African art frequently depicted early contacts with Europeans. Take a close look at the mask’s top (and the detail below). Do you notice any faces? These depict Portuguese explorers with beards and mudfish-flanked headgear who visited the Benin Kingdom on Africa’s west coast in the late 1400s. These explorers began collecting ivory, dubbed “white gold” by them.
Saltcellars, such as the one below, were commissioned by Portuguese commanders and finely crafted by West African carvers to store valuable table salt. They would have been returned to Portugal and placed in curiosity cabinets, which are collections of rare or strange artifacts gathered for research and/or enjoyment. Their sculptures are now used to document the entrance of weapons, Christianity, and European goods to West Africa.
African cultures were never isolated; there was always migration, trade, and intellectual interaction. African art, on the other hand, is dynamic and has evolved in terms of shape, function, and meaning over time. Nonetheless, the concept of “traditional” African art exists in the Western art market and academics. This usually refers to “indigenous art traditions that existed and were active before to European colonialism of Africa in the late nineteenth century.” The assumption implicit in the use of the term traditional is that the work it depicts is static and unchanging.”
Content created and supplied by: Spanio (via Opera
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