of the human species, the “Persian” rugs that curator Flora Kaplan contextualize Alonge cocooned the famous couch encouraged a exhibition review (1911–1994) in terms of an extended history more abstract thought process. For in Vienna of visual politics in the Benin Kingdom. The at 1900 it was believed that the ornamental art capacity to establish authoritative framings of of weaving, with its arabesques, rhythms, and visual experience and to organize apprehen- repetitions, and with its dizzying alteration of sions of dynamic exchanges between visible figure and ground, was a visual analogue to and invisible domains has long been central to the “free association” that Freud demanded royal ideologies of sovereignty in the kingdom of his patients for their talking cure. Add to (Freyer 1989, Gore 2007, Ben-Amos Girshick the power of tapestry’s patterns the mysteries 2007). The adornment, painting, and scarifica- of the weaver’s craft (the rapid twists, returns, Chief S.O. Alonge: Photographer tion of the bodies of the Oba, Queen Mother, and knots remain technically opaque even to the Royal Court of Benin, and others associated with the royal court, in when observed up close in the workshop) Nigeria stasis or in motion, dramatize and help con- and the result is a depth of imagery over and National Museum of African Art, stitute the flow of ancestral potencies into the above—and under and in-between—the enig- mortal world. In many respects, power in the matic pictures and stories that Kentridge’s Washington, DC Benin Kingdom is a supremely visual tech- designs encompass. September 17, 2014– nology, radiantly binding together royals and These are ancient metaphors. Thought is a July 31, 2016 commoners while diminishing, even crushing, thread. The storyteller spins yarns. And poets the capacity of opponents. Visual display is do something more: they weave. The great reviewed by Mark Auslander often used to dramatize structural oppositions, poem can be likened to a weaving or tapes- while simultaneously highlighting the sover- try because it doesn’t simply set forth plot and “Chief S.O. Alonge: Photographer to the Royal eign’s sacral capacities to transcend all opposi- characters but also conjures and entire world, Court of Benin, Nigeria” explores several over- tion (Nevadomsky 1983–84). a cosmos encompassing events, peoples, and lapping historical relationships: between colo- The exhibition cleverly deploys this aes- places and embracing, too, ourselves as, lis- nialism, postcolonialism, and photography; thetic of dramatized, and transcended, opposi- tening, we are psychically woven into that between the medium of photography and clas- tion throughout the installation. The opening tapestry. Later, the scribes began to write sic Benin Kingdom metal plaques and hip hallway displays on the left a large, blown-up down—first in scroll, then in codex—these ornaments; and between photography as a reproduction of Reginald Kerr Granville’s poetical weavings. And when they achieved on mode of documenting and constituting interior well-known image of the sacked place court- the written page a thing of similar consistency domestic life and photography as a technology yard following the 1897 British punitive expe- and complexity as the poem, they called what of royal ritual action. The exhibition emerges dition. Affixed to poles before the image are they made a text. The word comes from the out of a collection of 3,000 images, including three important royal Benin bronze plaques, Latin textus (“thing woven”) from textere (“to many glass plates and silver gelatin prints by evocative of the great cache of bronzes looted weave, braid, fabricate, build”), and before that Chief Solomon Osagie Alonge, the first offi- by the British Admiralty and eventually from Proto-Indo-European teks (“to weave, to cial photographer to the royal court of Benin, acquired by museums and collectors around make, to make wicker or wattle”). So originally now housed at the Eliot Elisofon Photographic the text was a weaving, and only subsequently, Archives at the National Museum of Afri- by analogy and metaphor, did text become can Art. The photographs are juxtaposed with 1 “Chief S.O. Alonge: Photographer to the writing or Scripture. works drawn from the Museum’s significant Royal Court of Benin, Nigeria” at the National Kentridge’s tapestries return texts to this collection of classic Benin art. Museum of African Art. Central gallery of exhi- bition, showing both the studio side and court primordial condition. The artist’s texts—the Lead curator and chief archivist Amy Sta- photography. stories this poet-artist tells in imagery, in per- ples, co-curator Bryna Freyer, and consulting Photo: Franko Khoury formance, and in the enigmatic narratives of his “drawings for projection,” are all about the imponderables of history, memory, and the human condition. In the tapestries, through the weaver’s craft, these become texts in that original sense of weavings. Examined closely, as this exhibition allowed us effortlessly to do, these collaborative creation do what great tapestries do plus reciting the poems that Kentridge, over the course of his career, has through his images composed.

Joseph Leo Koerner is the Thomas Professor of History of Art and Architecture and Senior Fellow at the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. His books include The Moment of Self-Portraiture in Germany Renaissance Art (1993), The Reformation of the Image (2004), and Bosch and Bruegel: From Enemy Painting to Everyday Life (forthcoming 2016). koerner@ fas.harvard.edu

88 | african arts SPRING 2016 VOL. 49, NO. 1 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_r_00275 by guest on 23 September 2021 2 Solomon Osagie Alonge Images of the Oba Ovonramwen, who reigned Stella Osarhiere Gbinigie, age 16 (ca. 1950) 1888–1897, in exile and related imperial ico- Hand-colored photograph nography (including a magazine cover cel- Chief S.O. Alonge Collection, EEPA 2009-007-1787 ebrating Queen’s Elizabeth II’s visit to Nigeria) Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives Photo: courtesy National Museum of African stress the pacification of the once-independent Art, Smithsonian Institution polity. (The exhibition celebrates the 100th anniversary of Nigeria as an amalgamated 3 Solomon Osagie Alonge country, and honors the last independent ruler Rest After Toil (ca. 1937) Photograph of Benin, Oba Ovonramwen, who transitioned Chief S.O. Alonge Collection, EEPA 2009-007-0080 to the ancestors in 1914.) Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives The central gallery again is organized around Photo: courtesy National Museum of African an aesthetic of paired opposition and transcen- Art, Smithsonian Institution dence. The left wall emphasizes Alonge’s biog- 4 Solomon Osagie Alonge raphy and his studio practice, documenting Young man and handrail (ca. 1950) family life and the emergent culture of the local Photograph bourgeoisie. Facing this is a major section on Chief S.O. Alonge Collection, EEPA 2009-007-0101 Alonge’s work as court photographer, bringing Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives Photo: courtesy National Museum of African Art, out subtle affinities between Alonge’s photo- Smithsonian Institution graphic practice and the ritual efficacy of earlier artistic works (Fig. 1). In the studio section, Staples calls our atten- tion to the democratization of visual represen- the world. Facing this assemblage, a large color tation over the course of the twentieth century. photograph by George Osodi of the present Image-making is no longer monopolized by Oba Erediauwa, who has reigned from 1979 to the court, but is part and parcel of prolifer- the present, in full regalia, looks back at this ating practices of creative self-fashioning by moment of crisis from the vantage point of diverse women and men. Photographic self tant men, whose wives are seated off to the restored sovereignty a century later. An adja- portraits of Alonge himself nicely suggest this side. Many other images, however, showcase cent carved Benin elephant tusk (a monopoly point, showing his carefully tailored elegance the growing sophistication and influence of of the monarch) depicts the king with legs of and ease as he moves between domains of women in the 1940s and 1950s. Especially mudfish, further emphasizing the king’s capac- church, business and royal court. noteworthy is a brilliant photograph, hand- ity to mediate between visible and invisible Of the many studio images displayed, tinted by Alonge himself, of Stella Osarhiere levels of experience, binding the spirit world among the most striking is a grand pho- Gbinigie, daughter of the founder of the (erinmwin) and the material world (agbon) tograph of the Benin Social Circle, a club Benin Social Circle, at age 16 (Fig. 2). She on behalf of all his people (Gore 2007:29–30, that boasted among its members many of rests extended on a studio divan, dressed in Blackmun 1997). the region’s emergent elite. Only men were her mother’s clothing and jewelry, adornment The next section deftly reviews the power of allowed to be formal members of the circle, that elegantly integrates Yoruba, Western, and photography in the colonial project in Nigeria. and the picture does center in these impor- Benin aesthetics.

VOL. 49, NO. 1 SPRING 2016 african arts | 89 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_r_00275 by guest on 23 September 2021 5 Oba Akenzua II greets Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip (not shown) on a Royal visit to Benin City. On the left is Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo, first Premier of the Western Region, 1952-1959. On the right is Sir John Rankine, Gov- ernor, Western Region, Nigeria, 1954–1960. Hand-colored photograph by Solomon Osagie Alonge, 1956 Taken together, Alonge’s studio works con- gelatin print of Oba Akenzua II, ca. 1937, and Chief S.O. Alonge Collection, EEPA 2009-007- 1796 stitute a fascinating social history of Benin inte- the commemorative textile onto which his Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives rior and public life, illustrating local struggles to likeness was reproduced following his death Photo: courtesy National Museum of African Art, navigate between local and transnational ori- in 1978. Equally intriguing is Alonge’s famous Smithsonian Institution entations. An enigmatic photograph centers on hand-colored photograph of Oba Akenzua II, 6 Case showing crossed eben and ada swords a young women elegantly dressed in Western bowing slightly as he shakes hands with visit- Photo: Franko Khoury dress, her hair in a “natural” style. To her right a ing Queen Elizabeth II (Fig. 5). The wall text man (perhaps her husband) lounges in Yoruba- notes the controversy occasioned by this mass- style adornment, his arm comfortably wrapped reproduced image of the king shaking hands around her; to her left another man (perhaps with a non-kin female. her brother) sits erect, a bit apart, dressed in The royal section further develops our Western suit and bow tie. I was especially fasci- understanding of the rich visual poetics of Kaplan 1990, 1991a, 1991b). These pairings seem nated by the glass plate entitled “Rest after toil”: Benin court life, past and present. At the gal- to imply that photography both continues and a man sits in a T-shirt and traditional wrap, lery’s center is a stunning installation of an illuminates ancient forms of bodily habitus. I listening to an open Victrola (Fig. 3). We can eben (fanlike sword), ingeniously mounted do wish this tantalizing insight could have been guess the era by the West African Pilot news- with a single curved wire that gives it the developed in more detail. paper resting on the adjacent cabinet, open to appropriate illusion of motion, crossed with As I finished touring the gallery, I contem- headlines about Stalin and Haile Selassie. Pre- an aba (curved sword) to produce the famous plated a large blown-up reproduction of an sumably the photograph dates to between 1935, crossed emblem of the Benin kingdom (Fig. early photograph of a royal palace ancestral when the Italians invaded Ethiopia, and May 6). An adjacent video monitor shows the eben shrine, sporting cast heads and sacred metal 1936, when Selassie when into exile. (We may being danced and twirled in front of the Oba, bells. In front of the reproduction are placed speculate that the Victrola is playing a popular conveying the political and ritual power of an actual metal head and bell. Next to this calypso song about the “Roaring Lion of Judah” visual display in the polity. A related point assemblage is a small installation covered in or other antiwar songs that circulated in the is made by the attached installation of male protective cloth. Visitors are invited to lift the transatlantic during the mid-1930s from Trini- court attire bearing the applique designs redo- cloth and to gaze at the beautiful original albu- dad to West Africa.) Visitors can illuminate the lent of the region’s cultural heritage no lon- men cabinet card of the ancestral shrine taken glass plate by pressing a button to turn on a hid- ger inscribed directly upon a person’s skin by Cyril Punch before the British 1897 inva- den LED, bringing to life this elusive historical through scarification, these marks of power sion. We have in a sense come full circle from moment. Another noteworthy image shows a continue to attract awe in a new form. the exhibition’s opening disturbing photo- young man in a work shirt leaning on a hand- For reasons of limited space, one of the most graphic image of the Oba’s palace, shattered by rail (Fig. 4). interesting aspects of the exhibition is rather British conquest. Here, we quietly gaze back in Facing the studio displays is the extended tricky to discern. Two intricate metal pen- time to an early image of productive sacrality, section of Alonge’s career as royal court pho- dants are displayed, each with a corresponding reminding us that across more than a century tographer, following his appointment to the Alonge photograph in which subjects are posed of tumultuous history, the polity’s enduring post in 1933 by the late Oba Akenzua II. A seg- in a fashion similar to that seen on the plaque. dialectic of mystery and revelation continues ment on commemorative textiles centers on In one pendant, for example, a chief is held to bless its subjects and all who visit it. works produced upon the death of the Queen up by his flanking attendants, a configuration The royal shrine segment caused this visi- Mother. We also see Alonge’s original silver echoed in the accompanying photograph (c.f. tor to reexamine the case directly across from

90 | african arts SPRING 2016 VOL. 49, NO. 1 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_r_00275 by guest on 23 September 2021 it, on the “personal” side of the gallery. Here phy (1983), such texts often overshadow the we see gathered the private possessions of book review important ways in which Thompson’s theoreti- Alonge himself: his favorite book, Character cal framings and cultural analyses have been Building, the musical instrument he played for formulated and refracted through the form three decades at his Baptist church, his Kodak of the short essay: a fact that Aesthetic of the Brownie camera, and various commemora- Cool makes strikingly clear. In all, the book tive objects, including a plastic measuring cup, demonstrates the far-reaching ambition in embossed with a photographic self-portrait Thompson’s career-long project of describing of Alonge following his passing. Suddenly, I the unifying characteristics of Afro-Atlantic got the point: in a society that has been for art and culture. centuries geared towards visually resplen- Thompson defines the “aesthetic of the dent rites mediating between the living and cool” that he identifies throughout African dead, Alonge’s mastery of photographic rep- and African diasporic culture as a “deeply and resentation has helped enable his transition complexly motivated, consciously artistic, to venerable ancestral status. Photography in interweaving of elements serious and pleasur- Benin on the one hand has been a technology able, of responsibility and play” (p. 16). The of royal power, helping to enable the remark- book seems to embody this aspect of the cool able continuity of this vibrant tradition-based with its large format and extensive illustrations polity within the modern Nigerian nation- that give the volume the feel of a high-produc- state. Simultaneously, photography has been tion exhibition catalog rather than a collec- instrumental to cycles of social and spiritual tion of essays. Mixing elements both serious reproduction for all Benin persons, moving and pleasurable, the visual appeal and pleasing them through cycles of life towards produc- prose of the book are balanced by the theo- tive ancestorhood. This dichotomy is elegantly retical rigor found in the included essays and dramatized, and ultimately bridged, by this Aesthetic of the Cool: interviews. sophisticated, thought-provoking exhibition. Afro-Atlantic Art and Music In all, the volume contains twenty-three by Robert Farris Thompson essays and two interviews with Thompson, Mark Auslander is Associate Professor of Pittsburgh: Periscope Publish- presented roughly in chronological order Anthropology and Museum Studies at Central according to their original dates of publica- Washington University, where he directs the ing, 2011. 179 pages, 119 color tion. They range from his early 1966 essay on Museum of Culture and Environment. He writes illustrations, 43 b/w illustrations, African and African Diaspora music in “Aes- on ritual, political cosmology, and popular aes- bibliography of author’s writ- thetic of the Cool” to the more recent 2005 thetics in Africa and Afro-Atlantic communities, ings. $40.00, cloth “Kongo Louisiana/Kongo New Orleans.” The and is the author of The Accidental Slaveowner: book also includes a previously unpublished Revisiting a Myth of Race and Finding an reviewed by Tobias Wofford essay on the art of famed contemporary art- American Family (University of Georgia Press, ist David Hammons. The texts’ original pub- 2011). [email protected] His students refer to him as “Master T.” The lishing venues vary from popular magazines honorific references Robert Farris Thomp- such as Rolling Stone to scholarly journals like References cited son’s enduring presence at Yale University African Arts. This reflects yet another way in Blackmun, Barbara Winston. 1997. “Continuity and as Master of Timothy Dwight College, but it which the volume (like Thompson’s scholar- Change: The Ivories of Ovonramwen and Eweka II.” also reflects his preeminence in the field of ship) collapses genres, but also makes acces- African Arts 30 (3):68–79, 94–96. African and African Diaspora art history for sible a number of essays that are normally Kaplan, Flora S. 1990. “Some Use of Photographs in the last half-century. Thompson’s 2011 book, difficult to find. For example, the sampling Recovering Cultural History at the Royal Court of Aesthetic of the Cool: Afro-Atlantic Art and of rare writings includes “The Afro-Cuban Benin, Nigeria.” Visual Anthropology 3:317–41. Music, provides a glimpse of his contribution Departure of Mongo Santamaria” reprinted ______. 1991a. “Fragile Legacy: Photographs as Docu- to the field through a collection of short writ- from the liner notes of the 1960s LPs Más ments in Recording Political and Cultural History at the ings from throughout his important career. Sabroso and ¡Arriba! La Pachanga. In addi- Royal Court of Benin.” History in Africa 18:205–37. While the book takes the form of disparate tion, Lowery Stokes Sims introduces the vol- ______. 1991b. “Benin Art Revisited: Photographs and case studies, it puts forth the thesis that there ume and it concludes with a bibliography of Museum Collections.” Visual Anthropology 4:117–45. is a complicated, yet cohesive, aesthetic that Thompson’s writings. Freyer, Bryna. 1989. Royal Benin Art. Washington, DC: connects Africa and its westward diasporas The essays gathered here cover a broad National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institu- into a unique cultural sphere: the Afro-Atlan- scope of topics including music, dance, and tion. tic. Through many specific analyses, Thomp- visual art and the context of their production Gore, Charles. 2007. Art, Performance and Ritual in son’s vivid, vibrant prose describes the ways in range from arts in daily life, including Hai- Benin City. London; Edinburgh University Press. which African social and visual philosophies tian buses called tap-tap and break-dancing are maintained and transmitted around the in the Bronx, to art made by some of the most Ben-Amos Girshick, Paula. 2007. “The Symbolism of Ancestral Altars in Benin.” In Benin Kings and Rituals: world through visual art, music, and everyday well-known contemporary artists. This array Royal Arts from Nigeria, ed. Barbara Plankensteiner, pp. practice. While Thompson may be best known of subject matter underscores Thompson’s 161–70. Ghent, Belgium: Snoerk Publishers. for large-scale projects such as the exhibitions abilities as a cultural theorist as he deftly, and Nevadomsky, Joseph. 1983–84. “Kingship Succession “Black Gods and Kings” (1971) and “African at times poetically, tests his conception of the Rituals in Benin. Part I: Becoming a Crown Prince.” Art in Motion” (1974) as well as discipline- Afro-Atlantic, convincingly demonstrating the African Arts 17 (1):47–54, 87; “Part II: The Big Things.” defining monographs such as his widely dis- durability and versatility of propositions such African Arts 17 (2):41–47, 90–91; “Part III: The Corona- seminated and well-loved Flash of the Spirit: as the aesthetic of the cool. tion of an Oba.” African Arts 17 (3):48–57, 91–92. African and Afro-American Art and Philoso- The collapsing of genres, space, and time is

VOL. 49, NO. 1 SPRING 2016 african arts | 91 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_r_00275 by guest on 23 September 2021