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African Art History

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African art history
Every civilization throughout history has recorded their beliefs, history and ideologies through different mediums and artwork. Three core beliefs of African societies included honoring ancestors and animal deities, elevating rulers to a sacred status and consulting diviners and fortune tellers. You can see this in their artwork by the use of symbolism in the sculpture to portray how important someone was by making a rulers head oversized and the use of tame animals near the figure to show his power over all things. They also honored their ancestors by way of body decoration and modification, rituals and masks. Being firm believers in the spirit world, they made grand forms of architecture using brick and living rock to create places of worship. The early African people had a few ways of remembering and honoring their ancestors and family, like making sculptures for display in shrines or making pendants and jewelry depicting the likeness of those who perished. One example of this is the Waist pendant of a queen mother, from Benin Nigeria, ca. 1520, thought to portray the mother of Oba Esigie. The naturalistic ivory pendant symbolized the legacy of a dynasty and was made to honor the king’s mother. There are Portuguese heads on the top and bottom of the head. The Portuguese were thought of as people from the spirit world who brought wealth, power and prosperity to the king. Trade networks led to the wide spread of religion throughout early African culture. Divination was important to African culture as people linked divinatory spirits to nature, landscapes, and animals and believed it to be a way to connect to the spirits and ancestors. You can see this at the soapstone Monolith with bird and crocodile. The bird and crocodile are said to represent “previous rulers who act as messengers between the living and dead.” Some people broke away from magic, witchcraft and divination after the spread of Christianity giving way to the rise of artistic churches. This led to King Lalibela commissioning 11 churches to be built with one in particular standing out. A work of architectural art as well as a functioning church, the Church of St. George (Lalibela, Ethiopia, ca.1220) was built down into living rock and made to recreate Jerusalem for Ethiopian Christians. As for elevating rulers to sacred status, many different works of art came from these ideas. To depict the status of the ruler, the people in the pieces had enlarged heads and figures because it was believed to be the locus of wisdom and showed the king to be larger than life respectively. The Equestrian figure on fly-whisk hilt (Igbo Ukwu, Nigeria, 9th to 10th centuries CE) is a good example of this. The figure depicts an enlarged ruler, who is actually bigger than the animal he is riding. This shows his dominance and power. Another good example depicting the status of leaders is The Alter to the Hand and Arm (Benn, Nigeria, ca 1735-1750). This piece depicts the leader being flanked by his attendants and tamed jaguars. His disproportionately large head symbolizes his rule over all including people and animals. The three core beliefs of early African societies influenced all sorts of pieces of art and architecture. A rich and diverse culture includes everything from witchcraft, magic, divinity, larger than life kings and religious beliefs to celebrating the lives of loved ones who were gone and remembering those that came before them.

Work Cited
Kleiner, Fred S. Gardner’s Art Through the Ages: Backpack Edition, Non-Western Art to 1300. 14th ed. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print. Book C.
Bittl, Ann, Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, Chapter 19, South From The Sahara Early African Art
Power Point Presentation

Tlhagale, But. "BRINGING THE AFRICAN CULTURE INTO THE CHURCH." BRINGING THE AFRICAN CULTURE INTO THE CHURCH. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Oct. 2014.

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