catalog, SAGE. Focus your search for data and research on artists rather than on art of your choosing. In either case, looking at their social life, customs, and culture of the artists will be beneficial to you finding

out about the forces driving artistic consciousness in modern Africa and to your discovery of the materials of engagement. Search the following fields using a Subject search and the subdivisions as well (if available).

The following are some of the useful subject search guides:

Akan African People Art, African – Catalogs Art African Art, Ghanaian

Art African 20th Century Art, Lobi Art African Catalogs Art, Nigerian, Exhibitions

Art African Exhibitions Ashanti — Ghana Art African History Ashanti (African people) Art Black Zaire [Congo] Ashanti (African people) Social life

Art Nigerian, Nigeria Nsukka Bambara [African People] Art Senufo Baule [African People] Art Yoruba Congo (Republic) -- Social life and customs