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Towards an Understanding of African Art

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

John Murungi
John Murungi*
Affiliation:
Towson State University, Maryland

Extract

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In the introduction to his book, African Art, Pierre Meauze refers to carving as a dialogue between man and matter. He does not specify what he means by this statement but if it is his intention to let African sculpture speak for itself he is to be credited for his accomplishment, for the book contains beautiful pictures of some of the most well known pieces of African sculpture. However, as the following inquiry seeks to indicate, it is not possible to fully understand the sense in which carving is a dialogue between man and matter without an initiation into the world of African art. It is therefore the aim of the following inquiry to reveal the sense in which Meauze's statement accurately reflects African sculpture in particular and African art in general. It is necessary, at the outset, to point out that an initiation into the world of African art is not simply an intellectual process. As is the case with other African initiations, it is a process that involves the entire being of man.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 30 , Issue 119 , September 1982 , pp. 114 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 Pierre Meauze, African Art: Sculpture, Cleveland, World Publishing Co., 1968.

2 Jeanette Anerson, Tradition and Change in Yoruba Art, Sacramento, E. B. Crocker Art Gallery, 1974, p. 9.

3 Meauze, op. cit., p. 56.

4 Leon Underwood, Masks of West Africa, London, Alec Tiranti Ltd. 1964, pp. 20-21.

5 Margaret Trowell, Classical African Sculpture, New York, Praeger Pub lishers, 1970, p. 21.

6 G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, New York, Dover Publications Inc., 1956, pp. 91-93.

7 G. W. F. Hegel, On Art, Religion and Philosophy, New York, Harper and Row, 1970, p. 29.

8 Ibid., p. 23.

9 E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Theories of Primitive Religion, New York, Oxford University Press, 1965, p. 18.

10 Daniel Biebuyck, Tradition and Creativity in Tribal Art, Berkeley, Uni versity of California Press, 1973; William Fagg, Tribes and Form in African Art, New York, Tudor, 1965; Rene Bravman, Islam and Tribal Art in West Africa, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1974; Herbert Read, The Artist in Tribal Society, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961.

11 Frank Willet, African Art, New York, Oxford University Press, 1971, p. 28.

12 Trowell, op. cit., p. 26.

13 John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy, Garden City, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1970, p. 141.