Artist and master craftsman Joseph Tetteh-Ashong (Ghanaian, born 1947), also known as Paa Joe, is the most celebrated figurative coffin maker of his generation. In the tradition of figurative coffins—or abeduu adekai (which means “proverb boxes”)—the structures represent the unique lives of the dead. This exhibition comprises a series of large-scale, painted wood sculptures commissioned in 2004 and 2005 that represent architectural models of Gold Coast castles and forts, which served as way stations for more than six million Africans sold into slavery and sent to the Americas and the Caribbean between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Once they were forced through the “Gates of No Return,” these enslaved people started an irreversible and perilous journey during which many died. Relying on traditional techniques and materials, Joe crafts his sculptures to represent vessels ferrying the dead into the afterlife that speak to spirits separated from bodies in trauma. In addition to the seven architectural models, the exhibition features archival documents and recordings, including photographs and short films by award-winning filmmaker Benjamin Wigley and art historian Nana Oforiatta Ayim, curator of Ghana’s 58th Pavilion for the 2019 Venice Biennale.

URL: https://youtu.be/O3TfEDllN3Q.   Source: High Museum, “Paa Joe: Gates of No Return,” in Smarthistory, September 10, 2021, accessed August 24, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/paa-joe-gates-of-no-return/.

The Role of Visual Expression in Africa

Because many tradition-based African artifacts serve a specific function, Westerners sometimes have not regarded them as art. We need to recognize, however, that the concept of “art for art’s sake” is a relatively recent invention of the Western world. Prior to the Renaissance, most art traditions around the world were considered functional as well as aesthetic. The objects African artists create, while useful, also embody aesthetic preferences and may be admired for their form and composition.

Aesthetics

Artists and patrons in many African societies express well-defined aesthetic preferences and value skillful work. Studies of aesthetics in some African societies have led to the identification of certain artistic criteria for evaluating visual arts. Among the Baule in Côte d’Ivoire, for example, a sculpture of the human figure should emphasize a strong muscular body, refined facial features, and elaborate hairstyle and scarification patterns, all of which reflect cultural ideals of civilized beauty (above and detail left). Scholars of aesthetics in Yoruba (Nigeria) visual expression have identified criteria based on both formal elements, such as a smooth surface, symmetrical composition, and a moderate resemblance to the subject, as well as abstract cultural concepts, such as ase (inner power or life force) and iwa (character or essential nature). Many African societies associate such smooth, finished surfaces with cultivated refinement.

African aesthetics generally have an ethical or religious basis. An artwork considered “beautiful” is often also believed to be “good,” in the sense that it exemplifies and upholds moral values. The fact that, in many societies, the words for beautiful and good are the same suggests a strong correspondence between these two ideas. The ability of an artifact to work effectively, whether that means connecting with the spiritual realm or imparting a lesson to initiates, may also be a standard for determining the “beauty” of an artifact.

Although in the Western world, aesthetics is often equated with beauty, artists in some African cultures create works that are not intended to be beautiful. Such works are deliberately horrific in order to convey their fearsome powers and thereby elicit a strong reaction in the viewer (above).

© 2006 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (by permission)

Additional resources:

Ways of recording African History on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

Source: Dr. Christa Clarke, “Aesthetics and African art,” in Smarthistory, October 9, 2016, accessed August 17, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/aesthetics/.

URL: https://youtu.be/uxsDvc5QDCQ  

Source: High Museum, ““Mami Wata” figure, Igbo artist,” in Smarthistory, September 10, 2021, accessed August 24, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/mami-wata-figure-igbo-artist/.

See also:

This work at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Portraits of African Leadership: Living Rulers

Source: Dr. Christa Clarke, “Buffalo (Bocio) (Fon peoples),” in Smarthistory, October 9, 2016, accessed August 24, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/buffalo-bocio/.

The Qur’an manuscript in the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles is a rare example of illuminated Qur’an produced in coastal East Africa on Pate Island made between the second half of the 18th century and first half of the 19th century.  It is the only known example of a complete, single-volume Qur’an from the region. [1] Its materials, calligraphy, and decorations tell us many stories about the Muslims in this region of Africa: how they expressed their faith, their traditions of religious teaching and learning, their aesthetic inclinations and artistic production, and their connections to other parts of the world.

Muslims consider the Qur’an to be Divine Revelation conveyed by God (Allah) to the Prophet Muhammad through the Archangel Gabriel in exquisite Arabic. The Qur’an is believed to be God’s final message to humankind and the verbatim Word of God. Hence, each utterance and written form of the Qur’an’s letters and words is considered sacred. Ever since the Prophet’s time, Muslims have safeguarded God’s Word and highlighted its sacred character through rich and diverse traditions of recitation, inscription, translation, and interpretation. Inscribing the Qur’an using beautiful calligraphy on surfaces such as stone, parchment, and paper developed over many centuries.

A Qur’an manuscript from East Africa

Muslims from different regions developed many styles of Qur’an manuscripts, including Qur’ans with elaborate decoration.

Coastal East Africa, also known as the Swahili Coast, stretches from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique and includes islands such as Zanzibar, the Comoros, and Madagascar. It has been home to a diversity of Muslim communities since the 8th century C.E. Its peoples have also had centuries-long interactions through trade and migration with Muslim communities from other parts of Eastern Africa, as well around the Indian Ocean from Arabia, to Iran, South Asia, and China. Despite the well-established nature of Muslim communities on the Swahili Coast, manuscripts of the Qur’an are remarkably rare. Only a small corpus of twelve illuminated Qur’an manuscripts from the Swahili coast survives, including the one in the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles. [2] These were produced between about 1750 and 1850 in modern-day Kenya, specifically in the historical Muslim city-states of Pate, Siyu, and Faza on Pate Island in the Lamu Archipelago. The manuscripts are notable for their scripts and distinctive style of illuminations, as well as their use of paper that was likely produced in northern Italy.

But why have so few Qur’ans from the region come to light? So far scholars have no convincing explanation for this. Some suggest that the region’s humidity and salty ocean air may have contributed to the rapid decay of manuscripts (which are typically made of fragile organic materials such as parchment, paper, cloth, and leather). Another factor may be that art historians and other scholars have paid limited attention to the region’s written traditions, particularly in Arabic, the language of the Qur’an. This may be particularly true of Islamic art historians who have often regarded the art and material culture produced in African contexts as less important than the art produced in other parts of the Islamic world. It is also worth noting that much of coastal East Africa has seen regular and sustained political upheaval owing to local power struggles as well as conquest and occupation on the part of European and Omani powers. Such turmoil may also have contributed to the destruction or dispersal of portable items such as manuscripts to other parts of the world.

A Qur’an manuscript from the Lamu Archipelago in Los Angeles

The Fowler Museum illuminated Qur’an is bound in a dark brown leather cover with raised floral and foliate designs that were made by impressing with metal stamps or dies.

In the illuminated two-page frontispiece that opens the manuscript, multiple decorative rectilinear frames surround the Qur’anic text with motifs in red, yellow-brown, and black. Starting from the outermost frame, there is: 1) a repeated single knot; 2) a continuous undulating floral and vine motif; and 3) an “s”–shaped cable pattern.

On each page, curvilinear cartouches located above and below the Qur’anic text contain chapter titles (in this case sura al-fatiha (1) and sura al-baqara (2)), the places where God revealed the verses to the Prophet Muhammad—Mecca or Medina, and the number of verses. The text of these titles is rendered in white reserved on a black ground. Their script style is cursive with some letters stacked above others and other letters overlapping.

The Qur’anic text (all letters and vowels) occupies the central panels of the pages and is written in black ink with the exception of the word Allah (God) which is written, or rubricated, in red. Red ink is also used for vocalization marks and the three dots in a triangular shape that indicate the end of each verse. The Qur’anic script is cursive, meaning that the letters are joined up rather than written out separately. It resembles a fairly common style of Arabic calligraphy used widely by scribes since the early period of Islam called naskh but has some distinctive features, especially the tails of some letters which swoop under others. At present, it appears that the script style used in this Qur’an was locally developed as almost no other comparable examples exist outside the region.

In the margins, outside the decorative frames, are annotations placed in rectangular boxes. These contain information concerning the standard variant readings or recitations of the verses as well as commentary about the verses written by authoritative Islamic scholars. The cursive script of the annotations is written in black and red inks. While smaller than the Qur’anic text, the calligrapher’s hand displays similar characteristics—suggesting the possibility that the same person was responsible for copying out the manuscript and annotating it.

Other pages in the manuscript contain many different decorative features and stylized text. These include: decorated prostration (sajda) markers that indicate to the reader where to bow in prostration when they are reading the Qur’an; a division (juz) marker that is used to divide the Qur’an into parts or sections to ease memorization or reading, chapter titles; and, highly stylized basmalas, the Arabic incipit “in the name of God the Most Beneficent the Most Merciful” (“bismillāh al-raḥmān al-raḥīm”).

Pages showing supplication sections with decorative and inscribed roundels. Unidentified artist, Qur’an, frontispiece, between the second half of the 18th century and first half of the 19th century (Swahili people, Siyu, Kenya), North Italian paper, ink, leather binding, 26.5 x 20.3 x 7.6 cm (Fowler Museum at UCLA, X90.184A, B., folios 405 recto and 413 verso, Gift of the The Jerome L. Joss Collection; image © Fowler Museum at UCLA, photo: Don Cole, 2019)

After the end of the Qur’anic text, the manuscript has two sections with decorations that contain supplicatory prayers meant to be read after completing the reading of the Qur’an. The beginning of the first prayer is marked with a roundel framed within several patterned bands (image above, left). Rendered in reserved white lettering against a black ground, the Arabic text in the roundel reads: “This is the al-fusuliyya prayer to be read after completing the reading of the Magnificent Qur’an” (“hādhā du’ā al-fusūliyya yuqra’ ba’da khitmat al-Qur’ān al-azīm”). The beginning of the second supplicatory section is marked by a roundel with calligraphic panels above and below. (image above, right) These panels include the Arabic text of the Muslim proclamation of faith (shahada): “There is no God but God, Muhammad is the Messenger of God.” Composed of three concentric sections, the roundel’s innermost section contains the invocation “Oh God” (“Ya Allāh”) written in red, black, and brown inks. The middle section is inscribed with a continuous pattern in red. The outermost section has the shahada inscribed around the circle in red, running counter-clockwise.

A patron, place, and date of production

The manuscript contains no date. [3] However, based on the paper’s ribbed texture, made by a paper mold, and watermarks detected on some of the sheets, it is likely that the manuscript’s paper was produced in northern Italy sometime after around 1750 C.E. Such paper was shipped from Europe to Africa through Egypt and Sudan in the 18th and 19th centuries, but it is not known how and when this paper made its way from north-eastern Africa to the Lamu Archipelago.

The time period in which the manuscript was produced, c. 1750–1850, is regarded by scholars as an era of cultural efflorescence on the Swahili Coast. Pate, the Island’s largest city-state, was ruled by the Nabahani dynasty who oversaw the growth of independent maritime trade between coastal East Africa and the Indian Ocean coast, particularly Gujarat. Ivory and textiles were some of the prized commodities that transited through Pate’s harbor alongside migrants and travelers from various parts of Africa and the Western Indian Ocean. Up to now, there is very limited historical evidence of the transit of enslaved people through the port. In 1800, Pate Island’s main city-states of Pate, Siyu, and Faza had a combined population of some forty-thousand people and boasted urban settlements comprised of stone houses, districts, and numerous mosques. The island’s population was diverse, comprising of Muslims and non-Muslims of different ethnic backgrounds, Indigenous groups, mainland migrants as well as people from other parts of the Swahili Coast, Eastern Africa, and the Western Indian Ocean littoral including Arabia and India.

A distinct Pate Island style

The decorative features of the illuminated Qur’an manuscripts produced on Pate Island share many features with other types of material culture from the Swahili coast. For example, patterns and motifs on the manuscripts’ frontispieces closely correspond to those found on the stucco decorations of wall niches and wooden-carved door surrounds of the coast’s 18th- and 19th-century houses.

The same knot motif found on the Qur’an frontispieces also appear on objects such as a tombstone from Kenya dating to the 15th century. Such tombstones also contain inscriptions with stacked and overlapping letters similar to the script used in some of the Qur’ans’ chapter titles. These and many other examples suggest that the manuscripts’ copyists were working with other local artists and sharing or borrowing from each other. This also suggests that the copyists were working within an established aesthetic tradition that utilized a series of known motifs and patterns that suited local tastes and that manuscript producers were creating a distinctive local style by using local motifs and patterns well-known in other media.

Eastern African and other Indian Ocean resonances

There are also correspondences between Pate Island’s corpus and Qur’an manuscripts produced in other parts of the Indian Ocean littoral. For example, Qur’ans from Harar, Ethiopia use inks in colors similar to those produced on Pate Island, while Indian Qur’ans of the 14th and 15th centuries are copied in a bihari script that has comparable letter forms and the word Allah rendered in red or gold.

Qur’an manuscripts from the Malay Archipelago in Southeast Asia also show resemblances. For example, the Boné Qur’an from South Sulawesi, Indonesia, has chapter titles with white lettering against a black background contained within curvilinear cartouches. The Boné Qur’an manuscript’s opening pages also contain a frontispiece with a series of layered and decorated rectilinear frames. Despite such similarities, however, these various manuscript traditions appear to be distinct, and the histories of how these traditions came to share some stylistic feature remains to be understood.

The place of the Qur’an in the life of historical Swahili communities

The text of the Qur’an appears to have been central to the life of the historical Swahili Muslim communities of Coastal East Africa. Qur’anic ideas were incorporated into Swahili-language poetic texts and Qur’anic verses were inscribed on the prayer niches (mihrabs) of mosques.

The illuminated Qur’an manuscripts of Pate Island were probably used for worship or study in local mosques. The effort taken by copyists to mark vowels, highlight particular phrases, and provide commentary on readings suggests that they were concerned that Qur’anic text be properly recited. In addition to mosques, Qur’ans may also have been stored inside the homes of local patrons, particularly in elaborately stucco-decorated wall niches known as vidaka/zidaka that were also used for storing and displaying other precious and luxury items such as imported ceramics and glass.

Notes:

[1] The Fowler illuminated Qur’an is the only single-volume Qur’an known to survive and the only manuscript that contains the entire Qur’an (the others are divided into two or four volumes, and are only partially preserved).

[2] A number remain with families and museums in the Lamu region, but others are found in private and public collections in Oman, England, and America.

[3] The manuscript does not contain a colophon, a statement containing information about the name of the scribe who copied it out or the date and place of its completion. However, some clues about these aspects of the manuscript and the broader socio-cultural context in which it was produced can be found in its endowment (waqf) inscriptions that appear in the manuscript. These state that the Qur’an was bequeathed to a mosque (masjid) by “Mwana Aqibibi bint Shaykh Dumayl [or Dumila] b. Yunus al-Siwi.” Aspects of the endower’s name including the Swahili title “Mwana,” meaning Mrs.; a first name containing the Swahili word bibi, meaning “lady” or “wife;” and the Arabic patronym “bint” meaning “daughter of” indicate that the manuscript’s endower or patron was a woman who lived in a Swahili context that was infused with Arabic norms and practices such as naming conventions. Additionally, her family name, al-Siwi, a geographical adjective (nisba) for Siyu, suggests that her family was from the town. Given that two other Qur’an manuscripts in the corpus are signed by a scribe whose last name is al-Siwi, it is likely that the manuscript itself was produced in Siyu, a town on Pate Island which is known to be have been Swahili city-state that was an historical centre of Swahili crafts and manuscript production.

Additional resources

Ann Bierstecker, “The Textures and Textuality of Writing in Eastern Africa,” World on the Horizon: Swahili arts across the Indian Ocean, edited by Prita Meier and Allyson Purpura (Champaign, Illinois: Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, 2018), pp.  310–36.

Simon Digby, “A Qur’an from the East African Coast,” Art and Archaeology Research Papers, volume 7 (1975), pp. 49–55.

Annabel Teh Gallop, “‘The Boné Qur’an from South Sulawesi,” Treasures of the Aga Khan Museum: Arts of the Book and Calligraphy, edited by Margaret S. Graves and Benoît Junod (Istanbul: Sakıp Sabancı Müzesi, 2010), pp. 162–73.

Zulfikar Hirji, “A Corpus of Illuminated Qur’ans from Coastal East Africa,” Journal of Islamic Manuscripts, volume 14, numbers 2–4 (2023), pp. 356–97.

Zulfikar Hirji, “The Faza Qur’an: Three Nineteenth-century Illuminated Manuscripts from Coastal East Africa,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies, volume 24, number 2 (2022), pp. 21–47.

Zulfikar Hirji, “The Siyu Qur’ans: Illuminated Qur’an Manuscripts from Coastal East Africa,” Approaches to the Qur’an in Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by Zulfikar Hirji (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 431–72.

Mark C. Horton and John Middleton, The Swahili: The social landscape of a mercantile society (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 47–52.

Sana Mirza, “The visual resonances of a Harari Qur’an: An 18th century Ethiopian manuscript and its Indian Ocean connections,” Afriques, volume 8 (2017).

Eloïse Brac de la Perrière “Manuscripts in Bihari Calligraphy: preliminary remarks on a little-known corpus,” Muqarnas, volume 33, number 1 (2016), pp. 63–90.

James de Vere Allen, “Swahili Book Production,” Kenya Past and Present, volume 13, number 1 (1981),  pp. 17–22.

Source: Dr. Zulfikar Hirji, “A Qur’an manuscript from coastal East Africa,” in Smarthistory, August 23, 2023, accessed July 18, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/quran-manuscript-coastal-east-africa/.

When early European explorers brought back souvenirs from their trips to the African continent they were regarded as curiosities and they didn’t find a home in art museums for centuries. Instead, these objects became part of natural history museums—along with fossilized remains, flora and fauna, and purely utilitarian objects. They were considered the man-made material remains of a culture. Clouded by the framework of Social Darwinism in the 19th century and other beliefs that justified racial hierarchies, peoples of African, Pacific, and Native American descent were regarded as less civilized, even less human. Attitudes about their art were also determined by pre-conceived ideas about race and therefore, their creations were not categorized as “Art” in Euro-American sense.

By the early 1900s however, these same objects that were initially regarded as artifacts of material culture, began to be exhibited in Western art museums and galleries as “art.” The objects themselves had not changed, but there was a shift in the attitudes and assumptions about what constituted a work of art.

To historicize this issue more, we can divide the history of the display and reception of African art into four periods. In the eighteenth century, objects like the ones illustrated here would likely be housed in a “curiosity cabinet”—in a private family parlor where trinkets and novelties acquired over generations, often while traveling, were displayed. The artist, culture, and function of these objects was not usually recorded or regarded as significant. By the nineteenth century, many of these curiosity cabinet collections were donated first to natural history museums where they were categorized and classified in the name of science along with flora, fauna, and skeletal remains. By the twentieth century, some of these same works were exhibited in fine art galleries and museums. Over time, African art has become widely collected and ever more popular.

Some of the assumptions about what constitutes art is still very much a part of the Western aesthetic system. For example, “high art” is still thought of as painting and sculpture. Because many African artworks served a specific function, Westerners have sometimes not regarded these as art. It is worth remembering, however, that the concept of “art” divorced from ritual and political function, is a relatively recent development in the West. Prior to the 18th century, most artistic traditions around the world were functional as well as aesthetic, and arguments can be made that all art serves social and economic functions. The objects that African artists create—while useful—embody aesthetic preferences and may be admired for their form, composition and invention.

Eighteenth-century theories

In Eighteenth-century Europe, philosophers and critics constructed a definition of “art” in which the object was unique, complex, irreplaceable, inspired by the natural world, and with the exception of architecture, non-functional. In contrast, non-Western art was viewed as not unique, simply produced, replaceable, abstract, and utilitarian. Therefore, Non-Western art was not considered to be art.

Nineteenth-century theories

Nineteenth century notions of art were redefined by theories of cultural evolution. Social Darwinism was used to support the claim that all cultures progress along an evolutionary ladder. Western culture was seen as the most advanced and inherently superior. Societies in Africa were viewed as more primitive, a state of being from which modern Western society evolved. Franz Boas in 1927 in his book Primitive Art shows that cultural evolutionism is seriously flawed. He argued that contemporary societies cannot be arranged on a ladder of “least evolved” or “most advanced.” Nor can their art.

Twentieth-century-cultural relativism and Pablo Picasso

Anthropologists and art historians came to realize that non-Western cultures should not be judged according to the values of the West, leading to a reevaluation of the nature of “art.” However, it was modern Western artists who brought non-Western objects into the popular imagination as works of art worthy of aesthetic consideration. Looking for a new way to represent modernity, artists such as Andre Derain, Amedeo Modigliani, and Pablo Picasso turned to non-Western art for stylistic inspiration. We see this in Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (above). The women’s faces on the right of the canvas have been painted as masks inspired by African artworks Picasso observed on his trip to the Trocadero Museum in Paris in 1907:

All alone in that awful museum with masks, dolls made by the redskins, dusty manikins. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon must have come to me that very day, but not at all because of the forms; because it was my first exorcism painting — yes absolutely!…The masks weren’t just like any other pieces of sculpture. Not at all. They were magic things. But why weren’t the Egyptian pieces or the Chaldean? We hadn’t realized it. ‘Those were primitive, not magic things. The Negro pieces were mediators. They were against everything — against unknown, threatening spirits. I always looked at fetishes. I understood; I too am against everything. I understood what the Negroes used their sculpture for. Why sculpt like that and not some other way? After all, they weren’t Cubists! Since Cubism didn’t exist.

In the quote above, Picasso recognized that the African and Amerindian artists whose work he saw at the museum in Paris were deliberately using abstraction. He doesn’t focus on why they chose this style but he adopts it, none-the-less, to pursue his own expressive interests. For contemporary avant-garde artists, African art offered abstraction as a strategy for the representation of modernity. The quote also tells us that Picasso, like many Western collectors, didn’t know much about the function, culture, or history of African objects and he seems to have focused on their purely formal properties. Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Constantin Brancusi, Georges Braque and other modernists helped Western viewers to see these objects as “art” but the cultural meanings of these works remained opaque. However, over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, scholars began to question social Darwinism and seek out indigenous interpretations of the form and function of objects.

Today, many contemporary African artists are influenced by tradition-based African art (see for example, El Anatsui). African arts played a central role in their communities, whether to communicate royalty, sacrality, inner virtues, aesthetic interests, genealogy, or other concerns. As the art historian Robert Farris Thompson has argued for the Yoruba, African art is used to make things happen, it is efficacious and necessary for events like rituals, masquerades, and life cycle transitions to successfully occur.

Additional resources:

African influences in Modern Art on The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

Collecting for the Kunstkammer on The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

Source:  Dr. Peri Klemm, “The Reception of African Art in the West,” in Smarthistory, December 20, 2016, accessed August 24, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/the-reception-of-african-art-in-the-west/.

The appreciation of African art in the Western world has had an enormous impact not only on the development of modern art in Europe and the United States, but also on the way African art is presented in a Western museum setting. Although objects from Africa were brought to Europe as early as the fifteenth century, it was during the colonial period that a greater awareness of African art developed. The cultural and aesthetic milieu of late-nineteenth-century Europe fostered an atmosphere in which African artifacts, once regarded as mere curios, became admired for their artistic qualities.

African sculpture, in particular, served as a catalyst for the innovations of modernist artists. Seeking alternatives to realistic representation, Western artists admired African sculpture for its abstract conceptual approach to the human form. For example, the powerfully carved Fang reliquary figure (right), with its bulbous and fluid forms, attracted the attention of the painter André Derain and the sculptor Jacob Epstein, both of whom once owned the sculpture.

Increasing interest among artists and their patrons gradually brought African art to prominence in the Western art world. Along with this growing admiration for African art, the aesthetic preferences of collectors and dealers resulted in the development of distinctions between art and artifact. Masks and figurative statuary in wood and metal—genres and media most readily assimilated into established categories of fine art in the West—were preferred over more overtly utilitarian objects, such as vessels or staffs. Masks and figurative statuary are more commonly found in western and central Africa. The legacy of early Western taste, with its emphasis on sculptural forms such as masks and figures, continues to inform most museum collections of African art.

As African art became more widely appreciated in the West, scholars began to study both its stylistic diversity and the meanings that African artifacts hold for their makers. Our understanding of African art has been shaped by the work of anthropologists and art historians, many of whom have spent considerable time doing research in Africa on specific cultural traditions. African scholars are also undertaking research into their own heritage. Their sustained commentaries have led to new information and insights, providing a better understanding of the complex cultural meanings embodied in art. At the same time, scholars today recognize that interpreting the creation, form, and use of African art is an inexact science, as meanings and functions shift over time and across regions.

Additional resources:

African Influences in Modern Art on The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

In Ryan Coogler’s 2018 film, Black Panther, the supervillain Erik Killmonger goes to a fictional museum—The Museum of Great Britain. While there, he meets with the curator of African art. Killmonger challenges the curator on her introduction of one of the African objects, asserting that “it was taken by British soldiers in Benin, but it’s from Wakanda [a fictional African nation in the film], and it’s made of vibranium [a fictional metal].” He further astonishes the curator when he casually says that he will “take it off [her] hands.” The curator declares, “These items aren’t for sale.” Killmonger then asks: “How do you think your ancestors got these? You think they paid a fair price? Or did they take it, like they took everything else?”

This exchange points to an actual moment in Britain’s colonization of West Africa: the violent destruction and looting of Benin City, the capital of the Kingdom of Benin (currently, Benin City is the capital of Edo State in present-day southern Nigeria).

During the 1897 attack, the British stole an estimated 10,000 objects made of copper alloy (plaques and other artworks), carved and uncarved ivory, works made of wood and coral, and human remains (such as skulls and teeth). Today, these objects are known collectively and loosely as the Benin “Bronzes,” and are displayed or stored globally in museums and galleries, private and family collections, and other institutions. [1] Originally, the plaques were displayed in the audience courtyard of the Oba’s (king’s) palace. The plaques were commissioned and created during the reign of two kings, Oba Esigie and his son, Oba Orhogbua. Sometime during the 17th century, the plaques were taken down. The British found them in an otherwise empty building in the Oba’s compound during the invasion of the city.

The violent sacking and pillaging of Benin City, (usually referred to as the Benin Expedition or the Punitive Expedition of 1897), had been framed in British newspaper articles of the time as a justified act of retaliation in response to another episode: the Phillips Expedition.

The Phillips Expedition

In June 1896, the Niger Coast Protectorate (NCP) appointed James Robert Phillips as its Deputy Commissioner and Consul. The British claimed Benin City was within the NCP’s domain, and tried multiple times (beginning in 1862) to get the reigning Oba (king) to sign a trade treaty that would give the British access to commodities in the area. In March 1892, the king at the time, Oba Ovonramwen, signed a trade treaty with the British. Marking the treaty with an ‘X’, it is unclear to what extent Oba Ovonramwen understood the conditions of the treaty, as multiple individuals served as translators.

Ultimately, NCP officials regarded Oba Ovonramwen as an obstacle to British access to trade commodities such as palm kernels, as they perceived that the king was not fulfilling his part of the agreement. To force Oba Ovonramwen to comply with the conditions of the trade treaty (which were far more advantageous to the British), Phillips requested permission from the British government to send an armed force to Benin City. In an effort to have his request fulfilled, he added that the vast amounts of ivory in Benin City would help to pay for the costs of the armed force.

After this request was denied by the Foreign Office, Phillips led (without permission) an expedition of nine British men and an estimated 200–250 carriers in January 1897. [2] When Phillips’ party reached Gwato, they received warnings that any white man who approached Benin City would be killed. Phillips’ party was on their way to Benin City during the Ague festival, or festival of yams. Since the Ague festival required that the Oba refrain from certain practices, such as meeting with foreigners, he was restricted from receiving the Phillips’ party. [3] Not heeding the warnings, the Phillips’ expedition continued with their mission. All of the British participants, except for two, were killed. It is unclear how many carriers were also killed. [4]

This incident, known as the Phillips Expedition, has been framed as the main impetus for the violence perpetrated by the British soon after. However, a few months after Oba Ovonramwen signed the trade treaty in 1892, NCP officials had expressed their desire to depose him. Accusing the king of hindering trade with the British, NCP officials wanted to be rid of Oba Ovonramwen nearly five years before the Phillips Expedition. NCP officials perceived that the Oba’s authorization of human sacrifices and other practices (which the British referred to as “fetishes” or “juju”) caused certain commodities to be taxed heavily or to be restricted from being traded. The British would use the existence of human sacrifice as another reason to justify their attack on Benin City. [5] The ambush of Phillips and his party (it is unclear how many non-British participants were injured and killed) gave the British a justification to finally remove Oba Ovonramwen and to destroy Benin City.

The Punitive Expedition at Benin City

Newspapers informed the British public about the Phillips Expedition days after it occurred, and reported that a punitive expedition was a likely response. On January 13, 1897, Vice Admiral Harry Rawson was appointed to lead an immense force to Benin City: an estimated 1,400 soldiers and 2,500 carriers, along with NCP staff, medics, and scouts. [6]

The Punitive Expedition of 1897 took place between February 9 to 27. During this 3-week campaign, the British machine-gunned, bombarded, and torched villages and towns, and indiscriminately massacred countless Edo people, the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Benin (and present-day Edo State). It is unknown what the death toll was. On February 18, the British took Benin City. They destroyed buildings, homes, and palaces, desecrated sacred sites, and blew up a sacred tree. The British believed that they were cleansing the city and breaking the power associated with “fetishes” or “juju” through these acts of demolition and vandalization. During their attack, the British also looted the wide range of objects referred to as the Benin “Bronzes.”

Dan Hicks, Curator of World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum, reminds us that besides taking objects from Benin City, the British also took photographs. In one of the most well-known and circulated photographs from this expedition, we see six white men sitting among a massive array of looted objects. In the foreground, we see a pile of elephant tusks (uncarved ivory), a bowl, bells, statues of leopards and people, and other objects (likely a stool and jugs or jars). In the middle ground, the men sit comfortably (several look at the camera). The man to the far right holds a statue of a head against his right leg. Behind the men is a large pile of loot (numerous elephant tusks) and perhaps debris from the destruction of the city. The background is blurry, but people can be seen underneath the roof of a building. Slightly towards the right of the roof, a copper alloy-casted snake appears to slither down.

Oba Ovonramwen escaped during the invasion of Benin City, but surrendered himself to the British in August 1897. He was put on trial for the killing of Phillips and his party, but was not found guilty. However, six other chiefs were convicted. [7] Oba Ovonramwen was exiled to Calabar, where he lived until his death in 1914.

The Punitive Expedition at Benin City was not an isolated incident, as other punitive expeditions were led by the British in present-day Nigeria (Brohemie, 1894; Brass, 1895; Ediba, 1896; Agbor, 1896; and Cross River, 1896). These expeditions were also characterized by the burning of villages and towns, the desecration of sacred spaces, the displacement and murder of Indigenous peoples, and overthrow or murder of local chiefs or kings seen as impediments  to British control. The Punitive Expedition at Benin City should be understood not as an anomaly, but as part of a recurring pattern in which the British used violent means to conquer lands that they claimed for themselves and to terrorize and subdue their inhabitants.

Display and interpretation of Benin “Bronzes”

Within months of the Punitive Expedition at Benin City, some of the stolen loot was displayed in various museums in London. For example, 300 plaques were loaned to the British Museum and exhibited. Charles Hercules Read and Ormonde Maddock Dalton, the Keeper and Senior Assistant in the British Museum’s Department of British and Medieval Antiquities and Ethnography respectively, praised the beauty and sophistication of the plaques. Regarding them as works of art, Read and Dalton acknowledged that their makers possessed remarkable experience, knowledge, and technical skill on par with Italian Renaissance artists. Similarly, Felix von Luschan, Assistant Director at the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin, promoted the metalwork and ivory as art. He invoked the highly-esteemed, skilled craftsmanship associated with the Italian Renaissance sculptor and goldsmith, Benvenuto Cellini, to describe the casting employed. However, in spite of their great admiration for the Benin art and material culture, Read and Dalton posited that the fabrication of the plaques could not have been made by the contemporary Edo people, whom they described as “barbarous.” [8] Like other British contemporaries, Read and Dalton perceived Benin City to be in a state of “degeneration.” [9]

Based on the representations of Europeans (including their manner of dress and weapons) on the plaques, Read and Dalton asserted that they were made in the middle of the 16th century, and speculated (incorrectly) that the Portuguese taught or helped the Edo to create these works. [10] Attributing the Benin works to the Portuguese reflects racist attitudes that deny the Edo as the rightful creators of their own art and material culture. Ese Vivian Odiahi, who has conducted interviews with members of the guild of casters, reminds us that casting is an “indigenous art” of the Kingdom of Benin, and the earliest guild of casters can be traced back to the reign of Oba Oguola in the 13th century. [11]

Returning the Benin “Bronzes”

Calls for the return of the Benin “Bronzes” have been issued since 1936, when Oba Akenzua II made the first formal request to the British Museum. G.M. Miller instructed the British Museum to return to Oba Akenzua II three items that he had loaned previously: “two coral crowns and a coral bead garment.” [12] Today, museums, galleries, and other institutions that have Benin “Bronzes” in their collections are grappling with what to do with them in the face of mounting diplomatic pressures, especially within the last decade, to repatriate or restitute them. Dan Hicks, who is working to return the Benin “Bronzes” in the Pitt Rivers Museum, makes clear, “the arrival of loot into the hands of western curators, its continued display in our museums and its hiding-away in private collections, is not some art-historical incident of ‘reception’, but an enduring brutality that is refreshed every day that an anthropology museum like the Pitt Rivers opens its doors.” [13]

Prince Gregory Akenzua, one of the great-grandsons of Oba Ovonramwen, asserts, “[the] artwork can be said to represent the history of the Benin people for centuries. It was taken from us. It was like ripping pages out of our history.” [14]

Footnotes

[1] The Benin “Bronzes” is a misnomer, as the items said to be created from bronze are actually copper alloy, made with varying amounts of copper, tin, and zinc. Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, while brass is an alloy of copper and zinc.

[2] While Phillips’ request to lead an armed expedition to Benin City was rejected, Paddy Docherty points out that the officers in the party still carried revolvers with them. However, Phillips instructed them to conceal these weapons. See Docherty, Blood and Bronze: the British Empire and the Sack of Benin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), pp. 147.

[3] For more on the Ague festival, see Kathy Curnow, “The art of fasting: Benin’s Ague ceremony,” African Arts, volume 30 (1997), pp. 46–53. Also see Barnaby Phillips, Loot: Britain and the Benin Bronzes (London: Oneworld Publications, 2021), pp. 52–53.

[4] Dan Hicks states that “initial press reports stated that all nine white men had been killed, along with 250 carriers,” but points out that “claims that ‘more than 200 carriers were killed’ are not clearly substantiated by documentary record.” See Hicks, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution (London: Pluto Press, 2020), pp. 92.

[5] Barnaby Phillips notes that the first mention of human sacrifice in Benin City comes from a Portuguese account in 1538, and that succeeding European accounts take a morbid interest in it or do not mention it at all. See Phillips (2021), pp. 28–31, 35–37. Prince Edun Akenzua, one of the great grandsons of Oba Ovonramwen, wrote in an article in 1960 that the practice of human sacrifice was “indeed reprehensible, but because it was so much a part of the religion of old Benin, it could not be so easily dismissed.” Akenzua, quoted in Phillips (2021), p. 37. Originally published as Edun Akenzua, “Benin, 1897; A Bini’s View,” Nigeria Magazine, volume 65 (1960), pp. 177–90.

[6] Hicks (2020), p. 110.

[7] Dan Hicks states that all six chiefs were executed. See Hicks (2020), p. 131. However, Paddy Doherty says that three were executed, two committed suicide, and one died before the trial. See Docherty (2022), p. 197.

[8] Charles Hercules Read and Ormonde Maddock Dalton, “Works of art from Benin City,” The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, volume 27 (1898), p. 371.

[9] Read and Dalton (1898), p. 366. For more on the concept of degeneration in relation to the interpretation of the Benin “Bronzes,” see Annie E. Combes, “Ethnography, popular culture and institutional power: narratives of Benin culture in the British Museum, 1897–1992,” Studies in the History of Art, volume 47 (1996), pp. 142–57.

[10] Read and Dalton (1898), pp. 373. Dan Hicks also notes that other people, including Felix von Luschan, proposed “Egyptian, Arab, or even Etruscan connections.” See Hicks (2020), p. 187.

[11] Ese Vivian Odiahi, “The Origin and Development of the Guild of Bronze Casters of Benin Kingdom up to 1914,” AFRREV IJAH: An International Journal of Arts and Humanities, volume 6, number 1 (2017), pp. 178–79.

[12] Hicks (2020), p. 196.

[13] Hicks (2020), p. 137.

[14] Prince Gregory Akenzua, quoted in an interview in 2019 with Barnaby Phillips. See Phillips (2021), p. 159.

Source: Dr. Kristen Laciste, “The Benin “Bronzes”: a story of violence, theft, and artistry,” in Smarthistory, April 25, 2023, accessed August 23, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/benin-bronzes-theft-artistry/.

In the age of social media, nearly everyone can present an idealized version of their real lives to the world. In the past, however, only the wealthiest and most powerful could afford to shape their image for the public. During the sixteenth century, the kings of Benin (in present-day Nigeria), reigned over nearly two million subjects and commanded a feared military force, but they also faced internal political problems that threatened the throne.

Politics, power, and art

The Kingdom of Benin was founded around the year 900, but it reached the height of its power in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a result of the conquests of new territories by two kings —Oba Ewuare and his son Oba Ozolua (Oba means “king”).

The Obas of Benin amassed great wealth by controlling trade routes reaching from the river Niger in the East to the western border with the kingdom of Dahomey. Taxes on pepper, ivory, and enslaved persons, and annual tribute payments from conquered lands in their expanding empire, also increased the wealth of the Kingdom.

Royal art from this period (and from a slightly later time of renewed wealth and power in the eighteenth century), was designed to broadcast and strengthen dynastic power. Benin court art celebrates the prestige of the monarchy to outsiders (like traders and ambassadors), as well as to courtiers who might try to wrest power from the king.

In the early sixteenth century, Oba Esigie successfully consolidated Benin’s power over conquered territories. He took the throne after a civil war with his older brother and soon after defended Benin City from an attack from a neighboring kingdom (Idah). His commissions were designed to address the turmoil of his early reign. Esigie was a brilliant politician, and he commissioned great works of art and new festivals to assert the legitimacy of his reign.

The festival of Ugie Oro

Esigie instituted the festival of Ugie Oro, where high-ranking courtiers process around Benin City striking bronze staffs with a bird on top. The festival refers to the Idah war, when leading courtiers refused to support Esigie in his defense of the city. A bird in a tree en route to the battle prophesied that Esigie and his troops would be defeated. Esigie shot the bird and carried it as his battle standard. When he won the war against the Idah, he instituted the festival to point out that the advice of the courtiers—and the bird—had been nothing more than the empty noise produced by clanging the bronze staffs, pointing out that courtiers’ should defer to the wisdom of the king.

In the plaques he commissioned to ornament his audience hall, Esigie surrounded himself with images of courtiers in processions, including the festival of Ugie Oro, or engaging in other acts of service and praise—reminding them to honor and obey his authority. Today, artworks from the period of Esigie’s reign are among the most celebrated in African art history, combining fascinating narratives on the majesty of the kingdom, luxurious materials, and fine workmanship.

Royal patronage in the 18th and 19th centuries

Changes in Benin art are tightly intertwined with the changing fortunes of the kingdom, because the Oba was historically the primary patron for all artwork in bronze and ivory. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, Benin recovered from a series of succession struggles and wars that weakened the court and devastated its finances. Oba Akenzua I and his successor, Oba Eresoyen, strengthened the king’s role and instituted new traditions and art forms to signal their regained power.

Akenzua and Eresoyen ushered in a period of renewed wealth and political power for the kingdom that continued into the 19th century. Akenzua and Eresoyen compared themselves to Ozolua and Esigie, starting the tradition of viewing Ozolua and Esigie as two of the most important kings in Benin history.

Oba Eresoyen was a major patron of the bronze-casting guild, and commissioned an elaborate copy of a bronze state stool owned by Oba Esigie—metaphorically connecting the two reigns. Eresoyen is also known as a patron of the ivory guild, and may have introduced the intricately carved tusk for memorial altars that first appear in the eighteenth century.

On memorial altars, ten to sixty tusks were displayed on top of brass commemorative heads. The tusk held in the Berlin Ethnographic Museum, is one of the oldest known. We see an Oba, his arms supported by attendants, placed in the center of the tusk, the most visible position. Surrounding this central triad are figures relating to the dynasty of great Obas—including two Portuguese men on horseback that refer to the reigns of Ozolua and Esigie—and motifs representing leading courtiers and priests serving the king.

The artists

The Igun Eronmwon (brass-caster’s guild), and the Igbesanmwan (ivory and wood carvers’ guild), are responsible for all the art made for the Oba. Until the 20th century, royal artists were not allowed to make pieces for other clients without special permission. Membership in the royal artists’ guilds is hereditary—even today. The head of each guild inherits his position from his father. He is responsible for receiving commissions from the king, overseeing the design of the work, and assigning parts of the project to different artists. For this reason, nearly all historical Benin art is made in a workshop style, with individual artists contributing pieces of the whole.

While the Igun Eronmwon and Igbesanmwan guilds are separate, they often make artworks that are displayed together. Commemorative heads made for the memorial altar of a king (see ancestral altars above), for example, combine a cast-bronze head with a carved ivory tusk rising from the top, just as an ivory leopard may be finished with inlaid bronze spots.

Controversy

Like other artworks taken from their place of origin by colonial occupiers, artworks from Benin are part of a public conversation on cultural patrimony and the ethics of collecting. The provenance (ownership history), of Benin artworks in Europe and America usually includes a moment in 1897 when Benin City was invaded by British soldiers and a part of the royal treasury was claimed by the British state as spoils of war. In the following years, other artworks were taken from Benin by individual soldiers, or pillaged from the palace and sold.

Today, the palace in Benin City and the Nigerian government both claim ownership of Benin art held in foreign collections. Museums and private owners have provided a spectrum of responses. In 2014, British citizen Mark Walker returned two Benin artworks he inherited from his grandfather, a soldier in the 1897 invasion, to reigning Oba Erediauwa, because he felt that the Oba was the only rightful owner. The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum is working to determine how to return a commemorative head to Nigeria, given the competing claims of the palace and the government.

A coalition of European museums that hold the largest collections of Benin art have been meeting with representatives of the palace and the Nigerian government since 2007, and at present plan to collaborate by sharing their collections through loans to a new Nigerian museum built on palace grounds. The public conversation on Benin art weighs the competing ownership claims of the palace and the government, the ethical obligation to respect communities’ rights regarding their cultural patrimony, and the belief that museum collections should present world art to foster cross-cultural understanding.

Art of the Benin Kingdom at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Benin chronology on The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn TImeline of Art History

Dr. Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch, “Benin art: patrons, artists, and current controversies,” in Smarthistory, January 28, 2020, accessed August 23, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/benin-art-patrons/.

Olowe of Ise, Veranda Post, before 1938, Nigeria, Yoruba peoples, wood, pigment, 180.3 x 28.6 x 35.6 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City). Speakers: Dr. Peri Klemm and Dr. Steven Zucker   URL: https://youtu.be/Yc9NJnx58Wg

In the early twentieth century, a Yoruba ruler commissioned this architectural column from one of the most renowned sculptors in the history of Yoruba art, Olowe of Ise. Born in the nineteenth century in Efon-Alaaye, a famed carving center, Olowe moved as a youth southeast to Ise. There, his artistic reputation was established when he carved a program of architectural sculptures for its king, the Arinjale. Subsequent commissions of architectural sculpture for the palaces of other regional leaders brought Olowe even greater recognition as a master sculptor. Admired by his contemporaries, Olowe’s artistic talent is recalled in oriki, or praise poems, composed in his honor. His accomplishments were also recognized in the West. In 1924, a pair of his palace doors was exhibited in London and acquired for The British Museum.

Olowe created this veranda post, one of several, for the exterior courtyard of a Yoruba palace. Carved from one piece of wood, the composition combines two classic Yoruba icons of power and leadership. The most prominent of these is the equestrian warrior, who is depicted frontally sitting regally on a diminutive horse. He holds a spear and a revolver. The image of the mounted warrior symbolizes the military might needed to form kingdoms. Local leaders adopted this image to validate their rule. At the base of the post, the kneeling female figure is depicted as the dominant form. In Yoruba culture, women are honored as the source of human life and embody ideas of spiritual, political, and economic power. These allegorical representations underscore the wealth and power of the ruler who commissioned the work.

Here, as in other examples of African sculpture, proportion and scale are altered and exaggerated to symbolize ideas. The disproportionately large heads represent character, self-control, and motivation. Eyes are large to suggest awareness. Among the Yoruba, the most beautiful people have a gap between their upper front teeth. The woman’s exaggerated breasts symbolize her ability to have children and to nurture them. The woman is represented slightly larger than the warrior, suggesting that she is the essential support. The warrior’s horse, less important than its rider, is depicted as smaller. The subordinate role of the two youths by the woman’s side is suggested by their small scale.

Stylistically, Olowe was very innovative in his composition. He is especially known for the manner in which figures project beyond the immediate boundaries of the sculptural space. Here, instead of the usual Yoruba practice of depicting figures in frontal poses, he sculpted the female figure turning toward the left with the two smaller attendants radiating outward at oblique angles. The compressed style of the upper portion of the column, with its weighty and self-contained equestrian figure, contrasts with the sense of kinetic energy created by the dynamic composition of multiple figures below. The sculpture’s formal complexity is enhanced by its textured surface, with details originally painted in black, white, and royal blue. The deep carving style was well suited to the intense raking sunlight of its original setting just inside an exterior veranda.

The Yoruba, who live in southwestern Nigeria and southern Benin, are a diverse people with a rich cultural and artistic heritage of considerable antiquity. Although they number over 15 million people, the Yoruba embrace an overarching common identity through shared language and history. They trace the origins of both life and civilization to their founding city of Ile-Ife, which was a thriving urban center by the eleventh century. In the centuries that followed, numerous autonomous city-states developed, related through professed descent from Ile-Ife. In general, each city-state was governed by a sacred ruler, whose power was balanced by a council of elders. Artists working for these regional leaders produced a wide range of art forms designed to glorify the status of the king and his court.

© 2006 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (by permission)

Like sculpture in Medieval Europe often created to embellish architecture, this magnificent work was commissioned for a principal entryway, originally one in a suite of five veranda posts. Hand carved from one sizeable piece of high-density hardwood timber, this work by the renowned Yoruba artist Olowe of Ise originally measured more than five feet high.

He has skillfully created a complex composition comprised of five figural elements on a circular base: the crowned king, his senior wife, and three smaller attendants (one now missing) in the royal household. Portrayals of rulers and their privileged power of earthly and divine authority unite the many global art traditions across time and space.

Master carver

Similar to the systems of Medieval European guilds of craftsmen, 19th and early 20th century Yoruba artistic traditions were maintained by artists working in specialized carving centers throughout the southwest area of Nigeria. “Master carver” designated a person who attained the skills through training and advanced from apprentice to master within a locally established carving center or compound. A carver with exceptional talent often set up a studio on his own, accepted apprentices and assistants, and was commissioned directly.

One great master carver, Olowe of Ise, became a widely celebrated artist for his virtuosity of invention and design developed through the production of a range of notable and important royal commissions in the early 20th century. Born in the town of Ise, according to published accounts, most of his life was spent working in the court center of Ise though he took commissions from other royal patrons over a wide area in the Ekiti region.

Signature style

Olowe’s highly original and unique style results from the variety of elements and details that he has made his own and that can be found in many of his published works. His remarkable ability to free the figures from the dense hardwood is unlike any other Yoruba carver. His virtuosity can be seen in the elegant balance of the fully three-dimensional figures in a tiered composition and placed in a variety of poses on a single base.

He treats the heads as a single ovoid form leading the eye to the crowned head of the king (Ogoga) and his attendant queen. The heads project at a diagonal angle that are mounted on highly elongated and slightly forward-bending necks, creating a distinct line down to their squared shoulders. The convention of elongating the figure, head, and neck can be seen in many of Olowe’s carvings, creating a solid “mounting” to visually highlight the importance of the head that holds ase, or the inner spiritual power, dignity, strength, and sacredness of one’s destiny.

Yoruba traditional thought and belief is often made manifest through hieratic proportions. The status of the king’s consort is visually relayed by her physical size. However, it is balanced by the location of the seated king at the center of the post. His crowned head has been positioned so that it would be viewed at eye level in the original veranda setting. His feet are not allowed to touch the earth, a symbol of his transcendent position. His eyes are downcast, introspective, and attentive to the world beyond. He wears a conical beaded crown, signifying the legitimacy of his reign. The crown is decorated with four carved ancestral faces or ‘heads’ with open eyes, a reference to the divine line of descent and spiritual wisdom (ase) it contains.

The style of the hats with serrated lines can be found in many of Olowe’s works. In traditional Yoruba religious belief, the crown is the key emblem of the power of a sanctified reign, signaling the transformation of the human wearing it into a conduit to the spiritual, ancestral realm. Three small figures, scaled according to culturally-specific status, are at the base: a female who kneels in a gesture of humility and reverence; a standing court messenger identified by his half-shaved head playing a flute announcing the king’s presence; and a third, now missing, standing while holding a large circular fan, emblem of royalty and Osun, the river deity.

The king sits poised, leaning slightly forward, his weight held by his hands on his knees. A bird at the summit of his crown, a sign of transformational abilities and the protection of ancestral mothers, is rendered with an elongated beak that extends down to touch the very center of the beaded crown. Its tail points upward to the head of the standing consort who wears three vertical parallel facial marks with a line running from the left side of the bridge of the nose, identifying lineage to a principal Yoruba family, the Egbas.

She displays a once common practice in the Ekiti area of filing the front teeth as a sign of beauty and rank. Her elaborate hairstyle would reflect one worn for a festival honoring a deity (orisha) or during a chieftaincy installation. On her back, Olowe has replicated the queen’s striking scarification patterns that are associated with her community and high status.

The formidable queen stands erect behind and towering over the king, yet they are visually connected by her hands gently resting on the back of the throne. Beaded coral adornments worn by the king and queen echo the form of their squared shoulders, and other beaded adornments are included, worn by entitlement as a member of the royal household. Traces of blue, red, and white pigments can be seen. They were once most likely prominent, but the colors have faded over time as the work was exposed to the outdoors.

A suite of five architectural posts commissioned from Olowe by the crowned king (Ogoga) of the town of Ikere, in Ekiti state, could be found situated in the principal entry to the local palace veranda and reception courtyard. Three of the major carvings appear to be functional supports, extending to the top of the veranda roof. Two multi-tiered figural posts flank a central geometric form, while two others facing outward represent a senior mother presenting her twins and a royal equestrian. A smaller freestanding equestrian figural group is at the center.

Photographed in situ more than two decades later (1958 and 1964), three of the original works had been reinstalled under a newly replaced palace veranda. The enthroned king with his senior wife is repositioned at the center and facing outward toward visiting guests, flanked by the senior mother with twins and the royal equestrian. All three appear to be structural supports. All three are now in American collections.

Global connections

Olowe of Ise was flourishing in southwest Nigeria in the early 20th century, coinciding with the time when early modernism was emerging in the avant-garde circles in Paris studios. African art was displayed in the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro in Paris, arriving in the late 19th century as a result of scientific expeditions and colonial conquest.

Constantin Brancusi would have been inspired by works from francophone colonies, as King of Kings demonstrates. Similar to Olowe’s veranda posts, this work was originally intended to stand in an architectural space, Temple of Meditation, a private sanctuary commissioned in 1933 by the Maharaja Yeshwant Rao Holkar of Indore.

Architect David Adjaye was inspired by the top element of another of Olowe’s veranda posts for his design of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C. Smithsonian Institution. Depicting a notable equestrian leader, the multi-figural veranda post is on long term loan from the Museum of Five Continents, Munich, Germany and installed on the 4th floor.

Source: Deborah Stokes, “Olowe of Ise, Veranda Post of Enthroned King and Senior Wife,” in Smarthistory, October 26, 2019, accessed August 24, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/olowe-ise-veranda-post-king-senior-wife/.