Master Hand: Individuality and Creativity among Yoruba Sculptors | Explore & Learn

Areogun
(Osi Ilorin, Opin, Ekiti region, ca. 1880-1954).
Photograph by Kevin Carroll, ca. 1948-54.

The Oriki, or Celebration, of the Masters

The expert, whose sculptures dazzle the beholder....
One whose mother lived to see his greatness [as a carver]
One who knows how to carve appropriately for kings....
As in a favorable divination, he has nothing to hide.

Oriki

Areogun

In Yoruba society, the idea that an individual's name relates to his or her spiritual essence is reflected in the expression "One's name controls one's actions." All individuals who have distinguished themselves and occupy positions of leadership are acknowledged not merely by name but also according to a description of their achievements and family lineage. They are addressed in the poetry of highly personal praise songs known as oriki.

Praise poetry
The hand of the artist
Workshops

Praise poetry
The oriki is a celebration and form of tribute that both immortalizes artists and reflects the contemporary recognition they receive. It is an evocative portrait that selectively draws from memory to create a collage of verbal images that is articulated by an individual's spouse and children on the occasion of family gatherings and annual festivals. The volume of these accolades constitutes one measure of an artist's professional success and the degree to which that artist's work is sought after by patrons.

Praise poetry for Areogun
Praise poetry for Bamgboye

The hand of the artist
William Fagg led a pioneering effort to overcome Western cultural biases that refused to acknowledge that African cultures appreciate artists for their individual accomplishments. Although Yoruba artists may not sign their works, their identities are widely recognized within Yoruba culture. In Yoruba eyes, a work's distinctive formal design--its line, volume, composition, and color--constitutes a signature. Yoruba audiences orally articulate their critical appreciation of an artist's ability, and their sophistication is such that they are able to assign attributions based on visual evidence, making a written signature superfluous. The fact that works of Yoruba sculpture entered Western collections without attribution is only a reflection of the lack of interest of those who removed them from their original contexts.

Workshops
In a manner similar to the Western practice of attributing works to the "school" of a certain master, works by members of Yoruba workshops are identified by the name of the workshop's founder. Indeed, the weight of a master's reputation may be such that it actually obscures issues of attribution. Because it is primarily the reputations of the innovative masters that endure, their names are used to identify works by contemporaneous collaborators as well as by later artists. In a society whose forms of historical documentation are oral, this tendency to conflate authors' names is exacerbated over time as objects are handed down to successive generations of owners.

The Yoruba scholar Olabiyi Babalola Yai has suggested that works of Yoruba sculpture themselves may be thought of as oriki extolling their authors' talents. This on-line exploration is a collective oriki in praise of those men and women esteemed both in Yoruba society and beyond.

Photograph Credits