Result of the research : 'persona'
Throughout
the centuries, African artists have created artworks in various media
that underscore the dynamic quality of Africa's visual traditions.
The categories presented here represent the breadth of the collection
and are intended as a guide. The
NMAfA collection includes tradition-based and contemporary
works of art. Both address important issues of identity, history
and aesthetics, demonstrate dynamism and reflect change as African
artists respond to new ideas, materials and sources of inspiration.
Tradition-based arts
help shape and reflect established formal, functional and aesthetic
canons. These artworks, which are used in everyday and ceremonial
settings, address individual and community needs and serve social,
religious and political ends. Humans and animals, the primary subjects
in African art, depict desirable and undesirable aspects of human
behavior. Deities, ancestors and other spiritual beings that are
portrayed embody the breadth of African religious beliefs and practices. The creators of tradition-based
African art are known and respected members of their communities.
Unfortunately, those who created many of the exquisite works now
found in museum collections remain unknown because their names were
not recorded when the objects were collected many decades ago. In
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At once beautiful, protective, seductive, and dangerous, the water
spirit Mami Wata (Mother Water) is celebrated throughout much of Africa
and the African Atlantic. A rich array of arts surrounds her, as well
as a host of other aquatic spirits--all honoring the essential, sacred
nature of water. Mami Wata is often portrayed as a mermaid, a snake
charmer, or a combination of both. She is widely believed to have
"overseas" origins, and her depictions have been profoundly influenced
by representations of ancient, indigenous African water spirits,
European mermaids, Hindu gods and goddesses, and Christian and Muslim
saints. She is not only sexy, jealous, and beguiling but also exists in
the plural, as the mami watas and papi watas who comprise part of the vast and uncountable "school" of African water spirits.
Mami Wata's presence is pervasive partly because she can bring good
fortune in the form of money. As a "capitalist" deity par excellence,
her persona developed between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries,
the era of growing trade between Africa and the rest of the world. Her
very name, which may be translated as "Mother Water," is pidgin
English, a language developed to facilitate trade. Countless enslaved
Africans forcibly brought to the Americas as part of this "trade"
carried with them their beliefs, practices, and arts honoring water
spirits such as Mami Wata. Reestablished, revisualized, and revitalized
in the African Atlantic, Mami Wata emerged in new communities and under
different guises, among them Lasirèn, Yemanja, Santa Marta la
Dominadora, and Oxum. African--based
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Wassily Kandinsky
Birth name Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky
Born 4 December 1866
Moscow
Died 13 December 1944 (aged 77)
Neuilly-sur-Seine
Nationality Russian
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (Russian: Васи́лий Васи́льевич Канди́нский, Vasilij Vasil'evič Kandinskij; 4 December [O.S. 4 December] 1866 – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter, and art theorist. He is regarded as the founder of abstract art and is, moreover, the chief theoretician of this type of painting.Template:Fact quoted from "Kandinsky" by Burkhard Riemschneider 1994 Benedikt Taschen Verlag GmbH
Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow and chose to study law and economics. Quite successful in his profession—he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat—he started painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.
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Jacques Chirac22nd President of the French Republic5th President of the Fifth RepublicCo-Prince of AndorraIn office17 May 1995 – 16 May 2007Prime Minister Alain JuppéLionel JospinJean-Pierre RaffarinDominique de VillepinPreceded by François MitterrandSucceeded by Nicolas SarkozyMayor of ParisIn office20 March 1977 – 16 May 1995Preceded by Office CreatedSucceeded by Jean Tiberi159th Prime Minister of France10th Prime Minister of Fifth Republic
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African traditional religion
African traditional religions, also referred to as African indigenous religions or African tribal religions, is a term referring to a variety of religions indigenous to the continent of Africa. Like tribal religions from other parts of the world, African religious traditions are defined largely along community lines.
Traditional African religions involve teachings, practices, and rituals that lend structure to indigenous African societies. These traditional African religions also play a large part in the cultural understanding and awareness of the people of their communities.
African Traditional Religion and Language
Most traditional African religions have, for most of their existence, been orally/spiritually (rather than scripturally) transmitted. Thus, linguistic experts such as Christopher Ehret and Placide Tempels have applied their knowledge of languages towards reconstructing the original core beliefs of the followers of these traditions. The four linguistic phylums spoken in Africa are: Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Congo, and Khoi-San.
Afro-Asiatic Spirituality
According to linguist Christopher Ehret, traditional religion among Afro-Asiatic-speaking (Afrasan) peoples was originally henotheistic in nature. In this sense, each clan gave
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Mali EmpireThe Mali Empire or Manding Empire or Manden Kurufa was a West African civilization of the Mandinka from c. 1230 to c. 1600. The empire was founded by Sundiata Keita and became renowned for the wealth of its rulers, especially Mansa Musa I. The Mali Empire had many profound cultural influences on West Africa allowing the spread of its language, laws and customs along the Niger River. The Mali empire extended over an area larger than western Europe and consisted of numerous vassal kingdoms and provinces.Manden1235-1600's. The Mali Empire grew out of an area referred to by its contemporary inhabitants as Manden. Manden, named for its inhabitants the Mandinka (initially Manden’ka with “ka” meaning people of), comprised most of present-day northern Guinea and southern Mali. The empire was originally established as a federation of Mandinka tribes called the Manden Kurufa (literally Manden Federation), but it later became an empire ruling millions of people from nearly every ethnic group in West Africa.EtymologyThe naming origins of the Mali Empire are complex and still debated in scholarly circles around the world. While the meaning of “Mali” is still contested, the process of how it entered the regional lexicon is not. As mentioned earlier, the Mandinka of the Middle Ages referred to their ethnic homeland as “Manden”.
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Claude Lévi-Strauss
20th-century philosophy
Full name Claude Lévi-Strauss
Born 28 November 1908 (1908-11-28) (age 100)
Brussels, Belgium
School/tradition Structuralism
Claude Lévi-Strauss; born 28 November 1908) is a French anthropologist.
Biography
Claude Lévi-Strauss, born in Brussels, grew up in Paris, living in a street of the 16th arrondissement named after the artist Nicolas Poussin, whose work he later admired and wrote about. Lévi-Strauss's father was also a painter, and Claude was born in Brussels because his father had taken a contract to paint there.
At the Sorbonne in Paris, Lévi-Strauss studied law and philosophy. After an epiphany resulting from a late night conversation strolling around the grounds of True's Yard, King's Lynn with renowned cryptozoologist Lewis Daly,he did not pursue his study of law but agrégated in philosophy in 1931. In 1935, after a few years of secondary-school teaching, he took up a last-minute offer to be part of a French cultural mission to Brazil in which he
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Paul Klee
Born 18 December 1879
Münchenbuchsee bei Bern, Switzerland
Died 29 June 1940 (aged 60)
Muralto, Switzerland
Nationality German/Swiss
Training Academy of Fine Arts, Munich
Works more than 10,000 paintings, drawings, and etchings, including The Twittering Machine (1922), Fish Magic (1925), Viaducts Break Ranks (1937).
Paul Klee (18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss painter of German nationality. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually mastered color theory, and wrote extensively about it. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes child-like perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality. He and his friend, the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the German Bauhaus school of art and architecture.
Early life and training
“ First of all, the art of living; then as my
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Georges Braque
Georges Braque (13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art movement known as cubism.
Youth
Georges Braque was born in Argenteuil, Val-d'Oise. He grew up in Le Havre and trained to be a house painter and decorator, as his father and grandfather were, but he also studied painting in the evenings at the École des Beaux-Arts in Le Havre from about 1897 to 1899. He apprenticed in Paris under a decorator and was awarded his certificate in 1902. The following year, he attended the Académie Humbert, also in Paris, and painted there until 1904. It was here that he met Marie Laurencin and Francis Picabia.
Fauvism
His earliest works were impressionistic, but, after seeing the work exhibited by the Fauves in 1905, Braque adopted a Fauvist style. The Fauves, a group that included Henri Matisse and André Derain among others, used brilliant colors and loose structures of forms to capture the most intense emotional response. Braque worked most closely with the artists Raoul Dufy and Othon Friesz, who shared Braque's hometown of Le Havre, to develop a somewhat more subdued Fauvist style. In 1906, Braque traveled with Friesz to L'Estaque, to Antwerp, and home to Le Havre to paint.
In May 1907, he
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André Malraux
André Malraux (3 November 1901 – 23 November 1976) was a French author, adventurer and statesman, and a dominant figure in French politics and culture.
Biography
Malraux was born in Paris in 1901. His parents separated in 1905 and eventually divorced. He was raised by his mother and maternal grandmother, Berthe and Adrienne Lamy. His father, a stockbroker, committed suicide in 1930. Andre had Tourette's Syndrome during his childhood, resulting in motor and vocal tics. This may have contributed to his animated and memorable oratory style later in life.
At the age of 21, Malraux left for Cambodia with his new wife Clara Goldschmidt. In Cambodia, he undertook an exploratory expedition into the Cambodian jungle. On his return he was arrested by French colonial authorities for removing bas-reliefs from one of the temples he discovered. Banteay Srei. The French government itself had removed large numbers of sculptures and artifacts from already discovered sites such as Angkor Wat around this time. Malraux later incorporated the episode into his second novel La Voie Royale.
Malraux became highly critical of the French colonial authorities in Indochina, and in 1925 helped to organize the Young Annam League and founded a newspaper Indochina in Chains.
On his return to France, he published
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Jackson Pollock
Photographer Hans Namuth extensively documented Pollock's unique painting techniques.
Birth name Paul Jackson Pollock
Born January 28, 1912(1912-01-28)
Cody, Wyoming
Died August 11, 1956 (aged 44)
Springs, New York
Nationality American
Field Painter
Training Art Students League of New York
Movement Abstract expressionism
Patrons Peggy Guggenheim
Paul Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956) was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. In October 1945, he married the artist Lee Krasner. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist, but had a volatile personality and struggled with alcoholism all of his life. He died at the age of 44 in an alcohol-related, single-car crash. In December 1956, he was given a memorial
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Maurice de Vlaminck
Maurice de Vlaminck. The River Seine at Chatou, 1906
Born 4 April 1876(1876-04-04)
Paris, France
Died 11 October 1958 (aged 82)
Nationality French
Field Painting
Maurice de Vlaminck (4 April 1876 – 11 October 1958) was a French painter. Along with André Derain and Henri Matisse he is considered one of the principal figures in the Fauve movement, a group of modern artists who from 1904 to 1908 were united in their use of intense color.
Maurice de Vlaminck was born in Paris to a family of musicians. His father taught him to play the violin.He began painting in his late teens. In 1893, he studied with a painter named Henri Rigalon on the Ile de Chatou. In 1894 he married Suzanne Berly. The turning point in his life was a chance meeting on the train to Paris towards the end of his stint in the army. Vlaminck, then 23, met an aspiring artist, André Derain, with whom he struck up a life-long friendship. When Vlaminck completed his army service in 1900, the two rented a studio together for a year before Derain left to do his own military service. In 1902 and 1903 he wrote several mildly pornographic novels illustrated by Derain.He
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Tristan Tzara
Born April 4 or April 16, 1896
Moineşti, Kingdom of Romania
Died December 25, 1963 (aged 67)
Paris, France
Pen name S. Samyro, Tristan, Tristan Ruia, Tristan Ţara, Tr. Tzara
Occupation poet, essayist, journalist, playwright, performance artist, composer, film director, politician, diplomat
Nationality Romanian, French
Writing period 1912–1963
Guillaume Apollinaire, Henri Barzun, Fernand Divoire, Alfred Jarry, Jules Laforgue, Comte de Lautréamont, Maurice Maeterlinck, Adrian Maniu, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Ion Minulescu, Christian Morgenstern, Francis Picabia, Arthur Rimbaud, Urmuz, François Villon, Walt Whitman
Influenced
Louis Aragon, Marcel Avramescu, Samuel Beckett, André Breton, William S. Burroughs, Andrei Codrescu, Jacques G.
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Arman
Armand Pierre Arman
Birth name Armand Pierre Fernandez
Born November 17, 1928(1928-11-17)
Nice, France
Died October 22, 2005 (aged 76)
New York City
Nationality French
Field Sculpture, Painting, Printmaking
Movement Nouveau Réalisme
Influenced by Kurt Schwitters, Vincent van Gogh, Surrealism, Dada, Serge Poliakoff, Nicolas de Stael
Arman (November 17, 1928 – October 22, 2005) was a French-born American artist.Born Armand Pierre Fernandez in Nice, France, Arman is a painter who moved from using the objects as paintbrushes ("allures d'objet") to using them as the painting itself. He is best known for his "accumulations" and destruction/recomposition of objects.
Biography
Arman's father, Antonio Fernandez,
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André Breton
André Breton (February 19, 1896 – September 28, 1966) was a French writer, poet, and surrealist theorist, and is best known as the principal founder of Surrealism. His writings include the Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism".
Biography
Born to a family of modest means in Tinchebray (Orne) in Normandy, he studied medicine and psychiatry. During World War I he worked in a neurological ward in Nantes, where he met the spiritual son of Alfred Jarry, Jacques Vaché, whose anti-social attitude and disdain for established artistic tradition influenced Breton considerably. Vaché committed suicide at age 24 and his war-time letters to Breton and others were published in a volume entitled Lettres de guerre (1919), for which Breton wrote four introductory essays.
From Dada to Surrealism
In 1919 Breton founded the review Littérature with Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault. He also connected with Dadaist Tristan Tzara. In 1924 he was instrumental to the founding of the Bureau of Surrealist Research.
In The Magnetic Fields (Les Champs Magnétiques), a collaboration with Soupault, he put the principle of automatic writing into practice. He published the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924, and was editor of La
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Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso 1962
Birth name Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso
Born 25 October 1881(1881-10-25)
Málaga, Spain
Died 8 April 1973 (aged 91)
Mougins, France
Nationality Spanish
Field Painting, Drawing, Sculpture, Printmaking, Ceramics
Training Jose Ruíz (father), Academy of Arts, Madrid
Movement Cubism
Works Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907)
Guernica (1937) The Weeping Woman (1937)
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. Commonly known simply as Picasso, he is one of the most
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Museo Etnografico Africa-Mozambico
Bari
The artifacts come from the African Mission of Capuchin firars in Mozambique: they include masks, musical instruments, objetcs made of ivory as well as a lot of documents.
Museo Villaggio Africano
Basella di Urgnano
The works exhibited in this museum-village since 1984 come from the collection of a Passionist Missionaries, a religious congregation founded in 1743. Tribal handcraft works are on display in the museum-village but some are also for sale. The profits go to the congregation whicj helps people in Africa. The objects come mainly from Sub-Saharan Africa (Dogon, Baule, Mahongwe).
Museo Civico di Scienze Naturali "Enrico Caffi"
Bergamo
The museum was born in 1917 when the cabinet of curiosities of the Royal Technical Institute was merged with several private collections of the area. After several places, it was finally established in the sumptuous Piazza Cittadella palace in 1960. The ethnographical section just opened: the largest part of the collection was brought back by Costantino Beltrami, who "discovered" the source of the Mississipi River; it includes
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Art
Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music and literature. The meaning of art is explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics.
The definition and evaluation of art has become especially problematic since the early 20th century. Richard Wollheim distinguishes three approaches: the Realist, whereby aesthetic quality is an absolute value independent of any human view; the Objectivist, whereby it is also an absolute value, but is dependent on general human experience; and the Relativist position, whereby it is not an absolute value, but depends on, and varies with, the human experience of different humans. An object may be characterized by the intentions, or lack thereof, of its creator, regardless of its apparent purpose. A cup, which ostensibly can be used as a container, may be considered art if intended solely as an ornament, while a painting may be deemed craft if mass-produced.
Traditionally, the term art was used to refer to any skill or mastery. This conception changed during the Romantic period, when art came to be seen as "a special faculty of the human mind to be classified with religion and science". Generally, art is made with the intention of stimulating thoughts and emotions.
The nature of art has been described by Richard Wollheim as "one of the most elusive of the traditional problems of human culture". It has been defined
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Tribe
A tribe, is a social group of humans connected by a shared system of values and organized for mutual care, defense, and survival beyond that which could be attained by a lone individual or family. A 'tribe' is defined in anthropology. When viewed historically or developmentally, a tribe is a mutual care system which, unlike a kingdom or state or other schema, is oriented around kinship and shared beliefs. Tribes can well exist simultaneously with other schema (see Schema (psychology)) such as states or other systems. They might consist of a social group existing before the development of, or outside of, states. Tribes are the most enduring and successful social survival system that has ever existed on earth. Tribes can exist within or without a state or kingdom and may or may not depend on the state or kingdom to endure.
Many anthropologists use the term to refer to societies organized largely on the basis of kinship, especially corporate descent groups.
Some theorists hold that tribes represent a stage in social evolution intermediate between bands and states. Other theorists argue that tribes developed after, and must be understood in terms of their relationship to states.
Etymology
The English word tribe occurs in 13th century Middle English literature as referring to one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. The word is from Old French tribu, in turn from Latin tribus, referring to the original tripartite ethnic
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