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" Contemporary southern Nigeria art in comparative perspective: Reassessment and analysis, 1935–2002 "
Onoyom Godfrey Ukpong
S. D. Ross
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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55305
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TL25259
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| Call number
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3213276
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| Main Entry
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Onoyom Godfrey Ukpong
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| Title & Author
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Contemporary southern Nigeria art in comparative perspective: Reassessment and analysis, 1935–2002\ Onoyom Godfrey Ukpong
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| College
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State University of New York at Binghamton
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| Date
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2006
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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2006
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332
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| Abstract
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The questions of whether the Calabar peoples produce art and whether Anglo-Calabarian hybrid visual culture constitutes a definable modern style in which imagery from everyday "nonartistic" sources may be understood as a component of global art resource are investigated. Calabar art data collected from field and literary sources is reassessed, analyzed, and compared with selected Yoruba art data to determine viability and find out whether the two traditions are historicized with equal emphasis. Reassessment reveals that Calabar peoples produce art both at the rural "workshop" and the urban "formal" levels. Productions at the former level are largely utilitarian while those at the latter are mainly pedagogical resources representing fusions of fundamentalism and formalism. Factors influencing production at the "workshop" level may be qualified and grouped into: functional, political, economic, religious, customary, and mythological; whereas, globalization and cultural exchange are major factors provoking and sustaining production at the "formal" level. In the utilitarian category, four major subcategories of everyday "nonartistic" productions are distinguished as veritably artistic: blacksmithing, bead/raffia work, woodwork, and chewing-stick sculpture. Evidence of metal engraving exists at sporadic locations in Henshaw Town. Political dynamics, custom, and royal necessities provoke commissions on tapestries, portraits, royal furniture and regalia, and festive installations. Anthropomorphism is perpetuated in some rural communities as part of an artistic tradition in which representative images for religious practices are carved. For the most part, devotional sculptures have not survived due to Christianity influence; a few leftovers are in poor conditions of preservation. "Formally" trained artists employ vernacular vocabulary and acquired skills to create, thus balancing fundamentalism with inventiveness. This results in a hybrid culture. An Abang dancer's protracted waist visor, for example, is a synthesized adaptation from the bloating gathers of Elizabethan gown. Certain paintings are executed in combinations of natural beauty, beauty of expression, and institutional styles. Explanations for this hybridity rest on: early contact with Europeans, colonialism, Christianity, "formal" education, and recent widespread intercultural exchange; whereas, the lacking knowledge of the Calabar culture is partly by reason of politically induced hardships, and customs causing self-inflicting predicaments beyond the artists' control. Selective cultural reception by Western Euro-American scholarship encourages historical emphasis on traditions from the major Nigerian groups but places the visual cultures of the less-popular groups in obscurity.
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Communication and the arts; Anglo-Calabrian; Art; Calabar; Hybridity; Nigeria; Visual culture; Art history; 0377:Art history
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S. D. Ross
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State University of New York at Binghamton
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