For a long time, African art has spread around the world. Most movements in both Europe and America were highly influenced by African art in the nineteenth century. African art primarily focuses on central and west African cultures in which people settled together as communities. The art was composed of statues, paintings, textiles as well as masks. Africans made use of the locally available such as feathers, clay, shell, wood, ivory, and bark (Tarver, & Barnes, 2006). However, these items had a relationship either with religion or traditions. They bridged the gap between supernatural and existing elements. Art patterns were mainly repetitive, that involved bright colours and exaggerated figures. Objects made were symbolic of other beings merged in one weighty figure. The various elements of African art were employed in America to articulate revolutions. In addition, African artists played a key role in stirring public reaction, awe and fear among Europeans as they viewed them as horrific and erotic objects. The paper is a presentation of how African art has influenced European and American art up to date.
Since the colonisation of Africa in the nineteenth century, Europeans controlled both political and economic resources. As such, they captured lands, which led to them collecting valuable objects that they took back to their continents (Tarver, & Barnes, 2006). At this time, scientific institutions, and museums had African artefacts which the Europeans perceived as of less civilization. Europeans then had not appreciated the beauty and value expressed by these objects as they did not understand their meaning.
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During the colonial era, schools were put up to provide art training specifically. Most of these schools were an idea of the Europeans that were aimed at promoting African art. Among these schools, was Congolese academy des Arts. The program in these schools was similar to those of art schools in Europe. African art was initiated by native Africans within the respective countries. In the mid-twentieth century, the number of African artists increased whereby most of them engaged in ways of improving nationalism by way of pictorial illustration (Pyne, 2010). Therefore, African artists emerged from distinct forms of art training and involvement in both local and worldwide programs. Recently, modern day artists of African descent have begun to gain recognition internationally. African artists that are self-taught as well as those academically trained have worked, lived or studied in either Europe or the United States of America. The modern-day ceramic vessels created in England are artistic, and they symbolise different sources of traditional African objects. These works depict different realities of artistic creations that are gaining a global increase.
With time, Africans’ statues and masks were used in Paris by organisers of the universal exhibition. These statues were intended to stir horrific reactions but resulted out in increasing the number of artists who were captivated by the paintings. For that reason, the norms that were attached to these paintings began fading away as they were used to instil inspiration to people in Paris. By the year 1905, many artists in Germany and Paris started embracing African art in their works.
During this period, various artists in the West desired different approaches to art. For that reason, there emerged Cubism and Fauvism movements. When America opened doors for the exposition of African works, the gesture prompted adventure of experimenting the art. The adventure was made possible by the Armory show as it resulted in the creation of market and taste of African art in New York City. The show is remembered for introducing modern art to America (Picton, 2013).
A collection of African art was transferred to Europe in a bid to embrace the art of bold colours. In his study of human psychology through artwork, Emil Nolde from Germany revealed that ideas are not passed across through fetching information from the providence of nature. Africans in Germany was heavily influenced by African art more so, sculpture as well as masks. The sculpture speeded up the rate of the innovations of modernists artists. Western artists looked up to the culture of Africans for its close conceptualisation of the basic human form. Even though they did not comprehend the underlying meaning conveyed by these pieces of art, they felt the need to take it up.
Between 1914 and 1932, artists in America, began upholding African sculptures of wood and incorporated them into the category of art objects and not ethnographic artefacts. Ms Biro included more masks, sculptures as well as objects of decoration collected from central and West Africa. These objects included paintings once showcased by artists like Francis Picabia, and Diego Rivera as well photographs by Alfred Stieglitz and Charles Sheeler.
In the year 1914, the world’s first African art objects were showcased at the gallery of Stieglitz, a tastemaker on the fifth avenue. The show encompassed works obtained from holdings of Paul Guillaume, a French dealer of art. Many masks were obtained from French colonies in Africa, particularly Ivory Coast and Gabon. Europeans admired these sculptures as they had glossy surfaces, prolonged features, and well-shaped forms, giving them a beautiful outlook. Again, Stieglitz demonstrated another form of African art in the twentieth century in the form of a photograph. In the picture, his partner is seen holding an ivory coast spoon which appears attractive. However, African art gained broad interpretation as soon as it landed in the West. They perceived African works as an opportunity to access foreign objects, while others liked them for their aesthetic traits.
African art was highly promoted in New York city by Marius de Zayas, who was fascinated by the relationship it had to cubism. He pleaded with Stieglitz to post the survey of African art as such desires opened up a gallery of his own where he put up the gatherings of works of a major supporter of the Armory show. De Zayas, showcased paintings of Pablo Picasso and Negro sculpture (Picasso, 2017). The works collected were photographed together with other objects that caught the attention of de Zayas. Sculptures belonging to Quinn together with assembled Africa art collection were incorporated in the collections. In the year 1924, the popularity of African works slightly declined until Ms Biro came to track it down through extensive research.
Europeans’ curiosity, led their exploring group to collect souvenirs from their trips to the African continent. The objects collected were included in the natural history of museums together with fossil fuels as well as the remnants of ancient Flora and fauna (Museum, 2011). Fauna, Flora and remains of fossil fuels are utilitarian objects which ought not to be included with the art. Therefore, considering human-made objects as remnants of culture is utterly inappropriate. The widespread perception of African people as an uncivilized and less human was justified in racial ranks. For that reason, categorisation, of African art and remains of culture was covered under the framework of social Darwinism (Hofstadter, 2016). The theory held the view that human beings struggle to exist and only the fittest survive.
African art has revealed Kuba cloths being showcased in Paris. These were handcrafted clothes in the nineteenth century whose fabric was obtained from the Democratic of Congo. The fabric was initially woven from palm fibres with the larger ones making festive attires in funerals. Matisse drew inspiration from the colours which patterned the fabric. As such, the fabric served an inspiration and aesthetic purpose, according to Matisse (Rabinow, & Aagesen, 2012). He, therefore, stared at them and awaited a new idea to come across his mind. Wifredo Lam was an Afro-Cuban artist who incorporated African styles of presenting figures as well as their sources of religion. Several advocators of post-war-like David Smith collected African art objects during the progression of the conceptual styles.
Moreover, there is increased globalisation of African art, such as photography and sculpture. The post-colonial era has widely influenced the processes and aesthetics that entrenched in African artistic practices. For that reason, it is unlikely to distinguish between African art and Western art. Again, African art had a worldview of primitivity, but this is an allegation of the past (Tarver, & Barnes, 2006). In a bid to understand the whole range of the beauty founded on modern-day art, investigations of how Africa impacts contemporary art is a relevant discussion up-to-date.
The aftermath of colonisation and exploration of Europeans in Africa involved the collection of sculptures in Africa. These sculptures were placed in museums of Paris, London, Berlin, and the Munich where they were treated as artefacts of African culture (Museum, 2011). For that reason, they did not attract high economic value as they were showcased in windows of pawnshop and flea markets. Artworks from Oceania and America drew attention more so in the 1930s (Pyne, 2010). There was a movement advocating for non-western art. The most influential individuals in this movement focused on the sculpture that would be obtained from sub-Sahara Africa. The sophisticated nature of African culture attracted modernists artists in terms of its approach to the conceptualization of the human figure. The sculpture demonstrated the existing integration of different forms which had been created centuries ago as African art before the colonisation of Africa by the Europeans.
All in all, incorporation of African art in western countries, has had a widespread significance in the way it is viewed in Western museums. Due to this, there has been an improvement of modern art in Europe and the United States of America. Even though objects of art from Africa were taken to Europe in the early fifteenth century, a greater knowledge of the art was developed later during the colonisation of Africa. Before colonisation, African art was viewed as an ordinary antique. The cultural, artistic qualities behind the art had not yet been discovered until nineteenth when Europe created an avenue in which African artefacts acquired admiration. African art was brought to prominence in the western world by the increased interest of artists and their patrons. The growing adoption of African art showcased beauty preferences in the improvement of the differences between artefacts and art. Figurative statues and masks were mostly found in central Africa which developed the legacy of the western and central African preference.
References
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Picton, J. (2013). Modernism and Modernity in African Art. A Companion to Modern African Art , 311-329. doi:10.1002/9781118515105.ch16
Pyne, K. (2010). Art and the Higher Life: Painting and Evolutionary Thought in Late Nineteenth-Century America . Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Rabinow, R. A., & Aagesen, D. (2012). Matisse: In Search of True Painting . New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Tarver, A., & Barnes, P. C., (2006). New Voices on the Harlem Renaissance: Essays on Race, Gender, and Literary Discourse . Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
