Page 62 - Studio International - July 1966

recapture the past... Seize all that was Africa, but in
doing so remember that you are in a state of metamor-
phosis...'
This metamorphosis is also to be found in the eye of the
beholder. Africans no longer approach their art in quite
the same way; to some extent in fact, they are discovering
it. One notices this when visiting villages deep in the
forest. Here and there embryonic museums are being
set up where local people indiscriminately pile up a
seventeenth-century rhinoceros-hide shield, a few pots
and baskets, one or two old statues, some contemporary
child art. They have come to understand that a work of
art is not a medium between man and the spirits, but is
simply art, a secular object whose place is not in the
witch-doctor's hut but in the museum showcase.
These were the concepts discussed by the intellectuals at
Dakar. Many advised a return to the past. The ethnolo-
gist Roger Bastide stated, for example: 'The only art
instruction I would welcome in Africa would be a delving
into the wisdom of our elders and the spirit of Africa.'
And Ben Enwonwu called for 'the creation of an inde-
pendent art in the independent countries of Africa'. Some
went even further, seriously declaring like André Terrisse :
`Without doubt the answers to the absorbing problems of
modern art will be found in the heart of Africa, in the
sculptor's gesture and the symbolism of our masks.' He
was indulging a tendency among certain African intel-
lectuals to attribute the whole development of modern
European art to the impact of Negro art, citing Picasso in
his Demoiselles d'Avignon as a clever plagiarist. It would
have been a waste of breath to explain that what hap-
pened was a happy confluence of ideas and experience,
and that although Picasso, Derain, and Matisse recog-
nized the importance of Negro art (and incidentally
attracted an audience to it as an art form), nevertheless
western painting after Cézanne would in any case have
reached the same plastic solutions as those prevalent
among the Dogons and the Urhobos.
Furthermore the festival organizers decided to distri-
bute a number of prizes (for literature, sculpture, paint-
ing, music, architecture, and so on) exclusively to Negro
artists both African and American. As a step to encourage
young and unknown artists, this was understandable; but
mance Forests to the Ivory Coast, are all indicative of the in fact it was not only arbitrary, but ran the risk of making
growing pressure of those international salesmen who, rather unsavoury calculations. Who actually is a Negro?
for better or worse, are determined to transform these One would have thought that a number of Cubans would
poor people into potential consumers. have qualified and yet they were not invited. And how
Here, where good and bad rub shoulders, where the many Venezuelans, Brazilians and people of mixed
gifts of technology are tied to market materialism, in this blood from a whole number of countries—including out-
melting pot where the most diverse cultures are in daily standing artists—were not invited to Dakar, perhaps be-
conflict, any isolationist conception of art is unreal. Thus cause they were too light skinned ? Yet they are certainly
the idea of négritude-speciflcally African culture—is no as dark as Duke Ellington who, with a few other Ameri-
more than a pious desire, a comforting lie. Sartre can artists, was invited. One can see the danger of such
recognized this when he showed, in his Orphée Noir, the comparisons. Racism is not far off. Nor is confusion.
danger of being blinded by negritude. He considered it The exhibition of current works of Negro artists organ-
no more than a weak moment in a dialectic progression, ized alongside the classical exhibition at the Dakar festival
a negative interlude before the coming synthesis—'the did not escape this confusion. There were two main ten-
fulfilment of human potential in a raceless society'. This dencies: the first, principally among sculptors, to go back
was also the line taken by Malraux at Dakar, not without to the origins of African art, consisted of no more than
raising some hackles: 'The men who once made masks, second-rate copies, neo-archaic pastiches of the great
like those who once built cathedrals, have vanished for- religious statuary of the past, here and there combined
ever... It is useless to think that we, even Africans, can with allusions to such European artists as Bourdelle and