Traditional African Art: Ritual, energy, concept 
The Introduction to a lecture presented at The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
May 22, 2013

Traditional African art encompasses works created throughout a huge territory south of the Sahara… by hundreds of tribes. In the space of this lecture, I should propose, not to classify these works so much as to suggest ways of approaching them,   of understanding their meaning. When you see a sculpture, a mask, an assemblage, I am providing you conceptual tools to approach these works.

An understanding of the ritual African object sharpens our understanding of what is art – in general.   Why?

Because this object concentrates a tremendous power of observation,     a lightening-like understanding of the character of people,   of the essence of what the object describes: the African art object goes from solemn to ceremonious,   to humorous or satirical, to frightening and even to the macabre, with a full range of transitions, and this helps us to understand humanity in a very general sense. This work is a shortcut to essences.

The ritual role of the African art work appears as essential. This object, in its traditional role, was always used in a kind of sacred ceremony – we remember Mircea Eliade’s assessment of the ubiquitous role of the sacred in traditional society. Hence, we are talking about the passage rites of the members of an ethnic group – such as university entrance exams in our society, or sports contests – there, there are dances in general with masks. Sculptures are invested with sacred energy. Then these objects are thrown away in the forest, maybe.

It is noteworthy how the esthetics of this object has attracted modernist painters and we still find these objects attractive – which implies esthetic affinities between cultures. Symmetry, movement, expressiveness, polish, texture… and so on, both African and us are fascinated by such qualities.

This object concentrates and conveys psychic energies.

At the same time, it may represent a symbol or a concept – an abstraction based on objects or situations.

Sometimes we may make the following distinction: between an object called authentic – that has been used in a ceremony – and an original object, an object that hasn’t been used. Some dealers dwell on this distinction.

I have entitled this talk RITUAL, ENERGY, CONCEPT, in order to underline certain qualities contained in a traditional African art object …in a way a generic object … well, ok we are in the realm of art and generalisations may have a limited reach. Anyways, the field is extensive, as we shall find out…

Ritual – we have masks, fetishes, we mean the attribution of mystical and religious qualities to inanimate objects. We are speaking about rituals, in a very wide-ranging sense. Rites of passage from childhood to adolescence, introduction into secret societies… widespread in West Africa… ceremonies to fertilize the Earth, healings, calls upon the soul of a deceased person to protect, to advise … masks are worn, costumes: one does bring out an object from a wooden chest: a FETISH… charged with unique energy to help our aims… or maybe to induce a hex, a curse….

Often, after the ceremonial, the object – what a waste! – is thrown away in nature. Because, once the function of the object has been performed, the masks and sculptures may lose their peculiar energy. You should know that philosophically African favour the present. Thus the design to collect may simply have been absent.

Energy   We can’t understand African art if we omit the concept of energy. This is not as strange as it may appear, because a Rothko, a Picasso, have their very real energy. I am not sure it can at this stage be measured by instruments.

A Russian orthodox icon or another type of icon, do also have a holy sort of halo, helping to protect or to give aid. The statue, the fetish, the African mask are implicitly charged with specific energy, a power…

Consider European sorcery which was, or is similarly charged with specific energy… or consider alchemy- which is supposed to have come to an end at the beginning of the eighteenth century…

Well, such exercises used objects, formulae, rituals meant to conjure up efficient energies.

Yet, I deign to refer to Christian objects – say the cross, the wafer – which I think are also invested with specific energy. I think that all forms of spirituality handle psychic energies.

Hence, the African art object is first and foremost used in proportion to its specific energy, a situation well-known in other civilizations… In Africa, this quality is maybe more evident, sometimes beyond dispute, yet akin to, closely connected to objects produced elsewhere. As we are looking at pictures, the omnipresence of this energy will be noted in a very, very concrete sense.

It seems to me that in animist African religions, the world is seen as a place for a vast traffic of energy moved by spirits. Guardian gods, supernatural powers usually have more energy than the living…

Painted white and scarified, Idoma masks of Nigeria seem to speak to energized spirits of the beyond… He who dons this mask – and his community – may share this energy of the ancestors.

Concept

The African artist is rather anonymous, he may have a trade other than that of artist. He follows tribal rules that distinguish his work from that of other tribes. Of course, styles may influence each other… There are hundreds of tribes, hundreds of artistic styles in Africa.  Again, I stress that the artist produces an object with a specific purpose. I mean a set of specific signs related to the object. I choose to bring together these common characteristics under the name of concept. These concepts constitute limits, borderlines which define the object with respect to those of other tribes. The concept which characterizes the object also determines its use. It has a generic quality.

On the other hand, the artist has his own gestural quality, which distinguishes the work with respect to other works of its category, works made by other artists.

What I cherish, is the dialogue between the tribal concept, a compulsory form as it were, and the individual gesture which gives the object force, uniqueness, value.

The individual gesture, the creative process, the individual process of production.

It is through this gesture that the artist picks up and charges the object with psychic energies.

The African artist works without blueprint. He must visualize from the beginning of his work, the completed work and keep it in mind. The concept in all of its complexity is kept in mind. It is the gestural quality of the work that gives this work its specific forcefulness. For me, the creative sharpness of the traditional African artist owes a lot to the fact that the concept of the work and the gesture of carving wood, of assembling are braided together in the work, as it were….

The sculpture does not want his work to resemble a photograph. In that the African is a trailblazer of modernism. A researcher, Fisher, notices that among the Dan tribes of North-East Liberia a sculpture picks his daughter as model for a spoon.

A fellow artist criticizes the work, thus: “This is not a sculpture, this is a photograph”. Just as in modern art, the work ought to be independent of the model, ought to possess its personality and energy.

The artist may exercise priestly functions, be a trained seer or diviner, or have another trade. But as an artist, almost without exception, he is trained in the workshop of an already established artist.

In the course of this presentation, we shall become acquainted with an analogical, with an animist way of thinking very different from our analytic own, but with a deep connection with the symbolic thought of our European past.

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Picasso, Braque and Vlaminck, the seminal modernists, had great enthusiasm for African art that profoundly influenced cubism, yet the local context of African art was of less interest to them than esthetic utility of this art for them as artists. In 1985, the New York Museum of Modern Art organized an exhibition entitled Primitive Influences in 20^th Century Art, accompanied by a superb catalogue that traces the influences of African, Oceanian and Inuit art on the work of great artists of the first half of the twentieth century.