This title was digitized by the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA).
About Art papers. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1981-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 1, 1981)
Upper Half of a Figure, terracotta, 25 cm. high, c. 15th century, from Igbo’Laja, Owo, from the collection of the National Museum, Lagos (photo: courtesy of the High Museum of Art). Treasures of Ancient Nigeria High Museum of Art Atlanta, Georgia June 20-August 16, 1981 “Treasures of Ancient Nigeria,” one hundred works representing many of the best known and most magnificent examples of African art in permanent media, opened in Atlan ta in early summer, near the end of more than two years of travel in the U.S. On loan from the government of Nigeria, the exhibition consists main ly of bronzes and terra cottas, with a few pieces in stone or ivory. The exhibition does indeed repre sent ancient Nigeria, with its works spanning over 2000 years from roughly 500 B.C. to the eighteenth or early nineteenth century. Compara tive time lines in the exhibition brochure and the otherwise excellent short film that introduces the show give the misleading impression of an artistic continuum represented in the eight styles or cultures included. Although the arts of the city-states of Ife (twelfth-fifteenth century), Owo (fifteenth century) and Benin (fif teenth-eighteenth century) are related historically and stylistically, the others (Nok, Igbo-Ukwu, Esie, Tsoede and Ikom) are site labels for artistic traditions whose antecedents and descendants remain a subject of speculation. The Nok culture, for example, includes objects found across an area roughly the size of South Carolina with dates scattered over more than a millenium. Despite its stylistic affinities with recent Yoruba sculpture of western Nigeria, Nok is too distant chronologically and spatially to be directly linked with any other known culture in Nigeria. In contrast, the Igbo-Ukwu works in the exhibition represent a visual ins tant, a moment in the ninth or tenth century in a single village—a single Art Papers September-October 1981 burial and single storage-house for a shrine discovered when a cistern was dug. Culturally the site can be ex plained and related to modern Igbo traditions, although the Igbo-Ukwu works are stylistically unique in Nigerian art history. Ironically, the exhibition consists in the main of the results of fortuitous accidents in twentieth-century Ni geria—finds made during mining op erations, road and house-building, and well-digging. A number of pieces initially recovered by Nigerians had been set up in shrines before their ultimate integration into the national museum system. Others were unearthed in archaeological excava tions that followed accidental discoveries. Because most of Nigeria has yet to be subjected to thorough and systematic archaeological survey work, future finds will undoubtedly begin to fill the gaps between the cultures represented in the exhibition. If the next forty years prove to be as fruitful as the past forty in uncovering major traditions, we may look for ward to additional exhibitions of riches from the artistic heritage of Nigeria. In an era when elaborate explana tions of function are virtually obligatory in exhibitions of African art, the curator of “Treasures” wisely resisted the temptation to reconstruct the cultural context or even the ar chaeological burial ground of the pieces. Rather, the installation was simple, stark, and unfortunately rather cramped in the second-floor gallery of High Museum. With little explanation and no distracting photos of contemporary Africa, viewers were forced to concentrate on the objects themselves, to confront artifact as art. The happy result was an oppor tunity to study a collection remark able both for its aesthetic and its technical qualities. Perhaps most impressive are the famous naturalistic terra cotta and bronze heads of Ife. Typically described as idealized portraits of kings and queens, the heads’ presence in a single room made their indivi duality striking. A slightly receding lower lip here, a thicker jaw there, dif fering facial planes, flared or sharply cut nostrils, gives each a sense of in dividuality despite the static pose characteristic of the Ife style. My favorite is the single mask in the ex hibition, by tradition a likeness of the ruler who introduced casting into Ife. Itself a tour de force of the lost wax process, the pure copper mask is un cannily lifelike. The Owo sculptors, like their mentors at Ife, created naturalistic heads in terra cotta. One of their most intriguing works, a head with broken torso, charms the viewer with its trace of an impish smile, demonstrating a liveliness that does not exist in the more formal Ife works. The Igbo-Ukwu bronze works rep resent a very different tradition, one characterized by objects of regalia with rich ornamental surface decora tion. Like the Ife masters of the lost wax process, the Igbo-Ukwu casters demonstrate their technical virtuosity again and again, but in forms im itative of animal and plant life. The bronzes seem literally alive with tiny insects, birds, small reptiles and other animals, all interspersed with geometric patterns. Several, like the ornate waterpot wrapped in a knotted rope work net, were cast in complex several-stage processes. In contrast, all the Nok pieces, which vary from delicate miniatures to near life-size heads, were modeled in terra cotta. The best-known piece, a 14-inch female head broken off at the neck and showing an elaborate hair style, has typical Nok modeling—sharply etched lines and details that suggest carving in a leather-hard state. Since the Nok pieces were probably fired in an open fire, this head and others estimated to have been originally as tall as four feet suggest the Nok sculptors’ tremendous technical mastery of their medium. An excellent catalog of the exhibi tion is available (Treasures of Ancient Nigeria. Ekpo Eyo and Frank Willett. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1980. 162 pp. $11.95) and well worth the purchase price. Illustrated with fifty- three color plates, the catalog pictures each of the 100 works at least once and includes second views of several. The catalog photos are preceded by two introductions written by Ekpo Eyo and Frank Willett. Dr. Eyo, guest curator for the exhibition and an archaeologist, has directed the Nigerian Department of Antiquities since 1968 and carried out excavations in Ife and Owo. Dr. Willett, also a trained archaeologist and Africanist art historian, has worked in Ife and published the most comprehensive book to date on the finds there. To gether, Eyo and Willett provide a suc cinct summary of the state of knowl edge about ancient Nigerian art and interpretations of the works’ meaning and function. Eyo’s straightforward narrative is thoroughly readable and informative for the non-specialist. Willett, on the other hand, enjoys discussing technological questions such as methods of dating and the technicalities of casting. The two separate introductions could and should have been edited together, but Eyo and Willett seem to prefer to highlight their differences, most of which seem minor when compared to their broad areas of agreement. —Edna Bay Edna Bay is an Africanist historian who works as Assistant Director of Emory University’s Graduate In stitute of the Liberal Arts. Lisette Model, Fashion Show, Hotel Pierre, New York City, gelatin silver print, 40 X 49.5 cm., 1935 (photo: courtesy of the New Orleans Museum of Art). Lisette Model Recollections: Ten Women in Photography New Orleans Museum of Art New Orleans, Louisiana July 1 - August 16 The New Orleans Museum of Art has a well-deserved reputation for initiative in the field of photography. Consequently, it is surprising but not startling that such an unexpected event as a Lisette Model restrospec- tive should be held there in that tropical Sugar Baron vision of neo- classicism, nestled amid the ancient oaks of a city park. It is almost sur prising that it should be held anywhere as Lisette Model is tradi tionally very shy about exhibiting and much prefers to concentrate on her chosen role of teacher. She is a teacher of historical dimensions: her students have included Diane Arbus,
