ARTHIST FINAL Flashcards
Dahomey belonging to the Fon culture, Akati, Gubasa (Asen Guma/Asen of the Rage of Gu), Republic of Benin, Nigeria late 19th century. Iron, wood.
Dahomey belonging to the Fon culture, connected to the Yoruba diety Ogun.
- Associated with War and the duality of Metal (construction & destruction)
- Fon were deeply involved in militaristic activities
Yoruba peoples, Nigeria, Oya Shrine Sculpture, early 20th century. Wood, pigment.
- Deals with rain and storms
- Powerful woman on a horse
- Body positions in traditional African Art.
Yoruba peoples (Olowe of Ise), Nigeria, Veranda Post of Enthroned King and Senior Wife, early 20th century. Wood & Pigment.
- Stands and holds up the roof of a building
- Seated person is a symbol of kingly power.
- Queen mother much larger (big and powerful)
- Conversation around Gender
Yoruba peoples, Nigeria, Deji of Akure wearing beaded crown, robe, & sandals circa 1960s
Fon peoples (Sosa Adede), Republic of Benin, Nigeria King Glele in the guise of a Lion, ca. 1858-89. Polychrome wood.- COMPARISON with Bangwa Queen
- Represented as a lion to represent power and ferocity
- Fon = warriors and power
Akan peoples, Ghana, Akuaba figure, early 20th century. Wood.
COMPARISON WITH VIRGIN MARY
- Connected to fertility
- Used, as a proto baby, to display a desire for a healthy beautiful child
- This is concretized (abstracted) by the large head of the baby (in relation to its body)
- Abstracts the notion of healthy baby body.
Asante Kingdom, Ghana, Soul Washer’s disk, 19th century. Gold. Akan peoples
- Washes your soul
- In Akan thought, gold is considered an earthly counterpart to the sun and the physical manifestation of life’s vital force, or kra.
- Created to energize and cleanse the king”
Kani Kwei (Fante people), Cocoa bean coffin, 1970s., Ghana
•Discussion on mortality and how we honor the dead.
Photograph of Bamum ruler, King Njoya, with soldiers holding ndop textile, Cameroon, 1908. Bamum kingdom
COMPARISON WITH Kuba RULER PICTURE
- His outfit indicates his relations with Germans and French
- Patron of the arts.
- Ndop is a traditional textile that are significant
- Rulers and their love of the camera
◦Pictures serve as archives of contemporary values & themes of propaganda that are not foreign to African rulers.
Man Ray, Bangwa Queen with unidentified model, Paris, France, 1937. Gelatin silver print.
- Showcases white woman with traditional sculpture
- Sculpture had been stolen for many years
- Queen Mother or Statue of the mother of Twins
Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi, After being denied a chair by the Portuguese governor, Queen Nzinga Mbundu sits on the back of her attendant, 1690. Engraving. Democratic Republic of Congo
- Scene of a diss (Portuguese)
- Ends up working the dutch & portuguese over many years
- Becomes a Christian to engage with colonial forces on equal playing field
- Sitting on servant after being denied a seat so as to flex on these niggas.
◦Also to showcase her power, presence, and authority.
Bwende, Democratic Republic of Congo, Funerary mannequin (niombo), early 20th century. Cloth, pigment, soil, human remains.- COMPARISON with funeral tradition
•Meditation on the dead and the departed.
Yombe peoples, Democratic Republic of Congo, Power figure (nkisi nkondi), 1905. Wood, metal, glass, & mixed media
- Every nail, placed by a ritual expert, symbolizes the resolution of a dispute whether it be sickness, arguments, or legal agreements.
- The term power figure is more appropriate than charm.
Kuba kingdom, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kuba Kingdom ruler (Nyim) Kot a MbWeeky III (ruled 1969- the present) Photographs by Eliot Elisofon- COMPARISON WITH Photograph of Bamum ruler
Yinka Shonibare, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (Africa), 2008. C- print on aluminum, Nigeria
- Known for works that incorporate African textiles (purchased in African setting but produced in global settings)
- Calls forth Goya’s series of Capriccios which illustrated the artist’s disdain for Spanish pre-enlightenment ideologies and beliefs
◦Here, Shonibare applies the same sentiments to the effects of European colonialism on the African continent. He applies African textiles to a white figure so as to document how far African traditions and visual aesthetics have been spread due to colonialism. His intertextual use of the Goya illustrations, along with the use of textiles, are indicative of the artist’s status as a post-colonial figure.
Paul Stopforth, Elegy (for Stephen Biko), 1980-81. Mixed media on paper laminated on panel. South Africa
COMPARISON with Bwende
Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Nigeria, Bronze Head, 1987. Gelatin silver print.
Papa Ibra Tall, Senegal, The Royal Couple, 1962, Tapestry
Believed that foreigners could not teach Africans art. Their authenticity came from within.
- Dyed wool embraces folkloric subject matter
- Part of the Senegalese renaissance.
Gavin Jantjes - Classify this Coloured (1974-75) - Screenprint on card, Courtesy of the Tate Modern, London, South Africa
Escaped to Holland
•Discusses racial tensions within apartheid south Africa as well as the effects of the SAP programs on the progression of African nations.
Djibril Diop Mambety, Touki Bouki (1973), Senegal
Ceddo
Senegal, 1977, Ousmane Sembene, dir
William Kentridge, Johannesburg,South Africa The Second Greatest City after Paris from the Drawings for Projection series, 1989. Video. COMPARISON with ali zaou
Julie Mehretu, Dispersion, 2002. Ink & acrylic on canvas, Ethiopia
Geoculture and aesthetic heterogeneity
- Ethiopia
- Displays the complexities of Contemporary African society.
- There is a topographical feel acquired through its 3-dimensionality.
- Painting seems to be separated into two equally disordered portions. Considering that the artist migrated from Ethiopia to the US, these analogous spaces
of visual chaos could represent the insular disorder the occurs within both locations.
All of these aesthetic choices culminate with the idea that migrant bodies can not escape chaos.
Magdalene Odundo, Asymmetrical vessel, 2004. Terracotta, Kenya
- Abstract shape, vessel,
- Kenyan artist
Lubaina Himid, The Carrot Piece, 1985. Acrylic on plywood, cardboard & string, Uganda
- Portrays the desire for white institutions to integrate black women but black women not falling for it
- Born in Uganda but her career is in the UK
- Won the Turner /Tate prize.
Ali Zaoua
Morocco, 2002, Nabil Ayouch, dir.)
Tracey Rose, Span II, performance piece at the Johannesburg Biennale, 1997. Vitrine, television monitor, hair, Rose’s body, South Africa
South African artist born in Durban well known for performance art, videos, and installations.
- Has to do with the concept of Womxn / Black Womxn.
- Long ethnographic history fixated on African female bodies & genitalia.
◦Channeling Sartje Baartman
- Uses the theatricality and artificiality of situations like this in a satirical & playful manner
- “with my naked body on TV, I wanted to negate the passivity of the action of the reclining nude”
◦Connected project to an old art history of the canonical western nude
Samuel Fosso, African Spirits (Self-Portraits), 2008. Gelatin silver print. Nigeria & Cameroon
- Many artists rose to the forward due to the commodification of African photography
- He stands out by doing his own archival work on himself.
- Was able to transfer amateur status into art world status.
- Mock of Malcom X
- His work occupies a performative space. He becomes, and embraces, the legacies of these “African spirits” by wearing their garments
- He also uses the archival space that is created through photography to link all of these black diasporic figures under a central category.
- His version of Cindy Sherman
David Goldblatt, Exhausted workers cram onto a “blacks only” bus traveling from a segregated homeland into Pretoria at two o’clock in the morning. 1983. Gelatin silver print. South Africa
- Goldblatt was born in 1930 in the mining town from Lithuanian Jews.
- Started working in the 50s and 60s
- His work is imperative to the establishment of a documentary style during Apartheid
- His work is also crucial to the humanization of black bodies during apartheid and showcases the importance of creating an archive for ostracized groups.
El Anutsui, Crumbling Wall, 2000. Mixed media. Ghana or Nigeria
Johannes Phokela, Percussion Piece on Mount Serious, 1998. Oil on canvas. Johannesburg, South African
- Inspired by the Flemish artists (dutch) Mock of Peter Paul Rubens depiction of satyrs and wood nymphs
- Discourse on historical tensions between White women & Black men
Angele Etoundi-Essamba, White Ebony, 1991. Gelatin silver print. Cameroon
Evocations of playful critique
- These images create a fascinating call and response between misapprehension and self portrayal
- African nudity goes a long way in addressing many conceptual touch stones.
- Play with certain notions of the gaze and art history
- Born in Cameroon in 1962
- Photography is very important to Cameroon.
- Moved to Paris as a young woman and later the Netherlands where she trained in photographer
- Contemporary female photographers are conscious of how the camera has been deployed on them and therefore try to flip that view.
- Relationship between tradition and modernity.
- Photograph speaks on black male subjectivity; how the male form can take upon many characteristics that don’t necessarily match with typical male tendencies.
Chris Ofili, Holy Virgin Mary, 1996. Mix media on canvas. UK, Nigeria COMPARISON with AKuaba
- Plays with Ethnophilia, a fixation or anxiety around the ethnographic. A western conceit that possess western figures making them create images that are weird and highly problematic ways.
- Flips this definition of Ethnophilia unto a literal appropriation of traditional Western figures.
- A way of providing meta-narratives to established institutions (in this case christian religion through the blackening of the virgin mary).
- Incorporates acrylic and cutouts from pornographic magazines.
- Glitter and balls of elephant dung.
- David Hammons
- African identity isn’t deeply implicated in his work but rather the techniques he uses are definitely traditional (alteration, media appropriation, etc)
- Troubling representation of the Virgin Mary
Lalla Essaydi, Les Femmes du Maroc: Grande Odalisque, 2008. C-print on aluminum. Morocco
- Photograph on aluminum
- MFA from the school of Boston
- She to is thinking about art history
- In one hand she evokes these orientalist fantasies of western art, on the other she denies them by covering up the woman’s body and adding
Arabic text to center the piece in the Arab world.
- Less about the male gaze and more about a mediation on the male gaze.
- Le Grand Odelisque - Ingres is referenced.
La Noire de
Comparison with THE CARROT PIECE
Senegal, 1966, Ousmane Sembene, dir.
Bangwa peoples, Cameroon, Statue of a Mother of Twins, 19th century. Wood.
