The History and Influence of African Culture on Global Art, Music and Fashion

...

At the start of the colonization period in Africa, the African art were crafted out of natural resources such as ivory and took the form of tools such as spoons and hunting materials. These artistic artifacts were crafted by African artists and then exported abroad where they had a great influence. The objects were had a puzzling effect and came from the crafting of living figures out of ivory. The sculptures in Africa also depicted some forms of injustices that were being witnessed in the continent in the hands of the colonizers such as slavery. There were also artistic artifacts which had both characteristics from Africa and other parts of the world. At the same time, there were other several artistic techniques which are being used in other continents but originated from Africa such as the casting technique which involved the lost-wax bronze and a brass alloy casting technique which originated from Nigeria.

The African culture and art has been a source of inspiration for most avant-garde artists who have mostly based their work on the influence by the same. For example Gauguin made assertions that African art and culture has had an influence on the western culture and technology as much as it has been labeled primitive. Most sculptures in Europe have also been cited as being dependent on material limitations but the African art has been perceived as more vigorous in its expressions due to its innocence of artifice.

Foreign artist have admired the African art and artist who never carved or painted what they saw but rather what they imagined. Furthermore, African artists as a means of gaining recognition started incorporating some foreign aspects and consequently led to the production of mixed-cultural art that consists of European, American and African art. African culture should receive credit to the artistic genius of Picasso as much as denied any influence of the culture on him. But Picasso has been cited as admitting that African art possesses power which can change then thinking of a person as much as he even denied that he never incorporated African art in his work. There is a possibility that scholars have misunderstood the understanding of African by Picasso.

Picasso’s collection of African art was from various locations including Ivory Coast, Gabon and Congo after which he visited the Museum of Ethnography located in Paris. When he was in Paris he was completely fascinated by the value and originality of African art, something he had constantly sought (Kangas, 2016). Another great artist, Matisse also adopted and embraced the African culture which was shown by the portrait of his wife where he used a green line just like an African mask to separate the her face into two.

According to Roland Penrose when writing Picasso’s biography, the African art has four distinct qualities which were embraced by the artists who crafted their art after Picasso. At the same time, the German art has also evolved out of African art with most artists from Germany celebrating the directness of expressions of the face of African art. They even adopted some African figures in their art such as African female figure as a sign of reproductive fertility.

Picasso had shown his art with most of African art in the United States from where it was picked up by the American artists. The American artists viewed African art as a formal power which could strongly appeal to everyone due to their cut planes, masses, voids and edges (Kangas, 2016, para 12). African art has been important in the combination of sculpture and plant form which forms a shimmering but a threatening art depicting vegetation. It is possible for one to easily resonate that the influence of African art has been blended and blurred which has resulted to the important that is present today. Contemporary African art has had a great influence on the development of the Western art.

The history of African art has also played a critical role in the modification and shaping of the culture and history of the world. It is quite not doubtable that Africa is the cradle of the history of mankind. The roots of the African art history, at the same time, are preserved with the obscurity of time and date back even before the recording of history. The rock art is centuries old as well as the shell beads which have been fashioned for making necklaces being traced back to cave in the southern peninsula of South Africa dating back to 75,000 years ago (Picton, 1991).

According to the study of the history of African art, the earliest sculpture forms which date back to 500bc have been found in Nigeria. But it can be argued that the untold pieces of African art history have disintegrated in time mostly explained by the limited archeological excavations which clearly shows the knowledge of the antiquity of African art. This can be compounded by the fact that the earliest artistic objects were not seriously coveted by the indigenous communities that created them mostly due to the negligibility of their value once they had been used and, therefore, there was no serious effort in preserving them (Picton, 1991)

With the colonization of most African countries taking place from early 19th century onwards, the value of the African art became evident. Most of the African art were acquired just for curiosity by the travelers, missionaries and traders on their trips to Africa. But at that time still, the colonists did not give the African art all the merit it deserved and therefore as a result not much of the history of the African art were never documented or even preserved. The central African history has received a lot of attention mostly because most communities which resided there at that time were sedentary and also due to the fact they sculptured figurative arts which could easily be identified with by the Western art collectors (Picton, 1991).

The basic outstanding quality of African art is the human figure and the formal qualities which have been exhibited with strong artistic design features which have created a balance and harmony. The powerful spirituality that the art exhibited as well as the vigor of expression compounded of the design qualities has what attracted most global artists and made them explore the dynamics of the African art which led to the modern day abstraction (Kasfir, 1981).

The importance and value of the African art have been reignited by the surge in interest in the collection of the African art both contemporary and tribal. This has led to governments, scholars, investors and institutions to make a re-examination of the essence of the African art. Most historic collections have been taken by institutions and governments and placed in museums, galleries and auction houses to be celebrated or observed to show the beauty and fascination