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  Emmanuel Aklasu

  Owusu-Ankomah’s painting at first glance reveals a foreshortening company of energetic warriors, muscular framed with broad shoulders, muscled chest, and a narrow waist in a chiselled physique. The hunters were portrayed with huge hands, clenched fist, knuckles, strong legs visibly revealing biceps brachiis and dabs of varicose veins on the arms, thighs and legs evident of powerful and efficacious men. Before modern society, the average male spent most of their time hunting, protecting, and engaging in physical activities that increased their muscle mass and maximize their muscular proportions. Owusu-Ankomah’s production exhibits masculine competitiveness and a sense of adventure – the brave team were a-fire with passion, armed with sticks in a leopard-like graceful movement as the captain leads carrying a captured antelope shoulder high.

   

  The warriors are noticeably naked with only a string of grass costume wrapped around the private parts which is the formal and ceremonial attire for the ancient culture. Owusu-Ankomah’s choice of colour in rendering the human figures lends credence to the fact that colours have a strong position in identifying humans while hunting. Wearing hunter orange is the best way to ensure other hunters see you and don’t accidentally mistake you for game in complex backgrounds that are often green or brown. The artwork reveals harmonizing brown colours which tend to create a central focal point in the entire picture frame to evoke earthiness, emotions, security and safety related to the natural world. The tints and shades of hues enhanced the main features in the painting to vividly communicate the intended message as well as create an illusion of depth.

   

  A thick flora forms the background of the painting evident that the hunting expedition was carried out in a thick forest. As the fearless, able-bodied men advance through shrubs in high spirit of mission accomplished, an earthly scent swirled around them coupled with a sense of eagerness to meet a welcoming, expectant and jubilant community. Hunting is an extremely important mode of human-nature interaction closely linked to culture patterns and value systems. This engagement with wild animals is thought of as part of a deeper unity with nature, which means being part of nature in physical sense (Lowassa et al., 2012). Sustainable hunting prescribes taking as much as needed and as much as the habitat and the population can regenerate. Suffice to say, when hunting for a game form the basis of a year-long survival of a people, it calls for a deeper reflection. Owusu-Ankomah’s painting comes on the back of an ancient heritage of a distinct tribe in Sub-Saharan Africa.

   

  ‘Aboakyir’ translated ‘deer hunt’ is a festival uniquely celebrated by the Effutu (Simpa) people of Winneba in the Central Region, southern coast of Ghana, West Africa. The festival which is celebrated annually on the first Saturday in May has the historical antecedent of the replacement of a human sacrifice to a tribal god with a leopard – an alternative which resulted in the loss of many more lives than the sacrifice of a single slave. Consultations with the deity for a more humane alternative resulted in the “Wansan” (the deer) as a practicable and most acceptable substitute. The capture of a live deer, like the leopard, required many more hands than the members of the royal family could find. The additional hands required were solicited from the local militia as a service to ‘the stool – a symbol of chieftaincy, royalty, custom and tradition’. It was this change in form; that is, the involvement of the local militia, that the annual consecration and appeasement of the deity became a public, state-wide affair. This marked the birth and hence the origin of the “Aboakyer” festival.

   

  The design of the Effutu State emblem tells this story; the ‘stool’ on which the King is installed sits on the “Wansan” (the deer).

   

  

  Emblem of the Effutu state (Source: Palace of Oma Odefe)

   

  The festival is therefore important for the ‘stool’, its occupant and the entire royal stool family. It is a religious duty and an obligation for the general citizenry to ensure its celebration annually is sustained to honour the ancestors and protect their historic culture for posterity on the back of removing evil and predicting a good harvest for a prosperous life in the coming year. The week-long activity begins with two traditional warrior groups known as the ‘Asafo’ companies consult their shrines for clearance, protection and early catch. The warrior groups clad in distinct costumes with distinct musical instruments — the ‘Tuafo' and ‘Dentsefo’, move to their respective hunting grounds at dawn on Saturday, wielding sticks and clubs amid chanting of war songs. No weapons, other than clubs and sticks are used to catch the deer, as it must be brought back alive.

   

  By far, the relevance of Owusu-Ankomah’s painting is not in doubt as it fosters a deeper understanding of the historical and societal roles of hunting within Ghanaian communities. The painting holds both cultural and educational significance which sparks discussions on conservation, sustainable practices, and the preservation of cultural heritage. Consequently, bridging the gap between present generations and the rich tapestry of cultural and environmental history. The sight of the painting in Ghana’s National Museum serves as a poignant reflection of the nation’s cultural heritage and connection to nature. In this visual narrative, the core of historical period of a distinct society is unearthed.

   

  References

  • Lowassa, A., Tadie, D. & Fischer, A. (2012). On the role of women in bushmeat hunting – Insights from Tanzania and Ethiopia. Journal of Rural Studies 28(4):622–630.

   

  Further Reading

  • Anane-Frimpong, D. (2022). Aboakyir: Deer hunt festival. Link Retrieved on April 10, 2023
  • Rubiano, W. (2017). Planting trees for the aboakyer festival 2017.  Link

   

  Published March 2024

  

  Barbara Lutz-Sterzenbach

  An energetic scene. Five men in a flat landscape approach the viewer. Their bodies are naked - except for their loincloths - their faces grim. Muscles in the bright light stand out under the skin, their chests bulge voluminously - they are timeless heroes. The men do not look at the viewer of the picture. With their long, dark sticks firmly in their strong hands, they gather symmetrically around the bald man in the foreground. He presents himself with an antelope in his raised arms. His bald skull points to the left, as does the antelope's head.

   

  On closer inspection, some things are irritating. Are the men dancing or walking? Where is the animal spatially located? Somehow it is on the shoulder of the man, but the legs are captured by the men behind, who would be much too far away for that. Is an event, an episode (as in a photograph) depicted? Or does the symmetry of the composition speak more of a constructed symbol, a sign, as in an emblem? The latter would support the strict division into horizontal planes: with the islands of grass in the foreground, the flat, ochre-coloured plane in the middle ground and the forest with sky in the background. But then again many design principles undermine this order: the tense, energetic movements of the figures, the strong brushstrokes, the irregular shapes of the white clouds and the tufts of grass, the dynamic accents of the sticks.

   

  We know from our Ghanaian colleagues that what is depicted here, the catching of the animal, is part of a ritual celebration and a festival (the Aboakyer Festival). Here the moment is shown when the men have stepped out of the dark, hermetically sealed forest in the background with their prey and now present themselves in the bright light with their success. A comparison with the results of an image search on the internet for “Aboakyer festival” (Fig. 2) shows that this is the iconic moment. Here the idea of the festival seems to be condensed. And this also explains the emphasis on muscles: the hunters must be well trained to match the animal's speed and strength.

   

  

  Fig. 2 (Google search for "Aboakyer Festival" on 9.9.2023 - the first page of results) Screenshot: Ernst Wagner

   

  Owuso-Ankomah's painting focuses on the men with the animal. At first glance, the painting shows above all the strength of the men. The space thus becomes the backdrop for their performance. Their bodies are not only idealised but theatrically exaggerated, their muscles as if illuminated by a spotlight. The geometric centre of the picture, through which the horizon also passes, brings the loincloth of the leader into focus (see fig. 3) - perhaps an allusion to male potency?

   

  

  Fig. 3: Composition sketch (horizon and geometric centre) Photo: Ernst Wagner

   

  A comparison with photos on the same theme from the Heritage Centre in Winneba (see Fig. 4-6) shows clear differences to the depiction in Owusu-Ankomah's painting. In the artwork, both animal and hunter have their mouths open, exhaustion is evident in both. In this way, too, man, animal and landscape are connected - despite hunting and death. The artist uses the warm ochre tones in such a way that the earth, the human body and the animal hardly differ in colour. Since the animal is still alive, its head does not have to be held. Thus, visually, it seems to elude a depiction of "being trapped", also due to the ambiguous spatiality described above. It could almost just as easily be understood as a triumphant appearance of the animal, to which the men are subordinate as bearers and assistant figures - comparable, for example, to Jan van Eyck's depiction of the lamb (see fig. 7), which also marks a mediating position between victim and victor, between human beings and God.

   

  

  Fig. 4-6: Photos from the Heritage Centre Winneba Photos: Ernst Wagner

   

  

  Fig. 7: Van Eyck, Lamb of God, Image Detail: Ghent Altar. Oil on wood, 350 x 461 cm
  Cathedral of St Bavo, Ghent

   https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109213 [28.10.2024]

   

  This image sets against each other contradictory concepts: static-symmetrical-ordered vs. dynamic; accidental situation vs. deliberate staging; documentation vs. sign; hyperrealism in body and space vs. symbolic charge. It sets these contradictions against each other in the unity of the painting.

   

  Reference

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W7IkJvL32E

   

  Published March 2024

   

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  Rosa Pfluger

   

  The Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Sydney Opera House, the Empire State Building in New York – it is not uncommon for innovative and striking buildings to become symbols of the cities they were built in. Architectural landmarks turn into trademarks of their cities. They shape the city’s silhouette and make it recognizeable.

   

  In Munich, a big city in the South of Germany and provincial capital of Bavaria, one of the most striking buildings is the Frauenkirche, which loosely translates to “Church of Our Lady”. It is dedicated to Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus Christ, who plays a big role in Munich as she is said to be the patroness of Bavaria. Its 99 meter (324 ft) high twin towers with the characteristic cupola roofs rise high over the inner city (as it is still prohibited to build any higher than them within the inner city). It is - by all means - not the biggest or even most beautiful church of its kind. Neither is its location in the city center, on plane ground and narrowly surrounded by pubs, shops and historic residential houses, spectacular.

   

   Up to this day, the Frauenkirche is the tallest building in Munich's inner city. View from the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich ©the author

   

  Still: The citizens of Munich have great sympathy with the brick building and identify strongly with it. There are several reasons for that: First of all, about 30% of the people living in Munich identify as roman catholic Christians and therefore have a religious connection to the 500-year-old church that is still in use for almost daily services. But the number of Catholics decreased drastically since 1925, when more than 80% identified as Catholic. In conclusion, there must be other reasons why this church is so important for Munich.

   

   

  A people’s church

  What makes this church indeed quite unique is the way it came to be: Munich didn’t lack any churches at all. In 1468, when the construction of the Frauenkirche was started, only 13,000 people resided there and there already was (and still is) a cathedral in the city center: Saint Peter’s church, or simply: Alter Peter (Old Peter). The Frauenkirche was enormously large compared to the city’s size and can house 20,000 standing people. It was built within only 20 years, which is faster than any other church in Europe at that time. The construction was probably initiated by the citizens – and can therefore be seen as a sign of confidence and emancipation of the common people in regard to the ruling class. (Which makes it all the more tragic that the towers were abused early on as platforms for cannons during the Landshuter Erbfolgekrieg at the beginning of 16^th century, a war between two aristocratic families contending for heritage.) As a side note, Germany’s supposedly very first photography, taken in 1839, shows the twin towers of the Munich church.

   

   

  Muslim towers on a German church?

  The two cupola roofs made of oxidized copper give the cathedral its unique and unmistakeable shape. Originally, it was meant to be topped by gothic pinnacles (comparable to those of the cathedral in Cologne, Germany). But at the beginning of 16^th century, architectural (and overall artistic) style changed drastically with the advent of the Italian renaissance. Pointed church spires suddenly seemed old-fashioned. And so, for more than 30 years, the two towers of the Frauenkirche remained “headless”.

   

  

  Bernhard von Breydenbach, Peregrinatio in terram sanctam, 1486, woodcut (Creative Commons); The Temple area, 1920, Library of Congress; Blick auf die Türme der Frauenkirche vom Odeonsplatz aus. 2017, D. Fuchsberger (Creative Commons)

   

  Lukas Rottaler, who was assigned with the construction of the roofs, was long thought to be inspired by Venetian churches, precisely the cathedral Madonna dell’Orto. Indeed, the 14^th century Italian church has a high brick tower with a cupola roof that might look a little like the Frauenkirche, if you turn a blind eye. But the origins of the onion-like shape are assumed to reach way back and way farther: Rottaler probably saw a woodcut of Jerusalem, which shows the Dome of the Rock. This dome, erected in the 7^th century and therefore the oldest edifice of the Islamic world, marks a place that is equally important for Muslims, Christians and Jews – the dome itself though is Muslim. That didn’t keep Rottaler from taking inspiration from the Dome of the Rock for his building project at a Catholic church in Munich. Hence, the Frauenkirche is shaped by originally “oriental” roof tops.

   

  Moreover, many churches in the rural outskirts of Munich, which were built in the following centuries, are oftentimes crowned by bulbous cupola roofs. This drop shape, which contrasts the villages’ common saddle roofs, now naturally is a part of the landscape as well as of the baroque style.

   

  The devil, a Munich sense of humor, kitsch, tourism and modern lifestyle

  One more reason why the Frauenkirche is so important for the Munich identity are the many legends surrounding it, which are an inherent part of many children's upbringings. The story of the bet between the devil and the constructor of the church, master bricklayer Jörg Ganghofer is widely known among Munich citizens. Ganghofer bet his soul that in this church there would be no windows. As soon as the church was complete, the devil entered the back of the church through the main portal and looked around. Indeed – there were no windows visible! Of course, the church has big windows which let an even stream of light enter the gigantic room. Ganghofer skillfully placed the massive pillars framing the middle section of the nave so that they cover all windows from a certain point of view – and thus won the bet! The devil was outraged and stomped his foot on the ground. This footprint is still visible in floor tiles (image below). In his temper, lucifer left in a rush, which caused a chilly gust of wind that up to this day blows around the church. 

   

  

  The "Devil's footprint" ©the author

   

  There are many more legends like these surrounding the historical center of Munich. The fact that they are not forgotten but very much part of social life shows how much the people of Munich value their ancient traditions and customs. Also, these legends – and the legend about Jörg Ganghofer is a prime example for that – often showcase a certain sense of humor, mischievousness and boldness. Possibly typically Munich qualities.

   

  

  The unique twin towers as logo: A design for a Munich tourism agency ©Georg Schatz, schatzdesign.de

   

  Today corporate logos, kitschy souvenirs but also everyday products reference the Frauenkirche’s silhouette. The Munich tourism agency „München Tourismus“ markets the city with the slogan “simply Munich”: approachable, hospitable, relaxed. It’s all about “Genusskultur, Kulturgenuss”, which translates to „culture of enjoyment, enjoyment of culture”. According to the agency, tranquility, love for old things and the so called “Bavarian cosiness” are trademarks of the Munich way of life. Compared to the daringness of Lukas Rottaler and Jörg Ganghofer, the constructors of Munich’s biggest cathedral, these qualities seem rather tame.

   

  References:

  • Forschungsgruppe Weltanschauungen in Deutschland: „München: Religionszugehörigkeiten 1925-2018“, https://fowid.de/meldung/muenchen-religionszugehoerigkeiten-1925-2018
  • E. Wagner, S. Wimmer, L. Sedghi: Isar-Arabesken – Spuren des Orients in München, München (Alitera), 2013
  • https://stadtfuehrung.info/stadtfuehrungen/zeitreise_muenchen_anhand_alter_fotos_und_bilder
  • https://www.muenchen.travel/artikel/ueber-uns/die-marke-muenchen
  • https://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/Lexikon/Frauenkirche,_M%C3%BCnchen#Der_Neubau_im_15._Jahrhundert 
  • https://www.venediginformationen.eu/kirchen/kirchen-in-venedig-teil-3/madonna-dellorto/madonna-dellorto.htm 
  • https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempelberg#Islamische_Bebauung:_al-Masdschid_al-Aqsa
  • https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frauenkirche_(M%C3%BCnchen)#Bau_der_sp%C3%A4tgotischen_Kirche

   

   

  published November 2020

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  Donna Pido

  Kenya’s Independence monument resides at Uhuru Gardens in Nairobi (Figure 1a), most likely because this is where received Independence (Kiarie 2022).  Though only a few people visit Uhuru Gardens and get to see the monument, it reminds us of 12 December 1963, the day of Independence and when Kenya Army soldiers first raised the national flag on Mt Kenya.  Mau-Mau and other guerilla soldiers see hoisting the flag as a visual symbol of military victory over King’s African Rifles and their British collaborators though some felt it is the same collaborators who inherited power from the British (Branch 2007).  In this context, Independence is remembered as a military defeat of the British sense of military invincibility.  However, a political class  comprised  of ‘under-educated’ intelligentsia saw Independence as an intellectual contest and a defeat of so-called colonial arrogance.   Rural dwellers, on the other hand, seemed spectators with the view that Independence was coming ready with ‘owners’ (politicians, businessmen and educated elite).  That Independence has owners who enjoy it while rural remain on the sideline is evident the persistent poverty thriving in rural Kenya (Njeru 2018).  So, even Uhuru Gardens and the Independence Monument have ‘owners’ who are not rural dwellers; it is clear that the monument is the collective memory and visual culture of its ‘owners’.  

   

  It seems the majority of rural dwellers understood Independence according to what politicians said- wealth as the accumulation of money, health as getting treatment in hospitals, education as attending school and passing examinations (Kenya African National Union 1969). We are not sure they are able to read and understand the Independence monument at Uhuru Gardens.  Why KANU did not install the rooster at Uhuru Gardens draws considerable curiosity. That is beyond our scope here.  One with a thick African cultural knowledge could easily choose the image of a rooster instead of that of hoisting the national flag because KANU was a nation-wide party and the rooster has cultural meanings nationwide.   Among the Luos of Western, establishing new homesteads entailed carrying an axe and rooster to the site of the first house; this ideology is well-represented in the KANU flag (figure 1d).  In other parts of Kenya, the rooster is a symbol of manhood required to make many children (Wikipedia. 2022).   By crowing early in the morning, the rooster does not simply announce time but also sets the work-eat-rest rhythm of life in rural areas.

   

  Before discussing WWII monument and of pre-Independence flags, we want to briefly address meanings in choices of colors and other elements in party flags and the national flag.  The black, red and green stripes in KAU, KANU and the national flag have the same meanings. The black stood for the indigenous population, red for the common blood of all humanity or blood shed during the struggle for Independence. Green symbolized the nation’s fertile land or landscape of the country, while the weapons were a reminder that organized struggle was the basis for future self-government (Smith 2001). No doubt the shield and spear are common traditional Kenya tools of offence and defense. It is said that white represented unity and peace.  It is rather clear that a section of Kenya’s coat of arms is modeled on KANU’s flag- colors and the rooster carrying an axe. Meanings herein are similar to those we mentioned in our discussion on KANU’s flag; the shield and spears also bear the same meanings as we mentioned when discussing the national flag.

   

  

  The combat boots (Figure 2b, Internet sources) tend to strike a note that is closer to the Acholi collective memory of WWII because they refer to it as too bin (Acholi for ‘come ye death’).  Among the Acholis of Northern Uganda, the combat boots symbolize the massive death in the War and the sacrifice of people forced to be loyal to the King of England. There is quite a stark contrast between the intended collective memory and the actual one.  At least among the Acholi, the boots are infinitely more meaningful that the bronze images so hapless servant/soldiers.

   

  Many of us in Kenya may not be able to remember the pre-Independence flags presented here because they were in use a long time ago.  Between Indonesians, Indians and Arabs, we are not sure on who first visited Kenya.  However, Arabs came in greater numbers over a longer period, intermarried with the local population and eventually set a government with the Sultan of Oman as its emperor or king.  We included the flag of the Sultan of Zanzibar (3a, Internet sources) as a part of the visual culture of Kenya.  The flag does not fly anymore but Arab dhows and their sails are prominent visual feature at the coast of Kenya. History has it that the Portuguese followed and displaced the Arabs  and built Fort Jesus- we included Portuguese flag (3b, Internet sources) of that time since we consider it a part of the visual culture of Kenya at that time.  Apart from Fort Jesus in Mombasa and the Vasco da Gama monument in Malindi, there seems no outstanding visual feature that rigorously reminds us of the Portuguese.

   

  We turn now to the World War II monument standing on Kenyatta Avenue, Nairobi (Figure 2a, Internet sources).  Our action was driven by the thought that the monument is also a reminder of how Africans were roped into a war they did not start, meaning, they did not have any special interest in the war.  While the British saw this monument as honoring the regional war dead, we remember our own who died in North Africa, Burma or elsewhere as WWII raged.  In any case it would have served us Kenyans more meaningfully if the monument had represented Kings African Rifles in action instead of as the transport company that was its main function.  The figures of this monument are just standing as if posing for a photograph.

   

  

   

  The eagerness related to the partitioning of Africa and the establishing of colonies saw the Germans come to Kenya and German East Africa (Tanganyika) where the German flag flew (Figure 3c).  Heller, the German coin is the most outstanding collective memory of German East Africa; old folk still refers to coins as heller (hela, eeera, Figure 4a and 4b, Internet sources).   Though rupee was more popular as an Indian coin, it was also used in German East Africa and its name was integrated into many languages that still use it to mean ‘money' (Figure 4c, Internet sources).

   

  

   

  Some people think that if Germany had won World War I (WWI), East Africa would have been a German colony.  But that was not to be; various parts of East Africa were under Brisstish rule until Independence in the early  1960s.  The Witu flag (Figure 3d) was hoisted soon after the British drove Germans out of East Africa, this was followed by the British East Africa flag (Figure 3g, Internet sources) and flags (Figures 3e and 3f, Internet sources) were used in Kenya colony, specifically.   The Union Jack was prominent in flags for British East and Africa and Kenya Colony.  British influence is massive in Kenya and related visual culture is so massive that it deserves more attention that is possible here.  Meanwhile we note that the structure of Kenya’s coat of arms is similar to emblems and related devices that were in use when Kenya was a colony.   

   

  Summary of Discussions

   

               We embarked on writing this article hoping to add to on-going efforts in exploring collective memory in Africa.  Our short article touched on political collective memory including but not limited to past and existing monuments, flags, coat of arms and emblems.  It is difficult but possible to argue that pre-Independence devices form a part of Kenya’s visual culture; we argue thus for believe that the past makes today as the present makes tomorrow.  Heller, the German coin of colonial Kenya, provides one example of how past visual culture persists through time to be a part of the present and does so with  little cultural transformation.

   

               In this article, monuments, flags, emblems, coats of arms and coins provided fodder for discussions.  It seems the Independence monument is a Government object that only officers of Government and the intelligentsia communicate with and use it to remember Independence and WWI.   Kenyans who paid the price of WWI and Independence have yet to enjoy whatever benefits may accrue from the two.  The once very powerful KANU that received Independence from Great Britain is now a pale shadow of the political party it was.  However, its rooster remains a visually powerful emblem that speaks of time, space, majestic manhood and connection with the universe.  

   

               We do not know why KANU’s rooster is dwarfed in the coat of arms and is absent in the national flag.  The absence or minimizing of such a powerful symbol can raise questions.  For example, is it a part of continued colonization that thrives on suffocating local expressions?  Or was it a matter dictated by non-Kenyan concepts of design?  These questions need addressing soon and with more concerted efforts.

   

  References cited

  • Branch Daniel 2007: The Enemy Within: Loyalists and the War Against Mau-Mau in Kenya, in Journal of African History, Volume 48, Issue 2, July 2007, Cambridge University Press
  • Kenya African National Union 1969: The K.A.N.U Manifesto, University of Virginia
  • Kiarie Maina 2022: http://www.enzimuseum.org/museums-of-kenya/monuments/uhuru-gardens
  • Njeru Timothy Njagi 2018: What is Driving Persistent Poverty in Rural Kenya, in: The Conversation https://theconversation.com/whats-driving-persistent-poverty-in-rural-kenya-99765
  • Smith Whitney 2001: https://www.britannica.com/contributor/Whitney-Smith/4445
  • Wikipedia 2022 Cultural References to Chickens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_references_to_chickens
  • Woods Steven Paul, Weinborn Michael, Ryan Yangi Li, Hodgson Erica, Amanda R.J. Ng, Bucks Romola S. 2015 Does Prospective Memory Influence Quality of Life in Community-Dwelling Older Adults? in: Neuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neuropsychol Cogn  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4537668/

   

  For further reading: Lydia Waithira Muthuma. How Public are Public Statues? (Public statues in Nairobi)

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  George Juma Ondeng

   

  Given the ownership structures of museums in countries such as Germany, the local politicians will never support repatriation requests if they still solely understand objects as pieces of art/craft. It is high time we appreciate spirit, soul and body of these objects. To illustrate this point, I will use the three funerary posts, the vigango (singular kigango) from the Giriama Community in Kenya which are part of the museum collection in Munich. Museum audiences and art enthusiasts in the Global North admire the artistic side of these objects. The truth is, they are not objects according to the producing community. Vigango are souls of the departed elders and thus an integral part of the Mijikenda community. Vigango are also significant to the Giriama as a way of communicating with Mulungu (God). The vigango serve as media of communication with Mulungu since they are no longer trees (wood) but humans (spirits). The vigango are very tall and are made largely for those who have attained the highest status in the society. Vigango are anthropomorphic carvings. They are made using valued indigenous species of hard wood through a lengthy ritual process. There are also strict rules to handle a fallen kigango. Thus their presence in museums collections are highly contestable!

   

  Perhaps Western museums ought to exhibit the processes involved in making of these objects more. To have a better understanding of these objects it is important to learn how they are used in their original community. To make a kigango, an appropriate hardwood tree is selected and prayers made to sanctify it and transform it from being a tree to a human spirit. Vigango are normally handled with great care usually wrapped with white cloth and erected when it is still dark (around 5am).

   

  The vigango provide protection to the community and ensure the education and progress of the family and members of the community in general. The living Mijikenda believe that the dead members of their community not only have influence on them but also that their special needs must be met for which they would receive blessings of good health, abundant rainfall and bountiful harvest. Otherwise they would cause trouble to them when neglected as indicated by the presence of termites or snakes in the house. When a kigango falls down it is left to rot away, under no circumstance it can be picked up and given to a museum or treated as part of a museum collection. A new kigango would be made to replace it. They can be erected somewhere in the kaya or in homestead and as much of the kigango is under ground as above the ground.

   

  Understanding vigango therefore should move beyond the motifs and patterns shown in them and look at the cultural significance and what they represent in Giriama community. As human spirits, Vigango are revered in Kenya and thus treated as human remains. Therefore no one dares to tamper with the fallen ones for fear of the repercusions. Besides, it is locally known in Giriama society that those community members who were complicit in removal of vigango for sale as works of art met early death. While such assertions may be hard to ascertain, it shows how valuable they are to the local Giriama community. It is worth noting that this community reveres the remains of their elders in exactly the same manner they treat vigango. Which brings the question, if they are considered as human spirits by the makers, should museums keep them in their storages? Should they not be treated as part of human remains because the process of working the trees into vigango transforms the trees into anthropomorphic characters with special influence over the living?

   

  If that was to happen, first, the only vigango that should remain in Western museums could be those purposely commissioned by holding museums for purposes of advancing their artistic values. If such a kigango is to be exhibited, it should be accompanied with a community documentary which gives the community an avenue to explain to the world the role of the object in their community including changes through time and space.

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  Annette Schemmel

   

  The photo at hand was shot in Paris in the 1920s. We are looking at a beautiful young woman with very fair skin who seems to have sunken her head on a table as if for a rest, while her left hand is carefully exposing a polished mask made from dark wood. The woman is Kiki de Montparnasse alias Alice Prin (1901 – 1953), Man Ray’s lover, a model for many painters and herself a successful artist. Supposedly, Kiki was central for the myth of the Montparnasse as an artistic enclave in Paris.³ The mask is simply “African” in the eyes of my pupils at first. I want them to learn that we are looking at a portrait mask⁴ of the Baule people in Ivory Coast. Pupils should also understand that such carved portraits served to honor an important member of a Baule society, a woman in this case. A dancer wearing a similar mask would incorporate the portrayed notable at the occasion of ritual dances, thus celebrating her achievements.⁵ This specific mask’s features are balanced and dignified, harmonious but not realistic, a point to which I will come back later.

   

  Meanwhile I shall argue that Man Ray’s picture thrives on carefully staged contrasts. The title that has come to stick with this photograph hints not only at black-and-white photography itself, but also at the most obvious contrast, at the White and Black⁶ skin or surface of the picture’s protagonists. Yet there are further opposites linking the lady and the mask in the picture, namely the opposites of young, ultra-modern and lively versus ageless, “primitive” and inanimate, matt versus shiny, skin versus wood, a seemingly passive woman versus the upright face of the mask, holding versus being kept. The photo historian Wendy Grossman has described how these opposites relate: “Almost as if it were a direct cast, the vertical mask, with its shiny black patina, is a negative mirror image of the reclining model’s ovoid face, echoing her pursed lips, closed eyes, and tautly styled coiffure. Parallel symmetrical shadows extend beneath the two perpendicular forms, coupling face and mask in a shallow and austere space.”⁷

   

  Clearly, Man Ray has smartly staged the Black and the White. By the time he shot this picture, Man Ray was making a living of object photography in Paris, then the world capital of fashion. It might therefore come as no surprise that this picture made its first appearance in an early print medium dedicated to beauty and fashion, the Vogue magazine. When the issue came out in 1926, everything “exotic” was fashionable in Paris, especially arts from (indirect) African origin, such as Jazz, Josephine Baker or, well, the mask in Man Ray’s photograph.⁸

   

  Beyond its uncontested fashionable appeal “Noire et Blanche” unveils some deeper, more unsettling meanings, some of which I intend to unfold here. A simple reading is ready at hand if one places this artwork in the historical context of the colonial era. In 1926, the mask’s country of origin belonged to Afrique Occidentale Française. On this backdrop, the dreamy woman holding the mask in Man Ray’s picture appears to be a Freudian slip in the form of a photograph, an unconscious idealization of colonial domination. Are we looking at a personification of the imperial power of France carefully embracing its colony Ivory Coast?⁹

  Next, we could follow a feminist lead towards interpretation. This photograph stages two females, whilst an important third actor of this mise-en-scène is invisible, the male photographer. Through his camera, the male artist is looking at the passive naked woman und at the artefact of a culture that is foreign to him. Obviously, the mask has become passive, too, once removed from its original context. In this reading, Man Ray’s photograph appears as a staging of the desire for submission – the submission of the idealized female and that of the cultural “other”. As viewers, we are lured into this voyeuristic pleasure, unless we take some critical distance.

   

  Following a suggestion of some South African colleagues, we shall now look at this photograph through the lens of the Martinican author Franz Fanon. In his famous psychoanalytical text “Peau noire, masques blancs”, Fanon is pointing at the phenomenon of the essentializing construction of a Black soul (“l’âme noir”).¹⁰ Following Fanon, Man Ray’s photograph can be considered one of those efforts by European (and certain African) artists of the classic Modern era to catch hold of an imagined essence of Black culture. This effort needed to objectify Blackness in order to make this construct palpable and acceptable. Arguably, in “Noire et Blanche” the ’black soul’ lies in the hand of a white person and is reduced to an object, the sculpted mask. Furthermore, it could be argued with Fanon that Man Ray used the Blackness of the wooden object, the “noir” that is readily associated with the ‘continent of darkness’ in the collective imagination of Westerners,¹¹ in order to highlight his girl-friend’s Whiteness. We know that contrasts help at intensifying and it is no secret that White is a color (of skin) that Europeans tend to associate with innocence and purity.¹² Arguably, this racialized contrast of the “Noire” and the “Blanche” served to celebrate qualities that Man Ray projected onto Kiki de Montparnasse, his partner.

   

  So far, I have tried to make clear that the artwork “Noire et Blanche” is not only a showcase of female attractivity, but that this photo also has a violent dimension to it because it relies on certain colonial mechanisms of distinction. As an art teacher, it is my ambition to make this picture’s ambivalence understandable for my pupils. I know that pupils are more likely to learn if they are allowed to make their own discoveries,¹³ for instance by exploring ‘real’ scientific data through the Internet. From our classroom, we can access the Metropolitan Museum’s online collections, which include a comparable portrait mask.

   

  

   

  Website of the Metropolitan Museum, New York

   

  Other than the black-and-white photograph by Man Ray, the museum’s more recent color picture unveils the fine shades of brown and red tones that are characteristic of the tropical wood used for Baule masks. Obviously, such masks are not Black in reality. Furthermore, pupils can learn from the provenance info that the Baule mask in the Met’s collection was famous amongst art lovers and artists in Paris and Berlin already before WW1.¹⁴ This insight helps to understand why Man Ray might have chosen a similar object for his photograph: artists tend to learn from each other.

   

  As a continuation, I like to encourage my pupils to sum up the museum’s text about the characteristics of portrait masks by the Baule by means of notes in German language. In doing so, the learners realize that these masks are carved according to a complex canon of beauty, that the forehead is high for a reason, namely in order to represent intelligence, that the polished surface signifies good health and that a representation of a person can convey dignity even if the proportions of its face have been exacerbated. This is new to many youngsters, whose frustration with their own efforts at realistic drawing has shaped their preference for artists’ realistic skills. Pupils also learn from the online information that this mask can only be brought to live as part of a performance, thus discovering a problematic aspect of its preservation in a museum.

   

  Coming back to “Noire et Blanche” with this new knowledge, my pupils realize that Man Ray’s photograph is concealing much of the knowledge that is available today. They understand that it is worthwhile to research background information for non-European art, even if this requires leaving their textbooks behind and going an extra mile with their foreign language skills. In the course of the classroom discussion that follows we are wondering why a Baule community would have let go of their precious mask, a question leading to recent restitution debates.¹⁵ Furthermore, the teenagers understand that the coquettish presentation of the mask in the hands of a naked European woman might be read as a sign of lacking respect by members of its culture of origin. At this point of the discussion some pupils have experienced a change of perspectives. This experience of assuming a position previously perceived as ‘other’ in the course of a lesson is the very purpose of our engagement with this artwork at school, arguably it is also the purpose of looking at art altogether.

   

  Let me summarize this approach. Comparing Man Ray’s photograph “Noire et Blanche” with the mask from the Metropolitan museum’s collection is a way to scrutinize a canonical picture from a critical perspective without denying the aesthetic appeal of the historic photograph. By way of this lesson I hope to enable changes of perspective and to build sensibility for post-colonial readings of pictures amongst pupils. Taking a bold stance, I shall claim that such lessons are conducive to a more general type of visual competence because I like to think that my pupils’ experience with the implications of this attractive historic picture might encourage them to also critically scrutinize any other picture in the future.

   

   

   

  References

   

  [1] For a thorough photo-historical analysis read Wendy A. Grossmans insightful article “Unmasking Man Ray’s Noire et blanche”, American Art, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Summer 2006), pp. 134-47.

  [2] For instance, Man Ray is mentioned in the widely used text-book Epochen der Kunst. Von der Moderne zu aktuellen Tendenzen (Hsg: Robert Hahne, Oldenburg Schulbuchverlag GmbH, 2013, S. 150/51). In this book, information about him and the photo “L’Enigne d’Isidore Ducasse” (1920) are featured under the header of „Fotografie und Film im Surrealismus“. It can be argued that „Noir et Blanche“ is surrealistic as well, since it seems to be illustrating Lautréamonts famous phrase “beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella” (Lautréamont alias Isidore Lucien Ducasse, „Die Gesänge des Maldoror“, 1874.), with Man Ray’s “chance meeting” bringing together a white woman and a wooden mask.

  [3] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Prin (last accessed on August 26, 2019).

  [4] Wendy A. Grossman’s article “Unmasking Man Ray’s Noire et blanche leaves no doubt that the mask in the picture is actually an airport art version of a Baulé mask, by the way (p. 136).

  [5] Collection Records of the Metropolitan Museums (Baulé Masken), www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/317834 ((last accessed on May 3rd, 2017), also https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/319512 (last accessed on August 26, 2019)

  [6] In this text, I will spell Black and White with capitals in order to highlight the cultural construct of Race.

  [7] For the complex history of the title see Wendy A. Grossman, “Unmasking Man Ray’s Noire et blanche”, pp.140.

  [8] More about this fashion in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_Baker (last accessed on August 26, 2019).

  [9] Research on Man Ray does not support this easy hypothesis however. In Wendy A. Grossman’s article from 2006, the origin of the photograph is described as an open-ended artistic process partly sparked by commercial interest, partly by a collaborator, but not by political intention. However, I would like to argue that art works tend to transmit more or less unconscious convictions of their authors and their peers, which makes of  artworks valuable witnesses of their times.

  [10] Frantz Fanon, “Schwarze Haut, weiße Masken”, translated by Eva Moldenhauer, Wien: Turia + Kant, 2013, p. 14, 147.

  [11] Fanon makes this point in “Schwarze Haut, weiße Masken” (2013), p. 158.

  [12] “Symbolik der Farben, Formen, Zahlen” in Lexikon der Kunst, Bd. VII. S. 153-154, E.A. Szeemann Verlag, Leipzig 1994.

  [13] I am here referring to pupils from eleventh grade of the Bavarian Gymnasium, whom the syllabus obliges to explore aspects of the body in art during half a year.

  [14] Collection Records of the Metropolitan Museums (Baule masks), www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/317834 ((last accessed on May 3rd, 2017), also https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/319512 (last accessed on August 26, 2019)

  [15] For a thorough introduction to this question read Felwine Sarr’s and Bénédicte Savoy’s “restitution report” commissioned by the French state. http://restitutionreport2018.com/ (last accessed on April 1, 2020).

   

   

  published April 2020

  Sound track / Hörimpuls Man Rays Noire et Blanche, 2018 (Schemmel): Link

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  Paul-Henri Souvenir ASSAKO ASSAKO

   

  The logo takes on the formal look of the chips used in the “Abbia” game. It is a traditional game that was played only by men in the South Cameroon Plateau until the beginning of the colonial period. In its general form, the logo is comprised of two main parts: an upper part which bears the phrase “The University of Yaoundé 1” (in French and in English) and a lower part that is defined by the slogan in Latin words “sapientia collativa cognitio” (wisdom is collected cognition).

   

  The central part of the upper component of the logo features four human figures organized around a table. The rigid geometrization of the composition of the logo and the regularity of the lines give great expressiveness to these graphics. The treatment of the shape of the logo exhibits remarkable influence by traits of the “Abbia” token. The geometric schematization of the pattern and the ogival shape of the logo scrupulously drawn by regular lines determine the elements that mark this influence.

  

   

  The name of the game “Abbia” refers to “hazard”, “a game of chance where bets are placed, which may be a simple gourd of palm wine, a human being (woman or child), livestock, or the player's farm or plantation etc.” (Cyrille Bela, 2006). These are not just simple tokens but a characteristic artistic expression that is pertinent to the sculptural heritage of South Cameroon’s population. These tokens obtained from the pits of the sapotaceous fruit (Mimusops le-testui), present on their smooth faces a wide variety of anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, geometric subjects, etc. minutely engraved in bas-relief by the artists. In addition to their use for the game, Abbia tokens are also ideograms and pictograms that have sometimes been associated with divinatory practices (Maurice Pervès, 1949: 27). Designing a logo that is inspired by them is significant from a dual aesthetic and symbolic perspective capable of inspiring elements of content to national identity.

   

  On the independence trajectory of the 1950 – 1960 period, the year 1957 is significant. It is marked by the creation of Cameroonian citizenship and the adoption of the first symbolic acts of the nation. After the investiture of André Marie Mbida, the first Prime Minister of the State of Cameroon on May 15th, 1957, the Legislative Assembly of Cameroon (ALCAM), on November 10 of the same year, chose the first national emblems: national anthem, flag, and a motto. From that moment, the visual and artistic elements revealed themselves and displayed their importance very early in the narrative of the history of the Cameroonian nation and the constitution of its heritage. The adoption of these national identification symbols is not unequivocal. We note with regret the anonymity of the authors/creators of these national emblems: “but we must nevertheless state the fact that no specific and nominal mention was made of the Cameroonian authors of the national anthem thus chosen. Later in 1960, the same silence will be reserved for the author – also Cameroonian, of the seals of the Republic of Cameroon, without us fully understanding the meaning to be given to these oversights” (J. E. Pondi, 2012: 65).

   

  The trauma created by the sanctions imposed by the colonial powers on the various forms of reference to local iconographic and symbolic culture could justify the timidity of an exaltation of visual culture and its authors. The elements of visual and symbolic language such as the logo will come from an experience of distant memory and sporadic circumstances for several years. We observe, for example, that for several years the University of Yaoundé remained without a logo. The covers of the University’s annals of 1969 and 1970 illustrate this and bear only the words “Federal University of Yaoundé”. During the same period within the intellectual elite of the aftermath of independence, a nostalgia for traditional artistic culture is expressed in a literary modality. For example, one of the most important cultural journals created by this elite in 1962 is called Abbia in reference to the art of “Abbia”.

   

  The absence of details on the date of creation and the conditions for the adoption of the logo of the University of Yaoundé does not exclude the probability that it was designed and produced by Engelbert Mveng between 1983 and 1987. Everything suggests that Mveng's legitimacy to take credit for the creation of this logo has not been subject to any reservations. As a Jesuit priest and artist/researcher, Engelbert Mveng’s cultural sensitivity, his academic reputation and his important artistic promotion action must have facilitated the adoption of the logo by the University’s administration. (Engelbert Mveng was Director of Cultural Affairs at the Ministry of Education and Culture from 1966 to 1974. Then, from 1983 to 1987, he was Head of the History Department at the University of Yaoundé.)The 1993 University Reform with the establishment of new state universities in Cameroon was also a significant factor in the creation of this logo. In Yaoundé, for example, the presence of two universities undoubtedly required the elements of visual identity capable of distinguishing the University institution from the others.

   

  Universities are considered by politicians as the contexts for the conception of modern culture with identity characteristics for the young nation. Mveng (1930-1995) does not lose sight of this perspective. This is how he undertakes the re-appropriation and integration of traditional knowledge and skills in the creative process of the logo. The author applies his theory of the “loi de creation esthétique” (aesthetic process of creation) to the graphic design of the University of Yaounde’s logo.

   

  The simplified form of this process is “OLMC” where O represents “natural object”, L represents “essential line of the object”, M is for “motif”, and C represents “composition”. This process was inspired by a methodological scheme of synthesis that Mveng (1980) notes by studying traditional artistic practice in several African societies. Mveng observes a recurrence of certain principles of creation: the observation of the natural object, the graphic representation of the object limited to the essential line and finally the use of the essential line as motif / sign in the composition of the works of art. The practical applications of this process favoured the development of an iconographic style and a production of works with a characteristic and very singular visual identity. This style is characterized by a schematic reinterpretation of the elements that surround us in patterns that we arrange in the compositions, which we transpose on different supports. In 1966, Mveng, inspired by the idea of ​​modernizing “traditional African art”, created the “Art Nègre” workshop in Yaoundé. This workshop became a veritable laboratory for graphic design of iconography called to mark a cultural renewal.

   

  Thanks to the privileged social and political position held by Mveng (priest, academic and artist), the Negro Arts Workshop succeeded in producing several works (paintings, drawings, sculptures, collages, etc.) both in Cameroon and in the diaspora. The workshop brings together artisans from various regions of Cameroon. It created a form of co-incorporation and also developed an important part of the production of religious art there. On the same methodological principles of “aesthetic creation”, the workshop produced the first liturgical imagery which presents the characteristics of the phenomenon of inculturation in the Cameroonian Catholic Church.

   

  The University which the logo identifies is an educational context that predicts the future of society. The development of this society depends on the quality of training/education, skills and values ​​that the school gives to young people. Education extends to everything from economic expansion to civic spirit. It engages the individual and collective prosperity of the country recalled in 1965 by Ahmadou Ahidjo (first president of the Cameroonian republic). The motto of the University in Latin: “sapientia collativa cognitio” displays the ideas that are dear to this institution whose mission is to train each Cameroonian well, to make him an artisan of prosperity and to make him a participant in the management of the state (J. C. Bahoken and E. Atangana, 1975).

  The mention in French and English of “Université de Yaoundé 1/University of Yaoundé 1”, which follows the contours of the upper component of the logo, mainly reflects the bilingual nature of the Cameroonian University. Of course, this bilingualism is one of the symbolic markers of the political and cultural history of the unity of Cameroon. It expresses national political unity and guarantees openness to the participation of the Cameroonian University in transnational and intercultural dialogue that is essential for the development of the country. To use President Ahmadou Ahidjo's words during the inauguration of the said University on November 17, 1967, the University is an instrument of “dialogue with all nations of good will”.

   

  Nowadays, the vices which characterize Cameroonian society such as corruption, the weakening of the patriotic and nationalist spirit in favour of ethnic and regional withdrawals, the weakening of the civic spirit, the inadequacy between training and employment and unemployment, to cite only these examples, expose the weaknesses of the education system in the country. The factors responsible for such an assessment are inter alia linked to the problems of immaturity of educational references very often adopted in a circumstantial manner (at random). Learning suffers from a lack of ingenious practices linked to the social transformation project. In other words, the educational project has a hard time building learning methods that take into account the socio-cultural, political and economic flows and bridges now established between here and elsewhere, today and tomorrow. As George E. Hein (2011) wrote, understanding learning as a social activity is a principle for considering successful education. An educational project which does not take this into account would venture to commit the fate of society at random as in the scenario of the game of “Abbia” where the most important goods of the players were randomly bet.

   

   

  Download Paul-Henri Assako Assako's presentation on the origin of the logo by following this link.

   

   

   

  References

  • BAHOKEN J.C. et ATANGANA Engelbert. 1975. La politique culturelle en République unie du Cameroun, Éditions Les Presses de l’Unesco.
  • BELA Cyrille. 2006. l’art des abbia : une forme d’expression sculpturale des pays pahouin, in « Afrique : archéologie et arts », 4 | 2006, p. 83-90.
  • George E. HEIN. 2011. Constructivist learning theory//1991, in education, documents of contemporary art, London, Edited by Felicity Allen.
  • MVENG Engelbert.1980. L’Art et l’Artisanat Africains, Éditions CLE, Yaoundé.
  • PERVÈS Maurice. 1949. Parmi les Fangs de la Forêt Equatoriale : le jeu de l’Abbia, Revue de géographie humaine et d’ethnologie n° 3, p. 26-41.
  • PONDI Jean-Emmanuel, 2012, (Re)découvrir Yaoundé ! Une fresque historique et diplomatique de la capitale camerounaise, Yaound Ed. Afric’Eveil.
  • https://journals.openedition.org/aaa/1373.
  • https://www.osidimbea.cm/cameroun-okoba/cameroun-1967/

   

   

  published February 2020

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  Amanda du Preez

  The first selfie selected is taken by a reporter Yuzrig Meyer who reported for the Bushradio blog and is taken in Cape Town with students congregating in the background. The second selected image is taken by Michelle Gumede for the student paper Wits Vuvuzela of a student of the University of Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) enrolling in January 2016, while the university campus is locked down by security guards and police officers after bloody clashes between students and police.

   
  The two selfies should be differentiated as the first image is an actual selfie (image maker and taker are the same person) while the second is an image of a selfie-taker (Image maker differs from image taker). In the first image the direction boards towards CPUT CT (Cape Town University of Technology) campus, and the Damelin building (Private Tertiary Training Institution) in the background are clear indicators of its location. The selfie-taker is visible in the righthand side of the image forming a montage by merging his own image with that of the protestors in the background. The second selfie-taker is wearing a T-Shirt with the slogan #FeesMustFall while making a typical selfie ‘duckface’ with the security guards looking on in the background. She is provoking the security guards by asserting her presence as a protestor in their midst.

   

  The two images are selected to engage with the growing selfie scholarship also in the field of image studies. The selfie has predecessors in the rich tradition of artists painting portraits and self-portraits, and then democratized further with the invention of photography as a means of self-expression to include a broader audience and artistry. Until finally in the contemporary moment anyone with a smartphone can create a self-portrait or rather, take a selfie. The two images sampled here showcase the expressive and participatory possibilities of selfies as voicing dissent against the powers that be on the one hand, and on the other hand, showing solidarity with those uprising. As such they form part of a new visual activism that is created via online participation and images.

   

  Interpretation(s):

  The selfie is notorious for its insertion of the human subject into the digital sphere that appear ubiquitously on social media platforms. More than any other mediating technology the front-facing smartphone has enabled the human subject to create and capture images of the self as never before. The immediacy and the circulation of selfies are extraordinary.

  Depictions of the self is however not a new venture within the history of images, in fact, any reflective surface has sufficed as a tool for creating self-images in the past. Most notably the mirror which shares an intimate relationship and history with self-portraiture and self-representation. The progenitor of the selfie can probably be found in Andy Warhol’s self-portraits taken in photo booths (circa 1964-1965). The selfie that became a substantial category on its own since 2012 and 2013 has elevated self-expression to a new level. The two selfies collected here fall within the insertion of agency within the image, as both photographers insert themselves and their subjects within political events. In the first selfie, the creator can only be seen in the bottom half of the image so that the world behind him becomes visible. In the second selfie, the photographer also puts the selfie-taker on display surrounded by an environment of contestation. The images state: look at me but even more importantly, look over my shoulder at the world behind me. I am a witness to these events, and by sharing this image with you, you are also now becoming complicit and a witness to the event. It is a calling forth of a visible agency.

  The attempt of the artists to show his or her witnessing of an event – being there – is also not a new endeavour in the history of images. We are reminded of Jan van Eyck’s (1390-1441) signature and presence left in the small mirror in The Arnolfini Portrait (1434), and later Diego Velázquez’s (1599-1660) mocking presence in the company of royalty in Las Meninas (1656). In all these instances, the artists insert or interject themselves into the picture plane. In the case of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s (1880–1938) Self-Portrait as Soldier (1915) we see the artist inserting himself into the horrors of war, with an arm lost (although only imaginary), trying to work through the aftermaths of terror. Granted it is not the same interjection we see as in the case of the selfies but one may argue that something of that tradition of witnessing, making present, announcing an event is already born in these earlier examples from Western art history.

  The selfies selected here as part of the #FeesMustFall events testify to being present to a historical event and also to being interpellated into the activities. Interpellation as used by the French Marxist philosopher, Louis Althusser shows the status of the individual as always already being a subject subjugated in terms of power and ideology. The selfie makes that power hegemony visible as the subject negotiates his or her status apropos the powerful and ideological hegemony. There is an awareness in the #FeesMustFall selfie that not only bears witness to the riotous event but also positions the self in a particular participatory and supportive position towards what is happening. As Yuzrig Meyer euphorically states about his participatory #FeesMustFall selfie: “I may not have been around in the apartheid era in freedom struggle as an active participator, but from my experience of today I (sic) may have a better understanding to what it was like to be in the atmosphere of passionate comrades and the feeling of camaraderie in the air.” It is both an act of uncovering how power works, by making power visible, especially in the second selfie, and showing solidarity with the riots by inserting the face of selfie-taker as a montage onto the events in the background, as in the case of the first selfie.

   

  These two selfies could also be interpreted as decolonising images as they disrupt what can be considered to be colonizing powers and assert themselves as agents of what Nicholas Mirzoeff (2011) terms “the right to look” and moreover, asserting “the right to be seen”. These two images refuse to look the other way by pretending nothing is happening. Instead, they inject themselves into the event and confront us as viewers with their message.

   

  Discussion of the interpretations:

  If we accept the interpretation that these two selected examples of selfies create a new decolonized agency by inserting themselves as both witness and participant of the #FeesMustFall events, it can be suggested that selfies allow for an expansion to the gamut of the traditional self-portrait. The contribution or democratic expansion of the selfie to the history of self-portraiture can be identified in at least the following three categories, namely skills required, immediacy, and generating a broader reach expanding the self-portrait genre. These three categories are not exhaustive but add to the meanings attributed to the two #FeesMustFall selfies.

   

  In the case of skills, one does not require much talent or particular artistic skill to take a selfie. Where the self-portrait traditionally required set skills in the medium utilized for creating the self-portrait, whether painting, sculpture, etching or photography, the artists had to master basic techniques. This is not the case for producing a selfie. One merely requires a front-facing smartphone and the willingness to share in order to create a selfie. In this respect the selfie can be interpreted as a democratizing tool.

   

  Similarly, whereas the creation of a traditional self-portrait mostly implied time (duration) and space for the artwork to be executed and to be exhibited, the selfie can be immediately uploaded online and shared. The selfie also potentially has a far broader reach than the traditional self-portrait as it can be viewed by hundreds (conservatively estimated) of viewers immediately after being shared. The selfie thus further democratizes the self-portrait by being available instantly and anywhere. The selfie is not bounded by time or place and space, as is the traditional self-portrait – it crafts a tele-presence.

  Although, like all images the selfie is a complex and multi-layered occurrence and therefore not all selfies produced can be considered as democratizing and destabilizing agents. What is however accurate for most selfies is that they expand the genre of self-portraiture in significant ways.

   

   

  published November 2019

   

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  Bernadette Van Haute

  Mrs Pinckney and the Emancipated Birds of South Carolina (2017) is a sculpture in the round composed of a headless, female, ‘white’ mannequin swathed in historical dress and balancing on a globe. In place of her head is an empty birdcage from which three birds have escaped. The work was created by the internationally renowned artist Yinka Shonibare (born 1962) who is a black man of Nigerian descent living in the United Kingdom. He can thus be identified as a member of the African diaspora. In his artworks he usually engages with concepts that are related to the politics of colonialism and the slave trade and explores cultural identity in the context of globalisation. ^[1] While his creations are deeply critical of western imperialism, he always makes sure to render them visually alluring and engaging to elicit a visceral response. ^[2]

   

  This particular artwork was co-commissioned by the Yale Center for British Art and Historic Royal Palaces, Kensington Palace, and created especially for the exhibition "Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World".^[3] This adds an aura of seriousness of intellectual and aesthetic intent to the sculpture. In the title of the work, the artist has identified the woman as Mrs Pinckney, or Elizabeth (Eliza) Lucas Pinckney, who at the age of 16 was put in charge of her father’s plantations in South Carolina. ^[4] She had a major influence on the colonial economy by developing indigo as an important cash crop to be processed as dye. ^[5] The sculpture is said to be the artist’s response to Eliza’s encounter with the German Princess Augusta in 1753 which further identifies her as a member of the social elite. ^[6] All of the above components help to retrieve the identity of the subject, the ideology being addressed as well as the message in the image.

   

  The artist has encoded his artwork with visual tropes that clarify and enforce his message. While the style of Eliza’s dress is based on 18th-century fashion, the fabric used is Dutch wax cloth which Amah Edo describes as a “marker of Africanness”. ^[7] Manufactured in Europe but using the Javanese batik printing technique, the cloth “came to be produced specifically for West African markets in the 1890s … [and] its aesthetic was adapted by manufacturers to suit these new consumers’ tastes”. ^[8]  Now widely perceived as symbolic of tradition, the Dutch wax cloth is regarded “as a high-end commodity desirable to elite customers”.^[9] The material of the woman’s dress thus not only identifies her as a member of the elite but also refers to Africa as the source of her wealth: it is through the labour of the African slaves that Eliza was able to run her family’s plantations in America. Likewise, the blue of the material – and the bird on her finger – is a direct reference to her successful cultivation and processing of indigo. It can thus be seen that the artist explores concepts of race and class through a careful choice of materials and colours in his imagery. By dressing the white woman in African cloth, he complicates history and racial identity in an effort to startle the viewer’s conscience.

  As the plantation’s manager, Eliza occupied a position of power which is visually manifested by her being placed literally on top of the world. The latter is represented by an eighteenth-century globe that shows the colonial territories of the British empire. ^[10] Eliza is thus turned into a symbol of white superiority and privilege granted by the politics of imperialism. Her balancing act, however, proves to be precarious and elicits tension as the ball can roll at any moment and topple her from her position of power. It is also interesting to note that the globe is an attribute of Fortune, the fickle goddess of antiquity. Fortune is blind and even eyeless, and the globe “on which she stands or sits, originally indicated instability, but to the Renaissance it was rather the world over which her sway extended”. ^[11]  The headless Mrs Pinckney thus shows a cunning resemblance with the antique goddess Fortune “who bestows her favours at random”. ^[12]  

   

  The favours bestowed by Eliza relate to her release of the birds from the birdcage. However, instead of flying away to freedom, they come back to her. She playfully lifts her left arm for an indigo-blue bird to perch on her little finger, while another bright-coloured bird sits on her left shoulder and a third one on top of the cage. According to Shonibare, the birds are a metaphor for slaves and her gesture of setting them free symbolises her wish to emancipate the slaves – hence the title Mrs Pinckney and the Emancipated Birds of South Carolina. ^[13]  The narrative thus presents a paradox between the white woman’s privileged yet unstable position as powerful, wealthy mistress and her fickle wish to liberate the black slaves whose destiny is entirely in her hands.

   

  In this work, Shonibare has given his own interpretation of the story of Mrs Pinckney, choosing to focus on the effects of the slave trade and colonisation in the eighteenth century in the United States, then still British territory. While the playfulness of his rendition and its aesthetic appeal conceal the harsh realities of enslavement, the dehumanisation of black people as a result of colonial politics still filters through in the form of brightly coloured birds which, although set free, are so tamed – read oppressed and subjugated - that they are not able to fly.

   

  ^[1]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinka_Shonibare (26 July 2021).

  ^[2] Yale News, 2017. Yinka Shonibare MBE (RA): ‘Mrs. Pinckney and the Emancipated Birds of South Carolina’. Video. Yale News, Yale British Art, 25 July 2017. https://news.yale.edu/videos/yinka-shonibare-mbe-ra-mrs-pinckney-and-emancipated-birds-south-carolina (26 July 2021)

  ^[3] Yale News 2017.

  ^[4] Yale News 2017.

  ^[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliza_Lucas (26 July 2021).

  ^[6] Yale News 2017.

  ^[7] Edo, Amah M. (2019). From African print to global luxury: Dutch wax cloth rebranding and the politics of high-value. In Mehita Iqani and Simidele Dosekun (Hrsg.). African luxury: Aesthetics and politics (pp. 77-92). Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA: Intellect, p. 82.

  ^[8] Edo 2019, p. 80.

  ^[9] Edo 2019, p. 85.

  ^[10] Yale News 2017.

  ^[11] Hall, James. 1974. Dictionary of subjects and symbols in art. London: John Murray, p. 127.

  ^[12] Hall, James. 1974. Dictionary of subjects and symbols in art. London: John Murray, p. 127.

  ^[13] Yale News 2017.

  

  Nobumasa Kiyonaga

  The oeuvre of Yinka Shonibare CBE is often characterised by a colourful and at the same time amusing appearance. This facilitates the viewer's immediate access. This is also the case with his 2017 work Mrs Pinckney and the Emancipated Birds of South Carolina. What one perceives here at first glance is the figure of a lady wearing historical European clothing, a "Robe à la Française" from the 18th century. However, the clothing is unusually colourful. Moreover, the woman is standing on a sphere, albeit shakily and leaning forward somewhat. This image quickly connects with the traditional European iconography of "Fortuna", i.e. the admonishing, allegorical symbol of "fate". It turns out that the sphere is the globe.

   

  The graceful lady also has a strange head in the form of a birdcage. But its door is open and the three birds have long since escaped. This could be an allusion to Maurice Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird, the central message of which is the obvious true happiness. In any case, the caged head shows us that it is actually our thoughts that tie us down and hinder our actions, as is often the case. Seen in this light, at least this lady has succeeded in unmasking the internalised gender ideology and liberating herself mentally. But is it really a lasting liberation?

   

  Who actually is this lady, this "Mrs Pinckney"? What fate is at stake? She is not known here in Japan, for example. A look at Wikipedia, for example, will help: she is considered one of the first emancipated women in the USA, who achieved prosperity with her pioneering attempt to grow indigo on slave plantations in South Carolina. This dye was in particular demand for military uniforms in Great Britain at the time.^[1] That is why the lady is wearing this indigo dress. But where does the artist's reference to Mrs. Pinckney come from? A direct connection is hard to find at first. However,  knowing that Shonibare describes himself as a "post-colonial hybrid"^[2] - he was born in London as the child of Nigerian parents, grew up in Nigeria and studied in London - and that he very often uses "African wax prints" for his works,^[3] one gains  more clues about the work.

   

  At present, those wax prints seem to represent "authentic" African life, but they have an Indonesian origin and were made by Europeans, especially Dutch, and sold and distributed in West Africa.^[4] In this sense, they are in fact a transcultural product. Through their use, the artist points to the "cultural imagination as a power structure and means of domination"^[5] in the spirit of the critique of representation. In this specific work, too, the wax prints, which have something in common with the fate of indigo, find their use in clothing.

   

  Thus, it turns out that the lady functions as the encouraging and, at the same time, admonishing symbol of the emancipation of women, which never proceeds in a linear fashion and is still threatened and endangered everywhere today. Moreover, this emancipation movement must always be seen in an even more complex context, which was and still is connected with the fate of countless people - in Mrs. Pinckney's case, for example, that of the slaves, according to the message of the work.

   

  ^[1]              https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliza_Lucas_Pinckney (27 July 2021)

  ^[2]              Shoji, Sachiko. 2019. “History is Happening Now: What Connects Us All to the Art of Yinka Shonibare CBE.” In Exhibition catalogue Yinka Shonibare CBE: Flower Power. Fukuoka: Fukuoka Art Museum, p. 105.  Incidentally, this is the artist's first solo exhibition in Japan.

  ^[3]              Shonibare CBE, Yinka. 2019. “Artist Statement. Woman Shooting Cherry Blossoms.” In Exhibition catalogue Yinka Shonibare CBE: Flower Power, Fukuoka: Fukuoka Art Museum, p. 13.

  ^[4]              Ibid. According to Shoji, Japan also became involved in the production of those wax prints and their export to Africa from the late 1920s to the mid-1990s. See Shoji 2019, 106-107.

  ^[5]              Shonibare 2019.

   

  

  Ernst Wagner

  A life-size, headless, female mannequin balances on a globe showing the African continent from the front. Her Biedermeier-style clothing in bright colours shows a deep décolleté. The fabric pattern is Dutch Wax, which can be inferred from the given information on the work. In combination with the birdcage and the three colourful birds outside the cage, the sculpture is reminiscent of surrealist montages like in René Magritte's artworks.

   

  

  René Magritte, Le Thérapeute (1976), Tehran (Copyright: WikiCommons)

   

  The title refers to a concrete iconography that makes research necessary which - as a reward - helps to decipher the birds and the blue dress: Mrs Pinckney refers to a prominent historical woman (Eliza Pinckney, 1722 - 93) whose biography - as one can read on Wikipedia - was deeply entangled with English colonialism and the American War of Independence. Shuttling between North America and England, she was remarkably innovative and entrepreneurial. The birds in the sculpture allude to a specific anecdote when Eliza Pinckney gave such birds as a gift to the mother of the British King George III. The blue of the dress can be seen as an allusion to Pinckney's production of indigo in South Carolina.

   

  The globe and the pattern of the dress - like the title - also allude to the theme of colonialism. Even the material specification of "Dutch Wax" tells a tangled story in colonialism. But the female role model embodied by Eliza Pinckney in her time, obviously denies the usual connotations associated with colonialism, slavery and looting. The birds outside the cage perhaps also make references to the immanent contradiction between freedom and captivity.

   

  Alluding seems to be the most adequate term to grasp the specificity of the visual language of this work. Nothing is clearly asserted, no thesis is put fprward. Rather, a dazzling, assembled, ambiguous figurine stands in the context of 18^th-century colonialism, hinting at many themes that are significant also today: women's roles, capitalism, domination and exploitation of nature, colonialism, freedom and oppression. This fits in well with the immediate perception of the object. Looking at the artwork, one gets the impression of a strange balance of lability and stability, of theatricality and ridiculousness, of immediate sensuality and learned knowledge.

   

  Now, the question remains as to how this work is located in the transcultural contact zones. Today, it is exhibited in a US collection of British art, the "Yale Center for British Art". The artist himself is called a British-Nigerian artist. He himself uses his English title of nobility CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in his name. Since documenta 13, he is well known in the context of Global Art. In terms of iconography, the work is also located at these interfaces. Through montage, it merges different associations into an inherently contradictory complexity that cannot be resolved. This creates a fundamental openness that is reflectes when we ask about its meaning: can we read the work as ironic alienation? Or as a commentary on history? Or as homage or, on the contrary, as criticism of the historical Mrs Pinckney? As a reflection of current and very serious issues or as a harmlessly playful object?

   

  A video produced by the museum where the work is now located shows an analogous reception history (Link 1 / Link 2). How does the work constitute the “ideal” viewer? He or she is a decoding, deciphering viewer who allows the iconographic fixation to fail with relish because of the sensuality of the playful object, just as the narrative of Mrs Pinckney fails because of the mannequin's instability. The ideal, contemporary viewer simultaneously enjoys the openness and yet sees him-/herself confirmed in his/her anti-colonial habitus.

  

  Discussion

  Discussion

  EW: When I compared all three contributions, I was initially surprised by the large number of common intersections. This certainly points to the global power of interpretation of media representations in English (website of the collection at Yale, Wikipedia), which we could not escape either. We all researched Mrs. Pinckney on Wikipedia, we all trusted the video on the website as a source. But what is interesting now is how differently we deal with it and what different conclusions we come to. I have the impression that in your approach, Bernadette, the story of Mrs. Pinckney plays the biggest role, while in my text this story is rather only a possible reference point. I don't know if you can agree with me.

   

  NK: Yes, I also see these differences. With Ernst, I see more of a fundamental, principled attitude in the analysis of the work. In Bernadette's interpretation, I found the interpretation of the birds as "slaves" interesting. I myself saw in it the - temporarily - liberated soul of an emancipated woman. Moreover, in this context, I also find your reference to the paradox of the actually already liberated "slaves" particularly illuminating, as it seems to have been derived from your discussion of colonial history in Africa.

   

  BVH: When comparing our contributions, I was also reminded of the fact that art is always about other art, hence we looked for precedents that may have inspired the artist. But what I find most exciting about our interpretations are the differences in emphasis on the various meanings that are embedded in the work. For Ernst, the transcultural nature of the work stands out, as well as its openness in meaning. For Nobu, it is the reference to gender ideology and women’s emancipation that forms the core of the work, especially in light of ongoing gender discrimination. For me, it is the historical narrative that led me to interrogate the issue of racial discrimination which also continues today in movements such as #BlackLivesMatter.

   

  EW: I share this, and I would like to follow up with a question. Is it possible that our respective contexts in which we work have influenced this? Not in terms of content – we agree on that – but in terms of patterns of argumentation. If you, Bernadette, place so much emphasis on the story of Mrs. Pinckney, does this perhaps reflect the great oral, meaningful storytelling traditions in Africa? And when you, Nobumasa, on the other hand, elaborate Mrs. Pinckney as an encouraging and at the same time cautionary symbol, does this perhaps reflect the great ethical traditions in Asia? My refusal of direct meaning-making and ethical service, on the other hand, would then be a European-style reflexive evasive manoeuvre to a (preferably unassailable) meta-level?

   

  BVH: Good question indeed. In my opinion, this exercise shows how we are all conditioned by the sociocultural environment in which we live and work. Hence my response, from a South African point of view, focused on the story/history in order to highlight the importance of the work in decolonising the subject. While playfully complicating racial issues in a historical context, the artist mainly celebrates Africanness by means of materials, patterns and colours. This allowed me to infuse my interpretation with African epistemologies. Your response, Ernst, could be regarded as a refusal, perhaps, to acknowledge and engage with the deeper implications of the work and indeed rather shift the focus onto more theoretical concerns as inspired by German art historians? I am keen to hear Nobumasa’s view on this matter.

   

  NK: Ernst's question about whether a Japanese ethical tradition might secretly be reflected in my interpretation is very difficult for me to answer. But as Bernadette has just pointed out, the social context in which we work definitely plays a certain role. While globalisation has erased spatial distances, perhaps not necessarily mental ones. For Japanese today, Africa is still very distant, in the double sense mentioned above. Although Africa is the second largest continent with 55 countries and countless information is available, detailed and nuanced ideas about it are often missing from our consciousness. My leap into the general, or ethical, implication of the work could possibly be explained in this way. Seen in this way, I have probably unconsciously "traced" my own situation. But this also underlines the fact that the critique of representation – in the sense of a critical questioning of pictorial representations – is still as relevant today as it ever was.

   

  EW: I was very grateful to you, Nobumasa, for the emphasis on the ethical, because we always have to include the ethical dimension in the context of education. My argument from a German point of view would be that the interpretation of a work like Mrs. Pinckney must not be arbitrary. That would be the ethical responsibility of the interpreters. We will have to come back to this in a moment when we discuss conclusions for a toolbox for decoding images.

   

  But first I would like to learn more about the differences between our approaches – even though there is a large area of consensus. In the theoretical discussions we had some time ago, we clearly distinguished the Japanese concept of 'kansho kyoiku', the South African concept of 'art criticism' and the European concept of 'work immanence'. Could you elaborate on the question of how these positions are reflected in your texts?

   

  NK: The introduction of dialogue-based art viewing from the USA in the late 1990s revived the field of art education in schools or museums in Japan. Since then, this didactic method, which seems to seek to maximise the viewer's part in interpretation through its strict rejection of knowledge transfer and ultimately prioritises the discussion of interpretation, is still in vogue today. But a crucial question still arises as to how the meaning of interpretation, or meaningful interpretation, is secured without degenerating into mere arbitrariness. In this respect, too, our experiment seems to be very inspiring.

   

  BVH: At the University of South Africa we believe that the basic skills required to interpret objects of visual culture are best taught by beginning to practise art criticism. The proper domain of a critic is the description, interpretation and evaluation of concrete works of art. As a first step in this process, students must learn how to describe and interpret artworks. Essentially art criticism is a practice embedded in western epistemology that has been appropriated to study the art of contemporary Africa in a global context. When investigating the historical arts of Africa, the method remains the same although the local context of traditional culture and customs must be taken in consideration. My interpretation of Shonibare’s work was guided by these very same principles.

   

  EW: Finally, I would like to ask you something with regard to the 'methodological kit' proposed by the editors of this volume: Which methodological approaches for the interpretation of images do you consider absolutely necessary – independent of our respective Japanese, South African or European context? And I'll add a second question in a moment: Does that leave one area that plays a role exclusively in your respective local context?

   

  BVH: From an art historical point of view, the methods best suited for the interpretation of political images stem from a contextual approach which demands critical consideration of the cultural context of the work, its artist and of the social practices and power relations in which it is embedded. As the interpreter, you can apply the iconological method: first describe what you see – formal elements and details – and then identify the iconography, the specific subject and symbolism of the work. Do some research on facts and historical context, as well as the reasons why the work was made or commissioned. Then you can explain how all this information was put together to express the meaning or content of the work and decide what message or ideas the artist was trying to communicate. Because every interpreter comes to the artwork with his/her own worldview, the interpretation will differ depending on that worldview and not on the local context. For example, because I attach more importance to the idea of decolonisation, my contextual approach is combined with and influenced by decolonial theory.

   

  NK: Basically, Bernadette, I gladly agree with you, especially with regard to your gradual approach. I also think it is reasonable and sensible from a pedagogical point of view. But this raises the question of what actually constitutes a "political image" or "when" an image becomes political. Of course, there are pictures or works of art that are obviously and unmistakably recognisable as such, but there are also those that are much more subtle, that are not so noticeable to foreign eyes, or that were not originally created with political intentions, but that in retrospect seem to be quite political. What one considers to be political depends, after all, very much on the view of the observer, possibly even completely apart from the original intention of the creator. In this respect, it seems to me that a fundamental attitude is indispensable for the viewer to be able to keep a mental distance from a picture and its context as well as from himself and his own horizon in order to perceive a picture (also) politically.

   

  EW: Thank you both, because from my point of view I cannot and do not need to add anything more. I completely agree that an iconological basis, as Bernadette has formulated it, is needed. And I am deeply convinced that the reception-historical and reception-theoretical extension that Nobumasa has added is absolutely necessary, indeed indispensable, for the toolbox. I can add nothing to this bundle of methods.

  What perhaps came up short in our conversation were the different cultural conditions and the resulting consequences for interpretation. But we'll make up for that on another occasion.

   

  NK: Finally, let me add something to my previous statement. For responsible interpretation, we need above all a willingness to engage in dialogue. I experienced this again in our conversation and our experiment also shows this in an exemplary way.

   

   

Read more …

• 

  Osuanyi Quaicoo Essel

  The seated human-like figure is centrally placed with the head occupying almost the centre of the entire composition while the hands rest gently on the laps. The head and the face of the human figure is rendered in planes and cubistic orientation, a style reminiscent in precolonial African wooden sculptures. Hands of the figure received similar cubistic treatment with less details as in realistic depiction. Interestingly, there is a deliberate subtle emphasis on the head size of the figure. In African sculptural renditions, the human head is considered as seat of wisdom and, therefore, presented bigger to defile the realistic canonic proportions and connote its Afrocentric symbolic essence. This concept of head re(presentation) is termed as African proportions (Amenuke et al, 1991).

   

  To create a harmonious contrast of colour and shape, tints of yellow forms an arc-shaped design around the head. This treatment possibly suggests a halo effect characteristic of saintly figural paintings in Western art traditions. It also mimics a turbaned human figure. As an artist who hailed from a predominately Muslim community, this stylistic treatment, perhaps, pays tribute to his religious cultural background. The eyes are presented with dark brown rectangular dabs, with the forehead gently highlighted with bright yellows, a treatment that puts the human figure in a meditative mood and sanctimonious character. Though Uche Okeke presented the work in a portrait orientation, the skilful placement of the human figure, and the peculiar colouration of the head regions creates a triangular effect when imaginary diagonal lines are projected from the bottom corners of the composition to the halo-shaped found on the head. Similarly, the haloed effect on the head and the elongated pharaonic beard creates an imaginary inverted triangle resonating a visual excitement. 

   

  Symbolically, yellow depicts riches and royalty in African colour scheme. With this schematic colouration, Okeke gave a clue to the kingly characteristics of the human figure. The white looking garment of the figure also adds to the sanctimonious conjecture of the figure as in African colour symbolism. The artist’s use of luminous chromatic reflection of the tint of yellow and dark shades helped in achieving the sense of depth in the garment. Complementing the overall kingly posture of the human figure is its elongated pharaonic beard and bodily language as found in sculptures of ancient Egyptian kings.

   

  Okeke skilfully deceived viewers of this composition into believing that it is symmetrical per its stylistic tendency, yet an intense observation reveals a psychedelic mutation of the placement of the fingers, padding of the background with tree-shaped figures in rich application of tints and shades of black, yellow and brown to create contrast of colours and shapes. Placement of the trees in colour variations and the sprouting of the branches forms a psychedelic cross and contribute to breaking monotony. The patchy effects of the intense yellow forming the negative spaces adds to creating a perceptual believability that the human figure wears a contemplative mood per the facial looks. There seem to be gentle highlights of the yellow from the shoulders to the halo-shaped object.

   

  Per the compositional portrayal, Okeke showed a kingly and majestic posture of, perhaps, the Christian religious icon in Africanised bodily posture and cultural praxis. This compositional contextualisation feeds into his personal manifesto that he did not subscribe to borrowing Western artistic accent hook, line and sinker. Neither was he comfortable with resorting his Nigerian indigenous artistic traditions without modification. He emphasised in his manifesto that it is ‘… futile copying our old art heritages, for they stand for our old order. Culture lives by change. Today's social problems are different from yesterday's, and we shall be doing grave disservice to Africa and mankind by living in our fathers' achievements’ (Okeke, n.d). For that reason, he appropriated western artistic accents and fused them with Afrocentric artistic concepts and perspectives to achieve a hybrid artistic language which is not purely African nor Western, but yet circumvent the boundaries of artistic cultural traditions in general. The fusion lends itself to exploring the familiar and the unfamiliar to create a renewed breed of art. He called this effect ‘natural synthesis’. Emanating from Nigerian non-conformist artist group named Zaria Rebels, Okeke sought to reinterpret the Western artistic style of realistic depiction, perspectival detailing, accurate proportions and tonal gradation he was exposed to by the Eurocentric-inspired faculty in the so-called formal education setup in art in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. As part of the pioneering post-independence artists in Nigeria, Uche Okeke was experimenting for a renewed artistic accent for his creations through the assessment of his Nigerian cultural values and the new artistic training he had been exposed to in order to arrive at the boundary of these two traditions.

   

  Using this painting in teaching and learning in the context of collective memory could inspire relevant competencies in the learners. Gathering inspiration from the artistic pursuit of Okeke, learners could fuse multiple artistic traditions of the artworld to arrive at their individualised artistic accents. Teachers could engage learners in this manner by asking them to borrow and appropriate a foreign artistic style and fuse it with their nationalistic art making techniques to develop a new breed of art or concept. Teachers could also discuss with learners about the fact that gathering artistic inspiration is multicultural with no boundaries. Furnishing learners with links to the biographical account of the artist for them to understand his cultural nuances remains key in the process. It would also be beneficial to guide learners to explore with their own interpretation of the artwork (figure 1). Teachers could also provide learners with printed copy of the painting and ask them to redraw this religious-centred figure to suit their own religious understanding and cultures.  This approach addresses the competencies of critical thinking and problem solving; creativity and innovation; cultural identity and global citizenship; and personal development.  

  
  References

  • Amenuke, S. K., Dogbe, B. K., Asare, S. K., Ayiku, F. D. & Bafoe, A. General knowledge in Art for
  • senior secondary schools. Evans Brothers Limited.
  • Okeke, U. (n.d.). Natural synthesis. final okeke natural synthesis manifesto 1960.doc (live.com)

   

  

  Mahmoud Malik Saako

  The image is presented in a form of a male figure in a seated position with long beard, white turban, white robe, long sleeves and a probably waist band. The painting represents fairly the complexion of a male, black bearded and wearing a face mask, with hands resting on the laps possibly in a meditation mood. The Background is probably a wooded environment or garden with tall trees of two colours (black and yellow). The figure seated probably on a staircase or an amphitheater. The sun ray penetrating through the tree created shaded patches reflected on the image.

   

  An Islamic perspective: I base my interpretation of the painting on Islamic perspective as one of the foreign region that had an early contact in northern Nigeria as early as 15th century long before Christianity and eventual colonization of Nigeria by European power (the British) and its possible independence in the 1960. The emir is mostly male usually dressed with a white robe, long sleeves and a white turban tied around his head to signify his authority. The painting perhaps represents an Emir of the Zaria state at that time sitting in a garden relaxing.

   

  Using an African mask: The use of an African mask to represent the figure was done deliberately or perhaps to avoid revolution from the Muslim community of disrespecting their leader which the author was much familiar in this volatile society especially, the intolerance nature between Muslims and Christians at this era in the Zaria state. The mask as a tradition signature that ubiquitous across many cultures that can be used to represent the religious discourses by appropriating and manipulating them to produce art forms of the past to produce a mythology for the present.

   

  Lessons

  1. The image portrays the power of the emir in the Zaria state with a possibly palace and vineyard or gardens where he retires to relax. The seat or staircase/amphitheatre is constructed within the park for relaxation.
  2. It also shows the importance of trees because the natural air and shade provided. It reflects the symbiotic relationship between man and the natural environment or biosphere.
  3. The long beard is a reflection of the age of the figure, combined with the white turban tied around the head which is a symbol of power and authority of the emir within the context of an Islamic state. Again, the white long robe coupled with black beard and the white turban is a reflection of the dress code of the emir within the states dominated by Muslims. The waist band (blue sea colour) is used to tie the robe for easy movement.
  4. The facial representation of the figure doesn’t conform with normal human head based on the eyes, nose and mouth. It is probably a mask of an Egyptian pharaoh to imbibe the spirit of the Pharaoh as a kingly figure that wielded much power. A story that is synonymous in both Islam and Christian doctrines except the West Africa Indigenous Religions that do ascribe this myth. The use of the mask also simmer the tension of using identifiable imagery that would have rise tension in this probably consecutive Muslim state. The use of masks within the Africa context show the spiritual powers embedded in them that the wearer or user is mostly possessed and transfigured a situation that can only be explained by adherences to that particular belief system.
  5. The black and yellow tall trees depict the diverse nature of the ecosystem and the symbiotic relationship mostly exhibited in the environment. This shows the complex nature of the human society with diverse cultural and different colours complexion that need a person with wisdom and patience to rule, like the emir who assumes the position of an Egyptian Pharaoh.
  6. Uche Okeke, was a revolutionary artist who tried to break away from normal art presentation handed to Africa by the white colonial powers. This diversion was to Africanize the art industry in West Africa and Africa at large. This where Okeke decided to use the Pharaoh mask from Egypt that was considered even among Europeans of the cradle of human civilization in the world.

  

  Ernst Wagner

  I argue in the following text from a special position. Firstly, I was present in Bayreuth on 26.4.2022 when the two co-authors, Osuanyi Quaicoo Essel and Mahmoud Malik Saako, discussed the painting in a larger circle. The representatives of the Iwalewa House clearly expressed their doubts about the (traditional) title of the painting "Christ".^[1] Perhaps this brought the question of who was depicted in the painting, Christ or another person, to the fore. This question also shapes my discussion of the painting presented here. It became the guiding theme behind which other topics disappeared, such as the question of the painting's function (what was it created for?), its biography (how did it come to Bayreuth?) the role of oil painting (is it a European import), the context of the debates on modern art during the independence movements in Africa (does the painting belong to a global modernism after the Second World War or does it mark a Nigerian path? ^[2]) - to name just a few.

   

  My own interpretation is therefore less an independent approach to the work than a response to the positions presented with the intention of building bridges between the approaches by introducing a meta-level. Whether this is convincing, whether the bridge is sustainable, is for the reader to decide. But more on that below.

   

  Traps through aesthetic stereotypes that lead to false classifications / interpretations

  And a second preliminary remark: I didn't like this picture at the beginning. It reminded me too much of the religious pictures of the 1950/60s of my childhood. They were popular for death pictures back then: A mixture of a bit of Pre-Raphaelite and icon-inspired imagery, soaked in the formal world of a moderate and esoterically inclined modernism (Franz Marc). The intention was easy to see through: To somehow keep alive that which, in my view, was no longer contemporary at all, and to do so through a bland, unconvincing and even less convincing adaptation (a kind of "modern facing"). This is also why, when I saw the picture hanging at the entrance to the Iwalewa House from the corner of my eye, I immediately saw a Christ.

   

  Iconography - inclusion of other perspectives

  

  Detail

   

  In the discussion mentioned at the beginning, the intervention of Mahmoud Malik Saako was really surprising for me - against the background of this perception, which was shaped by my own stereotypes. The halo (which I saw - see detail) was a turban (which Malik saw). But I could not counter his view. There was no argument for the interpretation as a halo. This is also true now when I read Malik's text (like Osuanyi's). So I first had to recognise my stereotype in perception, which had lured me onto a perhaps (?) wrong track, I had to get rid of this, unlearn something, in order to be able to open up to the other perspective.

   

  Why I - retrospectively - still speak of "perhaps wrong", a research on Okeke's work has confirmed as meaningful. After all, there are obviously works in his oeuvre that iconographically quite certainly represent Christ or St Mary, as an internet search reveals (see fig. below). The auction house Bonhams (Abb.1) states - even if for 1963, two years after our work: "in 1963 ... the Passion of Christ was a recurring theme for the artist. He had produced the stained-glass designs of the Fourteen Stations of the Cross in Munich earlier in the year." (www.bonhams.com/auctions/25800/lot/28 accessed 14 Sept 2024)

   

  

  Christian motifs in Uche Okeke's Ouevre between 1962 and 1963 found by the author on the internet (May 22, 2022)

   

  Perhaps this is why the discussion about whether Christ or a Muslim is depicted makes me feel uneasy. In my mind, the question is connected with the attributions or depreciations: To whom / which faith does the work of art belong? Does it belong to the Christians, the Muslims, or the traditional believers in northern Nigeria, if, as Philipp Schramm or Mahmoud Malik Saako suggest, one also discovers a traditional wooden mask?

   

  New approach and reflection on its anchoring

  Hence my attempt to think of the painting in a different way, i.e. not from the artist's point of view and what he or she wanted to represent. In doing so, it is clear to me that I am taking a specifically Western approach to a modernist work (where I now place Okeke's painting) with my new approach. This approach is based on the loss of a binding iconography and a fundamental openness / never-quite-unambiguity of 'autonomous' works of art for a Western-oriented, middle-class audience. In addition, my proposal for interpretation is based on a specific position in the interpretation of images, from production theory to reception theory (in the context of constructivist epistemology). The loss of a binding iconography is accompanied by a greater significance of form (which is now itself charged with content to compensate for the loss). In a next step, I therefore try to examine the image - beyond a positioning in the question of whether it is an "Islamic" or a "Christian image" or a "traditional image" - form-analytically.

   

  

  Analytical composition with auxiliary lines. (c) the author
  

   

  Form analysis

  The dominant, almost penetrating axial symmetry in a very high longitudinal format speaks of high order; the pyramidal structure of the figure also speaks of calm and stability, indeed of sublimity and dignity, of quiet, immovable power. And this dignity is not fed by external insignia or theatrical staging, but by a calm that radiates from within. It is a picture in front of which one can become calm if one trusts the order as a viewer.

   

  The striking human figure contributes to this effect. Although clearly figurative, it does not represent - to the degree of abstraction - a concrete portrait or a human being that can be grasped by the senses. This is most obvious in the geometricised eye area, which is shaded in various dark zones. This makes the gaze ambiguous: is the figure looking at the viewer, is it looking forward, is it looking inwards (contemplatively, with closed eyes)? Together with the geometric rhythm of the picture's surface (the symmetry, but of course above all the parallels that can denote eyelid, tear sac, eyebrow - or not) support the depiction of a human being in an abstracted ideal form that remains open to itself, as in a mask. The latter is also characterised by the fact that the viewer immediately sees what has been made, what has been assembled, as in the case of the moustache, for example.

   

  The figure sits quite classically in front of a middle and a background: at the bottom the zone (again - between two-dimensional and spatial effect - strongly abstracted) is divided into horizontal stripes, which become slightly narrower towards the top. They again suggest something familiar (a wooden bench), but this remains ambiguous. In the upper zones, the tree trunks (without leaves) form the liveliest, least symmetrical, most restless element in the painting, even if the alternation of light and dark again shows the abstracting hand of the artist.

   

  With this spatial layering in clear zones (background, trees, seat, figure), but also the geometric reduction of the forms, the picture looks like a carved relief. The colouring also fits in with this, for example when the "sky" behind the trees as well as the lighter trees have the same colouring as the face, while the beard, eyes and the dark trees form a second colour zone. The lightest zones are formed by the robe and the shape around the head. Despite the large spectrum in the area of light-dark contrast, the picture does not appear colourful, rather like a natural wood relief. An effect that is again particularly evident in one detail: the way the hands are shaped is reminiscent of hands carved out of a piece of wood.

   

  This character is supported by the way Okeke uses oil painting. He clearly outlines the contours of the surfaces. The objects are each assigned a main colour, applied impasto with broad brushstrokes. The modelling creates plasticity, lightly set with internal structures enliven the colour surfaces.

   

  Conclusion

  The degree of abstraction, the modelling construction of the figurative out of a colourfulness, the strict symmetry of the composition, the tectonics of the pictorial space unfold a tableau that nevertheless - and this is now decisive - creates zones of ambiguity in the figurative. The viewer must fill these with his or her own ideas. The viewer's gaze is directed towards the picture, but the eyes do not look back. In this respect, the painting is suitable for contemplation, meditation, spiritual experience. In seeing the painting, one's own can come to rest. And so the distinction between the Christian halo, the Muslim turban and the ritual mask can also come to rest in the contemplation of the painting.

   

  This consideration is based on an 'ideal viewer' of the work, i.e. it is reception-aesthetically oriented. If one finally turns it once again to production aesthetics, one could interpret the work as an attempt by the artist in which it experimentally unfolds what a spirituality beyond the distinction traditional - Christian - Muslim could look like.

   

  Footnotes

  ^[1]              Philipp Schramm's position becomes clear in his text (https://www.bayfink.uni-bayreuth.de/de/Sommerausstellung-2021_-Not-yet/audio-not-yet---welcome/index.html).

  ^[2]              Perrin Lathrop, "Uche Okeke," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed May 21, 2022, https://smarthistory.org/uche-okeke/.

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  Bea Lundt

   

  Louis XIV (1638-1715), King of France, was painted by Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659-1743) in his palace in Versailles near Paris in 1701. The oil painting was larger than life: 277 cm in height and 194 cm in width. The official title reads: Portrait de Louis XIV en costume de sacre. The painting is exhibited at the Louvre in Paris (INV 7492, open access), and a copy is in the Bavarian State Painting Collection in Munich.

   

  In this portrait, the king is shown dressed in the official royal robes of the monarch, posing magnificently in front of his throne, which is placed in the background. In the painting are gathered together all of the traditional symbols of a ruler: the crown, the sword, and the ermine cloak, which uses the fur of this most precious animal.

   

  Hyacinthe Rigaud was a famous and experienced court painter and had many assistants in his big atelier, so we do not know which parts of the picture are actually done by him. Since photography was not yet established at the beginning of the 18th century, every court employed artists specialising in portraiture to show people what their ruler looked like, or rather how he was expected to look or wanted to be seen in order to legitimise a political programme of monarchy. Specific iconographic symbols and accoutrements were used to demonstrate the tradition of rulership, which was thought to be bestowed by divine right. Rigaud fulfilled the wishes and orders of his patrons, but he also showed subtle characteristics of the people he painted.

   

   

   

  ‘Absolutism’: Paradigm of a ruling structure that today is considered a myth

   

  Nowadays, the portrait is often used for educational purposes to visually substantialise Louis XIV as the most important representative of ‘Absolutism’ in Europe, the regime of direct rule with no control by a parliament or council: ‘L’etat c’est moi’ (‘I am the state’), he is said to have described his understanding of his place in the world. Research has discovered that he never really defined his role in this way (first in Bernier, 1988, p. 110). However, it is true that he was attributed with the image of being the central part of nature and the cosmos: as the ‘Sun King’, he was staged as the genesis and focus of all energy whence all life originates.

   

  Scholars of the early modern era (Henshall, Wrede, Reinhard) consider ‘Absolutism’ to be a myth constructed in the 19^th century. Since Gerhard Oestreich observed the ‘non-absolutistic elements in absolutism’ in 1969, many studies have pointed out that the king depended on an influential elite as well as a number of committees. A complex and effective network of groups existed as the executive authority controlling the political system, as Althoff and Stollberg-Rilinger have shown in their groundbreaking books on the political organisation of the late medieval and early modern states in Europe. In their publications, they describe the ritualised methods used in communication between the influential groups in order to find a consensus. As result of that scholarly discussion of the topos of ‘Absolutism’, Wolfgang Reinhard, like other scholars, recommends, ‘that one should abandon the term’ (p. 40). But, as it is rooted quite deeply in the historical consciousness, this does not seem so simple. Martin Wrede complains in his article ‘Absolutismus’ in the handbook Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit of the continuation of the topos, namely ‘the cliché, still firmly anchored in popular views of history as well as in textbooks, of the all-dominant, all-regulating, arbitrary state built on princely power and with a splendid façade’ [‘das in populärem Geschichtsbild wie Schulbuch nach wie vor fest verankerte Klischee des alles beherrschenden, alles reglementierenden, auf fürstliche Macht gebauten Willkürstaates mit prachtvoller Fassade’] (p. 33).

   

  The portraits of Louis XIV and other kings are used to prove the existence of this colourful glory, whilst in reality, the monarchs were representative figures and personal symbols. During Louis’s lifetime, France expanded its territory in Europe and overseas, which brought extreme losses and financial burdens to the people. Because of that disaster, it was necessary to produce a reputation of honour for the king.

   

   

   

  Interpreting the portrait

   

  The portrait shows Louis XIV at the age of 63, at the height of his success. But he does not appear as a strong and resolute ruler who travels around in his country, nor an active fighter who leads battles to defend his people. Pupils today always miss a specific physical ‘masculinity’ that they expect from a king They fault this person for not being able to move, run, or ride in his heavy clothes, high heels and white tights. He is forced to stay indoors, surrounded with sumptuousness. They perceive him as ‘feminine’, as the only part of his body he is presenting is his legs, much like a young woman in a miniskirt, and the grandiose wig with its long hair hinders many activities. The entire image seems ridiculous to today’s pupils. What we see here is an old, ill, vain man who is dressing up to fulfil representative duties. What pupils remark is not just some disrespectful observation but is in line with what we know about reality. Rigaud is a superb artist to show the man in his demonstration of the ritualised courtly pageant of luxury.

   

  There are more paintings showing Louis at different phases of his life. As all royal children, he was kept in the same pretty clothes as girls during the first six years of his life. Portraits show him even at the age of ten with facial features and accessories we perceive as feminine and fanciful, not suited to preparing for the life of a strong ruler. The official regent for Louis until he turned 22 was his mother, Anna of Austria. Louis strengthened the Catholic church but did not follow her order of monogamy: besides his six legal children, he had eleven illegitimate ones, all of whom he cared for (Bernier, Tischer, Wrede).

   

  The ideal of masculinity during this time was the mixed one of early modern times, when gender was more hybrid than in the 19^th/20^th centuries, and life concepts were not sharply polarised between men and women in different spaces, placing men in the public sphere (Dinges, Lundt). Also, the central symbolic figure for the state was not necessarily masculine; there were very influential wives, concubines, and even female rulers.

   

   

   

  Conclusion

   

  In the educational process, it is important to dismantle prejudices about past ideals for masculinity as being strong, powerful and heroic. The historic examples of individual men’s glorious performances on European thrones need to be questioned. Pictures like the one of Louis XIV can help to construct a different understanding of courtly life. If it is understood against the background of a plurality of life concepts for ruling men and women, it can help us to see the limitations of their power.

   

   

   

  References

   

  • Gerd Althoff: Rules and Rituals in Medieval Power Games, Brill Academic Publ. 2019.
  • Olivier Bernier: Ludwig XIV Die Biographie, Albatros Verlag 1988. English edition: Louis XIV, New Word City 2018.
  • Ida Blom, Catherine Hall, Karen Hagemann: Gendered Nations. Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Long Nineteenth Century, Bloomsbury 2000.
  • Martin Dinges (ed.): Männer-Macht-Körper. Hegemoniale Männlichkeiten vom Mittelalter bis heute, Frankfurt am Main 2005.
  • Karen Hagemann: Gender, War, and Politics: Transatlantic Perspectives 1775-1830, Palgrave Macmillan 2020.
  • Nicholas Henshall: The Myth of Absolutism. Change and Continuity in Early Modern European Monarchy, London 1993 (first published in 1992).
  • Bea Lundt: Die Grenzen des Heros. Vielfältige Männlichkeiten in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. In: Martin Lücke (ed.): Helden in der Krise. Didaktische Blicke auf die Geschichte der Männlichkeiten, Berlin 2013, pp. 67-102.
  • Gerhard Oestreich: Geist und Gestalt des Frühmodernen Staates, Duncker & Humblot-Verlag 1969.
  • Wolfgang Reinhard: Geschichte des Modernen Staates, München 2007 (and elsewhere).
  • Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger: Des Kaisers alte Kleider. Verfassungsgeschichte und Symbolsprache des Alten Reiches, C.H. Beck Verlag 2^nd edition 2013.
  • Anuschka Tischer: Ludwig XIV, Stuttgart 2016.
  • Martin Wrede: Absolutismus. In: Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit vol. 1, Stuttgart 2005, cols. 24 -34.
  • Martin Wrede: Ludwig XIV. Der Kriegsherr aus Versailles, Darmstadt 2015.

   

   

   

  Translated from German by Kelly Thompson.

   

  published September 2020

   

  

  Bea Lundt

                              Prince Osei Owusu Bempah, from the exhibition "Orderly Disorderly" - End of Year Exhibition, KNUST (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology) in Kumasi, Ghana, Museum of Science and Technology in Accra, 2017, © Prince Osei Owusu Bempah

   

  The artist Prince Osei Owusu Bempah from Ghana artistically examines in two art works the portraits of Louis XIV (and below a typical European equestrian portrait of a ruler, like e.g. Charles V, painted by Titian 1548, today at the Prado Museum in Madrid). "Bempah appropriates historical images in the form of painting, sculpture and photography. Considering images as a multiplicity, he is now drawn to news from social media, television, radio and newspaper. Information is crucial to the making of his works which extends beyond the visual representations. He reinterprets them in tapestry, embroidery, banners and uses plastic sacks, curtain accessories, second hand table cloths and silk in different configurations. He substitutes certain elements of the original images with mortars and pestles" (leaflet of the exhibition).

   

   

    

   Image 1:Prince Osei Owusu Bempah, from the exhibition "Orderly Disorderly" - End of Year Exhibition, KNUST (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology) in Kumasi, Ghana, Museum of Science and Technology in Accra, 2017, © Prince Osei Owusu Bempah. (left)

   Image 2: Tizian, Carlos V en Mühlberg, 1548, H: 335 cm, W: 283 cm, Oil on Canvas, Museo del Prade. (right)

   

   

   

  published November 2020

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  Bea Lundt

  The picture of Christine de Pizan and our knowledge about her life show that this is not true. Christine de Pizan (1364 – c. 1429), born as Cristina da Pizzano in Venice, was a poet and author at the court of King Charles VI of France. Christine produced a large number of vernacular works, in both prose and verse. Her works include political treatises, mirrors for princes, epistles, and poetry.

  This very famous miniature is an illustration from a book, handwritten in the years between 1410 and 1414 and preserved at the British Library in London (Harley MS 4431, Vol. 1, fol. 4 r). This manuscript contains texts by Christine de Pizan and is called The Book of the Queen, as it had been produced on behalf of and dedicated to Isabeau of Bavaria, wife of King Charles VI of France. There is another miniature showing Christine on her knees dedicating the book to the French queen. Christine can be identified by her facial features and style of dress.

  

  Detail of: Master of the Cité des Dames and workshop, 1413 - 1414, parchment, 36,5 cm x 28,5 cm, British Library, London. © British Library, London. Photo: the author

   

  In the centre of the aforementioned picture, a woman is shown sitting at a table and writing into a voluminous book. With her left hand, she is erasing coloured letters with a knife and with her right hand correcting them. This dynamic gesture of self-correcting fills her working situation with life. On her head is a headdress typical for a widow, the guimpe/wimple. Around the desk, we see some fictive architecture with a broad symbolic meaning: it shows a room which is specifically tailored to an intellectual working woman but also opens to the outside, as there are windows, an arch, and entryways. The roof of another storey marks the building as a town house. Though the scene is an interior one, the colours on the woman are bright, and there are warm red colours around her. This is different from older pictures showing clerical female authors in the narrow, closed rooms of a cloister.

   

  ‘Je, Christine’: An independent author defining her role in society

  The picture shows a professional female author in an urban context in the process of writing a book and working for the public, where she is honoured as being part of the highest level of society. There are similar pictures with Christine sitting behind her desk with an open book and people coming and arguing with her in a lively manner. In one, a young man, who has been identified as her son, stands in front of her and speaks to her. Another one shows four men visiting her in her room and discussing her writings with her. Sitting Christine, standing men: the arrangement shows that the guests will leave soon. Such encounters are also atypical for a cloister, which is said to be the usual space for educated women.

   

   

   

  Detail of: Master of the Cité des Dames and workshop, 1413 - 1414, parchment, 36,5 cm x 28,5 cm, British Library, London. © British Library, London. Photo: the author

   

  As experts see it, it was Christine herself who ordered the illustrator to characterise her in this manner. Several autobiographical comments of hers document that she liked to show herself living this individualist intellectual lifestyle. Traditional scholars call this typical for the Renaissance, which began a bit after Christine’s lifetime. Very often in her books we find ‘Je, Christine’ (‘I, Christine’), at the beginning of a chapter.

   

  Christine’s life story

  Christine was born in Venice in 1364 as the daughter of a doctor of medicine and astrology. He was called to the French court in Paris. Christine married a royal secretary and had three children. But then her father, her husband, and the king who had supported the family died. Christine was 25 years old and had to care not only for her children but also for her old mother and younger relatives living with her. She decided not to marry again but to support her living by writing. Her oeuvre contains poems alongside utopian, philosophical, historian, didactical, allegorical, and autobiographical texts. Noble families ordered her books and paid her well. In her old age, she escaped from the civil war in Paris to a cloister nearby where she died around 1429.

   

  The first secular female author in Europe

  With her Italian-French background, Christine is an example for the migration of intellectuals in southern Europe in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. She was not herself noble but came from an academic family and remained near the court. She was privately educated, mostly by her father, and also educated herself using the offer of the erudition centre in France. Living within a totally Christian cosmos with a spiritual way of thinking, she was not a clerical but rather a secular woman. In her books, she fought for gender equality, especially in education, as well as for recognizing the extraordinary performances of women in the past and in her own time. She wanted this knowledge to be part of a new understanding of history. She sharply protested against texts which reduce women to sex objects. With her pugnacious notes, she provoked the first literary quarrel about femininity and masculinity in Europe, the ‘Querelle des Femmes’.

   

  The masculinisation of literacy and education in the modern era

  In premodern Europe, competencies in literacy were considered more or less ‘feminine’. Girls learned to read at least the Bible to their families; noblewomen were taught languages and literature to be able to marry into different countries. The ideal for masculinity was fighting strength; sitting with books seemed to be viewed as non-masculine. Many kings and noblemen were illiterate. This changed in modern times. Literacy became part of the public world and school education developed as a privilege of men.

  In the colonial period, Europeans attempted to impose this central European order on the African colonies: women were relegated to the private sphere, while men had the privilege of acting in public, which was more valued. The colonisers argued these gender roles were anthropologically fixed constancies, and they had the civilising mission of transferring this pattern to their colonies. But African scholars insist that in precolonial times, polar structures of different worlds for men and women did not exist, exactly as they had not in premodern Europe.

   

  Conclusion: Confirming non-dualistic, fluid gender concepts

  As we still need to fight against the discrimination of women and girls in educational systems worldwide, the message of the picture might be encouraging. This visual icon helps to deconstruct a common myth about Europe and to reject static ideas about continuities of bipolar gender structures. Even in the European Middle Ages, independent female authors were shown, combining inside and outside worlds. To see that it was different in history motivates us to see the hybridity of gender structures on both continents, which do not merely follow the dualistic scheme of men working in public professions and women working as housewives.

   

  References:

  • Christine de Pizan: Le Livre de la Cité des Dames. Stock 1986 (French).
  • Christine de Pizan: The Book of the City of Ladies (Penguin Classics) rev. 2000 (English).
  • Christine de Pizan: Das Buch von der Stadt der Frauen. Originally in Middle French. Translated and with commentary and an introduction by Margarete Zimmermann, Orlanda Buchverlag Berlin 1986, dtv 1999 (German).
  • Roberta L. Krueger: Towards Feminism: Christine de Pizan, Female Advocacy, and Women’s Textual Communities in the Late Middle Ages and Beyond. In: Judith M. Bennett, Ruth Mazo Karras (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe. Oxford University Press 2016, pp. 590-606.
  • Henry Kam Kah: The Sacred Forest. Gender and Matriliny in the Laimbwe History (Cameroon), c. 1750-2001. Berlin 2015.
  • Oyewumi, Oyeronké: Colonizing Bodies and Minds. Gender and Colonialism. In: ibid (ed.): Invention of Women. Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. Minneapolis, MN 1997, pp. 121-156.

   

   

  Edited by Kelly Thompson.

   

  published August 2020

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  Kerstin Pinther

  Moulding Tradition (2009) is a work done by the designers Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin of Studio Formafantasma: It consists of a group of five ceramics in different shapes and forms: boat-like bowls of various sizes, vases and bottles. Some of the maiolica objects display special attributes which refer to the sea and to rescue operations on the water such as a pair of paddles and lifebuoys. Others use ribbons, printed with historical and immigration data, to tie framed photographs and other ‘décor’ to the vessels. The project is informed by the tin-glazed maiolica from Caltagirone in Sicily – itself a result of the encounter with (Moorish) Islamic ceramic traditions in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which in the following centuries triggered a technical and content-related process of adaptation. From the early modern age onwards, maiolica thus became “an excellent indicator and agent of design transmission across the globe” (Ajmar-Wollheim/Molà 2011, 17).

   

  Among the ceramic vessels being produced up till now is the genre of the so-called teste di moro – vases that in a stereotypical, often grotesque and derogative manner depict the faces of people referred to as either ‘African’ or as ‘Arabic.’ In their original form as busts they most probably date back to the seventeenth century, when they were used as flowerpots to decorate balconies and terraces, suggesting an exuberant vegetation. By replacing this generic image with a black-and-white photograph of a known and thus named immigrant from Nigeria, Sofien Adeyemi, Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin update the references and create a link to recent migration movements. A flask with an attached ceramic tile lists the names of the countries Adeyemi has traveled through on his way from West Africa to Italy. His (multiplied) portrait together with written information on present-day migration policies is attached to the ceramic form, thus literally adding a new level of meaning. Yet another  wine bottle recalls fruit picking, predominantly done by migrant workers under harsh and exploitative conditions.

   

  By introducing further elements of reality in traditional forms, Formafantasma with Moulding Tradition create complex discourses on the historical and present-day entanglements between Africa and Europe and the imbalance in their economic and political conditions. According to the designers, “contemporary public opinion polls have claimed that 65% of Italians believe that the immigrants are ‘a danger for our culture.’” In this context Moulding Tradition speaks of the blind spots of contemporary culture: Neither the explicit transcultural character of the maiolica which had contributed to – if not established – the fame of Caltagirone’s craft tradition is valued, nor are the descendants of those who once introduced this new ceramic technique welcomed. Moulding Tradition also alludes to the fact that in the most recent age of globalization nearly everything – data, information, images, objects – is free-flowing, but some people’s movements from specific geographies are monitored and restricted. Thus, it questions the ideology of cultural segregation and confronts it with the factual migration of people and goods as well as with the various historical entanglements. Furthermore, Moulding Tradition, for which the designers cooperated with a local craftsperson, can also be read as a comment on the role of craft in contemporary society as well as on the question of how craft is sometimes “locked into a tradition repeating [moulding, author’s note] the same objects over and over again” (Studio Formafantasma 2015). In order to counter this tendency, the designers left their products with a kind of raw surface, since normally maiolica ceramic is painted in bold colors after being dried thoroughly. In the case of Formafantasma’s maiolica, the objects remain ‘unfinished’ – a (blank) space to metaphorically be worked on and to open up a debate. Thus, Moulding Tradition stands for Studio Formafantasma’s conceptual and critical design-thinking approach. In this approach, the duo relies on textual information as well as on the haptic and aesthetic qualities of the substances they use: “[M]aterials are not only functional but also have the ability to evoke memories or to testify historical knowledge” (Studio Formafantasma 2015).

   

  The authors of Global Design History make clear how the most recent phase of globalization not only accelerates flows of people, images, information, commodities and capital, but also contributes to the various types of exclusion and border control regimes (Adamson, et al. 2010, 1f.). At a time when design is becoming increasingly politicized, the question of how designers respond to the hitherto biggest wave of flight and migration in the years 2015/16 becomes obvious. Indeed, similar to Moulding Tradition, there are other design objects as well as works at the interface of design and art which can be seen as tools for reflecting on migration and flight. In using design as a tool, the migrancy reference can often be found on more than only one level. Besides its content-related presence, it is also tangible via the objects’ materiality or techniques, which for their part often bear traces of mobility and cultural transfer. Thus, these objects speak strongly to the historical and cultural migration of forms.

   

  References

  • Adamson, Glenn, et al., editors. Global Design History. Routledge, 2011.
  • Ajmar-Wollheim, Marta, and Luca Molà. “The Global Renaissance. Cross-cultural Objects in the Early Modern Period.” Global Design History, edited by Glenn Adamson, Giorgio Riello and Sarah Teasly, Routledge, 2011, pp. 11–20.
  • Studio Formafantasma. “Studio Formafantasma on Words as a Tool for Design.” Design Indaba Conference, Talk on November 3^rd 2015, http://www.designindaba.com/videos/conference-talks/studio-formafantasma-words-tool-design.

   

  published February 2020

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  Yaw Sekyi-Baidoo

   

  The Akan linguist¹ staff icon represents various aspects of the philosophy, values and symbolism of clan, town or ethnicity. The elephant icon, like other symbols of the Asante empire, is used in fabric and stool designs as well as the finial of the staff (Sarpong (1971:24), which is an important group formal identity symbol. Users of the staff include storytellers, clan linguists, and, most characteristically state linguists. Yankah has this to say about the state linguist staff:

   

  “Every Akan chief or king has two or more staffs. The higher a chief’s status the wider the range of staffs, since and important chief deals with a greater variety of social and political situations and has to match various situations with relevant messages (1995: 33).”

   

  The meaning and artistic significance of the finial of the linguist staff may be seen by considering the choice and artistic design of the finial, the identity of the user, and finally, the context in which the staff is used. The identity of the user, in this context, is the linguist of the King of Ashanti, a very powerful Akan monarch, whose influence and control is acknowledged over centuries and across different parts of Ghana.

   

  The paper examines the motivations for the choice and representation of the Elephant-Calf symbol, and the overall cultural and social significance of the use of this symbol.

   

   

  The Symbol in Context

  Two aspects of the image might are important for our current discussion: the finial itself, and the upper shaft on which sits the base carrying the finial. The upper shaft consists of two veiny lines which with a wisdom knot in their middle. The next is the finial – Mother Elephant with its Calf Standing on it.

   

  The choice of the elephant is based on the preeminence of the elephant as an animal. The elephant is universally used as a royal symbol of power and strength, and among the Akan of Ghana, Kwarteng (2006) reports that the paramount chiefs of Denkyira, Eguafo, Abura, Ajumako, Abeaze, Offinso, Wassa Amenfi have elephants as their royal symbol. The elephant is called ‘sono’ in Akan, and the morphological connection between the name and the Akan expression for immensity ‘so’ seems to emphasize the natural immensity of the elephant, which is also be expressed in the following:

   

  ‘Ɔson akyi nni aboa.’

  (There is no animal beyond the elephant).

   

  The leadership and protection associated with the elephant is represented in the saying:

  'Wodi esono akyi a hasuo nya wo. '

   (When you follow the elephant you are safe from the early morning dew of the bush)

   

  The Akan see the immensity of the elephant from the social, political and spiritual perspective also. Socially, the flesh of the elephant is socially significant as it, unlike all other animals, provides meat for the whole community for an extended period. Politically, its parts, skin, ears and tusks are crucial aspects of the insignia of royalty. Again, spiritually, among animals, the elephant is seen to have the greatest ‘sasa’, a kind of spiritual force normally associated with humans. The ‘sasa’ is a spirit which protects its possessor through life and which assails its killers after its death. Sekyi-Baidoo (1994) reports of extensive activities for preventing the ‘sasa’ of the elephant from escaping from the carcass to assail its killer. Overall, the elephant stands for physical, spiritual and social preeminence among the Akan.

   

   

  The Representation

   

  The Upper Shaft

  According some traditional consultants, the veiny lines, as seen above, represent the demands of the governance of the empire, which are controlled by the knot, symbolising the cohesion, control and direction of the Asantehene.

   

  The Parent Elephant

  The finial representation captures the side view of the elephant, showing major aspects of its immensity and power - the body, which showcases its immense size, the heavy legs, showing its matchless stability, strength and force; the trunk, with which it breathes, smells, grasps and lifts objects and produces sound; and the tusk, with which it digs, lifts, gathers, attacks and defends itself.  The limbs and the trunk are presented in neutral posture: both feet firm on the ground and the trunk lowered – not picking anything nor blurting - suggesting placidity. On the other hand, the tusks, bigger than natural, are lifted, pointing to an ever-readiness - not to attack, but to defend. It is on this placid but defence-ready image of the elephant that the dependant calf is placed - for optimal comfort and security. It is explained that this image symbolizes the prosperous relationship between the Asantehene and the people over whom he rules - not intimidating them with his supreme power and authority, but ensuring their peace and security.

   

  The Calf

  Interestingly, unlike the elephant, the calf is presented panoramically - without the details of ears, tusk and trunk - its source of perception, control, nourishment and defence, for which it would depend on the mother. This is understood to symbolise the governance relationship in the Ashanti Kingdom where the subjects look to the Asantehene for intelligence, protection and support.

  According to traditional informants, the elephant-calf image is sometimes interpreted as symbolizing the permanence of the supremacy of the Ashanti Empire - from 1701 to present – perhaps, unlike others powers which rise and fall.

   

  

   

  Significance

  As intimated above, beyond its art and royal attraction, the elephant-calf image of the Ashanti royalty reflects ethnic and universal ideals of effective leadership, which is for cohesion and protection and, rather than for oppression.  This is evident in the symbol of the wisdom knot and the image of the elephant carrying the calf.  This education on the effective use of power is relevant to majority/minority and local as well as international rich/poor contexts. On the reverse, it also points to the Akan and universal idea of responsible followership - submission and trust, and is easily utilised for the education of children. The image, thus, represents an effective blend of governance, culture and education.

   

   

   

   

  References

  • Kwarteng, K. O. (2006). The elephant in pre-colonial Ghana: Cultural and economic use values. Journal of Philosophy and Culture, Vol. 3 (2) June 2006: 1 -32.
  • Sarpong, P. (1971). The sacred stools of the Akan. Accra: Ghana Publishing.
  • Sekyi-Baidoo, J. Y. (1994) The Aesthetic and cosmological features of the Akan hunters’ song. MPhil Dissertation, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon
  • Yankah, K. (1995). Speaking for the chief: Ȯkyeame and the politics of Akan royal oratory. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

   

   

   

  Footnote:

   

  1) The term „linguist“ has been adopted in Ghana for the Akan designation  „Okyeame“ in an attempt to find an English equivalent for the role of the chief´s or king´s diplomacy attendant. This may have arisen out of the acknowledgement of the linguistic capabilities displayed by the attendants, whose main resource was language.

   

   

  published January 2021

   

   

   

  This article is part of a gallery: Perspectives from Ghana on Museum Objects in Germany

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• 

  Kerstin Pinther

  As a miniature, the sculpture Indépendence Tchao (2014) by the Franco-Algerian artist Kader Attia refers to the Hôtel de l'Indépendence in Dakar, Senegal. At the beginning of the1970s – a little over ten years after the independence of the west African country under Lépold Sédar Senghor and a few years after the first Festial Mondial des arts nègres (1966), the hotel was built by Henri Chomette and Roland Depret. Since the end of the 1940s and into the 1980s, the office of the French architects had built governemental and private buildings and others in numerous African countries. Indépendence Tchao was initially created as a site-specific installation on the occasion of the 11^th Dakar Bienniale in Senegal. It refers back to the hotel high-rise with the sculpture; the ‘borrowing’ can immediately be recognized, above all by its characteristic brise-soleil façade. Kader Attia used discarded and somewhat rusty inex index boxes, stacked on top of each other. The inventory of the archive itself came from a dissolved administration in Algeria. Only a few kilometres away from the central exhibition venue of Dak'Art, the hotel still forms a striking, decidedly 'modern' architectural antithesis to the flat neo-classical colonial administrative buildings - an aesthetic incunabulum that symbolized the future in its outstanding verticality and modern furnishings. However, the former architectural icon is now empty and in a state of decay. Indépendence Tchao (the title is a reference to the famous song Independence Cha-cha from 1960/Kalle) thus refers both to a utopia that has grown fragile, the bursting of a dream; as well as to the persistence of colonial archiving and (also structural) standardization practices, to old and new (architect) networks in the postcolony.

   

  

  Attia, Kadar. Pascale, Fernand Pouillon, Alger.  2012 

  https://inferno-magazine.com/2012/06/23/kader-attia-le-corps-utopique/ [Stand: 28.10.24]

   

  Two further - this time photographic - works by the same artist also address the ambivalences and potentials of modern architectural promises: In the case of the photograph of a woman, seen from behind, surrounded by the mighty arcades of the 200-column courtyard, the connection between the body as the 'first architecture' and the 'built' architecture is central. Not least through the title Pascale, Fernand Pouillon, Alger (2012), it becomes apparent that the person is a transsexual. According to Attia in an interview, the strangeness in one's own body corresponds to the 'architectural' alienation that the inhabitants of the 'Climat de France' who had resettled from the Kasbah in Algier must have felt in the 1950s; the necessity of appropriation, re-territorialisation or even 'becoming at home' applies to both bodies (the human and the architectural).

   

  

  Attia, Kadar. Déconstruir - Reinventer. 2012 

  https://slash-paris.com/en/evenements/construire-deconstruire-reconstruire-le-corps-utopique/sous/3669 [Stand: 28.10.24]

   

  A reflection on transgression and imagination also lies at the centre of another photo: Déconstruir - Reinventer (2012) actually shows only the results of a minimal intervention in the standardized construction method, and yet these traces of spatial action are marked here as meaningful in the sense of aesthetic place-making.

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• 

  Lize Kriel

  A German bowl inscribed in Africa

   

  In the process of finding out more about this baptismal bowl – where it comes from, who used it, and when it was discarded, it becomes a portal into South Africa’s contested past. Methodologically, a cultural-historical approach is taken to investigate the object as multiple signifier, not only as part of a transcontinental network, but also within a local, transcultural, context – what John and Jean Comaroff (1991, p. 200) referred to as the “long conversation” between European missionaries and African Christians.  

   

  The bowl was meant to be used with an accompanying, although, in this case, not quite matching, pitcher for the baptism ceremony, in which Christians use water to symbolise the blood of Christ washing away their sins. The Wallmansthal station where the bowl was found, was established by the Berlin Mission Society in 1869. The farm was about thirty kilometres north of Pretoria, today a capital city of South Africa. It became home to African converts gathered from the Kekana-Ndebele and several other pre-colonial northern Sotho polities (Van Rooyen, 1953, pp. 15-20). By the mid-twentieth century, the congregation was approximately 550 people strong (Schulze 2006, p. 456). Together with several other German protestant mission societies, the Berlin Mission contributed to the making of a Christian denomination referred to as “Lutheran” in South Africa today. After a century under white missionary tutelage, the African Church became independent as the Evangelical Lutheran Church of South Africa in the 1970s (Pakendorf, 2011, p. 115).

   

  Knowing that a protestant congregation in Bochum, Germany, donated a church bell to the Wallmansthal Church in 1870 (Van Rooyen, 1954, p. 26), we can deduce that the baptismal bowl may also date from this era. The pitcher bears the mark of Gerhardi & Co. Judged from its Art Nouveau design elements and knowing that this Ludenscheid-based (Gerhardi) company was quite prolific in the production of cast pewter in the Jugendstil (Online Encyclopedia), a post 1890 manufacturing date seems equally probable.

   

  Called Taufgeschirr (Baptismal dishes), bowl-and-pitcher sets of this kind are still being manufactured and used in churches in Germany today. Some congregations include images of old as well as new baptismal bowls on their websites as part of the material markers of their heritage. The exact same design displayed by the Evangelical Church of Illertissen in Germany on their website, is still in use today in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Masealama (formerly the Kratzeinstein Congregation of the Berlin Mission Church) in South Africa’s Limpopo Province (Joubert, 2015).

   

  Many baptismal bowls were inscribed with verses from the Bible. The quote on the Wallmansthal bowl is a contracted version of Matthew 19:14. What makes this bowl an exceptional object of transculturation, is the fact that its inscription appears in the early orthography of the local African language, Sepedi: “Lesang bana batle gonna, ka gobane mmuso oa Modimo ki oa bona” (NIV: “Let the little children come to me, … for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these”).

   

  The bowl was used in church services on mission stations in the same way it would be used in protestant churches in Germany: the pastor would sprinkle the children of African Christians on the forehead with water which had been poured into the bowl from the pitcher. The initial African converts, however, were baptised as adults, only after proving that they had internalised enough knowledge of the Bible and convinced the white missionaries of their commitment to the beliefs and practices of Christianity (which, well into the twentieth century, remained entwined with Western ideas about civilisation).

   

  To these converts, the baptismal bowl was symbolic of their ritual immersion into a foreign way of thinking, living and believing. And yet it was inscribed in their own language, invoking possibilities for cultural translation; for selective appropriation as well as for imbuing the alien culture with own interpretations, relating it to the indigenous and the familiar, and composing new meanings in anticipation of changing circumstances. The baptismal bowl is thus taken as reflective of broader processes of societal, economic and political reconfiguration brought about by the colonial encounter, but with an emphasis on African resilience.

   

  On the site where the Wallmansthal baptismal bowl was used, these processes played themselves out in a series of extraordinary episodes that indirectly also related to broader world-political epochs: Up until the First World War, the Wallmannsthal land sustained an African Christian farming community. In 1936, as an attempt to address their post-war financial crisis, the Berlin Mission sold off a large section of the farm, giving the (exclusively black) African buyers full title deeds for their plots. Until after the Second World War, Wallmannsthal was a bustling African town giving its inhabitants the economic advantage of being close to job opportunities in Pretoria (Van der Merwe, 1987, pp. 69, 135).

   

  In 1967 the Apartheid government forcibly removed all the inhabitants, including the Berlin Mission Christians who had still lived on the retainer of the farm where the Church and other mission station buildings were (Schulze, 2005, p. 458). Wallmannsthal then became a military base and arms depot for the South African Defence Force. During the late 1980s, with the Cold War still dictating international relations and South African whites slowly awakening to the need for political reform, the Defence Force contemplated the restoration of the site. These plans never materialised.

   

  In the early twenty-first century, in a successful land claim, the Wallmannsthal farm was returned to the descendants of its early twentieth century owners. The restitution did not herald a final episode of utopian prosperity. Increasing demands on limited resources seem to be one of the reasons for the reinstated landowners’ current challenges, ranging from obtaining municipal infrastructure, to addressing the status of illegal squatters on their land, and designing the best possible ways of yielding a sustainable livelihood for an increasing population (eNCAnews, 2018).

   

  Today the Evangelical Lutheran Church of South Africa is but only one of several Christian denominations in South Africa with missionary roots. Many more South Africans belong to African independent or African initiated churches – and, increasingly, international churches with their roots elsewhere in the Global South. The process of inscribing Christianity with own meaning and local significance, continues.

   

   

  References:

  • 925-1000.com (2018). Online encyclopedia of silver marks, hallmarks and maker’s marks. Retrieved from https://www.925-1000.com/silverplate_G.html.
  • Comaroff, J & Comaroff, J. (1991). Of revelation and revolution. Christianity, colonialism and consciousness in South Africa I. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
  • eNCAnews (2018, 27 October). Pretoria land claims. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/eNCAnews/videos/pretoria-land-claims/302862580316147/
  • Evangelische Kirchengemeinde Illertissen (2019). Die Taufe. Retrieved from https://evang-kirche-illertissen.de/informationen/taufe/
  • Gerhardi (2019). Gerhardi – Ein innovatives Traditionsunternehmen. Retrieved from http://www.gerhardi.com/index.php?id=9&L=0
  • Joubert, A. (2015). A journey into the life of a mission-ethnographer. doi: 10.6084/m9.figshare.1375528
  • Pakendorf, G. (2011). A brief history of the Berlin Mission Society in South Africa, History Compass, 9/2, 106-118.
  • Schulze, A. (2005). “In Gottes Namen Hütten Bauen“. Kirchlicher Landbesitz in Südafrika: Die Berliner Mission und die Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Südafrikas zwischen 1834 und 2005. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.
  • Van der Merwe, W. (1987). Die Berlynse Sendinggenootskap en Kerkstigting in Transvaal, 1904-1062. Pretoria: Government Printers.
  • Van Rooyen, T.S. (1953). Kronieke van Wallmansthal I, Pretoriana: Journal of the Old Pretoria Society 4, 15-20.
  • Van Rooyen, T.S. (1954). Kronieke van Wallmansthal III, Pretoriana: Journal of the Old Pretoria Society 2, 24-28.

   

   

  published February 2020

Read more …

• 

  Patrique deGraft-Yankson

  Akan definition of Colour

  The Akan people have no precise terminologies that assign a ‘name’ which interprets into the meaning of colour the way it is understood in English and other languages. In other words, most of the answers to the question ‘what is colour’ makes very little meaning to a pure Akan speaker whose understanding of colour transcends a scientific definition. In spite of several efforts by contemporary linguists to subject the Akan concept of colour to nomenclatural consideration, the traditional Akan people continue to describe hues by their relationship with similar colours in nature.

  Consequently, terminologies in Akan, which are associated with the word colour, are likely to describe what a hue looks like in association with the natural (or in few occasions, manmade environment) or how a hue makes one feel, think or behave. Among numerous attempts at coming up with an Akan word for ‘colour’, the ones many respondents settled on were yɛbea, subea, su, husuo, ahusuo and bↄbea. These words, which mean almost the same in Akan, literally describe the nature, quality or, probably more precisely, the physical look/appearance of something. By implication therefore, the terminologies deduced are more general and their usage go beyond the description of just the colour of an object or a situation under discussion.

   

  Colour names

  Colour names among the Akan people, are often given directly after identifiable objects within the known environment. Therefore, names given to colour in Akan have the tendency of affecting the perception, understanding and accurate adaptation of colour among the Akan people. Name, like colour itself, has strong cultural significance. Therefore, names that are understood in one’s language are likely to have better cultural associations and connections with their people than those that sound foreign.

  In this regard, many Akan people are of the opinion that all efforts at identifying names for colours should continue with the culture of associating colours with the local names of known objects among the Akan people. For instance, if there are names such as ahabanmon (fresh leaves) for green and akokↄ serade/akokↄ aŋoa (chicken fat) for yellow, there could also be names like ahabanfunu/ahatawfun (dead leaves) for brown, gyafrane/gyanframa (fire flames) for orange, gon/dwene (gray hair) for gray, etc.

   

  Number of colours

  The number of colours recognizable by a traditional Akan are as many as those identifiable and describable in nature. As already indicated however, recognized Akan colour names and their identification are mostly in relation to those discernible in nature, for which reason their descriptions are broadly categorized. The following are colours available in the traditional Akan language.

  • Kↄkↄↄ (Red)

  To a very large extent, kↄkↄↄ, the sound of the name of the colour identified as red among the Akan people is more onomatopoeic than semantical in interpretation. Kↄↄ, the root word, visualizes the sensation of the word glow. Therefore, kↄkↄↄ actually connotes more to complexion with a strong bright colour. It commands an ambience of hot brightness, usually with scorching visual sensation, rather than a simple colour name. For this reason, kↄkↄↄ is attributable to all objects that emit some warmth in their visual ascriptions. Therefore, whilst a ripe pepper is described as kↄkↄↄ, ripe mangos, ripe oranges, glittering gold, burning coal, sunny skies, flames, the skin of a ‘white man’, etc. are all kↄkↄↄ as well. In the Akan colour scheme therefore, colours that could be placed analogous to kↄkↄↄ include red, orange, pink, wine and the like.

  • Fitaa/Fufuw (White)

  Fitaa/fufuw is white, light, plain, spotless, clean, neat, pure, holy, untainted and incorrupt. Moreover, fitaa/fufuw is always associated with cleanliness, purity, victory and spirituality. It denotates white coruscating brightness, visual spotlessness and stainlessness. No matter where it is spotted, the associated psychological and spiritual experience comes naturally, and this is inert in almost every Akan.

  Another dimension of fitaa/fufuw is its direct association with light especially when it reflects bright objects to shine. When something shines or sparkles, or hyerɛn as it would be said in Akan, it is associated with brightness and for that matter, white. In this regard, a spark that would be lighted by any colour to give the feeling of brightness will be described as fitaa. The reason is that the psychological feeling of brightness invoked by the sensation is more important than its sensation on the eye.

  • Tuntum

  One does not need to understand the word tuntum to be able to link its semantic association with weight and heaviness. Tuntum connotes darkness and visual weight, and technically expressed, all the cool colours on the colour wheel fall within the brackets of colours in this category. Tuntum connotes darkness, gloom and heaviness. To the Akan, tuntum does not only stand for black, but absence of lightness, brightness, shine, glow, gaiety, happiness and sparkle. This is not to say that tuntum in Akan spells doom. Just as with all the other colours, the reason behind its application is what matters most to the Akan. For instance, the weight and compactness of tuntum also represents unmatched strength and solidity. Hence, expressions such as black power, black beauty, black star and black magic connote the highest levels or degrees attainable in the referent condition. So, whereas tuntum or dark colours are used in the expression of gloomy and moody conditions or situations, they are also considered for situations that require seriousness, formality, deep concentration, calmness, maturity, strength and energy. Again, in its association with darkness and stillness of dark night, tuntum also connotes calmness, coolness, rest, quietness and serenity.

   

  The Akan Colour Chart: Minimal Dimensions of the Akan Colour Scheme

  The following charts present attempts at putting into perspective the minimal dimensions of the Akan colour scheme. As mentioned earlier, everything that qualifies to be described as colour from the Akan point of view can be located within three broad colour spectra—tuntum (dark), fitaa (white) and kↄkↄↄ/memen (glow, spark, shine), and they physically manifest in the shades and tints of black, white and red. Right from this point, it is clear that colour among the Akan is perceived more with feelings than just the light sensation it emits. Therefore, the colours that fall under these themes are believed to share more physiological, psychological and spiritual feelings than aesthetical feelings (even though that is an integral part). In the examples of natural colours associated with colour names in the tables below therefore, the ripeness of pepper, mango, orange and tomatoes are all described as kↄↄ, establishing the overall feeling they evoke. The greenness of a virgin forest, the darkness of rain clouds, the depth of the deep blue seas and the blackness of charcoal are all tumm or tuntum (dark) because of their command of psychological heaviness. The bright skies, the white flower, cotton and the grey hair are all fitaa because they share similar ambience and invoke the same feeling of brightness. It should also be noted that apart from tuntum (black, dark), fufuw/fitaa (white, bright) and kↄkↄↄ/memen (red, glow, spark, shine), none of the associated colours has a name in Akan. What they have, at best, could be discussed as descriptions. In other words, colours of objects are rather described than named.

   

  The following charts illustrate colour from the perspective of the participants in this study, as illustrated by the author:

  

   

  Figure 1: Akan colour category Tuntum and its natural colour associations. (Photo: the author)

   

  

   

  Figure 2: Akan colour category Fitaa/Fufuw and its natural colour associations. (Photo: the author)

  

   

  Figure 3: Akan colour category Kↄkↄↄ/Memen and its natural colour associations. (Photo: the author)

   

  From the above charts, the Akan colour reference scheme above was derived.

   

  Implications for design and design education

  Cultural understanding of colour from Akan perspectives will direct how colours could be appropriately grouped under the appropriate themes to enhance effective appreciation of design as well as effective communication. It would also ensure that the role of language and cultural interpretation of colour is given due recognition in the design education process.

   

  Reference

  • deGraft-Yankson, Patrique (2020), ‘Of the Akan people: Colour and design education in Ghana’, International Journal of Education Through Art, 16:3, pp. 399–416, doi: https://doi.org/10.1386/eta_00041_1

   

   

  published November 2020