African Art and Agency in the Workshop

Description

The economic, social, and cultural worlds of artists and objects

The role of the workshop in the creation of African art is the subject of this revelatory book. In the group setting of the workshop, innovation and imitation collide, artists share ideas and techniques, and creative expression flourishes. African Art and Agency in the Workshop examines the variety of workshops, from those which are politically driven or tourist oriented, to those based on historical patronage or allied to current artistic trends. Fifteen lively essays explore the impact of the workshop on the production of artists such as Zimbabwean stone sculptors, master potters from Cameroon, wood carvers from Nigeria, and others from across the continent.

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Rethinking the Workshop \ Till Förster and Sidney Littlefield Kasfir
The Contributions to This Book \ Sidney Littlefield Kasfir and Till Förster
Part 1. Production, Education, and Learning
1. Grace Dieu Mission in South Africa: Defining the Modern Art Workshop in Africa \ Elizabeth Morton
2. Follow the Wood: Carving and Political Cosmology in Oku, Cameroon \ Nicolas Argenti
3. Masters, Trend-makers, and Producers: The Village of Nsei, Cameroon, as a Multisited Pottery Workshop \ Silvia Forni
4. An Artist's Notes on the Triangle Workshops, Zambia and South Africa \ Namubiru Rose Kirumira and Sidney Littlefield Kasfir

Part 2. Audience and Encounters
5. Stitched-up Women, Pinned-down Men: Gender Politics in Weya and Mapula Needlework, Zimbabwe and South Africa \ Brenda Schmahmann
6. Rethinking Mbari Mbayo: Osogbo Workshops in the 1960s, Nigeria \ Chika Okeke-Agulu
7. Working on the Small Difference: Notes on the Making of Sculpture in Tengenenge, Zimbabwe \ Christine Scherer
8. Navigating Nairobi: Artists in a Workshop System, Kenya \ Jessica Gerschultz

Part 3. Patronage and Domination
9. Lewanika's Workshop and the Vision of Lozi Arts, Zambia \ Karen E. Milbourne
10. Artesaos da Nossa Pátria: Makonde Blackwood Sculptors, Cooperatives, and the Art of Socialist Revolution in Postcolonial Mozambique \ Alexander Bortolot
11. Frank McEwen and Joram Mariga: Patron and Artist in the Rhodesian Workshop School Setting, Zimbabwe \ Elizabeth Morton
12. "A Matter of Must": Continuities and Change in the Adugbologe Woodcarving Workshop in Abeokuta, Nigeria \ Norma H. Wolff

Part 4. Comparative Aspects
13. Work and Workshop: The Iteration of Style and Genre in Two Workshop Settings, Côte d'Ivoire and Cameroon \ Till Förster
14. Apprentices and Entrepreneurs: The Workshop and Style Uniformity in Sub-Saharan Africa \ Sidney Littlefield Kasfir

Coda: Apprentices and Entrepreneurs Revisited: Twenty Years of Workshop Changes, 1987-2007 \ Sidney Littlefield Kasfir

Contributors
Index

Sujets

• African Studies
• African
• África
• History of art
• African people
• Anthropology
• Art
• Africa

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780253007582
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

AFRICAN ART AND AGENCY IN THE WORKSHOP
AFRICAN EXPRESSIVE CULTURES Patrick McNaughton, editor

Associate editors
Catherine M. Cole
Barbara G. Hoffman
Eileen Julien
Kassim Kon
D. A. Masolo
Elisha Renne
Zo Strother
AFRICAN ART AND AGENCY IN THE WORKSHOP

EDITED BY SIDNEY LITTLEFIELD KASFIR AND TILL F RSTER
Indiana University Press Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA
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2013 by Indiana University Press

All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

African art and agency in the workshop / edited by Sidney Littlefield Kasfir and Till F rster.
p. cm. - (African expressive cultures)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-00741-4 (cloth : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-00749-0
(pbk. : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-00758-2 (eb) 1. Workshops-Africa. 2. Artists studios-Africa. 3. Artisans-Africa-Societies, etc. 4. Art patronage-Africa. I. Kasfir, Sidney Littlefield. II. F rster, Till. III. Series: African expressive cultures.
N8520.A39 2013
706.096-dc23
2012036058
1 2 3 4 5 17 16 15 14 13
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION
Rethinking the Workshop: Work and Agency in African Art \ Till F rster and Sidney Littlefield Kasfir
The Contributions to This Book \ Sidney Littlefield Kasfir and Till F rster
PART 1. Production, Education, and Learning

1. Grace Dieu Mission in South Africa: Defining the Modern Art Workshop in Africa \ Elizabeth Morton
2. Follow the Wood: Carving and Political Cosmology in Oku, Cameroon \ Nicolas Argenti
3. Masters, Trend-makers, and Producers: The Village of Nsei, Cameroon, as a Multisited Pottery Workshop \ Silvia Forni
4. An Artist s Notes on the Triangle Workshops, Zambia and South Africa \ Namubiru Rose Kirumira and Sidney Littlefield Kasfir
PART 2. Audience and Encounters

5. Stitched-up Women, Pinned-down Men: Gender Politics in Weya and Mapula Needlework, Zimbabwe and South Africa \ Brenda Schmahmann
6. Rethinking Mbari Mbayo: Osogbo Workshops in the 1960s, Nigeria \ Chika Okeke-Agulu
7. Working on the Small Difference: Notes on the Making of Sculpture in Tengenenge, Zimbabwe \ Christine Scherer
8. Navigating Nairobi: Artists in a Workshop System, Kenya \ Jessica Gerschultz
PART 3. Patronage and Domination

9. Lewanika s Workshop and the Vision of Lozi Arts, Zambia \ Karen E. Milbourne
10. Artes os da Nossa P tria: Makonde Blackwood Sculptors, Cooperatives, and the Art of Socialist Revolution in Postcolonial Mozambique \ Alexander Bortolot
11. Frank McEwen and Joram Mariga: Patron and Artist in the Rhodesian Workshop School Setting, Zimbabwe \ Elizabeth Morton
12. A Matter of Must : Continuities and Change in the Adugbologe Woodcarving Workshop in Abeokuta, Nigeria \ Norma H. Wolff
PART 4. Comparative Aspects

13. Work and Workshop: The Iteration of Style and Genre in Two Workshop Settings, C te d Ivoire and Cameroon \ Till F rster
14. Apprentices and Entrepreneurs: The Workshop and Style Uniformity in Sub-Saharan Africa \ Sidney Littlefield Kasfir

CODA Apprentices and Entrepreneurs Revisited: Twenty Years of Workshop Changes, 1987 -2007 \ Sidney Littlefield Kasfir

Contributors
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The essays presented herein began as a double panel on workshops convened at the Triennial Symposium in African Art, held at the University of Florida in April 2007. Several panelists were our own graduate students and former students-including Christine Scherer, Elizabeth Morton, Chika Okeke-Agulu, and Jessica Gerschultz, a young group of scholars working in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya who have, in the intervening five years, moved forward in their own careers and conducted more research while acquiring jobs and promotions.
To augment their essays we have added our own-based on fieldwork conducted from C te d Ivoire and Cameroon to Nigeria, Kenya, and Tanzania-and those of our colleagues Nicolas Argenti and Silvia Forni, both working in Cameroon; Namubira Rose Kirumira, working in Uganda, Zambia, and South Africa; Alexander Bortolot, working in Mozambique, and Karen Milbourne, working in Zambia. As the manuscript developed, essays by two other senior scholars were added along the way: Norma Wolff s study in Nigeria, and Brenda Schmahmann s study in Zimbabwe and South Africa.
We are grateful to the University of Basel and Emory University for providing the funds necessary for color plates-and, more generally, for their support of our own scholarly research in several countries over the years. Most of all we thank our contributors, who have patiently stayed with us through the involved process of putting the book together.
AFRICAN ART AND AGENCY IN THE WORKSHOP
INTRODUCTION
Rethinking the Workshop: Work and Agency in African Art
Till F rster and Sidney Littlefield Kasfir
Why Workshops?
Workshops-preliminarily understood to be any group of artisans, large or small, who not only share a workspace but, in most cases, also draw on it as a stable framework of communication and learning governed by the acknowledged expertise of one or more senior members of the group-are one of the most basic institutions of production of African art and material culture. Yet empirical studies of workshops are usually part of larger ethnographies or art histories, and so they are frequently and frustratingly incomplete. This has been a deterrent to the development of a more general and theoretical understanding of the role workshops play in the process of creativity-and particularly of how the creative practice of one artist in the group relates to that of another or to the workshop as a whole. The persistence of old and the emergence of new styles and genres remains poorly understood if it is not related to the workshop within which artists learn and work.
Even a brief look at existing studies of workshops reveals how different they can be in African societies. Workshops range from the early historic potter workshop of the ancient cultures in the Nile valley to the postcolonial fine art workshop run by international artists. The differences in their internal organization and their external impacts on the arts are equally large. Accordingly, the state of research is uneven and disparate. Early colonial period accounts of artisanal practice are heavily weighted toward metallurgy-especially the production of iron-and copper-alloy casting, whereas most of what we know of carving workshops comes from late colonial or postcolonial sources. The Yoruba carving workshop and apprenticeship are well documented (e.g., Bascom 1969a, 1969b; Carroll 1967; Fagg 1969; Kasfir this volume; Pemberton 1987; Perani and Wolff 1999; Picton 1991a, 1991b; Willett 1971; Willett and Picton 1967; Wolff 1982), as are apprenticeships of the Dan and Gola (d Azevedo 1970, 1973; Himmelheber 1960, 1963; Fischer 1962) and Senufo (F rster 1988, 1992; Himmelheber 1960; Richter 1980) workshop organizations, as well as Cameroon Grassfields (Argenti 2002; Koloss 2000, 2008), Pende (Sousberghe 1959; Strother 1998, 2008), and Maconde (Dias and Dias 1970; Kasfir 1980; Kingdon 2002). To piece together a fuller picture it is necessary to look at certain processes, such as apprenticeship, across several kinds of practice within a community or a corporate group. One has to keep in mind that apprenticeship itself can follow rules and regulations or it can be informal, and it can take place within a workshop setting as well as outside of it.
But there are pros and cons to this approach: on the one hand, carving is a type of work like any other kind of artisanship. One begins knowing little or nothing, is apprenticed to someone (often a relative or friend of the family) who knows a lot, and gradually gains expertise-usually after several years. This is as true of wood, stone, or ivory carving as it is of radio or motorcycle repair. On the other hand, the production of certain objects destined to be receptacles for spirits often carries a whole set of prescriptions, prohibitions, and ancillary practices that set this kind of work apart. It may, for example, require that the apprentice exhibits a certain set of traits that makes him receptive to such work, as d Azevedo found among the Gola in Liberia in the 1950s and 1960s, when children earmarked for carving apprenticeships were expected to be either dreamers or people of special mind who exhibited certain food preferences and behaviors at an early age (d Azevedo 1973:294).
In addition to workshops run on the classic master-apprentice model-and which are probably as old as their European counterparts-there are also sponsored workshops that date from the late colonial era onward and usually are set up by a cultural outsider acting as broker, by a mission, or-more recently-by a development agency. Unlike the former type, these build on an uneven distribution of knowledge, in particular of the international art world or handicraft market. These workshops have run the gamut from Ulli and Georgina Beier s Osogbo painting and printmaking workshops in the early 1960s, to the Shona women s appliqu and painting workshops of the late 1980s and 1990s in Weya, Zimbabwe, to the !Kung San, Ku