Traditionalism and Internationalism: 19th and 20th Century African Arts
    
       
  The 19th Century :: The 20th Century :: The Recent Past   Images courtesy of
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  THE 19TH CENTURY

San Art (South Africa)

Historical art paintings:

While rock paintings are among the most ancient arts of Africa, the tradition continued well into the historical period. The latest examples were completed as recently as the 19th century, and some of these depict the presence of Europeans.

32-1: Stock raid with cattle, horses, encampment, and magical "rain animal," rock painting, San, Bamboo Mountain, South Africa, mid-19th century. Pigments on rock, approx. 8' long. Natal Museum, Pietermaritzburg.
  1. San Rock Paintings
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Fang and "Kota" art (Cameroon and Gabon)

Many reliquary garden figures made by Fang and several other peoples just south of the equator and the large "power images" of the Kongo people who liver father south in the basin of the great Congo (formerly Zaire) River can be assigned to the 19th century.

Ancestor reliquaries:

In some areas, ancestor veneration takes material from as collections of cranial and other bones gathered in special containers. Among both the Fang of Cameroon and several other peoples (often referred to as "Kota") in neighboring areas, these relic containers were protected by stylized human figures. The so-called "Kota" reliquary guardian figures (called mbulu ngulu) from Gabon, have a severely stylized body in the form of an open lozenge below a wooden head covered with strips and sheets of polished copper and brass to repel evil.

32-2: Reliquary guardian figures on bark boxes, Fang, Cameroon, photographed in 1910. Wood.
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32-3: Reliquary guardian figure (mbulu-ngulu), "Kota," Gabon, 19th or early 20th century. Wood, copper, iron, and brass, 1' 9 1/16" high. Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva.
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Kongo Art (Democratic Republic of Congo)

Kongo power images:

Ancestral and power images of the Kongo peoples of the lower reaches of the Congo River show varieties of conventionalized naturalism. They served several purposed - commemoration, healing ,divination, and social regulation.

32-4: Mother and child (pfemba), Kongo, from Mayombe region, Democratic Republic of Congo, nineteenth or early twentieth century. Wood, glass, glass beads, brass tacks, and pigment, 10 1/8" high. National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington.
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32-5: Nail figure (nkisi n'kondi), Kongo, from Shiloango River area, Democratic Republic of Congo, ca. 1875-1900. Wood, nails, blades, medicinal materials, and cowrie shell, 3' 10 3/4" high. Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit.
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Dogon Art (Mali)

A stylized couple:

In contrast to the organic, relatively realistic treatment of the human body in Kongo art is a strongly stylized Dogon carving of a male and female couple.		    
       
  32-6: Seated couple, Dogon, Mali, ca. 1800-1850. Wood, 2' 4" high. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gift of Lester Wunderman.
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Baule Art (Central Côte d'Ivoire)

Bush spirits:

In striking contrast to the Dogon sculptor of the seated man and woman, the artist who created the matched pair of Baule male and female images consciously perceived many naturalistic aspects of human anatomy, skillfully translating them into finished sculptural form.

32-7: Male and female figures, probably bush spirits (asye usu), Baule, Côte d'Ivoire, late 19th or early 20th century. Wood, beads, and kaolin, male 1' 9 3/4" high, female 1' 8 5/8" high. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller).
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