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African Aesthetics
ROWLAND ABIODUN
Rowland Abiodun is John C. Newton Professorof Fine Arts and Black Studies at
Amherst College. Recently, he has co-authored Yoruba:Nine Centuries of African Art
and Thought, YorubaArt and Aesthetics, and edited The YorubaArtist: New Theoretical
Perspectiveson African Art. His inaugural William Fagg Memorial Lecture at the Brit-
ish Museum,London,on "WhatFollows Six is More than Seven:UnderstandingAf-
ricanArt,"was publishedin 1995.
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16 Rowland Abiodun
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African Aesthetics 17
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18 Rowland Abiodun
enable the scholar to place his work in the appropriate context. These in-
clude data on the artist's family background, lifestyle, and clients, how
much traveling he did, and the regard for him and his work by those in and
outside his community. Famous Yoruba carvers did much traveling, and
were continually exposed to the work of greater and lesser artists and thereby
influenced by styles beyond their immediate environment. This would be
totally consistent with the Yoruba tradition of asa which enables the artist to
innovate through adaptation of styles while still respecting and preserving
time-honored visions whose vocabulary of representation has been found
supportive of the treasured values of the society.
Closely related to the problem of style and creativity in African art is the
presumed anonymity of African art. The problem of identifying individual
artists among the Yoruba, for example, is still very much with us. This prob-
lem is exacerbated by the fact that many Yoruba artists do not sign their
works in the way artists in other societies have. This, too, has led some
Western art historians to the dubious conclusion that African artists merely
repeat traditional motifs with no personal creativity or innovation.
There is no doubt that establishing the authorship of a work of art, or
associating specific forms with names, is important for the Yoruba. But this
is usually done very discreetly, as in discussions of Yoruba art criticism and
aesthetics which Western scholars once thought never took place. The myth
of anonymity was constructed and reinforced by early Western researchers
who probably believed that the artifacts and the supporting traditional
thought systems belonged to the Africans but that the interpretation and
theorization of African art must always be theirs (that is, the early Western
researchers).
Scholars today, however, are more cautious and are trying to avoid the
same old error: of believing that if artistic procedures in other cultures do
not take the familiar Western form, they must be absent. One reason that
the Yoruba may not publicly or openly associate specific art forms with the
names of their authors is because names given at birth are closely linked to
and identified with the essence of one's personality and destiny (called ori-
inu, inner spiritual head), which in Yoruba religious belief determines a
person's success or failure in this world and directs his or her actions.
Though the act of calling out a person's given names generally functions to
differentiate individuals, in the Yoruba religious thought system it is also
believed to have the ability to arouse or summon to the surface a person's
spiritual essence and cause him or her to act according to the meaning of
those given names or in some other way desired by the caller.
It does not take long for anyone who has lived among the Yoruba to dis-
cover that their naming ceremonies and practices (oriki)are among the most
elaborate and sophisticated known anywhere. It is clear that not only do the
Yoruba possess and practice an effective system of naming everyone in
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African Aesthetics 19
their society, but they go even further to identify them more fully through
their oriki. It is worth noting that while in the Euro-American tradition, a
child may call his parents by their first names, it would be unthinkable for a
Yoruba child to do the same, even after attaining adulthood, despite all the
influences of Western education and culture on the Yoruba society today.
Yoruba children know their parents' given names, but it is considered
disrespectful to address them casually or unceremoniously. This is apart
from the fear that unscrupulous people or one's enemies who hear and
know the name could use it to harm the bearers. There are, of course, ap-
propriate traditional contexts and occasions during which one's full given
names may be heard, but then adequate countermeasures are taken in ad-
vance to foil any machinations of evildoers. These instances include child-
naming, installation, and burial ceremonies, blessing and healing rituals,
and important family gatherings.
By reason of their profession and position in the traditional community,
artists were especially vulnerable and became easy targets for unknown
malevolent forces. Thus, artists rarely revealed their full given names to
strangers until relatively recent times. It is, therefore, not surprising that
many great Yoruba artists whose works have been collected and studied by
researchers have been identified in scholarly literature only by nicknames
or by-names, as, for example, Ol6we Ise (meaning Olo6w from the town of
Ise), O16gan Uselu (Ologan from Uselu quarters in Owo), and Baba R6ti
(father of R6timi).
Early researchers were clearly ill equipped in their training to grapple
with the problems of naming traditions outside their own social customs.
This initial lack of understanding may have led them to assume that the au-
thorship of an artwork was unimportant among the Yoruba. Moreover, the
biases of these early researchers must have prevented them from carrying
out any diligent probing of artists' full given names despite the fact, ironi-
cally, that such information was highly valued in Western art history. We
will surely need to collaborate with colleagues in the fields of African lan-
guages and literatures and modify our research techniques to make room
for the valuable data that oriki can provide in our efforts to discover Yoruba
artists' identities. Indeed, any serious attempt at art-historical studies in a
nonliterate society like the Yoruba can no longer ignore the place of their
rich oral traditions.
The field owes William Fagg a debt of gratitude for his pioneering work
in this regard.2 He was one of the first researchers to seek out conscien-
tiously and interview the so-called "anonymous" artists among the Yoruba.
His documentation of the lives and works of well-known Yoruba artists is a
rich legacy which the present generation of Yoruba art scholars highly
value. What role can familiarity with Yoruba orature play in this exercise?
Yoruba orature consists mainly of Ifa divination verses, chants, incantations,
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20 Rowland Abiodun
and songs. Examining these in their ritual contexts can reveal forgotten
meanings that would be hard or even impossible to obtain from archival
sources and most informants.
Closely related to ash as style is ase, meaning ritual power or life force,
which manifests itself in an aesthetics context as a forceful, exuberant, and
expansive style. In African-American culture ase is more implicit than
explicit. Palpably felt in churches, the "spirit," "holy ghost," or simply
"power" embodies an essentially ase-type phenomenon. Quite often a church
minister or person who manifests this spirit or power is highly regarded in
the community and seen as one with leadership potential. In more secular
contexts, in literary and oral traditions such as "signifying," "playing the
dozen," "reading," "toasts," "loud-talking," "dissin,"' "snapping," and "rap,"
there are reverberations of the structure and affective aspects of ase in vary-
ing degrees. Indeed, we must acknowledge ase as the most important
religio-aesthetic phenomenon to survive transatlantic slavery almost intact.
Yoruba artistic criticism emanates from the highest level of aesthetic con-
sciousness. Not everyone can be an art critic or amewi, "expert on beauty."
This is something that requires a significant and conscious effort to acquire.
The market woman, the festival participant, the art user, or even the artist
will not necessarily be an art critic, even though each may have acquired
some rudimentary appreciation of the Yoruba concept of beauty through a
random or accidental encounter with art. To say this is not to deny, of
course, that their comments can be interesting, intelligent, and even insightful.
Although there is no formal training for critics per se, from field experi-
ence I am led to believe that most accomplished critics acquire their experi-
ence and expertise by bd iwon agba rin, "walking with the elders," while
pursuing another primary interest or duty. "Walking with elders" means
taking an interest in traditional procedures and studying them. This kind of
exposure usually starts at an early age through regular attendance at artistic
performances, assisting with artistic processes and presentations, and lis-
tening to the comments of elders on the finished artistic works in operative
contexts. I discovered that a good number of these elder-critics are Ifa divi-
nation priests who, by virtue of their profession, take part in traditional
community rituals and festivals and have at their disposal a profound
knowledge of the complete cultural background.
It is a consequence of their position and training that the critics are gen-
erally reserved and are unlikely to volunteer information spontaneously in
public, especially when the artist or his relatives are nearby. For one to
qualify to "walk with the elders," one must possess and demonstrate these
qualities: ifarabal?(calmness and control), iluti (teachableness and compre-
hensibility), imojui-mora(sensitivity), and tftd (enduring, lasting, and stead-
fast). Other qualities, like ojiu-inui(insightfulness) and ojti-ona (design con-
sciousness and originality), are developed through training. These qualities
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African Aesthetics 21
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22 Rowland Abiodun
Control, stability, and composure under the African rubric of the cool
seem to constitute elements of an all-embracing aesthetic atti-
tude....Manifest within this philosophy of the cool is the belief that the
purer, the cooler a person becomes, the more ancestral he becomes. In
other words, mastery of self enables a person to transcend time and
elude preoccupation....Men and women have the responsibility to
meet the special challenge of their lives with the reserve and beauty
of mind characteristic of the finest chiefs and kings....To act in foolish
anger or petty selfishness is to depart from this original gift of
interiorized nobility and conscience.
By this kind of aesthetic consciousness both the Creator and his creation
are benefited. Because of this Yoruba belief, it is expected that the iwa of an
artist will not only show through his work but will influence his execution
of it. Thus, an artist who is impatient is not likely to convey the theme of his
subject effectively or execute a technically accomplished work. It is impor-
tant, therefore, that the artist possess the attributes of iwapble(the foremost
iwa) in addition to his own iwa. With the attributes of iwaple , the artist can
demonstrate qualities such as "poise," avoidance of "brute force," "composed
gait," "grace," "thoroughness," "calmness" "calculated patience," "insight,"
"endurance," and "fulfillment" through artistic expression in his work. A
critic's familiarity with these and other components of iwapele are basic to
his ability to recognize ewa (beauty) in Yoruba art.
In summary, I have examined the key aesthetic and art critical concepts
and the important interdependence of the verbal and visual arts in Yoruba
culture. Indeed, the basic functions and structures of these verbal and vi-
sual art forms are similar, even though their modes and manifestations may
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African Aesthetics 23
be different. It should also be clear from the above how familiarity with
Yoruba oral traditions will enhance our present understanding of Yoruba
art immensely, as well as the visual arts, informing our perceptions of oral
traditions. With the progress made so far in Yoruba studies, and the
thought-provoking research going on today, the time has now come to start
asking questions about the nature and concept of art in Yoruba culture.
Such questions are as important as those relating to art history, style, and
iconography which have been addressed in this essay. Whichever method
we adopt in answering these questions, the theoretical contributions of
Yoruba culture itself can no longer be underestimated; it must play a very
important role. The least we can do is to abide by the universally respected
legal principle of "audi alterampartem"(hear the other side).
NOTES
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