Cultural diversity

Africa is a continent with a rich history and many cultures. African art reflects this diversity through a wide range of styles, techniques, and materials. Each region has its own traditions, which are reflected in the art – from ceramics and textiles to wooden sculptures and fine crafts.

Symbolism and Religion

African art often has a deep symbolic meaning associated with religious, mythological and spiritual beliefs. Sculptures, masks, images, and various ritual objects often reflect or reflect religious and mythological images that are important to the community.

Expressiveness and Energy

African art has always been known for its expressiveness and dynamism. From rhythmic dances to dynamic lines and shapes in sculpture, African art has an inherent energy that can captivate the viewer.

Use of Natural Materials

The richness of Africa’s natural resources is reflected in the continent’s art. From wood to stone, clay to bamboo, African artists use natural materials to create their masterpieces, giving them a special character and authenticity.

Heritage and Modernity

African art has a huge influence on the contemporary art scene. Contemporary African artists combine traditional techniques with modern trends to create unique and innovative works that continue the rich heritage of African art.

In general, African art is fascinating for its multilayered nature, depth of symbolism, and expressive energy. It is not only a source of aesthetic pleasure, but also a window into the cultural heritage and spirituality of this unique continent.

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The art of the peoples of East Africa and northern Sudan, the regions where Islam was spread, has a different character. Its influence influenced the development of artistic culture, which almost did not include sculpture and painting. A special, local, Bantu-Indo-Arabic culture developed here, connected with Iran, India, and the medieval Arab world. However, both in the northern part of Sudan and on the east coast, the artistic creativity of the local African population was embodied mainly in folk architecture and wood carvings.

Monuments of ancient African art were also discovered in South Africa. For example, in the Matopo Mountains in southern Rhodesia, in the 1920s, rock paintings of mythological content, scenes of agricultural and domestic rituals were found. Undoubtedly, these monuments were created by peoples of high culture who were already familiar with agriculture.

Numerous paintings and drawings have been discovered in the extreme south of the African continent, in the Dragon Mountains, and in the mountainous regions of Southwest Africa. The style, subjects, and nature of the images are very different, so it is likely that the rock paintings of South Africa belong to different eras and are monuments to the artistic creativity of different peoples.

Africa is considered the cradle of body art (the art of decorating the naked body). The artistic culture of its peoples has preserved many artistic traditions of primitive society. Therefore, inauthentic art forms associated with the ancient African beliefs about the beauty of the human body have become extremely popular on the Black continent. Tattoos, piercings, body paintings, and changes in the natural proportions of the human body are still widespread in the culture of African tribes.

Both men and women decorated their bodies for decorative purposes and to show their social status (for example, women had tattoos that could determine their marital status, and men’s tattoos showed hunting skills or military victories). Also, for ritual purposes, cuts were made on the body and face in the form of sacred symbols, rubbing a mixture of ash and saltpeter into the wound. After the wounds healed, rough scars formed on the skin.

Piercing various parts of the body was practiced as early as several millennia BC. Africans wore all kinds of metal earrings that were inserted into their ears, eyebrows, lips, and nose. In general, African tribes are the only social environment where a positive attitude towards piercings has remained unchanged for several decades.

The lands to the west of Egypt were historically called the Maghreb. In Arabic, Maghreb means “the country where the sun sets” or “the west”. Sometimes only the country of Morocco was called the Maghreb. In the VII-VIII centuries, the countries of North Africa-Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco-were part of the Arab Caliphate. The art of these nations was called “Maghrebi” or “Moorish”.

The history of the terms “Moors” and “Moorish”, derived from the Greek word for “dark”, dates back to the ancient era, when the Moors were the indigenous Berber population of the ancient state of Mauritania, located in the northwestern part of Africa.

The first significant monuments of Arabo-Berber architecture were created in North Africa in the late VII century. Among them, the most prominent is the majestic Sidioukba Mosque in Kairouan (Tunisia), founded as the cathedral mosque of the city, which was considered “an excessively dry city of Islam.”

Its modern appearance was finally formed by the end of the ninth century. The appearance of the Kairouan mosque is characterized by the features of fortification architecture: the building is surrounded by blank massive walls, fortified with buttresses, with a minaret in the form of a tall and powerful square tower. The main compositional core, a huge courtyard, is surrounded by marble and granite columns supporting horseshoe-shaped arches.

Very little is known about medieval painting in North Africa. Ancient manuscripts have been preserved, decorated with exquisite geometric ornaments, the colors of which are dominated by gold and intense blue.

Applied arts, called “Spanish-Moorish”, reached a high level of perfection. Craft workshops produced brocade, expensive silk fabrics, ivory, earthenware, and beautifully decorated weapons. During the early Middle Ages, European countries received precious fabrics almost exclusively from the Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East, as well as from Sicily and Moorish Spain.

The earliest products of Spanish-Moorish ceramics date back to the second half of the 14th century. These are the so-called Alhambra vases. Among them, the most perfect is the Fortuna vase.

The medieval Maghreb and Arab Spain were among the bridges that connected the spiritual life of the East and the West. Arab culture left a deep mark on Spanish life and culture. The traditions of Moorish art in architecture, ceramics, and other branches of artistic crafts were especially strong.

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Honoring the fruits of nature, Africans centered their artistic styles around images of flora and fauna, as well as natural motifs.

But everything flows, everything changes, and new themes and new materials came to African art. And although artists were inspired by human forms, they also discovered many new styles outside the norms of traditional African art, such as contemporary painting and beautiful handmade fabrics.

So, let’s get acquainted with the diverse styles of this mysterious continent, starting with the earliest sculptures of the Nok civilization and ending with the excellent bronze casting of East Africa.

In the early Iron Age, the Nok civilization of eastern Nigeria created impressive terracotta sculptures that often depicted abstract figures of ancient people and animals, like tombstones or magical amulets.

Although almost nothing is known about the Nok culture, during excavations, archaeologists have found many clay figurines created about 2 thousand years ago. The stylized heads, decorated with intricate jewelry, barely survived the long years of the destructive effects of water, and now allow us to see the life of this early civilization.

Even today, sculpture is a very common art form in Africa. Historically, it was made from wood and other organic materials collected by artists.

West Africans, however, later contributed to the influx of bronze casting to the region, as it was used to decorate the palaces of rulers and much more.

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Each color symbolized a certain quality or attribute characteristic of their culture. Black and white kente cloths, for example, were worn, as a rule, during funerals, by the Ewe and Ashanti peoples.

Weaving was not forbidden to anyone: both men and women learned to weave from an early age. Artists dyed their fabrics with locally produced dyes that allowed them to obtain very beautiful shades of brown, yellow, red and indigo.

Although westernization has largely contributed to the decline of the art of weaving, it still holds a prominent place in African society. Many believe that it embodies the history of the continent, “written on fabric”.

Bright colors and abstract shapes define African art styles. And although there are still many unanswered questions in its history, the enormous diversity of its cultures and influences has become a worthy legacy in world art. I hope you will continue to explore this fascinating period of time on your own.

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In the rainforests, where dwellings were made of wood, the walls and ceiling were covered with mats with complex geometric woven ornaments. In the steppes, clay buildings prevail, and they are decorated with various painted projections, jambs, cornices, and sometimes with various pillars, vultures, etc.

If we turn to the sculpture itself, it is divided into three main genre groups. The first group includes images of spirits, ancestors, or certain historical figures, and for tribes with developed mythology, gods. The second group includes masks used in the rites of initiation of young men and women into the tribe. This group also includes shaman masks, dance masks, and masks of secret unions. The third group consists of sculptural carvings.

The art of wood carving, mats ornamentation, and beaded embroidery is widespread among all the peoples of Tropical Africa, both West, East, and South.

Music. One of the features of African musical styles is their question-and-answer nature, which is complemented by forced polyrhythmics. (The simultaneous sound of different rhythms that merge into a single complex whole). And every musician, dancer, or listener has their own place. The song genre in African music is a situation where the soloist and the choir repeat sentences. The chorus often consists of the audience. Thus, the performance of music in African culture and its perception is a form of communication. The goal is to attract as many people as possible to a musical event.

Unlike in Europe, music in Africa is an integral part of social life. Now even protests resemble carnivals.

Music promotes interaction between people and gives them a place in the community.

A characteristic feature of music is drums. Each tribe has its own drums, and each has its own “language”. There are almost as many “languages” of talking drums as there are language dialects (and there are more than 2000 of them in Africa). Each drum has its own rhythm, creating its own musical style.

The main feature of African culture and thinking in general is a focus on the past. But this past is not frozen, but is constantly present in the present. (Perhaps that is why it is so difficult for Africans to build a modern democratic society without past customs and traditions)

The artist focuses on the human figure. The head is the main element, and the body only indicates gender and tattoos.

The main thing in art is an action, an action (dance, ritual), so art objects are “moving” (a mask, during a ceremony).

African art exists for everyday life, protecting from the evil eye or other forces, evil or good (amulets, fetishes).

In Africa, works of art are an integral part of beliefs and belong to the entire community. For example, African bambara masks are masks with calm faces and closed eyes. They depicted deceased relatives and were used in funeral rites or on holidays. Frightening masks, where human features are combined with those of an animal. They were worn by members of secret societies African statuettes, most of them depicting the dead, or an animal totem, such as the antelope statuette of the Bamana people in Mali.
And finally, the general characteristics of African art are: strong, dramatic expressionism, lack of naturalism and sharp, angular forms. The African artist sculpts free and independent masses and obtains the symbol of a human being. All this is nothing more than stylization, which Europeans realized only in the art of the twentieth century.

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Decorative and applied art has always closely interacted with various spheres of human economic activity, in which manual labor is used, including pottery and carpentry, clothing and footwear, metal and leather processing. In different corners of the Earth, peculiar folk crafts based on unique techniques of processing available materials were gradually formed and perfected over many years. The development of crafts was greatly influenced by cultural, religious, social and climatic peculiarities of each region.

Throughout the history of mankind, arts and crafts have developed autonomously in different regions of our planet. Moreover, each nation strove to keep the secrets of its masters secret. The Chinese carefully guarded from foreigners the technology of porcelain production, the Arabs – the art of metal stamping, Venetian masters – the secrets of Murano glass production.

Only in the era of the industrial revolution in the middle of the 19th century did the situation change dramatically. New materials appeared, books describing cultural values and knowledge of different peoples became available to the masses, industrial production, including arts and crafts, reached a huge scale. A significant part of the secrets of ancient masters became publicly available, which provided a huge number of creative people wide opportunities for self-realization.

Nowadays arts and crafts are experiencing a true heyday. In the era of the Internet, anyone can easily master the ancient technique of intarsia, chasing or art painting, using the resources of specialized forums and visual video tutorials masters. This situation undoubtedly contributes to further popularization, development and preservation of most types of arts and crafts for posterity.

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The Arab scientist Abu-l-Fida (thirteenth century) made the first astronomical determinations of the geographical location of Africa, Ibn Batuta reached the shores of Zanzibar via Sudan in his travels (fourteenth century), and the African Lion traveled to Africa in the fourteenth century.

As a result of the Roman campaigns, the western shores of Africa were discovered, and the true outlines of this region were clearly outlined with the discovery of the Cape Verde (1416) and the Gulf of Guinea (1471) by the Portuguese. In 1498, Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and headed for India.

Following the Portuguese, the Dutch, English, and Danes began to discover the coastline and territory of Africa.

In 1788, the African Society was founded in London to explore Africa. Five years later, similar societies were formed in Germany, then in Belgium, Italy, and Malta.

African art is understood as the art of tribes and nationalities of Tropical (Black) Africa. Until the 19th century, this art was viewed from the point of view of ethnic value and was classified as “naive” (“primitive”) art.

The wave of avant-garde art in the 20s of the twentieth century brought a new perspective on cult sculpture.

Since then, African art has been perceived exclusively from an aesthetic point of view.

Before the discovery of Africa, its peoples developed in isolation. However, the local primitive cultures (the first stage of cultural development, the early period of art evolution) testify to the diversity and richness of the artistic abilities of the population. Living in huts, their inhabitants imaginatively made everything necessary for the home, such as furniture, which attracts attention with its craftsmanship. Made of wood, these products demonstrate the developed sense of form in their creators (they impress not only with their decorative design but also with their comfort). The supports of furniture for sitting were usually made in the form of human or animal figures.

Tables, chests and other objects are richly ornamented. Unfortunately, the name of the artist almost always remained unknown. However, several names have come down to us. Among them is Sultan Njoya, the creator of writing and patron of the arts. The masks and furniture created at his court were known throughout Africa, and their creators often became leaders in their villages.

North Africa is of particular interest for the development of art in this region: Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco (Maghreb countries), and Libya. Neither Greece nor Italy have Roman cities that are as well preserved as Lepti-Magna and Sabratha in Libya, Douga in Tunisia, and Timgad in Azhir. The magnificent works of art found during the excavations – mosaic statues – adorn the museums of the capitals of these countries.

The true capital of North Africa, Carthage sought to resemble Rome in everything. That is why its theater, amphitheater, and circus were huge monumental structures decorated with columns and statues. It was in the theater of Carthage that Apuleius, a famous writer of the second century, delivered his speeches.

Gladiatorial fights took place in the amphitheater, and horse races on chariots and on horseback took place in the circus. The circus was built on the slopes of a hill, where seats for spectators were arranged. The racetrack had the shape of an elongated rectangular field.

In Carthage, there was also an odeon, an indoor space for musical performances and competitions. Its walls were lined with colorful marble, and statues stood in niches.

In the center of Carthage and other cities of North Africa, there was a forum, a square for citizens to gather. The forum was surrounded by columns. The Capitol, the upper temple, which was located on the highest point in the city, was obligatory.

The cities were decorated with arches that were built in honor of some important event or deity, emperor or noble person.

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Various geometric signs, drawings, and ornamental compositions on the walls of dwellings, household items, and fabrics have magical (protective) and aesthetic (decorative) significance. A defining characteristic of the traditional religious consciousness of African peoples is the religious and mythological picture of the world. It takes on specific features in different ethnic groups, but it has in common the idea of the interaction of supernatural and natural forces, their mutual transformation.

The world of the supernatural includes the main deity who generates (or from whom the world arises), minor deities (spirits) of water, forests, land, and ancestors, whose souls act as intermediaries between deities and people; ancestors play a special role, because they combine the properties of two worlds – the natural and the supernatural: the dead are members of a certain community of people, beings of another dimension, belonging to which makes them capable of influencing the fate of living people. That is why ancestor worship plays a central role in traditional African religions.

Traditional beliefs are closely linked to rituals and initiations, which represent the ritual and symbolic side of African ethnic life. Different rites correspond to important events and stages of human life. Thanks to these rites, personal characteristics acquire social significance and are included in the orbit of social relations. These rituals accompany births, manhood, entering the age of marriage, marriage itself, childbirth, old age, and, ultimately, death of an African. A special role is played by the rites of initiation into secret unions, which are still preserved among many African peoples. The task of these unions is to guide all aspects of the life and activities of the members of the communities where they originated. The secret unions resolved issues of war and peace, carried out diplomatic missions, organized a kind of education system, supervised compliance with traditional morality, and performed the functions of judicial bodies, and practiced traditional religion. The main purpose of these unions was to raise useful members of the tribe.

The central figure in the ceremonies of secret unions was the mask. No ritual was performed without its participation. As a rule, each secret union has one main mask, a symbol of power and authority. This mask protected the community members from disaster and misfortune. When girls are initiated, this mask teaches them ritual dances, housekeeping, and everything else they need in life. In the Poro men’s secret union, a mask that imitates an animal’s head is called a gbel-la.

The mask was primarily used during initiation ceremonies and was kept in a ritual bush located in a place well hidden from view, on a kind of altar. The mask and all cult and ceremonial objects are regarded as shrines, as relics. A head mask could be seen only a few times in a lifetime.

Masks were made of a special kind of wood, painted in colors that corresponded to their character, and eventually restored or replaced. In addition to masks associated with initiation rites, there are also seer masks, masks of peace, war, justice, danger, luck, hunting, harvest, competition, fire, new year, singers’ masks, and others. The colors of the masks vary. For example, the Wobe craftsmen of the Ivory Coast use black, red, blue, green, and white. Black represents power and physical strength, while red represents power and strength. The seer mask helps to find out the truth. It can only be worn by healers and wise elders. The kuan mask is used in the fight against evil sorcerers, and only old people are allowed to see it. The war mask and its costume, made of raffia, are red. It is an image of spilled blood and a sign of readiness to shed the blood of enemies.

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African arts and crafts play a key role in the cultural exchange between Africa and other regions of the world. Elements of African art, such as masks, sculptures, textiles, and ceramics, are often the object of study and admiration for artists and collectors from around the world.

African art inspires contemporary designers in various fields, including fashion, interior design, graphic design, and many others. Elements of African ornamentation, color schemes, and traditional techniques are often reflected in contemporary works of art and design.

African arts and crafts play an important role in preserving the cultural heritage and traditions of African peoples. By studying, documenting, and promoting these artistic traditions, we help preserve the history and identity of various cultural groups.

The production and sale of African handicrafts and art provide a vital source of income for local communities. The development of these industries helps to stimulate economic development and supports local industries and artistic traditions.

Through the study of African art, people are able to better understand and appreciate the cultural diversity and traditions of different peoples. This contributes to a tolerant and open society where different cultures can coexist while preserving their uniqueness.

African arts and crafts are an important part of the global cultural heritage and have a huge impact on the modern world. Its beauty, diversity, and significance continue to amaze and inspire people around the world.

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Unlike painting, graphics, and sculpture, which reflect reality through the depiction of specific objects, phenomena, and events, decorative and applied art operates mainly with utilitarian spatial forms. The emotional perception of works of applied art is based on the plastic, textural and color properties of the form.

The basic principles of decorative art can be summarized as follows:

1. The unity of artistic form and practical purpose of products;
2. Building things in accordance with the properties and capabilities of the material;
3. The connection of the artistic form with technological methods of its processing.

The unity of the aesthetic and utilitarian is the main principle of this art form.

At the same time, there are often cases when an object that once had a certain practical purpose gradually lost it and became a purely artistic work. For example, in Hutsul carvings, a wooden plate once fulfilled its immediate practical function – it served as a tableware. A simple ornamental decoration was applied along its edges, which did not contradict the purpose of the item. Over time, it lost its practical function, as people began to use ceramic and metal plates more widely. However, this not only did not lead to the disappearance of the wooden plate, but also strengthened its purely decorative function. The shape of the plate changed (it became shallow), and not only the edges but also the bottom began to be decorated. Decorative plates are now decorated with ornaments, as well as with a plot and even a portrait image. And yet, folk artists make sure that the decoration of objects does not dominate, but only emphasizes the shape of the product and the beauty of the material.

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