The radiance of the King

African Arts, Autumn, 2009 by Donald Cosentino

Along with many other eager fans of both the curator and his subject, I visited the Ernie Wolfe Gallery in West LA shortly after the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama for the opening of "Out of Africa: Obama and McCain." The subheading on the fancy invite filled in a little of the back story: "Praise Portraits and Visual Narratives by the Ghanaian artists who brought us Extreme Canvas: Hand Painted Movie Posters from Ghana" (the book written and edited by Ernie Wolfe in 2000).

Who could resist such an invitation for such a celebration of the world's new Superman on the eve of Super Bowl weekend? Especially when, in addition to the curator's celebrated chili, we were being offered a moment "to enjoy positive globalization and to celebrate art as an ambassador of cross-cultural pollination" (not to be confused with "Palin-ation"). But the deal-sealer was the photo of Power House 08 printed on the front of the invite (Fig. 1). Painted by Isaac Azey, this "visual narrative" has Obama driving a motorcycle, with his African granny on back, hugging his waist and smiling like she just got a peek at heaven. Chasing behind the "moto piki" on a brown pony is McCain, his saddle flaps reading "P.O.W." and "Nation First." There's no doubt who's going to win this race as Obama makes a quick left turn into the White House driveway. Azey caught the moment in piquant detail: Granny in flip-flops; "Change We Can Believe In" inscribed on the cycle; McCain's grim determination juxtaposed to Obama's Seraphic grin.

Isaac Azey is one of a group of artists Ernie has known since the early '90s, when they were painting posters for what came to be known as "the mobile cinema": entrepreneurs who would drive into the bush with generators, TVs, and VCRs, bringing movies from all the hoods--Bolly, Nolly, Golly, Jolly, and Holly-into the remotest areas of Ghana. As Wolfe tells it, these poster painters not only spearheaded the mobile cinema; they created a parallel art form: "They would make these very elaborate paintings, really much more elaborate than they needed to be. They re-told the stories from their own imaginations. They were creating complex visual narratives." And scripting them as well. Like other African pop artists (think Cheri Samba in Congo), these painters came out of a sign painting (or "sign writing" as they call it) tradition. "They always imagine their paintings as having words attached to them. Given the chance, they always figure that words are better to add than not. They invent tag lines. They include signage in their backgrounds. They started as sign painters, and they carry that predisposition with them," Wolfe says.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

By the time Wolfe wrote Extreme Canvas the movie poster tradition itself seemed in extremis. "When I first got to Ghana in the early '90s, the tradition was so utilitarian, an entirely local market. Painting on used flour sacks. You could see the mill hallmarks of the sacks on the backs of the posters. The material could take paint, be rolled up on a stick, and easily transported. They would literally cut up old posters and make them into patches for new ones. The entire enterprise was one big recycle. That tradition died in the late '90s. Put out of business by chalkboards and cheap off-set printing. And then totally slammed by computers. By 2000, a new generation of young painters was making posters again, not only as advertisements, but also as flee-standing art commodities. Because there really isn't much of a domestic market for their work, (galleries in Ghana are not much interested in this kind of art) they were destined to be sold abroad. These guys paint because they can't help it. It's therapy. It's what they were born to do. They think a lot about their images before they paint them. Especially those who paint out of the depth of their religious beliefs."

Television has replaced cinema as a source for their inspirations. Artists now pick and choose from a free flow of televised signifiers jostling each other in what Appadurai (1996) calls "global image-scapes." Especially compelling are those images being re-broadcast from the drama of world politics. A new pan theon of virtual heroes and virtual villains has emerged from this ether. Bill Clinton--with and without Monica Lewinsky in various stages of dishabille. Nelson Mandela. (These two became such ubiquitous subjects that Ernie managed to mount a "Bill and Nelson" show in the 1990s.) The drama of 9/11 brought forth a flourishing of Osama bin Ladens (more often as hero than villain). Even our good Governator Arnie has been re-animated from his halcyon days as Terminator (another Wolfe exhibition). But all this while a new hero was shadowing the stage, coming up from Hawaii, Harvard, Springfield, and Chicago. The skinny guy with the dumbo ears and the killer smile. And Africa was picking up on this new kid tout de suite, as Ernie discovered. "The first time I heard that Obama was going to be president was from a friend in Kenya, and that was two and a half years ago. Africa's been buzzing about Obama, so it was natural for these artists to latch on to him, to express their feelings about his election."