power and that tension’s legacy for , book review northwest and southeast. Were there other Hughes demonstrates the saliency of both centers contemporary with ? e works of the asafo ag’s trademark style and its biting art known as the Lower Niger Bronze Indus- commentary in communicating assertions try (Peek and Picton ) suggest that there of personal and group identity. were, sharing forms and ideas amongst the ough the installation struggled in its peoples of the lower Niger region for a very ow at times, the overarching lenses of long time; and the very wealth of Ife, pre- art, honor, and ridicule resonated between sumably generated by its control over access the sections. While Forni rmly placed to forest products in the long-distance trade the exhibition in historical grounding, the networks across and the Sahara, emphasis on contemporary ags, costumes, is evidence enough for the expectation of accessories, and elements from pop culture rival cities and centers—but we have yet to guided the museum visitor to recognize know them archaeologically. Nevertheless, the continued relevance of the institution Suzanne Blier’s Art and Risk is by far the of asafo companies. As the “vibrant core of most thorough and intellectually coherent local communities,” the role of the group has publication on the art and antiquities of Ife shied from militaristic aims to communal yet to appear in print. And Blier also has the engagement. Every Fante man and woman unusual grace of acknowledging that her today belongs to a company. ough the book is the not the de nitive account: ere level of each person’s participation may vary, is still more to be done; I shall oer a few Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/afar/article-pdf/51/2/92/1814814/afar_r_00409.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 the leaders of these groups believe that asafo suggestions in due course. is a “practical enactment of the democratic We had been led to imagine that the art of ideals of the nation state.” From the hand- Ife was the work of two or perhaps three sep- stitched ags, to the dance groups’ costumes Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: arate populations: some, but certainly not all, and the footage of their performances, this Ife History, Power, and of the stone monuments perhaps the work of exhibition told a general audience the story a long-forgotten hunter-gatherer people who of how many generations of asafo indi- Identity, c. 1300 rst trod the forests and whose artifacts were viduals have de ned themselves and their by Suzanne Preston Blier incorporated into later cult contexts; in due distinct Fante communities through visual New York: Cambridge University course, a settled population of farmers devel- expression. Press, xxiv + 574 pp.; 52 color ill., oped a sculptural, gurative, naturalistic art A publication is available: Silvia Forni 159 b/w ill., bibliography, index. using the clay also used for making domestic and Doran H. Ross, Art, Honor, and Ridicule pottery; and nally, a gang of newcomers Fante Asafo Flags from Southern Ghana $118.00 hardcover; $39.99 paper established a - and copper-casting (Ottawa: Royal Ontario Museum Press and industry, transforming the existing forms Los Angeles: Fowler Museum at UCLA, ; reviewed by John Picton of art, while also establishing the mythic  pp. hardcover, . CDN). progenitor from whom almost all Yoruba So many of our questions about a history kings claim descent. Yet as Blier makes clear, J  L. U is an assistant professor of of Yoruba art, society, and culture revolve there is something of the caricature in this  art history at Kent State University, and a scholar around the mythic status of Ife as the account, an over-simpli cation of course, not and curator whose research focuses on exhibition source, the cradle (Akinjogbin ), the least because the art of Ife is not just stone platforms that artists from Senegal have used to very genesis (Fabunmi ) of Yoruba, with (whether granite, quartz, or schist—and the create transnational networks of inuence since the the mythic descent of the gods from the sky mid-twentieth century. JUnder@Kent.edu dierences have cult and art-historical impli- at the beginning of time. is is a popular cations), ceramic, and copper alloy: ere is Notes view. On the other hand, there is the more wrought iron, glass-making, featherwork, All quotes in this review are from the mundane recognition that “Yoruba” is a dress, textiles, basketry, and the arts of the exhibition didactics. modern ethnicity emerging, more or less, human body. And Blier considers everything in the period – (Peel ). In this within the full range of contexts available to References cited reading, “Yoruba” is a coming together of us—archaeological and ethnographic, mythic Adler, Peter, and Nicholas Barnard. . Asafo!: several centers, each with its speci city; Ife is African Flags of the Fante. New York: ames and and real-time historical, formal and aesthetic Hudson. but one—mightily important of course, but (what was the context in which this material still only one—among a series of overlapping was seen?), visual and poetic, current and centers and peripheries, each with its own contemporary. e works of art themselves name and identity, that comprise the “more- are part of the data available to us, as much or-less” region that today we have learned to as the present-day ritual context, which Blier call “Yoruba,” or “the Yoruba,” or “Yoruba- takes at face value as a source of information land,” or “the Yoruba-speaking peoples.” that brings together past and present. She is is most obviously seen in the cults of looks at everything and takes full account of deities and in the mythology of kingship, but all the available information, including the it is also evident via trade and cra centers, links between the lineage and title structure an evolving ethnicity in which “Yoruba” is of Ife and its sites, shrines and temples, and a retrospective judgment that identi es a their relationship to diering peoples claim-  speci c, interrelated set of histories. ing descent that is either autochthonous yet Ife must indeed have been a signi cant multiethnic or newcomer. She writes: center of trade, ritual, political energy, and visual culture at a time prior to the founda- It is dicult to write a “short” history of this remarkable city, not because we have little tion of the Oyo and City empires to its

 | african arts SUMMER 2018 VOL. 51, NO. 2 information, but rather because data from the once labor-linked cultural groupings are rem- characterize Ife ourished was a period various sources are so rich (p. ). nants of the longer history of cross-cultural before, during, and aer a civil war, which engagement that came to de ne this urban was represented in myth as a battle between Ife was abandoned twice in the course center and others in Africa (pp. –). two groups of gods, those led by Orishanla of the late nineteenth century, from about (a.k.a. Obatala: see below) standing for Blier draws upon evidence in Ife, not hith-  to  and again from about  to the autochthonous inhabitants, and those erto given the signi cance it deserves, for a , due to the disruptions and populations led by standing for conquering considerable measure of continuity between pressures following upon the Fulani-led newcomers perhaps invited into Ife by a antiquity and its contemporary context conquest of the . When peo- dissident faction within that autochthonous such that our understanding is enhanced ple returned to the city, its sacred groves, population. And, as already noted, lineages by her gathering together all the available shrines, and temples were overgrown with of autochthonous status still ourish in Ife, data: archaeological, ethnographic, and so vegetation and in a condition of decay. with their temples and shrines and their on. It is also worth noting that Blier makes “Western” scholarship assumed that much concomitant association with particular full and appropriate use of Yoruba schol- of what the ritual environment was all groups of antiquities. It is also possible arship. Moreover, everything is illustrated about was forgotten, just a smattering of that the autochthonous population was to provide the most extensive compendium half-remembered myths of little use in the multiethnic—some of the facial marks on of the art of Ife yet to appear in book form. twentieth-century context of an archaeology the ceramic suggest this—and Admittedly, much of the illustration is in trying to make sense of a remarkable series some of these autochthonous peoples were the form of Blier’s drawings, so that for the of accidental discoveries. Fagg and Willett known as Igbo, the mythic inhabitants of the

full eect, as it were, one still needs Willett’s Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/afar/article-pdf/51/2/92/1814814/afar_r_00409.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 (: ) took the view that forest whom the conquering elite of Ife are CD-ROM (). [T]here has unquestionably been considerable enabled to defeat only via the intervention ere was indeed a clash of rival popula- degeneration of both the traditions and the of the beautiful Moremi. She is married tions, the one autochthonous and probably practices. … e prolonged evacuation of to the conquering leader, Oranmiyan, but multiethnic, the other pushing in from Ife during the nineteenth century no doubt allows herself to be captured by the forest elsewhere, each still represented in the contributed to the confusion. people who were waging war on Ife. She lineage structure of the city. e entire marries their king and discovers their secret: Yet in my experience in , in the corpus of art was part of a ourishing city in terrifying monsters that were no more than absence of writing, memories persist far which a crisis wrought by a conquering elite masked gures clothed in vegetable- ber more strongly than the inhabitants of literate was resolved; the art was part of the process costumes, who could easily be dealt with by cultures expect, and we cannot assume that by which rival lineages and personalities means of aming brands. She returns to Ife a local memory is without a measure of real- achieved and documented this resolu- with this information, enabling Ife to defeat time historical veracity. Ife was abandoned tion—herein lies the risk of Art and Risk. the forest people, and she remarries Oran- for four years and then another sixteen; in And once Blier brings in the institutional- miyan. However, there is a rival myth that the minds of priests and elders, memories ized memories manifested in current and Blier chooses to make use of in her interpre- of lineage ancestries and ritual procedures contemporary lineage and cult aliations, it tation of the art: Oranmiyan forces the last do not habitually decay that quickly. Maybe becomes an account that is centered on the of the rst-dynasty kings of Ife into exile. there is a confusion between real-time events proposition that it is all an art of more or less is is Obalufon II, the great heroic gure of and mythic accounts of gods and heroes, the same period, around , a period Blier’s account, who in due course returns to and we can be reasonably certain that many in which Ife ourished, and in which there is defeat Oranmiyan and ushers in a period of works of art in Ife are no longer in the places both conict and its resolution. In regard to reconciliation that entails developments in for which they were originally made; yet this date, Blier follows Peter Garlake, whose the visual arts. And the beautiful Moremi is something of the history of Ife was always excavations are the most fully published, and married to both of them. It is in this context known to be embodied in a lineage structure thereby provide a context for the interpreta- that Blier, following up an insight derived that distinguished between peoples claiming tion of the earlier work of Frank Willett et al. from the late Cornelius Adepegba, solves the autochthonous versus newcomer descent. Garlake writes: problem of why some of the cast heads are e art-historical implications of this were At present we have insucient evidence to striated and some are not. noted by Frank Willett (see : ): at construct a sequence of sites or objects. It is I now want to make a few suggestions for the head of the family who represents the unsafe to assert that all the art from Ife was the continuing discussion. When living in Igbo [of whom more later!] was responsible not nearly contemporaneous: it could all have Ife in – looking aer the museum, for two sacred groves that contained so large been produced in the fourteenth century. If I called to see the Ooni, Adesoji Aderemi, a proportion of the Ife ceramic sculpture is we seek to place extreme outer limits on the a number of times. On one of these visits, striking might suggest that this was the art art these would fall between the tenth and and following from my Ekiti visits, I asked of an original indigenous population who eenth or sixteenth centuries (: ). him what was the generic term in Ife for the were then put to work in the service of a new e question of dating thus remains open, gods. He replied: “ẹbora.” I already knew this ruling class. Blier asks: but for Blier, the century centered around word, of course, from the Yoruba northeast, Can we simply assume that when one  is as good a guide to the possibilities where it referred to powers without “embod- encounters possible references to the Yagba, of interpretation as we can expect in the iment” in an artifact. Powers manifested in Edo, Igbo, or other groups in early art, facial current state of archaeological research, and the things made by artists were referred to markings, and ongoing ritual that what we are it enables Blier to present a more coherent with the Ekiti term imọnlẹ. talking about had similar meanings in earlier But if ẹbora was eras? … What is signi cant for Ife is both how account of the art history of Ife than anyone the generic term, what about òrìṣà? In Ife in vital idioms of autochthony continue to exist else has done so far. She has taken a chance the s that word was used exclusively of through time and how these ideas sometimes and it has worked: As I read through Art òrìṣàńlá, “the great ,” a deity known have occupational links … Like the small and Risk, the force of her argument became in the Oyo empire as ọbàtálá, which is the sacred groves scattered across the landscape increasingly convincing. word Blier uses here. Since the s there of the city, sites that serve as ritually charged e period in which the visual arts that has been a shi in the language used of the remnants of the deep forests of the past, these

VOL. 51, NO. 2 SUMMER 2018 african arts |  gods in Ife, and I accept that Blier has cast beyond the technologies available in J P  is Emeritus Professor of her account in Ife as it is. Nevertheless, it sub-Saharan Africa prior to the twentieth in the University of London. seems to me an Oyo-derived terminology, century. Tin is very dierent, as its smelting He was employed by the Nigerian Govern- and part of the history of both Yoruba and and alloying were easily possible within ment Dept of Antiquities –; British Ife resides in the histories of the words and the local preindustrial technology, and Museum –; and SOAS –. their distribution and signi cance. the necessary deposits were close at hand, His research and publication interests Secondly, the survival of the divide together with copper and lead deposits not include Yoruba and Edo-Benin sculpture, between autochthonous and newcomer pop- so far away. While the tin-bronze used in Ebira and the Niger-Benue conuence ulations still con gured within Ife society Igbo-Ukwu and other Lower Niger castings region, masquerade, textile history, and is essential for the understanding of the art. could have been manufactured in the lower developments in sub-Saharan visual Much of this data is here in Art and Risk, Niger region, the zinc-brass of Ife could culture since the mid nineteenth century. not least because Blier gives us a great many not. Brass had to be imported ready made, jp@soas.ac.uk reminders of the principles at work. But the and there are only two possible sources— principles are complex, and Blier is forced either trans-Saharan or coastal trade—and Notes into repeating herself as she reminds us of a trans-Saharan source for the brass used I lived in Ife for about een months in where we are at; we really do need a paper in Ife castings has to be the explanation for –, dividing each week between overseeing the administration of Ife Museum and traveling through that gives us a succinct guide to the lineages its presence in an art dated to circa . eastern and northeastern Yoruba surveying extant and their titles, as well as their relationship In that case, we need to explain why Ife is works of art for the archives founded by K.C. Murray to priestly titles, the festival cycle, temples, dierent from all the surrounding cop- in the Museum, and when possible collecting artisan groups, and ward structure, showing per-alloy-casting cultures prior to access such material for the Lagos collections (e.g., Picton Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/afar/article-pdf/51/2/92/1814814/afar_r_00409.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 how the interrelated con guration works. to coastal trade; with the proven existence a, b). Moreover, when traveling through Ekiti is brings me to the Igbo, as con gured of a local tin-bronze casting industry, why and Opin it was obvious that dialects, terminologies, cults, and the forms of art changed, sometimes so in myth and in the contemporary lineage is there no evidence of it in Ife? On the radically that mutual incomprehension would result and cult organization of Ife. Both Willett other hand, if for some as yet unknown unless both parties to a conversation were equally and Blier assume that “Igbo” here means (the reason coastal trade was the proven source uent in the Modern Standard Yoruba taught in ancestors of) the population now known by of Ife zinc-brass, we would have to date local schools. I was also informed by the District that word. But the Igbo of Ife myth were the those works to circa , around the time Ocers’ reports for the s and ‘s that Murray people of the forest, and “forest” in modern of the opening up of coastal trade by the had begun to acquire for the museum for precisely the purpose to which I put them; and as I read them Yoruba is igbó, whereas the people now dis- Portuguese! I was struck by the fact that when the DO in an Ekiti tributed around the lower Niger region are Finally, one would like to know much district referred to “the Yoruba” he was not referring igbò. Because of the dierence of tone on the more about the textual material quoted in to the people of that district but to the citizens of the nal syllable [high = forest; low = the people] Art and Risk, in particular the ìkédù, the empire of Oyo. these are simply two dierent words. If the ancient text in the care of the eminent Pro-  So, when was Yoruba art? Should we consider mythic people of the forest are identi ed fessor Akinjogbin which is so fundamental as “Yoruba” only those forms that develop within as igbó, they cannot be the ancestors of the to Blier’s interpretation. is text clearly has and as a response to the emergence of that modern ethnicity? is would be regarded as, at best, modern Igbò. is is not to deny continuities something of the qualities of an archaeolog- tendentious; this is not an argument about words. of social, aesthetic, and ritual practice across ical discovery and it would be good to know  Willett (: ) noted how one of the sacred space and time in the lower Niger region (see more about its “excavation” and conserva- groves around Ife, a repository of stone sculpture, Picton , Peek and Picton ), including tion: How was this text discovered, in what commemorates a hunter who was living in the the valid and intriguing parallels with the form does it exist, etc., etc.? One’s appetite world before the advent of that new ruling class. He antiquities of Igbo-Ukwu, but present-day is merely whetted by Blier’s very full note on suggests that some aspects of Ife art might refer back to a pre-agricultural foraging people. ethnicities are not a sure guide to past iden- pages –.  I do wish we could stop using the term “terra- tities, even though in her discussion of facial In conclusion, in Art and Risk Suzanne cotta,” which is the ne clay used by European markings Blier demonstrates the multiethnic Blier has given us a book that will provide artists; it is a highly specialist material quite unlike nature of the autochthonous population. substance to a great many discussions, the coarse clay typical of an African preindustrial en there is the term “copper alloy”; seminars, and lectures for several years to environment, and which, in Ife, is used for domestic it is, of course, the accurate generic term come. By the time this review is published pottery and sculpture.  I note one misidenti cation, admittedly of (in contrast to Fagg’s and Willett’s use of (for which late date I present my apologies), minor importance: the Archbishop of Canterbury “bronze”—which no Ife casting is), but, it will already have proved its worth as an in conversation with the Ooni of Ife in color plate  as has been suggested over the past thirty essential element in the dialogical process— (p. ) is not Rowan Williams, but his predecessor, years (Craddock and Picton , Picton necessarily situated within a continuing George Carey. , Peek and Picton ), there could be archaeological context, supported by a  is is a familiar trope in Yoruba history, as temporal implications in the dierent alloys proper attention to art-historical, current, seen in the fall of Old Oyo. used across the lower Niger region. On page and ethnographic data—that constitutes  In Ife, Blier tells us, the word imọnlẹ has associations with the powers of the earth, and  Blier refers to the possibility of a local progress towards the truth of one of the Abraham (: ) makes the same point. source for the zinc needed for the alloying great civilizations in world history and  Speech-tone patterns do change in particular of brass. Yet while zinc ores are plentiful antiquity. grammatical contexts but that does not apply here. across the sub-Saharan region, there is no I leave the last word to Suzanne Blier: References cited evidence either that zinc was extracted in a at Ife residents still today speak passion- preindustrial context or even that the nec- Abraham, R.C. . Dictionary of Modern Yoruba. ately about events in the era circa  when London: University of London Press. essary technology existed, and the report the great Ife heroes—Obalufon II (Obalufon on which she depends here has confused Alaiyemore), Oranmiyan, Moremi, Obameri, Akinjogbin, I.A. (ed.). . e Cradle of a Race: Ife zinc with tin. Moreover, given the very low Obawinrin, Lajua, and Osangangan Obama- from the Beginning to . Port Harcourt: Sunray. melting point of metallic zinc, the processes kin (Obalufon I)—were alive, highlights the Craddock, Paul, and John Picton. . “Mediaeval of alloying with copper are also complex reality that despite long centuries and change, Copper Alloy Production and West African Bronze the past is still very much in play (p. ).

 | african arts SUMMER 2018 VOL. 51, NO. 2 Analysis, Part II.” Archaeometry  (): –. book review his own paintings and the museum’s ethno- Fabunmi. M.A. . Ife, the Genesis of Yoruba Race: graphic collections, the catalogue smartly An Anthology of Historical Notes of Ife City. Ikeja: takes more of an historical lens to Sy’s con- John West. tributions as artist, curator, and activist. Fagg, William, and Frank Willett. . “Ancient Mutumba’s enlightening essay gives the Ife, an Ethnographical Summary.” Odu, a Journal of context for Afro-German exchanges from Yoruba, Edo and Related Studies, : –. the s, detailing how the two German Garlake, Peter. . Early Art and Architecture of states sponsored artistic programs and Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. exhibitions that advanced their respec- Peel, J.D.Y. . Religious Encounter and the Mak- tive ideologies (e.g., a  exhibition of ing of the Yoruba. Bloomington: Indiana University Ethiopian students mounted in Berlin to Press. champion socialist revolution). e unique Peek, Philip M., and John Picton. . “e Reso- relationship between Sy and Axt, who nance of Osun Across a Millennium of Lower Niger taught German in Senegal (–), is the History.” African Arts  (): –. starting point for Mutumba’s genealogy of Picton, John. . “On Artifact and Identity at the collaborations between Senegal and Ger- Niger-Benue Conuence.” African Arts  (): –. many. Axt shared Sy’s conviction that the cultural moment in Senegal was signi cant, Picton, John. a. “Art, Identity and Identi ca- tion: A Review of Yoruba Art Historical Studies.” In as governmental patronage waned and the Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/afar/article-pdf/51/2/92/1814814/afar_r_00409.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 R.Abiodun, H.J. Drewal, and J. Pemberton III (eds.), arts were liberated from Senghor’s dogmatic e Yoruba Artist, pp. –. Washington, DC: Smith- El Hadji Sy: Painting, Perfor- vision of postcolonial culture. Aer creating sonian Institution Press. mance, Politics video reportages on contemporary art prac- Picton, John. b. “Sculptors of Opin.” African Arts Edited by Clémentine Deliss and tice, they undertook the ambitious project  (): –. of anthologizing Senegal’s spaces, practices, Yvette Mutumba Picton, John. . “West Africa and the Guinea and artists, featuring trilingual contribu- Coast.” In T. Phillips (ed.), Africa, the Art of a Conti- Zürich, Berlin: Diaphanes, 2015. tions from artists, critics, and even Senghor nent, pp. –. Munich: Prestel Verlag and London: 408 pp., 404 color ill., 95 b/w ill. himself. With the sponsorship of the Federal e Royal Academy of Arts. English/German; $50.00 paper Republic of Germany, they approached Willett, Frank. . Ife in the History of West African Josef Franz iel of the (now) Weltkulturen Sculpture. London: ames and Hudson. reviewed by Joseph L. Underwood Museum to publish it. iel had recently Willett, Frank. . e Art of Ife: A Descriptive changed the museum’s policy, making it the Catalogue and Data Base [CD-ROM]. Glasgow: Hun- Beyond a traditional exhibition catalogue, sole European institution with a formal mis- terian Museum and Art Gallery. El Hadji Sy: Painting, Performance, Politics sion to collect contemporary art from Africa. oers not only the typical curatorial/con- Ultimately, iel printed the anthology textual essays, but also the original source and commissioned Axt and Sy to buy y materials pertaining to this pioneering works for the museum, making Sy the rst artist. In fact, the publication’s greatest African curator whose independent vision contribution might be its assemblage of was welcomed by a European institution and archival photographs, posters, invitations, audience. rough the partnership of two newspaper clippings, handwritten letters, men with a passion for recasting stereotypes and other ephemera related to Sy’s career. of African art, Mutumba proposes the larger ese accompany the sumptuous, full-color network of Senegalese-German exchange as photographs of paintings that represent a model for unpacking the complexities of the artist’s thirty- ve years of activity. As other Afro-European relationships. the curators—Clémentine Deliss, Yvette Manon Schwich elaborates on Axt’s Mutumba, and Philippe Pirotte—and guest nancial and material support of Sy’s practice essayists recount Sy’s wide-reaching impact as he coordinated exhibitions in Germany on the artscape of Senegal—including and built an archive of Sy’s paintings from Dakar’s École des Beaux-Arts, Laboratoire dierent periods (p. ). Navigating chal- AGIT’ART, Tenq workshops, the Huit lenges across Franco-German structures Facettes collective, and both iterations of the (mail, currency, publications, sponsorships, Village des Arts—these ephemeral, periph- etc.), the friends worked to exhibit and sell eral materials from personal archives richly Senegalese artwork outside of governmen- animate Sy’s prolonged engagement with tal interference, organizing “projects that politics and art. His engagement rever- had been le too systematically to foreign berated internationally, particularly with diplomatic missions” (p. ). In his constant multifaceted German networks of collection, lutte for artists’ rights to create and exhibit exhibition, and criticism. e solo exhibition beyond the nationalist or ideological bound- at the Weltkulturen Museum (Frankfurt) aries of state patronage, Sy was a mediator, or sprang from an earlier collaboration: the “counterweight,” to structures in Senegal (p. museum’s publication of Anthology of ). For Schwich, Sy’s politics of resistance Contemporary Fine Arts in Senegal (), were never prescriptive, but discursive, and co-edited by Sy and Friedrich Axt. ough the artist was leery of working with any actors the  exhibition was the result of an artist whose frameworks did not align with his per-  residency where he staged interventions with sonal convictions. In both his painting and

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