Sub-Saharan Africa - Art

Art

The oldest abstract art in the world is a shell necklace dated 82,000 years in the Cave of Pigeons in Taforalt, eastern Morocco. The second oldest abstract form of art and the oldest rock art is found in the Blombos Cave at the Cape in South Africa, dated 77,000 years. Sub-saharan Africa has some of the oldest and most varied style of rock art in the world.

Although Sub-saharan African art is very diverse there are some common themes. One is the use of the human figure. Second, there is a preference for sculpture. Sub-saharan art is meant to be experience in three dimensions, not two. A house is meant to be experienced from all angles. Third, art is meant to be performed. Sub-saharan Africans have specific name for mask. The name incorporates the sculpture, the dance, and the spirit that incorporates the mask. The name denotes all three elements. Fourth, art that serves a practical function, utilitarian. The artist and craftsman are not separate. A sculpture shaped like a hand can be used as a stool. Fifth, the use of fractals or non-linear scaling. The shape of the whole is the shape of the parts at different scales. Before the discovery of fractal geometry], Louis Senghor, Senegal's first president, referred to this as "dynamic symmetry." William Fagg, the British art historian, compared it to the logarithmic mapping of natural growth by biologist D’Arcy Thompson. Lastly, Sub-saharan art is visually abstract, instead of naturalistic. Sub-saharan art represents spiritual notions, social norms, ideas, values, etc. An artist might exaggerated the head of a sculpture in relations to the body not because he does not know anatomy but because he wants to illustrate that the head is the seat of knowledge and wisdom. The visual abstraction of African art was very influential in the works of modernist artist like Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Jacques Lipchitz.