The Myth of “Primitive” Art

 The word primitive was once used by Western art historians to lump together the art of Africa, the Pacific Islands, and North, South, and Central America before the arrival of Columbus.  The term itself means “early,” and its very use implies that these civilizations are frozen at an early stage of development, rather than that their cultures have developed along paths different from those of Europe.

How then, did these labels like primitive arise?  Many historical attitudes were formed by early Christian missionaries, who described the people among whom they worked as “heathen,” “Barbarians,” “ignorant,” “primitive,” and other terms rooted in racism and colonialism.  These usages were extended to the creations of the cultures, and primitive art became the dominant label for the cultural products of these people.

Criteria previously used to label a people primitive included the rise of the so-called Stone Age technology, the absence of written histories, and the failure to build “great” cities.  Yet the accomplishments of the people of Africa strongly belie this categorization: Africans south of the Sahara have smelted and forged iron since at least 500 BCE, and Africans in many areas made and used high-quality steel for weapons and tools.  Many African people have recorded their histories in Arabic since at least the tenth century.  The first European visitors to Africa admired politically and economically sophisticated urban enter such as Benin, Luanda, and Mbanza Kongo, to name only a few.^[1]

Ife

When terracotta and brass heads were first discovered at Ife at the beginning of the twentieth century, contact with the Mediterranean was assumed.  But they are as close or closer in feeling to contemporary Buddhist art in India and south-east Asia (although there is no evidence of direct contact) as to the art of Europe.  In fact, no sculpture or comparable technical accomplishment or spiritual poise and serenity was produced in Europe between the fall of the Roman empire and some centuries after the date of the finest Ife works.  Metals may have been imported from beyond the Sahara and the processes of working them learned from Muslim craftsmen, who were the most skilled metalworkers of the time, though never naturalistic.  There can, therefore, be little doubt that this west African art was an indigenous growth conditioned by the need for lifelike images of royalty for rituals of royal installations, purification and burial, and the cult of ancestors from whom kings derived their authority.  Significantly, the sculpture produced in the city of Benin after it began to trade with Portugal in the 1480s is more stylized than that of Ife.^[2]

Benin

It is likely that Ife was the artistic parent of the great city-state of Benin, which arose some 50 miles to the southeast.  According to oral histories, the earliest kings of Benin belonged to the Ogiso, or Skyking, dynasty. After a long period of misrule, however, the people of Benin asked the oni of Ife for a new ruler.  The oni sent Prince Oranmiyan, who founded a new dynasty in 1170 CE.  Some two centuries later, the fourth king, or oba, of Benin decided to start a tradition of memorial sculpture like that at Ife.  He sent to Ife for a master metal caster named Iguegha.  The tradition of casting memorial heads for the shrines of royal ancestors endures among the successors of Oranmiyan to this day.

Benin brass heads range from small, thinly cast, naturalistic images to large, thickly cast, highly stylized representations.  The dating of these works is controversial, but many scholars have concluded that the smallest, most naturalistic heads were created during the so-called Early Period (1400-1550 CE), when Benin artists were still heavily influenced by those of Ife.  The memorial heads grew increasingly stylized during the Middle Period (1550-1799 CE), becoming very large and heavy during the Late Period (1700-1897 CE), with angular, stylized features and an elaborate beaded crown.  A similar crown is still worn by the present-day oba.^[3]

The palace of the oba, which sprawled over much of the city of Benin, was constructed of mud brick and timber decorated with copper relief-plaques.  It consisted of rooms ranged round courts with roofs sloping inwards to carry rainwater into cisterns – rather like a huge ancient Roman villa.  Building with stone seems to have been practiced only in east Africa.  At Great Zimbabwe impressive remains survive, testifying to the size and importance of this once great capital city of a kingdom which stretched from the Zambesi to the Limpopo – covering the main gold-bearing area – and reached its summit of power and wealth in the mid-fifteenth century.  They include building on elliptical plans and a conical tower within a massive enclosure wall some 30 feet high and nearly 800 feet in circumstance, faced with neatly cut granite blocks.  And there are more than 100 other sites with the ruins of stone buildings.  The remains of trading cities on the coast, including that of Kilwa, which the Muslim, traveler Ibn Battuta described in 1331 as one of the most beautiful and well-constructed towns in the world, how deeply the art as well as the religion of Islam had penetrated this part of Africa.^[4]

In 1897, when the British sacked Benin City, there were still 17 shrines to ancestors in the Benin royal palace. Today, only one 20th-century altar remains. According to oral history, it is similar to centuries-earlier versions. With a base of sacred riverbank clay, it is an assemblage of varied materials, objects, and symbols: a central copper-alloy altarpiece depicting a seated sacred king flanked by members of his entourage, plus copper-alloy heads, each fitted on top with an ivory tusk carved in relief. Behind are wood staffs and metal bells. The heads represent both the kings themselves and, through the durability of the material, the enduring nature of kingship. Their glistening surfaces, seen as red and signaling danger, repel evil forces that might adversely affect the shrine and thus the king and kingdom. The elephant-tusk relief carvings atop the heads commemorate important events and personages in Benin history. Their bleached white color signifies purity and goodness (probably of royal ancestors), and the tusks themselves represent male physical power. The bamboolike, segmented forms of the carved wood rattle-staffs standing at the back refer to generations of dynastic ancestors. The rattle-staffs and the pyramidal copper-alloy bells serve the important function of calling royal ancestral spirits to rituals performed at the altar. The Benin king’s head stands for wisdom, good judgment, and divine guidance for the kingdom. The several heads of royal ancestors on the altar multiply these qualities. By means of animal sacrifices at this site, the living king annually purifies his own head (and being) by invoking the collective strength of his ancestors, whose presence is made manifest by their heads. Thus the varied objects, symbols, colors, and materials of this shrine contribute both visually and ritually to the imaging of royal power, as well as to its history, renewal, and perpetuation. The composition of the shrine, like that of the altar at its center and the mid-18th-century Altar to the Hand, is hierarchical. At the center of all Benin hierarchies stands the king.

As in the case of the reliquary guardian figures of the Fang and Kota, wood statues, often enhanced by the addition of metals, shells, beads, and other materials, play a key role in the veneration of ancestors and spirits in many African societies.