WEST-AFRICA BEAUTY

It is difficult to give a useful summary of the main characteristics of the art of sub-Saharan Africa. The variety of forms and practices is so great that the attempt to do so results in a series of statements that turn out to be just as true of, for example, Western art. Thus, some African art has value as entertainment; some has political or ideological significance; some is instrumental in a ritual context; and some has aesthetic value in itself. More often than not, a work of African art combines several or all of these elements. Similarly, there are full-time and part-time artists; there are artists who figure in the political establishment and those who are ostracized and despised; and some art forms can be made by anyone, while others demand the devotion of an expert. Claims of an underlying pan-African aesthetic must be viewed as highly contentious.

First, in any African language, a concept of art as meaning something other than skill would be the exception rather than the rule. This is not because of any  inherent limitation of African culture but because of the historical conditions under which European cultures arrived at their concept of art. The Western separation of fine art from the lowlier craft (i.e., useful skill) came out of a sequence of social, economic, and intellectual changes in Europe that did not occur in Africa before the colonial period at the very earliest. This separation, therefore, cannot be applied without qualification to African traditions of precolonial origin. Philosophers of art in the West might agree that works of art are simply artifacts made with the intention of possessing aesthetic value, and in that sense art, which would include craft work as well as works of fine art, would indeed be found in all parts of Africa (as indeed it is throughout human culture). But even in this case, African art must be understood through the investigation and understanding of local aesthetic values rather than through the imposition of categories of external origin. It may be a field of well-hoed yam heaps (as, for example, among the Tiv people of Nigeria) or a display ox castrated in order to enhance its visual effect (as among the Nuer and Dinka pastoralists of South Sudan) that constitutes the significant work of art in a given area of Africa.