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13 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Stereoscopic vision: you achieve stereoscopic vision by learning more and more about the lens in which you were taught to look at the world.
The more complex the world becomes the more you must learn about your "lense" |
The point is to make your own convictions and opinions of unexamined assumptions.
Learning about African institutions clarifies and explains a lot about Western Institutions.
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Grammatical tense is a problem when discussing African institutions. If you put everything in present tense it makes all of Africa and Africans seem more alike than they actually are. Also obscures the process of change and development. |
Past tense would be even more falsifying. The African past continues to inform the present. Africans use this to understand their own changes and developments. Unlike Americans, all educated Africans speak English and/or French. |
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Art has two characteristics:
embodies a message & arouses a sense of mystery
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"Good" Art: Africa has extensive good art, because it arouses mystery in most people and bears a message from artist to viewer. It may contain about mystery and a message. The mystery of good art crosses cultural barriers, message may not.
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Art appreciators: those who prize mystery for itself- object to the people who intellectualize and put messages into words.
African art has three levels: 1. Forms and Technique 2. Purpose and Meaning (history and place for it) 3. Impact on Western World |
-African music is one of the worlds greatest -polyrhythms=complex combinations of simple different rhythms at once -African dancing (also art) follows these rhythms -head shoulders arms trunk and feet move in different rhythms -African dancing demands both great precision and allows freedom of expression; considered a folk art.
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Central form of African Literature is the dramatic tale. -theatrical quality -acted out before audiences who participate in musical choruses & spoken responses -in the reenactment of the tale, the teller manipulates dramatic elements to highlight the moral= living theater |
-The westernized version of African folk tales are written on half a sheet of paper, losing all instilled "plot" of the original, losing all "art" value. -Africa has produced world renowned novelists- Chinua Achebe, playwright and poet Wole Soyinka- won noble prize for literature. -american and european universities have added courses in African Literature. |
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-Best known african art = sculpture -soapstone carvings found in Sierra Leone -iron sculpture found in several isolated places in Africa -ivory is a medium used in the kingdom of Benin and in Zaire -sculptures are made of wood and various types of copper, tin and zinc that hover around bronze and brass.
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-Carvers work almost exclusively with green wood. -must be educated on wood bc some wood will crack with intense temperatures of heat and dryness -woodwork is done with adze and finished with a knife, rough leaves like sandpaper is also used -painted with mineral and vegetable colors - lampblack set by sap from trees
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Indigenous African Sculpture (3 types) -figurine: small and simple figures a few inches high to elaborate carved house posts, stools, or others. -mask: best in the world, either worn over the face, top of the head and helmet type over the head. -decorative objects: anything ranging from doors to spoons. |
History of African Art |
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-Nok culture was the home of the earliest sculpture except for Egypt -Nok art is almost entirely pottery or terra cotta art -earliest bronze sculpture found in Nigeria - Igbo Ukwu style -finest pieces of measuredly naturalistic sculpture produced are the bronze heads of Ife in Nigeria. -assumed that Africans could not make them, but carbon 14 dates suggest they could only have been made by Africans. |
-Benin art flooded Great Britain -The content of Bini religion embraced safety, salvation, fertility or increase; royally sponsored, made by highly organized craft guilds -art was based on altarpiece heads of cast bronze, with a carved elephant tusk. -major component of Benin art was bronze plaques which were set into the adobe walls and pillars of houses.
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There are three major geographical culture of art: -The art of Sudan: has a quality of quietness & inwardness & intensity. -The Congo Basin provides a more flamboyant, decorated, exaggerated, and extroverted kind of art. -The Guinea Coast lie stylistically as well as geographically between them. |
The Place of Art in African Society
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Westerners seek the origins of art rather than to understand its use. Art is a form of communication and grows with culture and develops with the human creature. Many forms in African art are associated with religion. Masks are usually worn as part of a costume, court proceedings, or in ritual. -masked drama is the reincarnation of the basic myths of creation, power structure of society, history&religion and myths of settlement patterns. |
Figurines are not worshiped any more than saints are. they are used as symbols of forces, ideas, historical events or myths- symbols stand for something important and holy. Art permeates African culture- which in turn permeates African art.
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Aesthetics of African Art |
-critics and scholars create aesthetics rather than artists -it is the critics and the consumers of art who relate art to the rest of culture -it is from the critics that the greatest knowledge is to be gained. -discussion about whether or not African sculpture is "portraiture"
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-Western portraiture captures the personality -small figurines in the Cote d'Ivoire are said to be portraits in the sense that they provide a place or site where the spirits can settle. -Unless art conforms to cultural patterns and values of the people who make it and use it, it is meaningless. -Art has no glorious future if that future is measured solely by its historical tradition.
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African Art in the Western World |
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During the last 20 years art museums have begun to collect and display African pieces. African sculptures are visual sensations African art speaks both for African culture and for itself |
The End. |
