Heroic Africans: Legendary Leaders, Iconic Sculptures

LaGamma, Alisa (2011)

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Winner of the English edition of the International Tribal Art Book Prize (2012)

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Description

Over the centuries, artists across sub-Saharan Africa have memorialized eminent figures in their societies using an astonishingly diverse repertoire of naturalistic and abstract sculptural idioms. Adopting complex aesthetic formulations, they idealized their subjects but also added specific details—such as emblems of rank, scarification patterns, and elaborate coiffures—in order to evoke the individuals represented. Imbued with the essence of their formidable subjects, these works played an essential role in reifying ties with important ancestors at critical moments of transition. Often their transfer from one generation to the next was a prerequisite for conferring legitimacy upon the leaders who followed. The arrival of Europeans as traders, then as colonizers, led to the dislocation of many of these sculptures from their original sites, as well as from the contexts in which they were conceived; thus, today they are seen primarily as timeless abstractions of generic archetypes. Heroic Africans reexamines the sculptures in terms of the individuals who inspired them and the cultural values that informed them, providing insight into the hidden meanings behind these great artistic achievements.

Author Alisa LaGamma considers the landmark sculptural traditions of the kingdoms of Ife and Benin, both in Nigeria, Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire's Akan chiefdoms; the Bangwa and Kom chiefdoms of the Cameroon Grassfields; the Chokwe chiefdoms of Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (D.R.C.); and the D.R.C.'s Luluwa, Kuba, and Hemba chiefdoms. More than 140 masterpieces created between the 12th and the early 20th century—complemented by maps, drawings, and excavation and ceremonial photographs—reveal the religious and artistic conventions that defined these distinct regional genres.

Table of contents

Director's Foreword
Preface and Acknowledgments
Lenders to the Exhibition
Map of Africa

Introduction: Enshrining Greatness

1. Visual Poems in Praise of an Ever-Present Past: Ife Terracottas

2. Pageantry and Ritual: The Akan

3. Dancing Figures and Effigy Thrones: Grassfield Chiefdoms

4. The Golden Age of Shyáám and Beyond: The Kuba

5. Of Hunter Princes and Cherished Maidens: The Chokwe and Luluwa

6. Sublime Chiefs and the Persistence of Memory: The Hemba

Notes
Works in the Exhibition
Selected Bibliography
Index
Photograph Credits

Press release

Featured Publication: Heroic Africans

Posted on Friday, January 20, 2012

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Exhibition

Heroic Africans: Legendary Leaders, Iconic Sculptures

This major international loan exhibition challenges conventional perceptions of African art. Bringing together more than one hundred masterpieces drawn from collections in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Portugal, France, and the United States, it considers eight landmark sculptural traditions from West and Central Africa created between the twelfth and early twentieth centuries in terms of the individual subjects who lie at the origins of the representations. Analysis of each of these considers the historical circumstances and cultural values that inform the artistic landmarks presented.

The works featured are among the only tangible links that survive, relating to generations of leaders that shaped Africa's past before colonialism, among the Akan of Ghana, ancient Ife civilization and the Kingdom of Benin of Nigeria, Bangwa and Kom chiefdoms of the Cameroon Grassfields, the Chokwe of Angola and Zambia, and the Luluwa, Hemba, and Kuba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Harnessing materials ranging from humble clay, ubiquitous wood, precious ivory, and costly metal alloys, sculptors from these regions captured evocative, idealized, and enduring likenesses of their individual patrons whose identities were otherwise recorded in ephemeral oral traditions....

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