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Your questions on African art

Before being tribal art pure it was a need, a divine representation for the appeasing of the hearts. The majority of the traditional works of art in Africa had a religious goal. The man called upon various beliefs intended to reconcile the innumerable surrounding forces. Were born from the divinities, geniuses, called upon by rites intended to enter in communication with them, called in order to protect them, in prayer and incantations in various forms: songs, dances, offerings and sacrifice. The men asked a sculptor to create a form which would be used as receptacle, of useful support during ceremonies, which often personifies dead ancestors or divinities.

The loans having been frequent between the people, it is often difficult to allot a mask to such or such population. The majority are cut in wood tender easy to work, sufficiently light to allow the clothes industry of large masks blade, but very vulnerable to the insects. Also the majority among are relatively recent.

Tradition in Cameroun:

The transmission of the tradition is important cement of the social and cultural life. Ellerepose of advantage over orality that on the tangible properties. A statuette or a mask does not count that if they are invested of a value added, at the time of ritual ceremonies for example. If the object is not inhabited any more by the spirit ous' it appeared ineffective, it can be forsaken whatever its aesthetic value, from where the possibility for the chief or the notable ones to sell it or of of débarasser, with load to remake some to carry out another on the same model by a local artist.

Les emprunts ayant été fréquents entre les peuples, il est souvent difficile d'attribuer un masque à telle ou telle population. La plupart sont taillés dans des bois tendres faciles à travailler, suffisamment légers pour permettre la confection de grands masques à lame, mais très vulnérables aux insectes. Aussi la majorité d'entre eux sont-ils relativement récents.

Tradition au Cameroun : La transmission de la tradition est un ciment important de la vie sociale et culturelle. Ellerepose d'avantage sur l'oralité que sur les biens matériels. Une statuette ou un masque ne comptent que s'ils sont investis d'une valeur ajouté, lors de cérémonies rituelles par exemple. Si l'objet n'est plus habité par l'esprit ous'il s'est révélé inefficace, il peut être délaissé quelle que soit sa valeur esthétique, d'où la possibilité pour le chef ou les notables de le vendre ou de s'en débarasser , à charge d'en refaire exécuter un autre sur le même modèle par un artiste local.

Le griot :

"gardien des traditions et des coutumes" :

En Afrique, le Griot est synonyme de poète et de musicien. Le griot connaît les mots et les rythmes, et jouent un rôle important en Afrique ou la mémoire, la tradition ont longtemps été transmises par la parole. Le griot est souvent musicien, chanteur et compositeur. Ses récits sont accompagnés de cette musique traditionnelle que chacun a appris à écouter depuis l'enfance Il connait les légendes, les mythes et l'histoire de sa région, lors des conflits armés, il ne portait pas d'arme et n'était pas fait prisonnier. Aujourd'hui encore, les griots servent d'émissaire dans les villages, et se chargent aussi des affaires familiales ou sentimentales (fiançailles, animent les mariages, annoncent les naissances ou les décès, arrange les conflits entre voisins). Ils savent se faire comprendre sans dire les choses, en procédent par allusions, car leur honneur est de savoir ne pas meentir tout en préservant les secrets qu'on leur a livrés. Ces gardiens des secrets sont parfois redoutés des puissants et certains ont été jetés en prison parce leur voix dérangeait. Le bon griot est habile et prudent, au Sénégal, on dit que losqu'un vieillard meurt, c'est une bibliothèque qui disparaît.

Africa through the Post office

timbres d'Afrique

The post office carried a great interest to the African sculpture. Here some examples of sculptures: Bakota reliquary, Ekoi Head, Baoulé statue, Dogon Dancer with the Kanaga mask, Punu mask, Sénoufo Mask, Mask "bald person mouse" board Sore.

Dating of the objets d'art out of wood

The principle of Carbon-14: One can date all that was alive at one time, in particular the bones and the objects out of wooden. Carbon exists under various isotopes (an even number of protons, but a number of different neutrons), in particular the carbon-12, which is most abundant and which is stable, and the carbon-14, which is rarest and radioactive (unstable). When the animal or the piece of wood is alive, it incorporates carbon (via photosynthesis or food). It incorporates carbon-12 as well as carbon-14, and its proportion of the two isotopes is thus the same one as in nature. When the animal or wood dies, it ceases incorporating carbon. However, as carbon-14 is unstable, its quantity decreases gradually. (once the died organization, C14 disintegrates but is not renewed any more and thus its décroit quantity). One connait the average lifespan of carbon-14, therefore his speed of decrease. By calculating the report/ratio of the isotopes, one deduces the age from it from the fossil or the object. It is valid only for certain dates (too much recent, and the carbonne-14 almost did not disappear; too much old, and it does not remain about it practically more). Fork of dating for carbon-14: from 50 to 50 000 years.... There is also a second method of dating for the objects out of wooden, which is thermoluminescence.

African sculptors

Fabrication des djembés en Côte d'Ivoire

Artistic expression represented in all forms is derived from the fruit of their efforts, their work is recognized and respected. Access to the art of sculpture is open to all, except inside tribes in which caste prédestines a professional job.
Everywhere else the job of sculptor is transmitted most often from father to son. In some areas, art is transmitted in a family who jealously guard the secret. Elsewhere, if one wants to become a sculptor, the fan receives such education by learning a duration of three years and by step.
The self-taught are not uncommon among sculptors. The carvers sometimes specialize in one kind or contrary to work on command an individual or a secret society.
Exceptionally they carve without having received orders, in order to build up a stock. The African artisan sculptors aims to reproduce a model aware that this will not be copied but to perpetrate in a form close.

Wood

Types of wood used in Africa:

Hardwoods and very hard: padauk (bright red, purple becomes brown to light), wenge (yellow of fresh becoming dark brown to black to light, Îroko (pale brown chocolate / resemblance with teak ). Doussié. Azobé. Nîangon / eck. Makoré. Sipo. Mahogany (grand Bassan). Sapelli. Bété. Izigo. Landa. Bubin-a. Zebrano (zingana). Afrormosia. Amaranth. Movîngui.

Soft woods: cheese (fuma) white cream. Okoumé. obèche (or samba, or ayous). limba Lomba. tchitola. olon. framiré. avodîré. dîbétou.

A traditional sculptor works never ebony wood or any other similar noble. Apart from the authors of current artists modern sculptures. Broadly speaking on select softwoods because of their handling. The hardwoods are used in the case or sculpture is supposed to have long resisted the alleged attack termites. The sculptors often use a green wood from a freshly felled tree. This causes the sculptures of longitudinal cracks which damage often beautiful masks and figures of collections. The masks are most often carved from a single block of wood (masks monoxyles). Font exception among other models whose lower maxilaire is articulated and some antelopes consisting of several pieces which comprise the cimiers of Bamana, Mali.

The tools are simple: a adze (long chisel slightly curved fixed on a long wooden handle and a knife or possibly a gouge to give its final form and minor details. When there is a need polishing perfect, it uses abrasive sheets. The work completed then receives a coating, composed of sap or oil, which eventually darken. The object is still generally skated artificially. Immersed for a few days in rivers which lends a dark color. Or still exposed to smoke from a wood fire constantly fed green, giving a black-brown hue. The mask can also be tinted, see below.

Technical melting wax lost

For the manufacture of metal objects, the technique of rendering the lost wax can be used both for the bronze (or brass) for gold.
see the announcement of the head Ife

1. for a small object or a jewel, the artisan is a model of his work in wax.
2. if the object is large and must include a vacuum, the founder prepares a core composed of a mixture of clay and charcoal to the desired shape, then it applies on this nucleus of wax and sculpts Finely the surface.
3. The artist adds an extension wax intended to drive the molten metal.
4. The soul wax is then covered with fine spray and wet clay while respecting forms grounds surface.
5. With less fine clay mixed with kapok, the founder makes a mold of any work.
6. The mold is set to be heated. The wax flows. It is replaced by molten metal that fills the space left blank.
7. After cooling, the mold is broken to release the work. It can therefore provide du'une times.

Bronze or brass?

The alloy used for these fonts consisted of approximately 75% copper, 20% zinc, 1.5% to 2% lead and 0.80% tin. This is not, strictly technical terms, bronze but brass. However, as usual, we continue to talk about "bronze" of Benin.

Geography: The current state of Benin does not correspond to the former Benin. It was located in what is today Nigeria.

The polychrome

Colors at vegetable base: tinted with vegetable essences, one coats it red palm tree and paints using vegetable pigments mixed with the kaolin (white clay) or clays. But since many decades, colours the oil imported are also employed.

Base forms

The facial mask: (ex: Dan, Liberia) known in Africa of all the people using of the masks.

The mask heaume: made starting from a block of hollow wood so that the head of the carrier can there be entirely introduced. Répendu in Sierra Leone at Mendé, or in Zaire at Suku.

The mask helmet: is distinguished from the mask-heaume by its cavity, into which the head of the carrier can slip very whole. It is fixed at the manner of a cap on the head of the carrier, of which it does not dissimulate the face. This type of mask is found in the company kwifon in Cameronian Grasseland, and the company gélédé of the Yoruba in the south Nigerian.

The frontal mask: (ex: Gouro Ivory Coast) is composed as the mask facial, that from a face but stabilized by its circular circumference, it comes to position with horizontal on the head of the carrier, which in the case of masks anthropomorphic (as in Cameronian Grasseland), must lean very ahead so that the spectator is likely to see the face represented. For the mask frontals zoomorphes, the carrier does not need to lean. The two last shapes of masks mentioned leave the face of the apparent carrier. This is why it is covered with a net, of a fabric or of any other similar material through the carrier can see.

The cimier: (ex: Baga, Baman of Mali) which represents a head of man or animal, comes to position on a small support located at the top of cranium. The art of Bamana, to Mali and that of various ethnos groups established in the area Stick To rivet it Nigeria offers the example of it.

The mask of shoulders (ex: Baga of Guinea): appears itself as a very heavy bust. As its name indicates it, it goes on the shoulders, a small window spared at the level of the chest make it possible the carrier to move.

From these principal types of masks a whole variety of particular forms developed. For example the masks boards increased by the top or on the sides:

(Bobo:Bwa, Burkina Faso).

Or of the proliferating forms characterized by the addition of several stages or addition side. There are also those carried by several people at the same time (Nasolo of the company of the poro, Sénoufo, Ivory Coast). Etrave (left before skittle a boat) decorated of an mask-ox, Bidjogo, Guinea-Bissau.

Reliquaries

Under the name of Kota, one indicates many ethnos groups living in the East of Gabon. In the aesthetic plan, they concern the same cultural current come from north, but the shapes of the figurines vary. The face is always covered with metal, coppers or brass, worked either in juxtaposed wire sheets or. The use of the metal, regularly rubbed with sand to revive the glare of it, was intended to reinforce the psychological impact of these figurines when they were presented, brilliant in the half-light, during night rites. The remainder of time the reliquaries were grouped by clans in the shade of a devoted hut, with the shelter of the glance laymen, but near the village. With the origin for all the reliquaries Mahongwé and Kota, the mounting of the figurine was planted in a package of relics.

The reliquary expresses in a very strong way persistence and the authority of the défuns which remain thus doubly present, with the material plan of access, since bones are preserved, in the mythical plan then, with through the figurine which is never a portrait, but an abstract evocation of the ancestor. The heads of household had some formerly in their boxes, those dates of one or two generations behind.

Topics and reasons

Anthropomorphic faces or busts: masculines, female or very seldom two sexes at the same time.

Heads of animal zoomorphe: representing all the animals of fauna, cliffs and plain:(antilope, bull, elephant leopard, monkey, crocodile, fish, bird, etc).

Or the association of both: human heads with horns, hybrid creatures presenting of the features as well anthropomorphic as zoomorphes or characteristics of several animal species.

Particular characteristics: leather coating, face in the shape of heart, double faces known as janiformes, multiple heads or compositions with several figures (various association oiseuax or figures anthromorphes at the top of the mask, head of surmounted animal of anthropomorphic figures.

Form eyes: In circle daN, Ivory Coast. In the shape of rectangle: Dogon of Mali. In the shape of slit: Kwélé of Gabon. In the form of rhombus: Baoulé, Ivory Coast. Asymmetry of the eyes: mask disease (Liberia). Double pair of eyes: Vuvi of Gabon. Triple pair of eyes: Kwélé of Gabon. Double reflection: Téké de République of Congo. Double pair of eyes of sizes different:Bembé from Zaire. Multiple pair of eyes: Oubi de Côte dIvoire.

The press speaks about it...

Work of art first most expensive in the world! MASK FANG SOLD A DROUOT Saturday September 15, 2007 The historical collection of Pierre Truth, started in 1920, was dispersed at the end of bidding going sometimes beyond a million euros. Dispersion this weekend of Saturday 17 and Sunday June 18 with the Drouot hotel of the collection of Pierre and Claude Vérité, together exceptional of 514?uvres of arts first of Africa and Oceania, held all its promises, the nail of this sale returning to a mask "ngil" fang of Gabon, asset at the price record of 5.904.176 euros by a purchaser remained anonymous. Mask "ngil'
Emblematic part of the collection Truth, this white mask-helmet out of wooden painted with the kaolin, chief-of?uvre of art fang of the XIXe century, was estimated between 1 and 1,5 million euros. This "pure wonder of geometry", as qualifies it Pierre Amrouche, expert of this sale and friend of the Truth, is from now on the?uvre of first arts most expensive ever sold with the world. This mask, which would be one of the ten authentic specimens large-sized "ngil" indexed, appeared in 1984 in the mythical exposure "Primitivism" of MoMA in New York. Picasso itself would have been influenced by this stylized representation of a human face to the high face, which one finds in his "Young ladies of Avignon". The treasure of the Truth, regarded as the last large French collection of arts known as "primitive", largely exceeded the initial overall estimate from 15 to 20 million euros. With final, after the sale Sunday of the 80 océaniens batches, the total except expenses posted 36,8 million euros, definitely more than is envisaged. "With this sale, which is perhaps the last of this importance, one attends a flight of the prices", analyzed Sunday Muriel Berlinghi-Domingo, auctioneer of this sale organized by Enchères Left Bank. "As it acts of a historical collection, of which good number of the objects had been seen almost never, an emulation was created. The collector's items Vérité profit from an extraordinary pedigree ".

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