African Art - sculpture with a deeper meaning

Posted: Thursday, December 30, 2004

by Susan Phillips

African Art - sculpture with a deeper meaning

ONG>By Susan Phillips

Traditional African art is often unusual and abstract. Sculptures of human figures may have out of proportion elements such as an over-sized head coupled with a tiny body form.
To understand the art, it must be remembered that the majority was made for religious purposes. The artist was not interested in the beauty of the subject in a Western European sense but instead the work would have a deeper meaning that was based on a religious belief.

Most traditional Africa tribal reglions are based on one all-powerful God and ancestor worship being a major part of the belief. As God could not be represented in an artistic work then statues and carvings were made of ancestors. Realism was not an important factor or even a consideration.

The most important aspect to the work would be the artists ability to bring a life-force into the sculpture that came direct from God. In this way the spirits of the ancestors could occupy the statues and only then would the artist have created a successful sculpture.

In addition to the ancestral figure sculptures another important African art form is the mask. Again, the mask was carved for religious purposes and usually destroyed after use. This is one of the reasons why so little ancient African art has survived. Of course another reaons is due to the nature of the materials that were used in the sculptures. Clay and wood were the most common and unlikely to survive over a long period of time.

The earliest known African sculptures come from Nigeria. Between the years 1100 AD and 1300AD Nigerian civilization flourished and many beautiful terrocotta sculptures have been discovered and are suprisingly lifelike.

African Art has had a considerable influence on Western Art. Most notable would be the work of Picasso. The inspiration of African masks and sculptures and the shapes partly inspired 'cubism' and other abstact art forms.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Are you looking for information on anything and everything Art related?
Check out YU Art at: http://www.yuart.com
YU Art , published by Susan Phillips, is a complete resource directory covering the A to Z of Art topics
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This Article has been viewed 4,502 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)

» left by Anonymous 5 years 279 days ago.

wher can i fine information about a body sculpture of my chioce ?

Respond to this comment

» left by sagar patil from india 1 year 292 days ago.

i want to do a deep study about sculpture designs, so pls co-operate me...

Respond to this comment

We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.

Other Posts by Susan Phillips:

Purchasing framed art for your home or office - a novel way to decorate

Home

WryteStuff Home

Terms

Privacy

Contact Susan Phillips

About Susan Phillips

Copyright 2012 IcoLogic, Inc.

Viewed from Cache.
Load time: 0.016 seconds.