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One Tribe, One Style? Paradigms in the Historiography of African Art*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Sidney Littlefield Kasfir
Sidney Littlefield Kasfir*
Affiliation:
Boston University
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Extract

While the historiography of art as an academic discipline can hardly be construed as a science, it is nevertheless governed by certain dominant paradigms in both of the senses that Thomas Kuhn intended. First, at any point in time there is a constellation of beliefs, values, and techniques shared by the community of scholars who comprise the discipline known as art history. This can be further broken down, altered, and refined for the various sub-fields, but taken together, the separate facets constitute a “way of seeing” art history which differs substantially from the “way of seeing,” say, political history.

Applying Kuhn's second and more rigorous sense, the historiography of art is dominated by certain paradigms which serve as exemplars or models of puzzle-solutions. While these change over time (it is no longer permissible to ascribe German expressionism to “national character,” for example), they are so powerful that they function as unquestioned assumptions when in force. Even more importantly, they are frequently invisible because they are rarely made explicit. In European art history, the dominant paradigms have coalesced into entities such as “The Baroque” or “Mannerism” which are largely ontological models used to simplify the otherwise intractable complexity of European art styles and movements.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 11 , 1984 , pp. 163 - 193
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1984

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Jan Vansina for his encouragement and the shared conviction that art is a powerful and valid form of historical evidence.

References

Notes

1. Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (2d. ed., Chicago, 1970), 181–91.Google Scholar

2. Armstrong, Robert G., “The Idoma-speaking Peoples” in Peoples of the Niger-Benue Confluence [Ethnographic Survey of Africa: Western Africa, Part X] (London, 1955), passim.Google Scholar

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4. An important Otukpo ancestral chant speaks of “Apá that originated guinea corn, Apá that originated millet.” A number of masks, even the origin of masking itself, are associated with the millet and guinea corn harvests.

5. Armstrong, Robert G., “The Dynamics and Symbolism of Idoma Kingship,” paper presented at the IXth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, Chicago, 1973, 10–15.Google Scholar

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10. These field studies are basically unlike the early diffusionist works which relied mainly on secondary sources and were focused on ethnology rather than art. See, for example, Graebner, F., Methode der Ethnolgoie (Heidelberg, 1911)Google Scholar, or Schmidt, W., The Culture Historical Method of Ethnology (New York, 1939).Google Scholar

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12. Even the exceptions tend to be European historians or ethnologists. Jan Vansina has applied the methodology of the historian to an examination of Kuba art: “Ndop: Royal Statues Among the Kuba” in Fraser, D. and Cole, H., eds., African Art and Leadership (Madison, 1972), 41–55Google Scholar; Children of Woot (Madison, 1978).Google Scholar Tamara Northern has done seminal work in uncovering the precolonial art history of parts of the Grasslands, Cameroon: Royal Art of Cameroon (Hanover, 1973)Google Scholar; The Sign of the Leopard (Storrs, Conn., 1975).Google Scholar In Nigeria, the Oyo historian Solomon Babayemi has reconstructed the origins of the Yoruba Egungun cult. Denis Williams, a Guyanan art historian, has combined archeological, ethnographic, and art historical approaches in his landmark study of Nigerian iron and bronze arts, Icon and Image (London, 1974).Google Scholar Most recently, the American scholars Henry and Margaret Drewal have begun to construct a history of Yoruba art through the study of the cult life of selected families over several generations. See their “An Ifa Diviner's Shrine in Ijebuland,” African Arts, 16 (1983), 60–67, 99–100.Google Scholar

13. That is, the invention, propagation, replication, variation, duration, and retention of things. See Kubler, George, The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things (New Haven, 1962).Google Scholar

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19. While Herskovits' culture areas were followed (and superseded in levels of complexity) by Baumann's, monumental synthesis in Les peuples et les civilisations de l'Afrique (Paris, 1948)Google Scholar, the latter's ethnohistorical model has not been widely used by English-speaking scholars.

20. Both were included in Ankermann's fifth culture area, called “Sudan Beyond the Upper Nile.”

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22. Ibid., 1:6.

23. Kjersmeier, , Centres de Style de la Sculpture Negre Africaine (reprinted New York, 1967).Google Scholar

24. See, for example, Jones, G.I., “Sculpture of the Umuahia Area of Nigeria,” African Arts, 6/4 (1973), 58–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. The concept of tribal style is not logically connected to that of culture areas. They are in fact two separate paradigms, the first of which has been subsumed within the second to create a convenient, if unreal, system of style classification.

26. In a few isolated instances such as the Ife and Benin heads and the Kuba ndop figures, style sequences have been proposed. But these resist classification as pan-tribal styles, since they are examples of court art.

27. Sieber, Roy, “African Art and Culture History” in Gabel, Creighton and Bennett, Norman R., eds., Reconstructing African Culture History (Boston, 1967), 136.Google Scholar

28. See, for example, Southall, Aidan, “The Illusion of Tribe,” Journal of Asian and African Studies, 5 (1970), 28–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; articles by Fried, Morton, Moerman, Michael, and Dole, Gertrude in Essays on the Problem of Tribe, ed. Helm, June (Seattle, 1968), 3–20, 153–69, 83–100.Google Scholar An excellent review of culturetrait vs. boundary theories is Anya Royce, P., Ethnic Identity (Bloomington, 1982), 20–24.Google Scholar

29. Southall, , “The Illusion of Tribe,” 28.Google Scholar

30. (New York, 1965), 11.

31. Fagg, , Tribes and Forms, 13.Google Scholar

32. Early colonial reports yield references to many cults and mask associations over broad supratribal areas of eastern Nigeria at the onset of British administration. This in turn suggests considerable precolonial contact. On the other hand, oral accounts make it equally clear that travel in this area was far more restricted prior to the pax Britannica. See, for example, Isichei, Elizabeth, Igbo Worlds (Philadelphia, 1978), 43–45, 50–52, 76–77.Google Scholar

33. Southall, , “Illusion of Tribe,” 32.Google Scholar

34. Jones, , “Umuahia,” 63.Google Scholar

35. Fagg, , Tribes and Forms, 16.Google Scholar

36. See discussion by the author in Vogel, Susan, ed., For Spirits and Kings (New York, 1981), 163–64; cat. no. 96.Google Scholar

37. The Tishman collection has been published at least four times. Reference here is to the third major catalog, Sculpture of Black Africa, prepared for the Los Angeles County Museum (Los Angeles, 1968).Google Scholar

38. Sculpture of Black Africa, 12.

39. Ibid., 20.

40. David Dalby, SOAS Seminar on Ethnicity, 11 December 1973.

41. Bravmann, René, West African Sculpture (Seattle, 1970), 28.Google Scholar

42. Ibid., 52. Furthermore, the Eastern vs. Western Mande linguistic division does not fit perfectly the coastal vs. Sudanic Mande style division. See Greenberg, Joseph, The Languages of Africa (Bloomington, 1963), 8.Google Scholar

43. Bravmann, , West African Sculpture, 11.Google Scholar

44. (Washington, 1976).

45. The Sculptor's Eye, 62.

46. Ibid., 30–32.

47. (London, 1934).

48. “Cultural Map” (see note 3).

49. Using Forde's characterization, one should expect a greater elaboration of sculpture in the wooded savanna zone than in the forest. Maquet, Jacques, on the other hand, describes the forest or “Civilization of the Clearings” as the primary sculpture-producing zone of Africa (Civilizations of Black Africa, New York, 1972, 68–69).Google Scholar Frank Willett has criticized writers such as Griaule for invoking an overly sharp and romanticized contrast between the art of the forest and that of the savanna (African Art: An Introduction, [New York, 1971], 26Google Scholar). It would appear that the relation of ecology to art and ritual is by no means as straightforward as many writers claim.

50. Willett lists forests, settled agriculture, and statehood as favorable preconditions for the proliferation of sculpture (African Art, 18). These are reiterated by Fraser and Cole in African Art and Leadership, “Overview,” 321, along with Fraser's earlier observation that figure sculpture in Africa can be linked to the Niger-Congo language family (Primitive Art, [Garden City, N.Y., 1962], 46–47Google Scholar). Unfortunately this says very little, since most sedentary peoples in Africa speak Niger-Congo.

51. To be sure, the interlacustrine area may have had both masks and figure sculpture prior to the Luo migrations. But aside from the Luzira Head and a few other isolated examples, there is little evidence of a plastic art tradition.

52. See Baikie, William, Narrative of an Exploring Voyage Up the Rivers Kwora and Binue…in 1854 (reprinted London, 1966), 83Google Scholar; Burdo, Adolphe, A Voyage Up the Niger and Benueh (London, 1880), 245–50Google Scholar; Hall, F.W. Byng, “Notes on the Okpoto and Igara Tribes,” Journal of the African Society, 7 (1907/1908), 168.Google Scholar

53. Bravmann, Rene, Open Frontiers: The Mobility of Art in Black Africa (Seattle, 1973).Google Scholar

54. Bravmann, , West African Sculpture, 11.Google Scholar

55. The first region is that comprising west central Ghana and, adjacent to it, the Cercle de Bondoukou in the Ivory Coast. The second is the Cameroon Grasslands.

56. Biebuyck, Daniel, ed., Tradition and Creativity in Tribal Art (Berkeley, 1969), 1–2.Google Scholar

57. See Sapir, , “Time Perspective,” 410–12Google Scholar; Wissler, , The Relation of Nature to Man in Aboriginal America (New York, 1926), 182–83Google Scholar; Kroeber, , Cultural and Natural Areas, 4, 21.Google Scholar The wider the area of distribution of a trait, the older it is assumed to be relative to comparable traits with more limited distribution. This is because the innovation of a trait is assumed to begin in a core area, not at a cultural boundary.

58. Jones, “Sculpture of the Umuahia Area.”

59. Ibid., 59.

60. Ibid., 63.

61. Ibid., 59.

62. Ibid., 60.

63. Ibid., 61.

64. Ibid., 59.

65. Ibid., 60.

66. Sapir, , “Time Perspective,” 419.Google Scholar

67. Jones, , “Umuahia,” 63.Google Scholar

68. Nigeria, Department of Statistics, Population Census of the Eastern Region of Nigeria, 1953 (Lagos, 1953).Google Scholar For more recent figures see Iloeje, N.P., A New Geography of West Africa (London, 1972), 3–6.Google Scholar

69. Nigeria, Department of Statistics, Population Census of the Northern Region of Nigeria, 1952 (Lagos, 1952).Google Scholar See also Prothero, R. Mansell, “The Population Census of Northern Nigeria 1952: Problems and Results,” Population Studies, 10 (1956), 166–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70. Armstrong, , “The Idoma-speaking Peoples,” 117.Google Scholar

71. Bohannan, Laura, “Political Aspects of Tiv Social Organization” in Middleton, John and Tait, David, eds., Tribes Without Rulers (London, 1958), 34.Google Scholar

72. See Henderson, Richard, The King in Every Man (New Haven, 1972), 76–90Google Scholar; Isichei, Elizabeth, A History of the Igbo People (New York, 1976), 3–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

73. See Biebuyck, ed., Tradition and Creativity, especially essays by William Fagg, Robert Thompson, Adrian Gerbrands and William Bascom and comments by Daniel Biebuyck, Ralph Altman and Roy Sieber.

74. Preface to Neyt, François, Traditional Arts and History of Zaϊre (Brussels, 1981), 6Google Scholar, and personal communication, 3 February 1982.

75. Biebuyck, , ed., Tradition and Creativity, 7.Google Scholar

76. Boas, Franz, “Style” in Primitive Art (Oslo, 1927; reprinted New York, 1955), 144–82.Google Scholar

77. For example, the Idoma alekwuafia or ancestral masquerade is a category “closed” to innovation by virtue of its ritual status, whereas secret society masks are considerably more “open,” particularly those owned by young men's age sets.

78. Ackerman, James S., “Western Art History” in Ackerman, James S. and Carpenter, Rhys, Art and Archaeology (Englewood Cliffs, 1963), 175.Google Scholar

79. John Picton, SOAS Seminar on Nigerian Art, December 1973.

80. Kasfir, Sidney L., “Visual Arts of the Idoma of Central Nigeria” (Ph.D., University of London, 1979), 131–32.Google Scholar

81. Biebuyck, , ed., Tradition and Creativity, 3.Google Scholar

82. Ibid., 2.

83. Ibid.

84. Vansina, Jan, “The Use of Process-Models in African History” in Vansina, Jan, Mauny, Raymond and Thomas, Louis Vincent, The Historian in Tropical Africa (London, 1964), 378–79.Google Scholar This stands in sharp distinction to the prevalent “ethnographic present” approach in which all aspects of a culture's art are normalized to a single “eve-of-contact” synchronic picture.

85. See Kasfir, “Visual Arts of the Idoma,” Chapters 4, 6, and 7.