African Art Asking What Is The Art Of The Beautiful
Notions of what is beautiful, artistically, in the Westernconsciousness typically revolve around notions of symmetry, partially as aresult of the Platonic influence and stress upon form, upon our ownphilosophic and religious tradition. However, beauty in much of Africanart has a ritual significance that is not necessarily symmetrical orpleasing to the eye. Because of its non-representative attempts atrendering nature, some of African traditional art has been called'primitivism' in its figurative construction.
ists such as Picasso who considered themselves as adopters ofthe primitive African tradition of mask0art made use of the term'primitivism. A figure with adistended stomach might be designed to help an individual with a stomachcomplaint, for example. ' But the BaTeke, the Fang and the BaKota, did not see theirown art as primitivism. " Even if one disagrees with the highly questionablecharacterization of sophistication, aligning this notion with beauty andrefinement, the purpose of equating royalty with beauty and symmetry withloveliness was thus not absent from Africa-it was simply not endemic toevery tribe and every element of African civilization, and one must becareful not to valorize those civilizations with conceptions of beauty, thelack of functionality of art, and the notions governing the representationsof form closest to the Western tradition. However, even amongst such African tribes, there was a considerablediversity of what was viewed as beautiful and possessing beauty, some ofwhich might be closer to the Western, symmetrical ideals. Rather they often saw what we might considergrotesque or disproportionate representations of the human as ritualimplements-beautiful not in a comely sense perhaps, or an attempt atperfectly rendering the human form, but possessing a beauty ofexpressiveness, of the ritual and communal functions formed by figures,masks, and more practical implements to heal the sick. of kings and queens, relief plaques and staffs ofoffice. The ancientkingdom of Benin was, according to the British Museum website, "one of themost sophisticated in Africa, with a tradition of refined and beautifulrepresentations.
Common topics in this essay:
Fang BaKota,
British Museum,
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possessing beauty,
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