Western attitudes to African people and culture have always affected how their art was appreciated and this has also coloured the response to the art from Benin. Over time concepts of ‘Race’, defined as a distinct group with a common linage, and ‘Primitive’ which pertains to the beginning or origin, , have been inextricably linked with the perception of Africa. The confusion of the two in the minds of people at the end of the 19th centaury, and some of the 20th, caused a sense of superiority amongst the ‘White Races’ that affected every aspect of their interaction with ‘the Black’. The ‘Civilisation’ of Africa by conquest and force was justified by these views. The definition of ‘Negro’ in the Encyclopaedia Britannia just 100 years ago, calls them mentally and intellectually inferior as well as childish and lazy. Any ‘sophisticated’ skills they had must have been taught to them by Westerners. Other sources are even more damning, for instance the forced conversion to Christianity was justified by attitudes such as Georgr Crabb in his Mythology of all Nations (1847) ‘It must be borne in mind that the fictions of mythology were not invented in the ignorance of divine truths, but with a wilful intention to pervert it.’ Based on this any artefacts acquired, mostly by force, could only be of inferior quality and artistic value compared to the sophisticated and civilised West and, if associated with African religion, morally tainted. They were mostly seen as having a purely anthropological value. However, the artefacts brought to England from Benin in 1897 were an anomaly. The craftsmanship and sophistication were such that some were reminiscent of the beautiful figures in the Hofkiche, Innsbruck 1502-1563 (plate 3.1.12. Visited... ... middle of paper ... ...htm (Accessed 11.02.11) http://www.arm.arc.co.uk/britishBenin.html Negritude http://www.nigerdeltadirectory.com/websiteseminars/negritude.html http://www.culturekiosque.com/calendar/item14966.html http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/negritude/ (Accessed 14.02.11) African Art http://www.jpanafrican.com/ (Accessed 14.02.11) Benin Massacre http://www.dawodu.com/igbinedion3.htm http://www.arm.arc.co.uk/britishBenin.html http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/articles/anthony-okosun/the-glory-of-benin-kingdom-and-the-shame-of-the-british-empire.html http://books.google.co.uk (Benin Diplomatic Handbook By USA International Business Publications) (Accessed 14.02.11) Fiona Mauchin The African Biennale: Envisioning ‘Authentic’ African Contemporanity 2009 Stellenbosh University https://scholar.sun.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10019.1/.../Mauchan,%20F.pdf?...
associated blackness as a curse by god that justifies their lifetime servitude. The black Africans
Mackie, R. (2008), ‘The Art of the Benin: Changing Relations between Europe and Africa I: The conquest of the Benin in the 1890’s’, in Brown, R (ed.), Cultural Encounters (AA100 Book3), Milton Keynes, The Open University, pp. 16-32
In the early sixteenth century, the Oba, on the hip or neck, wore the Benin pendant mask during sacred ceremonies. The pendant represents Queen Idia, mother of Oba Esigie, who ruled the Benin court. The pendant is an ivory mask decorated with heads that represent the Portuguese men with beards, symbolizing the Benin’s alliance and dominion over Europeans. The pendant’s forehead was decorated with a pair of metal strips to indicate scarification marks. Below the chin, the pendant has bands of coral beads and carved mudfish are on the crown and collar. Due to their ability to live both on land and in water, mudfish symbolized the king’s double nature as human and divine. Since the Portuguese came from across the seas, they were considered people
5. Howe, Helen, and Robert T. Howe. From the Ancient and Medieval Worlds. N.p.: Longman, 1992. Print.
“Different but Equal” is a video in which Basil Davidson, the narrator, attempts to expand and heighten the understanding that Western civilization has about Africa. Often thought of as underdeveloped or uncivilized, Basil focuses mainly on the accomplishments of Africans throughout the years and uses them to contrast the surprisingly popular belief of African inferiority. Just a few of the main issues being brought up are how Europeans routinely discredited African accomplishments, the often disputed race of the Egyptians and their society, and why the thought that Africans are ‘uncivilized’ isn’t accurate. The video uses science, archaeology and history combined with the input of well-known researchers to give a more accurate depiction of
Many African cultures see life as a cycle we are born, we grow and mature, enter adulthood, and one day we will eventually die but the cycle continues long after death. In Africa art is used as a way to express many things in their society, in this paper I will focus on different ways traditional African art are used to describe the cycle of one’s life. Since Africa is such a large continent it is important to keep in mind that every country and tribe has different rituals and views when it comes to the cycle of life. It is estimated to be well over a thousand different ethnic groups and cultures in Africa today. Thousands of cultures in Africa see the stages of life bound together in a continuous cycle; a cycle of birth, growth, maturity,
Beginning in 1880, there was a growing desire for European countries to expand and control their rule. The only continent at that time that was left uncontrolled and, in the European's eyes uncivilized, was Africa. This was the start of Western Imperialism. All European countries wanted their piece of Africa and to get it, they would let nothing stand in their way. They would change the entire government, religion, market, and behavior of most of the African nation and affect almost every person living there. An account of the impact of Imperialism is given in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. This book shows the changes that occurred in Africa during Imperialism and its affect on the community and the people of the tribes that existed there.
There is no art, music, and literature like here in sub-Saharan Africa. What is important to Westerners, such as the artist, label, and static-like wall hanging, means nothing to us. African art is living, spiritual, and meant to go back to the Earth once the soul of the item has run out. As the Bamana of Mali say, the art are “things that can be looked at without limit”. Our artwork has changed, emerged, and survived eras of turmoil and inversely, hope. I have found passing through the global gateway into Africa has made me appreciate this culture more, and appealed to me on a level that made me choose being a part of it.
During the 19th and 20th century, Africa experienced various influences and manipulation from Western colonizers. Westerners emerged with strong intentions to destroy local traditions and establish a solid group of supporters who would accommodate their rule. Religion, being central to all African lives, was the first on the colonizers’ execution list. Evangelists and Missionaries arrived in Africa and infused with the local African community, appearing to be supportive and empathetic towards the natives. Gradually, Africans became brain-washed and started to fall for the cajolery that Westerners had plotted. However, eradicating the beliefs that were had been so deeply rooted in African culture for centuries were not an easy task. Although many radical Africans were tolerant towards the Westerners, conse...
Loftus, D. and Wood, P. (2008), 'The Art of Benin: Changing Relations Between Europe and Africa II' in Brown, R. D. (ed.) Cultural Encounters (AA100 Book 3), Milton Keynes, The Open University, pp. 43-87.
The relationship between Benin and the United States is commendable. The two countries have had a meritorious history of relations in the years since Benin embraced democracy.
Adas, Michael. 1989. “Africa: Primitive Tools and the Savage Mind” In Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology and Ideologies of Western Dominance, from Historical Problems of Imperial Africa. Edited by Robert O. Collins and James M. Burns, 30-39. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers.
Africa’s struggle to maintain their sovereignty amidst the encroaching Europeans is as much a psychological battle as it is an economic and political one. The spillover effects the system of racial superiority had on the African continent fractured ...
Africa has been the embodiment of european perspectives before and after the Colonialism; these perspectives have attempted to provide insights on the facts behind it. In those terms, Africa has been reduced an atmosphere of concepts such as deep darkness, mystery, and madness, a place in which attrocities arise at any time of the day, and people are savages and chaotic. From that colonialist viewpoint, Africa was a place that needed help and control urgently in order to save it form itself and civilize it; therefore, white European men felt the need of accomplishing this mission and bring civilization to black men, which only meant to do thing as Europeans did. In Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1993), these European visions are portraited to such an extent that makes us understand that to unveil the heart of Africa we first need to be expose to their attrocities, and realise that we will always fail to do it because the chaos would consume us as well. Achiebe says it himself “Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as "the other world," the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man's vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant beastiality.” (Achebe, 1977) This is one of the many issues that postcolonialism argues and confronts as a lie, since African history has only been told from the colonizer's viewpoint overshadowing the perspectives and voices of the colonized. Chinua Achebe, on the other hand, was the first writer to actually tell the story from the eyes of the African communities through his novel Things Fall Apart, more especifically, nigerian tribes. In this essay, I will attempt to analyze from a postcolonial approach themes present in the novel such as identity, ...
The way in which this redefinition took place was through the institution of a fundamentally hierarchical system. "Primitive" versus "sophisticated," "barbarous" versus "cultured." The anthropology of the time—articulated primarily by Frazer—espoused an evolutionary view of humanity. Societies passed through several stages of development on their way to true civilisation, and, while the Europeans had made it all the way, the Africans were lagging just a bit behind. This, however, created a problem for Europe. If Africans were fundamentally the same as Europeans (albeit farther back on the evolutionary ladder), what did that say about the roots of European society? This uncertainty created a very disjunctive view of primitives in the literature of the time. In his book, The Dialect of Modernism, Michael North suggests that, "The colonial subject is either a part of nature, utter...