Discuss critically the idea of popular art in Africa Essay

Discuss critically the idea of popular art in Africa - Essay Example among artists who had come through the Fine Art departments of West African universities, and who sometimes began to write or speak as if we should thus omit these forms of practice from consideration as ‘art.’ Susan Vogel’s 1991 Africa Explores was criticised in precisely this way, for placing artists who were in some sense part of an international art world in the same space with sign painters. Indeed, one might have all sorts of reasons for being critical of it, but one achievement of Africa Explores was to show that the diverse forms comprising the category ‘popular’ had little or nothing in common, other than their location in a largely urban environment; and yet, in practice, printmaking, sign painting, photography, masquerade, textile design, etc, may well subsist as parts of a common set of visual environments; and yet, while possibly functionally inter-related within local art worlds at some level ,for example one medium as source material fo r another, each will have its own developmental trajectory. In this essay I will discuss the idea of ‘popular’ art in Africa. I will first focus on popular arts in West Africa then I will move onto the popular arts in Central Africa. Following this, I will discuss Primitivism and the Magiciens De La Terre event in 1989 and lastly, conclude that popular art are also much more than constellations of social, political, and economic relationships — they are expressive acts. Their most important attribute is their power to communicate. African art takes many forms and is made from many different materials. Jewellery is a popular art form and is used to indicate rank, affiliation with a group, or purely for aesthetics. African jewellery is made from such diverse materials as Tigers eye stone, haematite, sisal, coconut shell, beads and ebony wood. Sculptures can be wooden, ceramic or carved out of stone like the famous Shona sculptures and decorated or sculpted pottery comes from many regions. Various forms