Magdalene Anyango N. Odundo, Kenya, born 1950, “Teardrop I,” 1996, terracotta and slip, 20 × 16 inches/The Art Institute of Chicago, Harriott A. Fox Endowment, 1997.63
When Picasso completed his revolutionary masterpiece “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” (1907), he unveiled it in his Paris studio to a circle of contemporaries. With its groundbreaking perspective and composition featuring African masks, Picasso “changed history with… a killer picture” as New York Times art critic Holland Cotter wrote over a century later. With its debut, “Les Demoiselles” reignited artistic rivalries and spurred sensational debate and coverage. While Picasso, along with other Modernists such as Modigliani and Brâncusi, influenced Americans’ initial exposure to African forms, sub-Saharan art as a field of study was not established in the United States for another fifty years.
The powerful convergence of the civil rights movement, as well as the acceleration of independence among African nations, contributed to sub-Saharan art scholarship and presentation gaining traction in late 1950s America. In 1957, the Art Institute of Chicago established a curatorial department inclusive of African objects. That same year, the first American PhD in African art history was awarded to the Midwestern Roy Sieber, who as a child accompanied his parents on visits to the Art Institute. In 1987, the museum engaged its first curator of African art.
In the decades since, the Art Institute has expanded its sub-Saharan holdings, assembling one of the preeminent collections in the United States. The museum presents traditional sub-Saharan art—with a throughline to contemporary practices—focused on West and Central Africa. It is also dedicated to showing works from East and Southern Africa. In 2019, the museum launched a significant refurbishment of its African galleries. The following year, the Art Institute established the Arts of Africa as a curatorial division separate from the Arts of the Americas—featuring Indigenous communities of the Western Hemisphere—an unprecedented reorganization for any American art museum.
Recent scholarship emanating from the Art Institute has contributed to a transformative reassessment of sub-Saharan aesthetics from the perspectives of their originating cultures versus through a Western perspective; and the co-existence of art for art’s sake with the more African-centric concept—originated by Sieber—of art for life’s sake. In a recent conversation, Constantine Petridis, PhD, chair and curator of the Arts of Africa at the Art Institute, spoke to how artistic assessments held by sub-Saharan societies are influencing the museum’s display of its permanent collection.
Crown (Ade), Yoruba, Idowa, Nigeria, Coastal West Africa, late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, glass beads, fabric, thread, and copper alloy, 40 1/2 × 10 7/8 inches/The Art Institute of Chicago, Cora Abrahamson Endowment, 1994.314
Enriching the narrative “is an ongoing process and should ideally expand,” Petridis says. “We want to give voice to the makers and the users of this art, and that isn’t necessarily the curatorial or even the art-historical perspective. That translates, in part, into how wall text, audio tours, and interactive tools are produced. I’ve added acquisitions, and I’ve taken some objects out of the galleries. We have to accept that some of the objects in our collection aren’t necessarily meeting African criteria of aesthetic perfection and quality.”
When asked about his vision for the sub-Saharan collection, Petridis comments, “It starts with acknowledging that aesthetic perspectives exist in the African communities where the objects originated because that has been one of the big problems in our field for a long time. The emphasis was so much on the anthropology of the art, on the functionality of the art. There was this false conception that this art is not meant to be beautiful; that it’s only meant to do something. But these are not two different things. One is totally in sync with the other. In order to be functional, it needs to be beautiful. It’s not an afterthought.”
In discussing African aesthetics, Petridis speaks to “an enormous diversity but also core ideas shared across societies within the huge expanse of West and Central, and to an extent, Southern Africa. There exists this ideal which is the perfect combination of visual excellence and moral integrity because one is aligned with the other and in many cultures there is one word that means both beauty and goodness.” Other aspects of the region’s aesthetics that Petridis underscores are “balance, youthfulness—the expression of old age or childhood is rare in art—as well as moderation, an absence of excess and clarity. A streamlined form conveys a more decipherable message.”
Pectoral Disk (Akrafokonmu or Awisiado), Asante, Ghana, Coastal West Africa, 1925-1929, gold and red ochre, 7 3/4 × 7 3/4 × 1 inches/The Art Institute of Chicago, Irving Dobkin and David Soltker estates; Jane Brill Memorial Fund; Mr. and Mrs. David B. Ross Endowment, 1999.287
The artistic legacy of East Africa is an even more nascent field of study emerging from a new generation of scholars. Historically, the art of the Swahili coast—including the Indian Ocean shorelines of Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique—was not necessarily considered as truly African given the influences it drew from India and the Arabian Peninsula. A compounding factor in the previous lack of attention is that figurative art in the form of masks and sculptures produced in other parts of the continent is not as commonplace in East Africa.
Perhaps more familiar in the Western imagination, however, are the aesthetics of the Maasai, semi-nomadic pastoralists and warriors of Kenya and northern Tanzania. Joseph Ole Mpoe, a Maasai guide, observes that “Visual culture is deeply rooted in our rites of passage, our way of life.” One of the most striking elements of Maasai imagery is the shuka, or body cloth, still worn as it has been for several generations. As Mpoe describes, “Shukas are traditionally red, but more recently a variety of colors has been introduced. Historically, bright colors were for easier identification during clashes or cattle raids. The same clan would wear the same colors and patterns.” Red continues to loom large in Maasai culture. In the past, the Maasai believed that red would scare away predators; and red ochre is still applied over the body during marriage and naming ceremonies.
Tanya Leakey, who lives and works in the Maasai Mara National Reserve and is the granddaughter of the late paleoanthropologists Mary and Louis Leakey, captures the balance of sub-Saharan art’s function and appearance in relaying, “One of the most striking aspects of this community’s visual culture is its use of colors. There is something very iconic about seeing Maasai walking across the golden savannah plains in their red shukas. You can see them from miles away. It’s just beautiful.”
Excavated Images: A Review of “Life Against Itself” at Patron For the better part of a decade, the L.A.-based artist has used a variety of bladed tools to make her signature alla prima monochromatic gestural abstractions. In the last year, however, the hand has cut off the knife.
Gregory Bae In Memoriam: A Blueprint for an Artistic Life Many friends and collaborators drew connections between Bae’s studio practice and social justice/organizing work, noting Bae’s ability to transcend personalities and conflicts in pursuit of just principles.
Symbols of Life: A Review of Theaster Gates at the New Museum in New York City Gates unites his artistic beginnings as a ceramics sculptor with the impressive amount of objects that he has acquired as an archivist. Titled “Young Lords and Their Traces” it follows the lineage of his artistic and archival practice through multiple times and histories.
