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Imaging Otherness in Ivory: African Portrayals of the Portuguese Ca. 1492 Suzanne Prestonblier

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Imaging Otherness in Ivory: African Portrayals of the Portuguese Ca. 1492 Suzanne Prestonblier Imaging Otherness in Ivory: African Portrayals of the Portuguese ca. 1492 Suzanne PrestonBlier This new white cloud, the sails of their boats slowly to dominant views of disempowered individuals or cultures, nearing the shore, was a thing never yet seen; it was delimited by factors as diverse as race, class, and gender.3 something strange. If these were their ancestors come Rarely, however, has the question been reversed in the back from the Land of the Dead, they could be none but context of arts outside of Europe to ask how native residents their nobles, for no souls but theirs were immortal. They have perceived Europeans and have sought to express ideas must be worthily received. Or were they the devils of the about European otherness in local art. world below seeking vengeance for diverse crimes, commit- Several exceptions stand out in the context of Africa, ted by members of their tribe? however; one is Julius Lips's The Savage Strikes Back," which --Julius E. Lips, The Savage StrzkesBack, surveys African, Oceanic, and Native American artistic por- New Hyde Park, N.Y., 1966 trayals of Europeans. Another is Henry Drewal's article on African Mami Wata worship,5 which describes the role such The stranger, writes Georg Simmel in his seminal essay on arts play in constructing meaning in the context of African the subject, is bound up with paradoxical qualities of close- encounters with overseas strangers. Still another is Herbert ness and remoteness, for such persons are, in Simmel's Cole's recent discussion of "ambiguous aliens" in his cata- words, both "near and far at the same time."' Simmel goes logue Icons:Ideals and Powerin theArt ofAfrica.6 If the first two on to explain that: works are identified primarily with recent periods many centuries after the time of the first encounter, the third offers Between these two factors of nearness and distance ... a an interesting if brief overview of African stranger images peculiar tension arises, since the consciousness of having from diverse areas and periods. In addition to the above, a only the absolutely general in common has exactly the short article by Kathy Curnow examines European represen- effect of putting a special emphasis on that which is not tations in late fifteenth-century and early sixteenth-century common. For a stranger to the country, the city, the race, ivories from the Sapi area and Benin.7 My essay explores and so on, what is stressed is again nothing individual, but instead the larger corpus of ivories carved in Africa in the alien origin, a quality which he has, or could have, in period ca. 1492 (including not only Sapi and Benin works, common with many other strangers. For this reason but also those from the Kongo).8 My concern is with the strangers are not really perceived as individuals, but as unique insights these ivories offer as objects created by the strangers of a certain type. Their remoteness is no less first generation of African artists to meet or know of the general than their nearness.2 Portuguese.9 I suggest here that African beliefs about death, regeneration, and the afterworld played a critical role in Related questions of otherness have been a central concern African perceptions and representations of the Portuguese, in recent scholarship in fields as diverse as history, anthropol- and that related issues find expression in a range of artworks ogy, literary theory, philosophy, and film theory with regard created at this time. I G. Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms. ed. and intro. D. N. Silverman, The SubjectofSemiotics, New York, 1983; G. C. Spivak, In Other Levine, Chicago, 1971, 148. This paper was originally presented at the Worlds:Essays in CulturalPolitics, New York, 1987. National of Art in a with the exhibition Gallery symposium coinciding 4 Originally published in German in 1937. "Circa 1492." I thank Marcia Kupfer for her invitation to present this H. Drewal, the Other: Mami Wata in paper on that occasion and Eunei Lee for helping in the course of 5 J. "Performing Worship Africa," Drama 160-185. manuscript preparation. All translations in the text are my own. Review, xxxII, 2, 2 6 National Museum of African 1989. For a discussion of strangers in Africa, see E. P. Skinner, "Strangers in Art, Washington, D.C., West African Societies," Africa, xxxIll, 4, 1965, 307-320, and W. A. 7 Curnow, 1990. In this work Curnow suggests that artistic differences in Shack and E. P. Skinner, eds., Strangersin AfricanSocieties, Berkeley, 1979. Portuguese portrayals can be correlated with distinctions in European and in these two areas. 3See, among others, C. W. Bynum, Fragmentationand Redemption:Essays reception integration on Genderand the Human Body in MedzevalRelzgion, New York, 1991; M. 8 The inclusion of Kongo in this discussion presents an important Sahlins, Historical Metaphorsand MythicalRealitzes, Chicago, 1981; N. Z. contrasting (yet complementary) context. Because Kongolese ivories at Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre, Cambridge, Mass., 1983; J. Fabian, this time do not appear to have been carved at the request of Europeans Tzmeand the Other:How AnthropologyMakes Its Object,New York, 1983; H. or following European models, scholars generally have not included L. Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey:A TheoryofAfrzcan-American Literary them in discussions of Afro-Portuguese art. It is my belief, however, that Crztizcsm,New York, 1988; T. de Laurentis, Alice Doesn't: Femiznsm, regardless of their patronage, these works provide important insight Semiotzcs,Cznema, Bloomington, Ind., 1984; T. Todorov, The Conquestof into Kongolese perceptions of the Portuguese, and the latter's place America, trans. R. Howard, New York, 1984; V. Y. Mudimbe, The within Kongolese cosmology. Invention Gnosis, and the Order Bloom- ofAfrwca: Philosophy, of Knowledge, 9 Both in Africa and in Pre-Columbian Quetzacoatl traditions, there is a ington, Ind., 1988; R. H. Pearce, Savagzsmand Czvzilization:A Studyof the certain ironic with to beliefs Indian and the American M. B. convergence respect indigenous concerning Mznd (1953), Berkeley, 1988; Campbell, the death and return of the white-skinned culture hero(s) and the arrival The Witnessand the Other World:Exotic Travel 400- European Writing, of the European explorers. 1600, Ithaca, 1988; E. S. Said, Orzentalism, New York, 1978; K. 376 THE ART BULLETIN SEPTEMBER 1993 VOLUME LXXV NUMBER 3 As will become evident, this essay is a largely speculative Treaty of Tordesillas was signed twenty-one years later, one, revealing among other things the enormous challenges guaranteeing the Castilian monopoly of the Americas, it that one faces in a field in which recuperating a distant past is simultaneously accorded sub-Saharan Africa to the throne of often based on a combination of very limited European Portugal. Africa, a land of legendary riches, now offered sources (which themselves require careful deconstruction) Portuguese merchants ports of direct access to the interior, and sparce local oral traditions, which are quite distant in independent of the still powerful (and wealthy) Islamic states time and subject from the artworks in question. Despite these that had been controlling routes across the Sahara for several difficulties, I hope through this analysis to push our under- centuries previously. Ever since the fourteenth century when standing of these magnificent ivories in a new and important the Mali king Mansa Musa had traveled to Cairo and spent so direction. My essay seeks to "excavate" the indigenous much gold that he caused a crisis in the gold-based world African cosmologies into which the early Portuguese travel- monetary system,14 European desire had been great to find ers entered, and through which these strangers were recon- an alternative means of entry into the continent. figured. Within this analysis I have also shifted interpretive What the Portuguese discovered on their arrival on the emphases from European to African perspectives, hoping West African coast were not only vast reserves of gold, but thereby to enrich our knowledge both of the works them- also impressive traditions of art. Among the locally manufac- selves and of the cultures that made them. tured items brought back by the Portuguese in the late The period ca. 1492 in African art is particularly interest- fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were richly woven mats ing to explore from the perspective of stranger ideation and which soon were prized as bedcovers and floor coverings.'5 issues of European otherness. The second half of the fif- Locally made textiles also were appreciated, Kongolese teenth and the first half of the sixteenth centuries was a time examples being compared to fine imported silk. The most of artistic florescence in sub-Saharan Africa. Great Zimbabwe, highly valued of the African works collected during this pe- the famed East African Shona site, witnessed during this riod, however, were carvings made of ivory (Fig. 1), a number period the building of architectural works and stone enclos- of which were displayed in the 1988 exhibition "Africa and ing walls of impressive scale and beauty.'1 In Ethiopia, to the the Renaissance: Art in Ivory" at the Center for African Art in north and west, this was a time of similarly rich cultural and New York. These ivories, which consist today of some 140 or artistic achievement, the area reaching what Tamarat calls so pieces, found their way early on into such prestigious col- "... the pinnacle of its cultural, literary, and spiritual lections as those of Albrecht Diirer, the Medici of Florence, attainments."" In the western Sudan, the accession of Askia and the Elector of Saxony in Dresden, to name but a few.'16 Muhammed to the Songhay throne in 1493 similarly ushered Horns from the Kongo (which today lies in the modern in a reign of extraordinary artistic development with the nation state of Zaire) were among the earliest of the ivories to construction of architectural monuments of striking visual have been brought back to Europe (Fig.
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