- Welcome to "University Place Presents,"
I'm Norman Gilliland.
We have our work cut out for us in this hour because we're
going to cover art from most of an entire continent
over the course of two or three or more millennia.
And our guide for this exercise is going to be Henry Drewal.
He's a Professor of Art History and Afro-American Studies
at the University of Wisconsin- Madison.
Welcome to "University Place Presents."
- Thank you, Norman. A pleasure to be here.
- How did you get involved in this enormous topic?
- Well, yeah, folks often ask me how does a white guy
like you find yourself teaching African art history?
When I graduated from college I joined the Peace Corps,
and I was a teacher in Nigeria in West Africa.
I had done languages but also studio art,
mostly sculpture.
While I was there I was teaching French and English,
but I got less interested in teaching those languages
to my Yoruba students and learning more
about Yoruba culture that I was living in.
And I made friends with a Yoruba sculptor and asked him
if I could become his apprentice.
So he agreed and I did
an apprenticeship of maybe about seven or eight months with him
in the town where I was teaching,
and that apprenticeship transformed my world.
It was a transformative experience
that changed my whole interest and desire for learning more
about African art and African culture and African history.
- And how did that translate into a profession?
I mean, it's one thing to be a Peace Corps graduate, alumnus,
and doing sculpture, African sculpture,
and another to come back to the United States and make a living.
How did that tie together? - Exactly, exactly.
I never became a Yoruba sculptor
but I wasn't a non-Yoruba sculptor either.
I was somewhere in between.
And I used that body experience, that body knowledge
of an apprenticeship,
of trying to carve like a Yoruba sculptor
to give me an insight into the art forms
that I would later teach.
So I came back, did graduate work at Columbia University,
earned two Masters and a PhD, and started teaching,
and continuing to still create.
One of the pieces that I did in a second apprenticeship,
a mask-making apprenticeship,
is one of the first images I wanted to show you.
- Norman: Let's have a look at that.
- This is from a Gelede masquerade performance that's
happening in a town not too far from where I was teaching.
Gelede masquerades honor the mystical powers of women.
A couple of weeks before the festival,
I went to meet the man
who was about to organize the annual festival
and told him I wanted to come and I said,
"Oh, by the way, I carve."
He said, "Oh, really?
"Well, in that case, make us one.
Make us a Gelede mask."
So I had four weeks to create a mask.
And that's that first one, not the second one,
that first one that was on the slide.
And that red-face mask
is the mask that I created for that festival.
As far as I know, it's still dancing today because it hasn't
turned up at Sotheby's auction house at a high price yet.
So that apprenticeship gave me insight
into the body knowledge of sculptors,
a different way of understanding aesthetics
and intention of artists
and what forms they wanted to create
and how they were trying to express,
in a very powerful way, aspects of their culture and history.
And from that apprenticeship, that bodily experience,
I have developed an approach that I call "sensiotics."
It's the study of art and the senses.
Because I believe that we have to understand
that all of our experiences on a continuous basis,
every day and every night of our lives,
are multi-sensorial experiences.
That we privilege certain senses over others,
but they're all happening simultaneously.
So I've been researching the multi-sensorial,
sensorium of Yoruba peopleS, writing about it,
and in other places as well, as a way to give us a deeper
and richer insight into the arts of that culture
and other African cultures and, I think,
other cultures around the globe.
- Well, yes, those things would apply, wouldn't they?
- Yes. - The same basic principles.
But if were talking about multiple sensual experiences at
the same time, I would think performance art would be
a prime example of that, prime application.
- Yes it is.
Yes, exactly, and so I often define myself
as an arts historian, not an art historian
because I am interested in the performing arts,
music, dance, and song
as much as I am the visual arts.
That masquerade tradition has many other
accompanying traditions
among the Yoruba people,
like the second image that we are looking at,
which is from the Egungun masking tradition,
which honors the spirits of ancestors.
With the Yoruba sensorium,
I'm defining and understanding
not the typical five senses that we talk about,
but seven all together.
- Norman: Seven?
- The six being the sense of motion,
which is distinctive and very important for the Yoruba,
expressed in these dancing masquerades.
And the seventh being supersensory perception,
what we often term altered states of consciousness
or extrasensory perception.
- That plays into these masquerades?
- Plays into the masquerades and it plays into
religious ceremonies where people go into altered states
to kind of connect with
supernatural forces of various kinds,
whether the ancestors or divinities
or God,
so those altered senses of being
are also crucial to understand.
[native drum music]
And in this image you are seeing
an Egungun masquerade in performance.
It's constructed of elaborate costume of multi layers
of panels or flat bits of cloth.
The choreography is primarily a twirling, a whirling,
and a jumping choreography, so those flaps of cloth
fly outward on the air.
And the Yoruba say that
when the spirit of their ancestors dance,
they create a breeze of blessing.
It's that motion that is bringing the presence of their
departed loved ones back to the world to celebrate
with them and honor them.
- Now as a sculptor of this culture have you had the
experience also of participating
in these masked masquerades?
- I am not initiated, so I can't go into the masquerade
itself, but I can create a carved mask like that
first one we looked at that is danced by a professional
dancer and one who is a member of that masking society.
- So the extrasensory experience
isn't one you have had directly,
but rather more as a reporter you're following it.
- Well, yes, in a way.
Carving the mask was part of my involvement with it.
But whenever I would attend a party in Yoruba land
I would be expected to dance.
And, you know, the first times I went to those parties,
I was using my own Brooklyn boogaloo style
from the States. [Norman laughing]
And my Yoruba friend stopped me, he said, "Henry, please.
Henry, let me tell you the first principle of Yoruba dance:
do not disturb yourself too much."
So I had to calm my actions and movements.
Make them flow, make them more subtle.
So I was learning how to dance in a Yoruba style.
That's an example of it.
- Norman: Something you still get to do occasionally?
- Oh, definitely, I'm now a salsero.
I dance salsa whenever I can.
- Oh, is that right?
Those senses are kicking in. [laughing]
- They are, they are.
I wish I could sing, I can't sing, but I dance.
- And what do we have here?
- Henry: And here is another example of the importance of
masquerades in Yoruba, not in Yoruba culture but in Africa.
This comes from the Guro people, who live in Ivory Coast
in West Africa.
This is a wonderful image by a colleague of mine that
I love to show because it gives you a sense
of the importance of motion.
This is actually a depiction of a masquerade that
represents a forest spirit, something the from deep forest.
The forest is seen as the abode
of different kinds of spirits.
And this is one that combines both animal and human features
as you can see in the carved mask.
And that wonderful costume just kind of
vibrates in performance.
So another example of the importance of dance
and ritual and masquerade.
- Norman: What's the material then?
- Henry: Well, the grasses are coming from the forest,
from plains, and there's also some raffia.
The mask itself is carved in wood
and it has these long antelope horns,
but if you notice the face,
it's a humanoid face.
This is what we would call a composite mask that brings
together the spirit world, nature, and culture,
humans and animals.
- Is there a mask tradition for royalty
or for leaders of any kind?
Would there be a specific kind of mask for those roles?
- Yes, there is, and in fact, the example that we're looking
at now is such a royal mask.
It comes from the Kuba people of central Africa.
And the court, the Kuba court,
has a series of masks
that refer to mythical royal ancestors.
This is the one that depicts Mwaash a Mbooy.
It has a very abstracted face.
Notice the top of that crown curls down to the front.
It's a reference to an elephant's trunk,
because the elephant is the ruler in his realm,
the Kuba king is the ruler in his.
And he's not only got the power and the presence
and the stature of an elephant, he can also fly like a bird.
So you see those red parrot feathers at the end.
It's a mixture of many different media
each with their own texture and quality and associations.
And this is what creates this royal mask.
- So I would assume across African cultures
there would be a lot of animal representations?
- Very many, yes, right.
And lots of proverbs and ideas that link animal culture
and animal ideas as proverbs
and kind of wisdom for human action and culture.
- One of the things you brought with you, Henry,
is this fascinating sculpture.
What's the story behind that?
- Well, this is a piece from Yoruba land.
It's probably a portion; it's broken at the bottom.
It would have had a staff or a base on it previously.
And it would have been used by a priest or a priestess
probably in honor of one of the Yoruba divinities:
Shango, god of thunder and lightning.
The devotees or the followers of Shango,
when they are initiated,
they are termed wives of Shango.
He's kind of a macho divinity.
- Norman: [laughing] Some of them are.
- So even the men devotees become women, in a sense,
they become wives of their god.
And so this male figure wears and ties in front
a sash
because that's the way you have to present yourself
before the altar.
And also his coiffure, as you can see it here,
is a female hairstyle that he has now put on
to indicate his transformation as a wife of Shango,
or follower or devotee of Shango.
I also wanted you to see what a master sculptor
from the Yoruba would be able to create.
You saw my mask, which was okay,
but this is a really beautiful piece, and
I wanted you to see something by a true master Yoruba sculptor.
- Norman: Is this a Yoruba artist in particular
that we are seeing here?
- Henry: Yes, she is a very famous artist, Abatan.
She was known for her earthenware sculpture
that you see to the left of the screen.
She was known for these figurative works,
and that vessel is an example of one her works,
which she created as a kind of altar centerpiece
for the divinity that she was a follower of, Eyinle.
Eyinle is associated with the river but also with warriors.
So it combines strength and power
with the fluidity and the coolness of water.
And she developed a very distinctive style,
as all Yoruba artists do,
and she had a wide reputation in her country
for the work that she was doing,
being commissioned to do it for many different people.
- How far back do these examples of African art go?
- They go back to the earliest examples of art-making
in the world.
Unfortunately, we don't have the names, as we do for Abatan,
but the earliest example is now dated
to about 70 to 75,000 years before the present.
These were small shells that were found in an
archeological site in southern Africa, and each shell
had a hole pierced through it so that they were
turned into beads.
They would have been worn as decoration.
That's one of earliest, earliest examples anywhere
in the world--
- Norman: 70,000 BC.
- 70 to 75,000 years before the present.
- As far as what we have, what you can show us, now,
I've seen this image
of the rock art
which is strikingly similar to, although much later than,
what you'd see at Altamira or Lascaux.
- Right, well, this is another interesting thing.
Some of the earliest rock art paintings and engravings,
like this one, come from the same era
as the Grotte de Lascaux in France or Altamira in Spain.
The earliest are in southwestern Africa
in a site that's been dated
to 26 to 28,000 years before the present.
What we're looking at here, however,
comes from another place on the continent
that has rich imagery on the rock, caves, and outcroppings.
This is central Sahara.
The Sahara desert was never always,
was never always a desert.
At a certain point in its history
it was a well-watered plainsland, grasslands.
And this image of these cattle comes from that period,
from about 5000 to 2000 to 3000
before the current era.
So it was a well-watered area,
and people were semi-nomadic and herdsmen.
So this comes from what is known as the Pastoralist Period.
When I teach about African art
I try to give an overview of some of the highlights,
in that vast and incredibly long history.
I think what we all need to remember is that humanity
as we know it, we think, began in Africa,
began in east Africa.
We all are Africans in a sense.
It's time and movement that has taken us from that source,
so I'm interested in reconnecting us
to those artistic traditions from the source continent.
- It does make you wonder a little bit what's buried
under those dunes of the Sahara.
- Yes, yes, very much, because it is a difficult place
to continue to do work.
But lots has been found and more is still being done.
- When would that, the image that we just saw,
when would that have been discovered?
Because the colors are so vivid,
I can't help thinking that it must have been protected
very early on after discovery.
- It was, because these are on the inner walls of caves
that would have been protected from extremes of weather
and from sandstorms and so on.
Most of that work dates to the '30s and the '40s.
There were a number of French archeologists
who were documenting and photographing.
- Norman: Sculpture from how far back?
- This is a sculpture from the Nok civilization.
This one dates to 800 before the current era.
It's a tradition that goes for at least 1000 years,
from about 800 to about 500 of the current era.
It's a terra-cotta sculpture from Nok,
N - O - K,
that is found in the central part of Nigeria.
What's incredible about this terra-cotta sculpture
is that you are looking at a head that was broken off a body.
That head is itself 13 1/2 inches high.
Even if the body was smaller,
it means that this was a terra-cotta sculpture
that was maybe half to three-quarter size life-size.
Fired clay is difficult to work.
- Norman: A little unwieldy, isn't it?
- Very unwieldy, and unless you're a very expert potter,
that scale of sculpture starts to break and crack in the kiln,
in the firing.
- Do we have any trace of the rest of this figure?
- Yes, we do.
We have lots of shards and pieces of other sculptures,
some full figures, some of them quite large,
others very small.
It's a tradition that continued for, as I said,
almost a thousand years, and there is great variety
and it spreads over a very wide area of central Nigeria.
- It's a question that probably artists and art historians
would prefer not even to address, but do we have any sense
of the purpose of those figures, those terra-cotta figures?
- Well, we think that some of them were guardian figures
within shrines or sacred spaces,
altars of various kinds.
Some terra-cottas have been found in association with kilns
that were for iron smelting.
So we know that Nok was an iron-working culture
very early on.
One of the things, one of the important things,
and I'm working on an exhibition on this issue,
is that Africa, the African continent,
doesn't go through a Bronze Age.
It goes right from Stone Age to Iron.
And that's because vast areas on the African continent
are lateritic soil,
high in iron content and iron deposits
very close to the surface.
So it was a material that was more easily accessible
and it leads to extraordinary works in iron.
I'm not bringing you any examples today
but when you see this exhibition you'll see that.
- I can imagine in the meantime.
Here's another example of fairly early art?
- Yes, it is, from a distinctive culture
that's near the delta area of the Niger River.
I think what we're starting to find
from research and archeology
is that the Niger River in West Africa
is West Africa's equivalent of the Nile in Egypt.
- Norman: In terms of spawning culture.
- In terms of spawning culture
and incredible art traditions.
This is a work from Igbo-Ukwu.
Igbo-Ukwu had a very fine tradition of bronze casting.
That's what you're looking at.
You're looking at a bronze cast of a bird,
a miniature bird seated on two enormous eggs.
We don't know what is being expressed in this.
But then it has attached to its strands with glass beads
and other bronze crotales, or bells, at the very end.
It was probably part of the shrine regalia
maybe worn by a priest or priestess at some point.
And because of the bird sitting on or kind of
resting on the top of these two eggs, we suggest
that it has something to do with life and fertility.
- That would make sense.
Do we have any idea of where some of
these things were found?
I mean something like this looks a little more vulnerable
to the ravages of time.
- Well, actually, no, because it's a bronze casting,
it has survived.
The terra-cotta did because it was fired clay,
but the bronze and other metal works have survived.
That object was found in what we think
was a storeroom of ritual regalia.
One other site was a burial site.
We know it was a burial site for an important individual,
and many of the things that that individual was dressed
in made out of bronze and beads and cloth did survive.
And that dates to the ninth century of this era.
- Speaking of terra-cotta, here's another image
of terra-cotta sculpture which has a more delicate,
almost, I want to say, modern sense to it
than what we saw earlier.
- Well, it does, you know, yeah.
I think many people think, "African art, well,
it's very abstract.
It doesn't look like we look like."
But in fact, there are important and ancient traditions
in Africa that are very realistic or naturalistic,
and this is probably the most famous.
It's a tradition that is called either Ife
or its full name, Ile Ife.
It's the ancestors of the Yoruba people,
so this is a tradition I know well,
because this is where I lived and worked and taught
and did much of my research.
These Ife terra-cottas date to about the 10th or 11th
century and continue up until about
the 15th or 16th century.
And there's also a tradition of bronze casting
or copper alloy casting.
The Yoruba here,
you're looking at probably an important individual
because this individual, perhaps a woman, wears a crown.
And that crown is either a representation of coral beads
or stone or glass beads
because there was a glass bead industry
in the city-state of Ile Ife, where this work comes from,
very delicate.
One of the things I like to point out
is the composure on the face of this individual.
- There's some personality there,
isn't there, it's very individualized.
- There's a lot of personality, yeah.
And the head, according to the Yoruba and the artists
of Ife, is the site of a person's personal essence,
their spiritual essence.
One of the ideals of right living is composure of mind,
of calmness, and of balance.
And this portrait certainly, I think, expresses those ideas.
- What kind of connection do we see
between early sub-Saharan art and the Egyptian art
that we're so familiar with?
- There are some striking similarities.
If we understand that the Sahara was not a desert back when,
that people were moving from the Nile Valley
into West Africa and the Niger River valley,
I think in the future if we're able to do systematic
archeological work throughout that vast area,
I think we're going to see many more threads and connections
between the Egyptian civilization and African civilization.
And one of the connectors is, of course, Nubia,
the Nubian culture, which is in the upper part of the Nile,
which is sub-Saharan essentially
just but on the east side of the continent.
I think that will come.
- You mentioned, I think, copper and alloy work?
Here's an example of that.
- There's a wonderful example, it also comes from Ife.
These date a little bit later.
There is a large corpus of the terra-cottas.
We have a smaller corpus of these copper alloy castings.
But this is a lost wax casting process.
They date to probably
12th, 13th, 14th centuries of the current era.
Again, that composure of mind and presence.
Those striations that you see on the face
are perhaps an ancient form
of body decoration, perhaps scarification,
but it could also be a reference to a painted pattern
that may have indicated the special status
of this individual.
Again, it's someone who wears a crown-like form
that would have been made with these incredible
glass beads that were being made at Ife.
- You mentioned lost wax casting, which is a
technique that is still used.
How does that work?
- Well, it's complicated.
[laughing]
But you start with a clay core, then you sculpt
your sculpture on top of it in a thin layer of wax.
And then you put another layer of clay on the outside,
you put it all in the kiln to heat.
The wax melts out, and then you pour in molten copper alloy
into the space that's left
between the outside investiture
and the inside core to create such a work.
- It's fascinating that such a complicated process
would still be with us today.
That implies there's some kind of continuous use
of lost wax casting, but that's a long way to connect
and a lot of distance.
- Yes, and it seems as though lost wax casting techniques
may have developed independently
in different parts of the globe.
- Yeah, and complicated as they are, yes,
that would be your first thought, wouldn't it?
- Yes, yes, right, yeah, yeah. - And what do we have here?
- Well, now we are moving to the kingdom of Benin,
and you're looking at the ruler, the Oba,
or the divine king in the Benin kingdom.
This is a photograph that was taken of him in 1958,
just before the Nigerian independence in 1960.
There are these annual kingship rites in the kingdom of Benin,
and he's wearing an incredible coral garment.
Coral is the Benin kingdom's association with the sea
because it was right along the coast of West Africa
and it had connection to the sea and trade routes
all along the West African coast.
The Oba, or divine king, is seen as the human ruler on land,
the equivalent of Olokun, the god of the sea
and the riches that coral represent.
So he's in procession here.
He's wearing that coral
and supported by his attendants.
He has these wonderful ivory pendants around his waist
and a coral crown on his head.
He was also a well-educated man
and you can see his glasses as well.
[laughing]
So it's the past and present coming together
in his person.
- Let's go back a little bit maybe to the 19th century
and you have another fascinating imaginative piece here
and also associated, I think, with ruling class.
- With ruling class, this is a royal work of art,
and it's the Benin version of lost wax cast
that was done in copper alloy.
Some of these are bronzes some of them are leaded brass.
And this is actually an altarpiece to honor
an ancestral queen mother.
We know that it honors a queen mother
'cause they were powerful in the court structure.
We know that this honors her because of
that tilting, conical headdress or crown that she wears.
It's known as hen's beak.
It's a representation of the hen's beak,
and it's a reference to her as hen mother,
taking care of her brood, of her family,
of her society, of her community.
And she has around her neck strands and strands and strands
of what are being represented are these coral necklaces.
- Norman: And that almost far-fetched number
of the strands would be some indication of rank?
- Yes, of rank and of wealth.
The more strands you have--
- The more disposable wealth you have.
- Exactly, exactly.
- One of the forms of African art in particular,
not just African but African we associate so much with
because, I think, we have more recent documentation of it,
is body art.
Now, that would be something that would be largely lost,
I would think, hard to preserve.
But we do have more contemporary examples of it.
- Right, yes, we've been documenting some of those
we see in the earliest examples of art,
like the Saharan rock art, where we can see
what costumes and things people were wearing.
But, yes, the body arts or personal or decorative arts
are still very strong and very alive and well.
You're looking at the image of a Kuba king.
You saw that Kuba royal mask earlier on.
Well, here's the Kuba king seated in state,
flanked by his family.
And he's covered in incredibly beautifully
hand-woven textiles that are decorated with cowrie shells.
Cowrie shells were a traditional form of currency,
of money, used in many parts of the continent.
He's dressed in, you know, hundred-dollar bills,
essentially, and he's ruler of his community.
but he's the ruler of his world,
so he has these bird feathers and other animal skins
that are part of his attire
to express his presence and his power.
- Norman: Would this be his formal wear?
- Henry: Yes, this is his formal wear, not every-day wear.
- It'd be a little impractical for everyday.
- Yeah, one other thing I want to mention
about the Kuba king.
As part of the installation, when the Kuba people
are deciding on the various candidates for kingship,
one of the things the king has to do is he has to
get up and dance, he has to know how to move.
- Norman: In all of that?
- In all of that, exactly.
How one moves through the world is one of the ways
you see what kind of person you're going to have.
So again, it's this sense of motion that is so important,
not only for the Yoruba but also for the Kuba
and other African people.
- It sort of makes you wonder a little bit,
I mean, what happens if the king, and this would
be a hereditary kingship?
- Yes, yes.
- Makes you wonder what happens
if the king just happens to be a lousy dancer? [laughing]
- He's in trouble, he's in trouble from day one.
[laughing]
- Doesn't come up in Western democracy so much.
- No, not so much.
- In that culture I could see that would be a problem.
Another kind of body art would be the actual painting,
piercing, tattooing, I suppose, of the body.
- Henry: Exactly, exactly, yes.
- That can get to the point
where you almost run out of body sometimes, doesn't it?
- Henry: Sometimes, yes.
- Norman: Run out of things to decorate.
- Henry: And some of them are permanent transformations
that indicate stage of life, but others are temporary
for ceremonies or festivals of various kinds.
- Norman: What would the stage-of-life
decoration typically be?
- Well, certainly at birth it might be circumcision.
Then it would be puberty for both men and women,
for boys and girls.
Then it might be when a woman gives birth to her first child
other marks might be added.
And then elderhood, usually no marks are made
by that time, but it's those earlier stages--
- The medium is not quite as pliable.
- Right, the skin does that by itself.
[laughing]
- Enough said.
- Yeah, and what were looking at here is a young man
who has just come to adulthood.
He's probably maybe 17, 18.
He's a young warrior in the Nuba culture
of southern Sudan, and he has body painting all over.
- Bring him back, there. [laughing]
- Yeah, there he is.
He's got this wonderful body painting that is probably
a reference to the civet cat because families
have a totemic animals that they are associated with.
And these are kind of like spiritual guides.
And so the pattern that he puts on his body
is a way of saying, okay, this is the clan that I'm from,
this is the group that I'm from.
Since his youth he's been collecting bird feathers,
he's been hunting and collecting bird feathers,
which he has used for the crest on his head.
And he's also adapted and modernized his presentation
'cause if you look closely at his eyes,
around his eyes,
he's got eyeglass frames, and he's got
those sunglass ones that flip up and flip down.
- Talk about adapting to modern--
- So it may look very traditional,
but this is a modern guy.
- And this is one of those almost iconic images, isn't it,
of Africans with the grace that's implied
by the ability to maintain your balance,
as you say, composure--
- Yeah. I was very lucky to be in the marketplace on the day
that this woman came by and agreed to allow me
to take her photograph.
She has an example of a permanent transformation of body
art, a tattoo scarification that's known as "kolo."
She is a Yoruba woman.
She's also wearing a textile like the one
that we have with us here that I'll talk about.
- Norman: Yeah, we'll get to that in a second.
- Yeah, but I just wanted to say something about this.
She has this across her front,
so it's like a permanent blouse that she wears.
It's a form of beautification for her,
but it also makes her very attractive to men.
As a Yoruba man confided to me once,
he said, "Ah, when we see a beautiful woman with kolo,
with these patterns on her body,
all we can do is want to go up and touch her
and the weather changes to another thing."
- [laughing] Interesting way of putting it.
Now this textile, we can see it here and is this kolo,
or what's the source of it?
- Well, she's wearing one of these.
This is a cloth known as "adire",
and it's an indigo-dyed fabric.
This one has been designed by stitching,
by tie and dye.
The Yoruba women are famous for these adire textiles.
The deep, deep blue is much appreciated;
it's one of the Yorubas' favorite colors.
The pattern is simple but very, very elegant,
and a woman would wear this as a wrapper.
This is a contemporary example, it's made by a woman
by the name of Mohinde Makinde
from the Yoruba town of Oshobo.
- And what's the actual fabric made of?
- The actual fabric is cotton.
Now it's imported cotton, but some of the older ones
are still hand-woven and then dyed with the indigo,
and the patterned as you see it here.
- Well, we've talked about terra-cotta
and we've talked about lost wax casting
and we've talked a little bit about alloys,
but what we haven't gotten to, Henry, is gold.
- Henry: Well, we are now.
- Is there gold to be found?
- Yes, yes, gold to be found.
In fact, I mean, Africa, West Africa was the source
of gold for many, many centuries.
Mansa Musa, who was the king and emperor
of the Malian Empire in,
I guess it was about the 10th or 11th century,
went on pilgrimage to Mecca
and brought so much gold with him
that it depressed the gold market
for five years after his arrival there.
- Wow.
- Gold is still being mined in and used in West Africa.
The earlier name for Ghana was the Gold Coast,
it was called and the Gold Coast.
The jewelry that you're seeing here, gold jewelry,
gold leaf, solid gold, gold-plated jewelry
is all from the Akkan area or that general vicinity.
So gold is the expression of royalty, of wealth,
of well-being, and is still being used to a great extent.
The next image also comes from this Ashanti or Akkan area.
You're looking at the top part, or the finial
of a linguist staff.
These are gold leaf, it's carved in wood
and then covered in a thin layer of gold.
And these linguist staffs are visualizations of proverbs.
And these are meant to be lessons
not only for the rulers who use them
but for their followers in the community.
So you are looking at a chief seated on his throne, or stool.
He has his hands out in front of him,
which is the expression of generosity of spirit.
And if you look carefully, under his feet
there are a series of other four hands that hold him up.
- Norman: Symbolic of?
- Henry: Symbolic of the support of his people.
Without the support of his people he cannot rule well.
- That's a very healthy attitude
to take toward royalty.
- Exactly. And it's a wonderful image of
give-and-take and flexibility.
The Akkan also say leadership is like holding an egg.
If you hold it too tightly, you crush it.
You hold it not tightly enough, it falls and breaks.
- Another good image, which many should take heed of.
- Henry: Yes, yes, go ahead, sorry.
- I was going to say, if we're turning a page here,
at least I don't think often of architecture
as being, you know, something African in nature
that would translate across the continents.
Is there an African, inherently African
kind of architecture?
- Well, no, there are many different kinds
of architectural forms on the continent
because, as you know, the continent is huge
and it has very, very different ecological zones.
- Norman: Absolutely.
- That architecture very much reflects the
built in environment.
It's the environment made for human living, so they're using
the materials that they have.
The image that we're looking at now is the
Grand Mosque at Djenne in Mali.
It's mud architecture, it's sun-dried clay soil--
- Norman: I was going to say,
it's exactly the color of the surrounding ground.
- It is, and these are incredible structures.
The central mosques of every city in Mali are these
enormous and beautifully constructed structures.
They are made with mud bricks those mud bricks are surfaced
on an annual basis after the short rainy season
'cause this is generally fairly dry;
it's sub-Saharan, but it's a dry area.
And you're looking at one, its original form was probably
built in the 12th or 13th century and then
it was rebuilt again in the early 20th century,
and that's what you're looking at now.
But these are structures that very much express
the religious life and the cultural life
and that comes out of earthen architecture in that area.
- And what about masonry
in the sense that we are familiar with in Europe?
- What you're looking at here is probably one of the
finest monuments of dry stone wall masonry on the continent.
It's a site that's known as Great Zimbabwe.
The country Zimbabwe takes its name
from this architectural site.
It was probably a ritual site
for powerful Shona kings and queens.
This is granite, these are granite blocks that have
been hand-cut and shaped to fit tightly to create
this wall without the use of any kind of mortar,
that's why we call it dry-stone masonry.
You're looking at a section of one of the walls
of this enclosure.
At certain places it rises to 35 feet in height
and 14 to 15 feet in thickness.
- Norman: Wow.
- Henry: It's an incredible sight,
with decorative stone work at the very top edge
that you see there.
- Norman: So would this be a fortification?
- Henry: Well, we don't think so.
- Norman: Really?
- We think it was a ritual site.
There were other stone buildings and walls that probably
were fortifications.
There's another outcropping of these on a hill
that looks like it was a fortification site,
but this was a ritual site.
This was for probably the annual rights of rulership
in that particular community, and again,
an impressive example of architecture of the continent.
- Is that the same technique used in the pyramids,
where the blocks were so closely fitted without mortar?
- Yes, yes, very definitely.
And this is, you know, East Africa, the part of East Africa
where we have many traditions of stone architecture.
Along the Swahili coast,
on various islands and coastal towns
there are what are known as "stone towns",
where the houses were built with dry-stone masonry.
- What would be the vintage of this one
in Zimbabwe that we saw?
- This one in Zimbabwe is probably 12th or 13th century
of the current era.
- And speaking of the current era,
speaking of the current era,
what kind of things do we find now
as we get into the 20th, 21st century in African art?
- Yeah, I always like to emphasize the fact that
while I've shown earlier examples from the continent,
and that earliest example is 75,000 years before
the present that I've mentioned,
art-making on the African continent is alive and well
and very vibrant, all over the continent.
And I am just showing you two examples that we have
here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
in the permanent African gallery of the Chazen
we have this work by El Anatsui.
He's a Ghanaian artist,
but he's lived and worked most of his life in Nigeria,
teaching at one of the universities.
This is a work that he calls "Old Worn Towel."
It's actually made out of panels of wood
that have been engraved and pyro-engraved,
and then painted with various colors.
It's a series of panels set next to each other
that can be re-arranged in different orders,
if one chooses.
He's basing it on a textile form
where strips of cloth are woven and then basted together,
sewn together,
to make a large cloth for wearing toga-style.
But he's also making a political comment in this work,
because he's talking about how the colonial era,
colonial masters came and just divided
and decided the borders of--
- Norman: Oh, all willy-nilly.
- Henry: Willy-nilly, putting enemies together.
- Norman: Straight lines where rivers made boundaries.
- Exactly, and the political challenges
that Africans face today are partly due to that colonial era.
So he's commenting about those matters of fragmentation
and rearrangement decided by somebody else.
- Kind of an arbitrary, yes, approach to these things.
- Yes, exactly, exactly. - And here?
- And this is also a second example from El Anatsui,
and it's also in the Chazen.
It's called "Danu", and it's a wonderful example of
the art of recycling causing because he has taken
the metal tops of liquor bottles and other bottles
that are flattened out, pierced with holes,
and then strung with copper wire to create
this wonderful metal textile that hangs on the wall.
And every major art museum now in the world
has at least one example of El Anatsui's works,
they have become so iconic.
- There's another image here that I find quite intriguing.
What are we looking at here?
- [chuckles] Well, okay, Norman, since we're leaving
this program shortly, this is a departure vehicle.
[chuckles] - Norman: Okay.
- That's what we're looking at.
It's a coffin, a design coffin,
or some call it a "fantasy coffin".
There's a tradition that started in the '40s and the '50s
in Ghana where people, when they were preparing
for their own funerals, decided they just didn't want
to go out in a plain pine box.
They wanted a container expressed who they were
in their lifetimes, so what you're looking at here
is a large cocoa pod turned into a coffin form.
- Norman: They come that big?
- Well, the cocoa pod doesn't, but in its form
as vehicle it does, it's a larger version of it,
because the man who commissioned this for his own funeral
was a very famous and very wealthy cocoa farmer.
You will remember that Ghana supplies much of the cocoa
for chocolate all around the world,
and this was the major agricultural industry in Ghana.
So, here we're seeing a kind of visual epitaph
to a very prosperous cocoa farmer
who is going to be processed to the grave site in his cocoa pod.
And there's one other one that you can see at the Chazen
that we have just gotten from the artist Eric Anan,
who is the grandson of Kane Kwei, who made this cocoa pod.
It's now in the African art gallery
and it's in the form of an eagle.
And eagle coffins were reserved for chiefs.
The eagle was the symbol of chieftaincy,
and if you were a chief or a lady chief
you could fly to the next destination with your eagle.
- And how does that work,
[laughing] I mean in terms of the coffin, the eagle?
- Well, the body of the eagle is the coffin itself.
It has wings that fold outward, and these are carried
in procession from the deceased's home to the cemetery.
- Well, that's certainly, no pun intended, a departure.
- Yes, it is.
- What about the spread of African art to other continents,
how big a phenomenon has that been?
- That's an enormous phenomenon because African people,
whether they left the continent involuntarily
or voluntarily continued to create wonderful art forms
wherever they found themselves.
So the impact of African-American artists
on American culture is enormous.
Wherever African people found themselves,
they re-created culture, they re-created
their artistic forms and traditions, and adapted them
to the new conditions that they were in.
And today I've brought just one example of an art
from an African diaspora community.
These are descendants of Africans that were brought
to India since the 16th century.
- Would they have been brought, for what purpose?
- They would have been brought, they were enslaved,
these particular people were enslaved by the Portuguese
and brought to Goa on the west coast of India.
- Portuguese colonies, yes, not long ago.
- Exactly, and a very rich and powerful one.
And they came mostly as domestic servants,
it was not a plantation situation.
So they didn't come in very large numbers and they probably
were working mostly as domestic servants.
They escaped slavery over the generations,
went into the interior, set up their own independent
communities in the forest and the highlands
of what is now the state of Karnataka in India.
And the women there have this incredible tradition
of patchwork quilts that are just beautiful,
so I brought an example to show you.
I know you can't see the whole thing,
but at least I wanted you to see
these wonderful patchwork traditions
where mothers are making them for their daughters
on the occasions of their weddings.
And when new children come into the family
they'll make other patchwork quilts.
They are used as mattresses to sleep on in the hot weather
and as covers in the cooler weather.
And it's a tradition that has so many resonances
with African-American quilting traditions in the South.
I don't believe there's any direct connection,
but it is interesting how--
- I was wondering about that, the quilt connection,
but again maybe it's just a coincidence.
- Yeah, well, I think it's a coincidence.
I think it's a case of independent invention in this case.
But there is this interesting, very bright cloth because
the one I'm showing you was actually a baby quilt or a crib
quilt, and one of the Siddi women, one of the African women
that I lived with, was telling me, "We like to use
very bright colors to liven up our little babies".
- [chuckling] That is sort of an African tradition
anyway, isn't it?
Everything you have shown us so far, Henry,
has had these bright colors, whether it is
the masquerade costumes or the masks or even the, you know,
the figures and the jewelry.
They love those bright colors.
- Yes, Yoruba philosophy has lots to say about
what colors mean and how they are used.
There's a whole Yoruba chromancy idea.
- Oh, really?
- Yeah, because, you know, color, the perception of color
goes back to the senses, our perception of color
actually involves three senses.
It's the sense of sight, it's also the sense of movement,
because some colors appear to advance toward us
and others seem to recede away from us,
so it's a sense of motion, and thirdly, it's a sense of
touch, a haptic touch, because some colors we associate
with heat, and some we associate with coolness.
- Very true, yes.
- So color perception is at least three senses.
- That's right, and then they communicate that way,
- Exactly, exactly, and certain colors are symbolic
of royalty or certain spiritual forces and so on,
so there's a whole philosophy
behind the use of and the importance of color.
- And we see that spreading with much of the other sense
of African art around the world.
- Yes, yes, I think so.
- Well, thank you for running through how many centuries--
- I'm out of breath. [laughing]
- And how many contemporary countries in Africa,
quite a few.
- Thanks, Norman it's been a pleasure to be with you.
- A pleasure, touching the surface, Henry.
- Thank you.
- Look forward to your next visit.
- Thank you.
- I'm Norman Gilliland and I hope you can join me
next time around for "University Place Presents."