Creative reformation of African art traditions: the iconography of Abayomi Barber Art School

African Arts, Summer, 2009 by Freeborn O. Odiboh

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Even in those places where today's art exists within a surviving historical art tradition, individual artists regularly recreate or reform traditional perceptions in their works by employing diverse techniques. For example, Youssuf Bath from Cote d'Ivoire draws from traditional myths, mysticism, spirituality, and witchcraft to convey the strength and power of Africa in his works, using "chalk and coffee as alternative pigment on paper and tree bark" (Oyelola 1988:24). The Groupe Bogolan Kasobane, a collection of six artists in Bamako, Mali, formed in 1978 with the aim of revitalizing the Bogolanfini textile-dying technique, "use an ancient method to innovate, to create works that will be completely original and even modern." Such paintings as Ba ka Kulushi juru (polygamy; 1989), "draw on motifs from traditional African sculpture, ancient Egyptian art, and futuristic space comic books" (Vogel 1994:180). In Nigeria, Uche Okeke and others of the Nsukka School assert their "Igboness" by using Igbo folklore and women's uli body-painting techniques to inform their painting. In their works, the subjects of their compositions are reduced to lines, thus crystallizing their basic forms or aspects (Ottenburg 1997) as in Uche Okeke's 1962 Head of a Girl and From the Forest (Oja Suite; Dike and Oyelola 1998:135).

Some other artists, such as members of the Osogbo School in Nigeria or Zimbabwean soapstone carvers, resort to weird, grotesque, and ghostly forms to express folkloric or mythological subjects as aspects of their cultural identity. Cornelius Adepegba (1996) referred to such work as "naive abstractions" and saw them as resulting more from lack of representational skill than artistic intention. He insisted that workshop schools in which the student was given materials to produce "master pieces" without any technical instruction or any form of interference, encouraged this approach. In the classification of workshop schools, the Abayomi Barber art group is considered an anomaly because of its founder, who describes himself as self-taught but whose approach and methods have been described as "not different from those of any of the conventional art schools" (Adepegba 1996). His works and those of his students display a disciplined adherence to the adopted mandate of naturalistic tradition of representation and a rendering of African subject matter and themes for both nationalistic and aesthetic reasons.

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This can be seen in comparison between the work of Toyin Alade, The Search (Fig. 2), an adherent of the Abayomi Barber School, and that of Twins Seven-Seven of the Osogbo School (Kennedy 1992:76-77, Mount 1973:150, Magnin and Soulillou 1996:63-64). The Search is a symbolic landscape imbued with meaning, in spite of its realistic forms. It features images of individuals considered to be great philosophers in times past, including the Yoruba political sage Chief Obafemi Awolowo and India's Mahatma Gandhi. Although the painting features a congregation of ideas, forms, and figures surrealistically arranged, the artist's ability to compose within the design space is evident: the work is concerned with the artist's search for ultimate mastery in terms of composition as well as didactic regarding his quest for the truths of the past.