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Afrocentric worldview
African art and its impact
African art and its impact
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Kwame Anthony Appiah is a well known Ghanaian-American (British-born), who was born on 8th may 1954, Appiah main interests include cultural theorist, novelist and philosopher. He bases his attention on the issues that relate to political facts, moral theory and the philosophy of mind and language which relates to African intellectual history.
Kwame Anthony Appiah was originally born London, England and raised in Kumasi, Ghana, he studied at Clare College and Cambridge University were he earned his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1972-75. Appiah was the Laurance S. Rockefeller university professor of philosophy at the University of Princeton, before deciding to transfer to New York University in the year 2014, where he currently based and holds appointments
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Anthony Appiah explains the question of what is African art? From the introduction to the catalogue of the exhibition ‘Africa: The Art of a continent’ at the Royal Academy in London in 1995. He states that ‘it’s only recently the idea of Africa came to figure importantly in the thinking of many Africans, and those who took up this idea got it, by and large, from European culture’. In addition to that, Appiah is hinting at a new kind of …show more content…
About a million years ago, early humans spread out of Africa into Asia and Europe. These tools remind us that human technology, culture and the species itself all began in Africa.
art from what is sometime termed the the ‘classical’ period, such as the great brass and bronze castings from western Africa, (need to write more about this) add ref
and art which is often referred to as ‘Contemporary African art’, produced by many artists’ designers not Just in Africa but also around the world. Africa art, can now be seen throughout objects ancient and modern sculptures, in the many contexts which invite pertinent questions of history, culture and contemporary politics.
The British museum houses arguably the world’s finest and most comprehensive collection from Africa – over half a million objects representing two million years of history tell the story of vast continent of diverse cultures. For many years the collections of the department of Africa, Oceania and The Americas (formerly the Department of Ethnography) were displayed at the Museum of Mankind in
In the essay “Why Africa? Why Art?” by Kwame Anthony Appiah, he talks about basically how Africa is thought to be an uncivilized barren and that’s the stereotypical thing that comes to most people’s mind when thinking about this continent. African art has to look a certain way to be able to be called “African.” It has to be made by a tribe, not just one person which is why he says that most African pieces are signed with a tribe name, not just one name. Appiah gives an example of these Asante gold weights that his mother had a collection of. Their use value was to weigh gold dust, which used to be the method of currency. They were made as a utilitarian product, not for art, but many people started to recognize the aesthetic value. He says, “…in appreciating and collecting these weights as art, we are doing something new with them…” These days art is defined to be a certain way and look a certain way. It can’t just be anything, it has to have an aesthetic value to be considered art and to fall into the “guidelines”.
Initially there was a great deal of debate about Benin art and its display, as it did not equate with the perceptions then held about Africa. Until the British conquest of Benin in 1897, little was known about Benin and its culture apart from brief interaction with other Europeans in the sixteenth century. The perception of Africa was of a primitive, savage and uncivilised land, full of ‘abuses and fetishes and idolatries’, (Hodgkin, 1975, p33). Therefore, when the British invaded Benin they treated any artefacts they found as ‘war booty’ (Woods, 2008, p30) and sold anything of any value to pay for the expedition. They removed artefacts and artwork without recording any contextual evidence of form or function. These ideas are evident in the photographs in figures 1.10 on page 31, 2.2 on page 50 in Cultural Encounters (AA100, Book 3) and Plate 3.1.14 in the Illustration Book: Plates for Book 3 and 4 where artefacts are bundled into piles with centralised white figures suggesting only British triumph (Loftus, 2008). The ‘clever workmanship’ (Gallewey, 1893b, p37) and ‘delicacy of detail’ (Bacon, 1897, p39) attest to the quality of the artwork and the subsequent bidding by rival museums and galleries for the pieces did not prevent the perception that Africa, and thus Benin, as being barbaric and primitive.
“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,
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.
In the first segment of his film series, Different but Equal, Basil Davidson sets out to disprove the fictitious and degrading assumptions about African civilization made by various Western scholars and explorers. Whether it is the notion that Africans are “savage and crude in nature” or the presumed inability of Africans to advance technologically, these stereotypes are damaging to the image and history of Africa. Although European Renaissance art depicts the races of white and black in equal dignity, there was a drastic shift of European attitudes toward Africa that placed Africans in a much lower standing than people of any other culture. The continent of Africa quickly became ravished by the inhuman slave trade and any traditional civilization
The attitudes towards the display of Benin Art, adopted by European museums and galleries have dramatically changed over the 112 year period since their initial acquisition. This has been for a number of reasons including the societal transition from accepting colonialism to acknowledging cultural diversity, the gradual integration and cross-fertilisation across the academic fields of anthropology, ethnography and art history and the ongoing debate regarding provenance and repatriation.
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.
Toyin, Falola. “The Power of African Cultures.” Woodbridge, Suffolk, United Kingdom: University of Rochester Press, 2003. Print
In 1970, Dr. West attended the prestigious Harvard University and graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in Near Eastern Languages and Civilization. He subsequently began studying at Princeton University, where he would attain his master’s degree and doctorate in Philosophy in 1980—he became the first African...
... Cambridge Encyclopedia of Africa. Ed. Roland Oliver. 1. New York: Trewin Copplestone Books Limited, 1984. Print.
In the slippery terrain created by globalization and cultural brokering, contemporary art made in Africa (and its diasporas) has enjoyed a steady growth in interest and appreciation by Western audiences during the last few decades (Kasfir, 2007). Several biennials, triennials, and scholarly works attest to that, with much of its impact owed to the figure of Okwui Enwezor. However, seamlessly uniting diverse African artists under the untrained Western gaze for the commercialism of the international art circuit – notwithstanding their different cultural contexts and the medium in which they work – is bound to create problems. Enwezor’s and other authors’ sophisticated publications and curatorial works show both the vitality and issues still to be addressed in this field of study (Ogbechie, 2010).
I have chosen to describe the artwork Song of the Picks by Gerard Sekoto. I will look at what defines a work as modern and discuss Sekoto's background to fully understand his work and to prove whether it is modern. Several people influenced, supported and encouraged Sekoto and I will briefly discuss them. I will give a brief history of European modernity and its influence on Africa in order to understand African modernity.
Most art has some sort of reason or purpose behind it. It might be religious, symbolic, literal, traditional, customary, or just a preference by the artist. Most African art has a symbolic reason. Masks, pottery, figures, portraits, jewelry, baskets and clothing reflect the religious belief of the different tribes. Africans believed that everything in nature is alive. For example: rocks, grass, plants, trees, rivers and mountains. African art was not popular and was looked down upon until recently. In Nigeria, people were tattooed as a test of courage. The figure- “Portrait Head of a King (Oni)” reflects this. The King has this tattooing on his entire face. The King has big slanted eyes, a prominent nose, and big full lips. All these things represented something to the Nigerian people; the King...