Art and Oracle: African Art and Rituals of Divination - Book Review

African Arts, Autumn, 2002 by Robert T. Soppelsa

Alisa LaGamma

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2000. 80 pp., 5 b/w & 50 color photos. $19.95 soft-cover.

Art and Oracle was published to accompany an exhibition of the same name that was mounted at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the spring and early summer of 2000. The exhibition was the first in a long time to present African art at the Metropolitan outside the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing. It included 140 objects relating to African divination practices: single figures, sets of objects, costumes used in divination performances, and objects that result from divination or depict aspects of divination.

In just eighty pages, the catalogue presents three significant bodies of information. The first is the introductory essay by Alisa LaGamma, the Metropolitan's associate curator of the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, who does a fine job of presenting the essentials of divination arts in sub-Saharan Africa. She explains why the objects are often so beautiful (they are meant to reflect the prestige of their owners and the efficacy of their spirit connections) and so ubiquitous (divination is an important art of communication in African cultures). LaGamma observes that objects used in divination are intended to capture the attention of the spirits; the unstated corollary is that in doing so, they also capture the attention of human beings.

Next is John Pemberton's masterly twelve-page discussion of divination from the anthropologist's perspective, which makes the point that Africans are not alone in practicing divination or in using expressive material artifacts (i.e., art) in the process. Accompanied by five photographs of diviners and their paraphernalia taken in the field, the essay includes detailed discussions of specific types of divination from five African cultures: Azande, Yaka, Luba, Yoruba, and Malagasy. The discussions are thorough, thoroughly readable, and well documented. My only criticism is Pemberton's choices: they are heavily concentrated in central Africa. Plenty of information is available on west African divination practices, which were represented by numerous objects in the exhibition. Three of the Metropolitan's most striking examples of the arts of divination are the Baule couple (probably made for a trance diviner) and the Senufo Kafigeledjo, used as the cover image for the catalogue. Moreover, Malagasy divination apparently involves no material art at all, whereas other divination systems with rich material components were not included. True, the essay is about divination practices, but the subject of the book is art.

The third part of Art and Oracle is a collection of fifty catalogue entries written by LaGamma, each focused on a single object in the exhibition, each illustrated in a photograph of fine quality. The objects were apparently chosen for their striking visual impact and were meant to represent as broad a spectrum as possible of the media and styles of divination arts. Like the first two parts of the catalogue, this section is concise, well written, thoroughly documented, and easy to read.

In contrast to the recent tendency toward weight and bulk in museum catalogues, Art and Oracle is refreshingly light and portable. While chockfull of information and excellent color photographs printed on good-quality paper, it is not so heavy that a small wagon is required to cart it home. The price is right: $20 for this much information is a bargain. The authors have struck just the right tone, balancing scholarly correctness and readability. LaGamma's essay in particular is informative without being ponderous. The essays and catalogue entries would make excellent supplementary reading for college courses in African art or ethnography, representing a welcome collaboration between the disciplines of anthropology and art. Along with Philip Peek's 1991 anthology African Divination Systems, this elegant little publication makes a substantial contribution to the scholarship on Africa's culture and arts of divination.

ROBERT SOPPELSA retired recently as director of the Mulvane Art Museum and professor of art history at Washburn University. He lives in Washington, D.C.