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

African Arts, Summer, 2009 by Freeborn O. Odiboh

Busari Agbolade's Money and Women (Fig. 8) integrates traditional and modern objects to make coded statements about the Yoruba view of women as associated with the glamorous things of life. The painting displays a subtle gradation of color from primary to tertiary--red, yellow, blue, green, ochre, and mauves are blended to attain their mildest tonal value. The subtle toning of the colours, foggy background, and the mat that dominates the background conjures up objects from the background such as different types of money (manilas, cowries, dollars, and naira notes) along with two femme breasts. Most of the artists of the Barber school are Yoruba, like Abayomi himself, and so have adopted Yoruba symbols, subjects, and themes, justifying their use because of their cultural knowledge. The school's non-Yoruba students initially adopted Yoruba cultural imagery and symbolism too, but abandoned it as they matured professionally. For example, Kent Ideh, an Urhobo artist trained by the school, does not see any justification for Yoruba symbols' inclusion in his work. For many of the Yoruba artists, however, adaptations of the cultural images have become a hallmark.

Busari Agbolade maintains that it was Abayomi who initially introduced them to ideas about cultural subjects and themes. Other artists of the school have their diverse opinions on these cultural subjects. According Muri Adejimi, the events of the 1970s and 1980s were also responsible for the choice and adaptation of Yoruba iconographical symbols in the art of the Barber School. These years, encompassing the Second World Black and African Festival of Art and Culture (FESTAC) in 1977 and the success of performance groups such as that of playwright and producer Herbert Ogunde, stimulated cultural pride in Nigerians. At that period, notes Adejimi, "we were thinking that Africa, particularly Nigeria, was moving towards a kind of self identity ... Unfortunately, nobody had foreseen this 'born-again' [phenomenon] in the country [that is, the wave of fundamentalist Christianity across Nigeria]"--or, in retrospect, the impact of Islamic fundamentalism. (5)

Abayomi insists that the iconographic symbols and images as used by the Barber School are deeply rooted in the African psyche, and he feels they have immense influence on him. (6) Olu Spencer, one of the first-generation artists of the Barber School, however, insists on more intentionality than that. He contends that the desire to establish some measure of African identity is the basis of the Barber School's incorporation of Yoruba iconography. Indeed, Spencer maintains that the use of Yoruba motifs and symbols by the artists of the school has gone a

   long way to reveal that African art works can have elements of
   study, treatment and rule comparable with those that are
   naturalistically rendered by European artists ... Ironically, when
   art work is properly addressed, critics from the West often
   conclude that it is not an African art work; indeed, some art works
   from Africa have been labelled as not being African because their
   naturalism was too obvious.... But now, through the style of the
   Barber School, a statement is established that to be African does
   not necessarily have to be a celebration of kitsch in rendition.
   (7)