The creativity of the African people is extraordinarily vigorous and brilliant in its sense of form and intense emotional life. In contrast to Western creativity, African creativity is almost never meant to beautify and decorate. It is intended for tribal worship, rituals, magic and communication with the supernatural. Nevertheless, the forces of these societal needs created works of great artistic skill, stylistic diversity and expressive qualities. The African collection at MOAS was initiated between 1979 and 1985 through generous philanthropic donations from the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) of Los Angeles, CA and has grown over the years with additional gifts and acquisitions. The most recent installation features carefully selected artifacts from the permanent collection to represent and illustrate the many regions and secular notions in African tribal culture.
This Gallery has recently been reinstalled with some exquisite pieces. These African tribal objects, are part of a significantly larger number gathered and donated to the museum during the 1980’s. In their historic homeland, in isolated and highly organized communities these items originally played vital roles in daily events; for example in ceremonies for celebration, initiation from childhood into adulthood, preparation for war or harvesting. The establishment of this seminal collection came at a time of intense growth at the museum and is considered one of the most exciting and exotic groupings within the collection as a whole.
Africa was once the site of one of the world’s greatest ancient civilizations: Egypt, its name derived from the word Kemet, meaning ‘black soil’-the black soil of the flooded valley of the Nile. Coinciding with the rise of Egyptian power, the Sahara desert evolved from the lush grasslands of northern Africa, to be followed by the growth of many complex societies. All have left remarkable races of technical achievement and creativity.
Arab conquests of North Africa in the 7th and 8th centuries introduced the voice of Islam, and from Islamic writings we learn of the powerful early West African empires of Ghana and Mali which accumulated great wealth through control of the lucrative trans-Sahara gold trade. In the 15th century Portuguese explorers discovered the southeastern kingdom of Benin where the techniques of bronze casting had reached great heights, with artists working directly for the court creating cast bronze portrait heads of astonishing beauty.
The sculptures emphasize the human figure and their mythical functions. The creator of each piece was known as the artist. Unlike artists of the western world expressing ever-changing viewpoints, African art has an almost static quality; to change a traditional sculptural format implies mistake. Power and magic made the sculptures come alive.
By and throughout the 19th century, missionaries and explorers of Africa’s vast and still-unmapped interior resulted in a burgeoning interest in the daily lives and customs of its many differing and isolated tribal communities and the expressive creativity of the tribal sculptures discovered there. Over time, these found their way to Europe’s collectors and galleries. Directly as a result of the French colonization of North Africa important ethnographic exhibits of African sculptures were installed at the Parisian ExpositionsUniverselles, where elaborately decorated individual buildings showcased arts from around the world.
Parisian Expos were staged in the years 1889, 1900 and 1907, by which time Picasso had both examined and been overwhelmed by African displays filled with stylized power, seeing before him a dazzling new way of expressing the human form: through geometric abstraction. In an early French film he recalls the frequency and length of his visits… “I stayed, oh I stayed.” He had discovered that a woman could look like a woman yet not be proportionally exact, and a man or animal be exaggerated and simplified in both body and expression yet be totally recognizable.