Yoruba Art

The Yoruba are the very different than the Congo and Dogon people. There are about 40 million Yoruba people around the world today which accounts for twenty percent of the Nigerian population. The Yoruba people were also the people that were commonly traded as slaves which accounts for why there are so many of these people in North and South America.

Before Christianity and Islam came to the Yoruba people, they had their own set of beliefs. Though their creation story has many different version, they all still shared the same set of gods.

The Yoruba are famous for being able to manage to intertwine their art with their religion. These works of art helped the people visualize how their deities would look like. The sculptures would also be used for worship in their altars.

Though the Congo, the Dogon people, and the Yoruba are all heavily devoted to their religion, only Yoruba is able to bring their culture out of being nomadic peoples. They end up creating a large and very influential kingdom. This kingdom really gained its wealth from trade with other kingdoms which is also a reason why they were well known for selling their people over to the Americas so they could be slaves.

Even if the Yoruba people did not have religion influence them too much, they still were a very respectful people. They were always respecting their elders. They even had certain ways to greet another person as well. These people were well known for their hospitality.

As a result of the Yoruba people using religion to influence their art, and since they were very good sculptors, the culture was praised for having outstanding sculptures. The sculptures showing the individual are typically realistic with the exception of bulging eyes, and in the case of female figures, and large breasts.

The large breasts are yet again used to show motherhood. And it is also used to show that the people can survive because the mother can have the baby, and she can the nurture the child. This is why the female figures always have very exaggerated breasts in African art.

Another art form that Yoruba was known for was their skill in making ornaments. One such ornament is the Hip Ornament from Benin. This is a depiction of an African person's face made of ivory. It shows that the sculptor was able to master the art of realism because the face looks as if it could start talking to you at any second. This is a great example to show that the people of Yoruba were able to master so many type of art in their history which still lives on even today.























SOURCES
http://www.newarkmuseum.org/museum_default_page.aspx?id=5080
http://www.tigweb.org/youth-media/panorama/article.html?ContentID=1088
http://www.zyama.com/yoruba/
http://www.historywiz.com/benin.html
http://wysinger.homestead.com/yoruba.html

Dogon Art

Another type of people located in Africa that is very interesting is the Dogon people.

There are around 400,000 Dogon people in Africa. They also have 125 languages being used by the Dogons as well. These people used to be hunter gatherers, but after some time, they became very good farmers as a result of modernization in Africa.

 The Dogon people are very well known for their excellent masks as well as their wooden figures. These masks are usually filled with very intricate designs. But the Dogons also use very simple colors such as red and white for these masks.

The Dogon people were also very well known having religion take place in their works of art such as in their wooden carvings. Their religion gives birth to large amounts of cults that helped make their art more diverse and unique every time a Dogon artist would make a wooden carving. The Dagon religion is polytheistic with the Amma as the main deity. This religion is also based around worshiping your ancestors.

The wooden sculptures that the Dogon people would make were very simple. They tried to show the human being as a very simple person unlike the Greeks where they would try to show their people as extremely muscular.

The art of the Dogon people also tends to be based on fertility just like the people of the Congo. This tends to be a recurring theme in Africa. The reason why is because Africa is home to the origins of the earliest human beings so as a result, their ideas tend to not change. And one of these ideas is their worship towards fertility. 

One such symbol  of fertility is the Dogon sculpture of Louvre. This wooden figure is of a woman. This woman has very exaggerated breasts.  This theme of exaggerated breasts is very common when talking about fertility because it shows that the woman is ready for motherhood if she has not had any children already. The exaggerated breasts are also meant to show that she is able to feed her children. In other words, this mom is ready to provide for a child to ensure that the Dogon people can survive. 

The Dogon were also known for theiur excellent craftsmanship in their masks as well. These masks generally are very large as to show off. Think of it as a peacock showing its feathers so it can impress.

Just like the wooden sculptures the Dogon make, the masks are meant to be used in religious ceremonies. These masks would usually be used in dancing rituals called damas, but it is very difficult to see these rituals be performed. Every mask that the Dogon use is meant to have a religious effect such as asking the gods to bless them with a good harvest.

A great example of these masks being used in religious ceremonies is from a ritual called the Dance of the Antelopes. The masks are in the shape of a box and have these very colorful feathers sticking out of them. This religious ceremony is meant to connect the Dogon people from the ground to the heavens.

Though the culture of the Dogon and the culture of the people of Congo may be in different areas, both share the same values of fertility. I believe that this is a common concept from old African cultures.

SOURCES: 

http://www.zyama.com/dogon/pics..htm

http://www.uiowa.edu/~africart/toc/people/dogon.html

http://www.contemporary-african-art.com/dogon.html#sthash.ec10objl.YDsH0d9k.dpbs

http://saharanvibe.blogspot.com/2007/06/dogon-people-of-bandiangara.html

The Art of the Congo

As I look through the art of Africa from places such as the Congo. I can tell that this style of art, African art,  is a style that I am not used to seeing in my everyday life.

The Congo is located in central Africa and borders the Central African Republic. This country has more than 250 languages which makes for a diverse group of people.

The first are the Batwa, or Pygmies. The Pygmies are hunter-gatherers who exchange the animals they kill for agricultural products. As a result, much of the ancient Pygmy art is found on rocks in caves. These people are the earliest inhabitants of the Congo, but are slowly being assimilated into the regular African population we see today.

Archaeologists have found thousands of sites that contain Pygmy art. The art tends to be very simple such as finger paintings on top of rocks. But some of the art can be very detailed where the animals are distorted on purpose.

Though much of the rock art that the Pygmies have is very hard to distinguish as representing some type of real life object. There are two subjects that tend to be displayed the most. These two objects are fertility and weather.

The subject of weather shows images of the sun, the rain, the clouds, and the moon. This is the case with most Africans because since it is very dry in the region, they depend on these meteorological subjects to keep them alive. As for the Pygmies, they depend on the clouds and rain to give them rain so they could drink water. They also depend on the sun to give them light so they could hunt for their food so they could eat or trade this meat. The Pygmies practically thought that since these objects made me survive, then that means they have to honor them in some type of way. This lead to them making works of art on these such objects.

Fertility is also a very important subject to the people of Africa and the Pygmy people as well. Fertility means the survival of the people. And the survival of the people means that you can now have more workers to work with you.

The Pygmy's love towards the subject of fertility lead to their love to maternal figures as well. Maternal is meant to give off a motherly feel. This motherly feel comes in the form of a mother carrying a child, or a mother with her child in her womb. This goes back to the subject of fertility because both of these concepts lead to the survival of the species. As a result of the Pygmy people being well known for their worship for fertility, the African people have believed they have supernatural powers that boost fertility.

A good example of the Pygmy people's love for fertility is the Tikar Figure. The figure has a very large head which was meant to represent the Pygmies because they are well known for having heads of large sizes. The large head is supposed to symbolize knowledge. The figure is also female and has a protruding belly as to show she is pregnant.

After looking at just one of the many groups that live in Africa, I realize that their art is very different than the art I have seen growing up.

SOURCES:

http://www.sarada.co.za/traditions/african_hunter-gatherers/pygmy/

http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/tikar-figure-cameroon-pygmy-fertility-fetish

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/484571/Pygmy