Dr Olaomo

INDIGENEOUS ART AND RELIGION IN AFRICA

ENVIROMENTAL SCULPTURES An Artistas View

Art is for the “artist” his speech, his way of communication and the image, the recognizable shape, the meaningful symbol’ is the basic unit of his language. Line, shape and colours, though they may be beautiful and expensive are by no means images. For us the image is a figured shape or symbol fashioned by the artist for his perceptions and imaginative experience. It is born of past experience and it communicates. It communicates because it has the capacity to refer to experiences that artist shares with his audience. Art is willed, no matter how much the artist may draw upon the instructive and unconscious level of his experiences, a work of art remain a purposive act, a humanization of nature. The artists’ purpose achieves vitality and power in his images. Take the great Blackbull of axcurx for example and old beast and a powerful one who has watched over the birth of many arts and many mythologies. He is endowed with vitality, which is an emblem of life itself. Destroy the living power of the image and you have humbled and humiliated the artist the artist have made him a blind and powerless Samson fit only to guide the town of Palestine. And of the various branches of arts and crafts perhaps by far the greatest and nearest to the African heart is sculpture. This is so because as Luise Jefferson puts it in his “Decorative Arts of Africa”, “African Sculptures saved deeply rooted needs for the African”. These deep-seated needs, we shall try to explore later in this paper.

ARTS AS RELATED TO OTHER FORMS OF LIFE

INDIGENOUS ART OF WEST AFRICA IN WOOD

Art as it has been defined severally,it has many definitions of its own, but in the context of this paper. Art will be defined as a means of self-expression with the medium which one is familiar with. Wood is one of the very important means of artistic representation which the Africans have used and are still making use of in bringing forth and producing artistic works aimed at documenting peoples way of life as well as their religious and socio- cultural values. African wood sculptures are not older than two centuries old because of the susceptible nature of wood to the destructive effect of termites and climate. Wood is the Africans most favourite material or medium for sculpture. Hard, termite-resistant woods are preferred for sculpture, Iroko wood (chlorophora excelsa), Mahogany and Ebony varieties which are suitable for extremely delicate carving. For the large masks lighter woods are chosen, which do not weigh so heavy when worn. The African traditional artist or carver doesn’t just go to the forest to fell trees indiscriminately. If there is any particular tree they are interested in, in the forest, they carry out some sacrifices to find out from the tree itself if it would like to be fell or not. And if any particular tree is to be felled, they carry out some sacrifices before they touch the tree at all. I would like to make the following West African countries as my area of focus in this paper with particular references to their masks, stools and architectural designs. These countries are Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra-Leone and Mali.