GALERIE ART PREMIER AFRICAIN GALERIE ART PRIMITIF AFRICAIN AFRICAN ART GALLERY

The Authenticity of African Sculptures

by Henri Kamer

The issue of authenticity of African art has been central to collectors for decades.  Henri Kamer, who was president of the International Arts Experts Association at the time, published an outstanding account of the state of the matter in Artes d'Afrique Noire, No. 12 (1974).  The text  that follows is extracted from an English translation of that article, and has been edited further.  The original includes a number of illustrations.  They are not included here because I believe the text suffices without them. 

The original version, including the illustrations, in French and with the English translation, is 

STRENGTH AND MEASUREMENT

The discovery of "primitive art": an art of strength
Shapes and shape functions
Deities and ancestors
The living wood

Force and Measurement

Develop an aesthetic of black Africa is seen as a risky business in many ways. Is it legitimate to isolate these objects, that today we call art, the general framework of their relations and their cultural constraints? Can we submit to a test that has never existed in the minds of their creators? And can we finally see in this art - if we 'take on this term - a uniform phenomenon, despite the wide variety of both regional and local styles we offer this huge continent, following lengthy Historical developments often poorly understood? Finally, remember that this approach excludes large regions, including Africa white, that is to say the Mediterranean area with its ancient history, the eastern and southern Africa whose pastoral peoples have given rise to cultures almost without images, and finally these hunting societies, which, even in our time have not passed the stage of evolution of prehistoric rock paintings which are the main evidence of an artistic production that appears at various points the continent. Similarly, we must exclude from our contribution to the aesthetics of black African art the old feudal societies, including Benin. Our discussion is therefore limited to large areas farmers, the true cradle of

THE WAY OF THE AFRICAN RENAISSANCE

Text from the "diplomatic world" in October 1998

In economic terms, Africa figure of poor and marginalized continent. Since the end of the Cold War, it appears as an area that declassified no longer a geopolitical and diplomatic challenge for the major powers. Outside of emergencies that require humanitarian intervention, nobody is really interested in the fate of 700 million men and women who live in this part of the world. "Bankruptcy of development"? "Retard"? Or, rather, strength of African societies, refusing to be trapped neoliberal, and the emergence of alternatives to the Western model of development?


Few studies of the continent really leave room for hope: it keeps repeating that it "Africa sinks" and becomes "a repository of humanity's ills." The image of a "continent wrecked," repeated ad nauseam, seems to summarize all the perceptions of Africa that tend to be synonymous with poverty, corruption and fraud would be the home of violence, conflict and genocide. Images are projected onto Apocalypse "an impoverished Africa in the spiral of conflict." In the late twentieth century, "no continent offers such a spectacle of desolation, war and famine as Africa. (...) Slowly, the place is going to drift. "

The paradigm of "bankruptcy" is the same analytical framework of economic and social

Tangle of ropes, accumulation of disparate elements, small heaps unspeakable, are the objects of divination in Africa in this book. These figures of the formless, sometimes perceived as loathsome and strange, are much more familiar we suppose at first, and do not speak of anything but life and countless son's existence, which continue to establish and discard. It is not that of any tribute to Africa and mysterious fetish, but to honor human creativity and variety of forms it knows borrow.

Exposure. Musée du Quai Branly (2009) Recipes of the Gods: the fetish aesthetic Actes Sud € 19.90
Group under the leadership of Jacques Kerchache African Art & Citadels Mazenod € 199.00
Faik-Nzuji, Clementine M. African Arts: signs and symbols boeck From € 42.00
Collective Imprints of Africa: African Art, Modern Art Workshop € 9.91
Basson, Mbog Aesthetics of African Art: The Symbolic and complexity Harmattan € 21.00
Diagne, Souleymane Bachir Leopold Sedar Senghor, African art as philosophy: an essay Riveneuve € 15.00
Exposure. Afrikamuseum (2007-2008) Ubangi, art and culture in the heart of South Africa Acts € 99.95
Alain Lecomte art, magic and medicine in Black Africa Gallery Alain Lecomte € 35.00
Exposure. Dapper Foundation (2007-2008) Musée Dapper Pet € 45.00
Exposure.

Black African Literature
Modern literature of Black Africa lies at the confluence of various trends: its
own traditions and diverse, the impact of Islamic and Arab worlds;
the pervasive influence of European colonialism and Christianity. Africans
have been particularly prolific since the Second World War;
using French, English, Portuguese and more than forty African languages, they
made up of poetry, fiction, drama, and invented forms of writing
for which there is no description in the European literary world. Their
works portray the modern political and social reality, and focus on
value systems, whether or not African. At the same time, their writings
are based on indigenous traditions and world views typically
Africa.
Long before Europeans arrived, even before the development of writing,
peoples of sub-Saharan Africa have expressed their thoughts in an artistic manner,
their feelings and concerns the deepest in the form of myths,
legends, allegories, parables and stories, songs and chants from
poems, proverbs, riddles and theater. Some traditional forms of
oral literature have survived until today, while new forms do
cease to

Africa since 1935

Research Director
Professor A. A. Mazrui (Kenya)

Co-Director
C. Wondji (Ivory Coast)

Arts and society since 1935
J. VANSINA

Across Africa today the arts give the show an amazing cauldron of creativity emerged with a dizzying diversity of all layers of society. Many new artistic trends date from the second half of the colonial period. Besides, some pioneers are still working today. After all, it is past two generations since 1935. But in that short time, the artistic activity was a richness and diversity as this chapter may at most trace the main lines of its evolution (1).

Initially, we must enumerate a few general features of social and cultural matrix that is all. These are: the growing impact but unevenly distributed in Europe, the growth of cities, social stratification more trenches that lead to the formation of new classes, the industrial division of time has reached the beaches of leisure may be devoted to the practice and enjoyment of the arts, the prestige associated with the technical and technical training, changing the place and role of the artist in society, past status of artisan to that of cultural soothsayer The change in attitude toward art and their use, alteration of values in general and more specifically the changing religious values. The multiplication of objects of artistic production offers new opportunities, these are just

Africa under colonial rule, 1880-1935

Research Director
Professor A. A. Boahen (Ghana)

In February 1976, in Nigeria, a man was arrested at a police checkpoint between Ibadan and Lagos. He was carrying two bags full of bronze sculptures and wood on suspicion of having stolen it affirmât well as the owner. Upon inquiry, the man telling the truth. Recently converted to Islam, he lived and worked in Ibadan at a community center. The effigies of deities carved Yoruba he was carrying had been brought in Ibadan, like many others, by migrant workers to satisfy the spiritual aspirations of these artisans, shopkeepers, civil servants and other migrant workers in their temporary residence. But the leader of the community, having converted to Islam, began in turn to convert their neighbors. Converted in his turn, the suspect heard himself served as symbols of their ancient faith were to disappear to allow the community center to become a dwelling worthy of the spiritual presence of Allah. Unable to consider destroying these objects, he resolved to return to his village, place of origin, where they have since been resettled.

This incident is a perfect example of the evolution of cultural forms and their concrete manifestation and at the same time, the survival or the renewal of cultural values from specific forms of domination, whether of a religious or more clearly social. What remained true in 1976 was even more common during this period particularly dramatic external domination of Africa, which saw the submission of an entire people, its social