Texts, Reflections, Poems, and Remarks

(Photo: Leonard Gadzekpo)

Ethiopian Religious Painting
C20th. Paint on canvas.
52 x 24 inches .
Reginald Petty African Art Collection.

I.

Not only were the walls filled with creatures who stared back as we stared at them, not only was the space filled with chairs and pots and wrappings that pulsed with traces of the life in the hands that carved, molded, wove them; not only was the air filtered and fogged with color and light and scent

there were voices old and sonorous and querulous and approving.

Terra cotta and enameled lips.  Wooden mouths honed and polished with knives, stones and cloth.  Feathered filigrees of paint whispering sly jokes and incantations.  Voices. Voices. Beginning at the beginning.  Outlasting, out-laughing, out-admonishing and cajoling us to see the need and the beauty that coaxes need into attention.

II.

East St. Louis began talking to Ghana, to Zimbabwe, to Zambia, to the Yoruba, the Fon, the Hausa, long before the first stool was bestowed, the first trade-weight was pocketed; long before the first long-limbed spirit-filled wood dancer stood in the window looking across time.

Miss Helen said:

look as far as your eye and soul can see.  Recognize yourself in the faces of strangers who have long passed into the valley of the dry bones and in the eyes of children who won’t be born until you are way past grown. 

She said:

converse with the world. Know things and be known by your patience, generosity and feeling for family.  Wherever you walk, bring back the stories of those you meet.  And tell them where you came from, who knows you, and who your people are.  This way and that: they all said: what we have taught you, remember.  Connect and trace and figure. 

She (and they) said:

teach.  Always teach.  And learn something, too.  Put flesh into your dreams.  Walk the earth.

III.

And then come home.

Home.
The afterthought of those (ever and always) who pushed/push on to some other destination and leave the dirty work of building, slaughtering, packing and moving necessities out of sight
until ready to be consumed.

Fling sin across the river (they said).
Keep the dirt and the disease out of our homes (they say).
Put it in one convenient place (they never say) where we can reach it when our bellies rumble and crave some sweetness that can be tasted only after hours
-of denying lying crying and signifying-
put the gin and the cards, the horses, the easy houses and the soft dreamy playthings where we can always ignore them.

But close (they say, with urgency and hypocrisy), always close where we can control them.

And what would home be
without the songs
the singers
the conjurers who could with their breath take
the torture out of pain and hungry beds
and smooth crumpled souls with sounds
making visions appear
everywhere

like wheels? within wheels?

Miles Davis. Grant Green. Clark Terry.
Left home and met
other sound-shapers who knew how to hammer
a note into the thickest heart and head
where even the strongest rye whiskey could not completely
narcotize the pain

Edna Patterson-Petty, 42 Days Till You (Miles).
1996. Quilted Fabric and beads.
22 x 20 inches.

(Photo: Leonard Gadzekpo)

[wheels of music leap across the space of the walls
one quilt enjoining night life quilts to shimmy crackle and shake]

Dunham daylight-danced through
sprinkling ancestor goofwa dust in the eyes and ears
of children
stretching their bodies to “fly without ever leaving the ground

Dumas slid up river from Sweet Home, Alabama, heard
something soft and sensual in the sounds of rain
steaming up from the streets in the July sun
and added his words to the gumbo pot

[behind all of this moving up and down the road
is the home grown beret-capped

Papa Legba who smirks at the bus station
train station way-station
river dock

reading-man Redmond:
nobody knows the trouble they see
until the poetry man can smack eyeballs into word clouds
rising up like wheels? yeah, like wheels
ropes and ladders]

visions and voices
and songs and dances

home-grown
home

the world met at the riverside

and Reginald Petty
took the first chariot
to the homeland

that had room for him

(Photo: Leonard Gadzekpo)

How, do you suppose, could one survive dances at the Vets Club in East St. Louis and
the dance halls of Ouagadougou without
the ability to fake the cool

until one learned it?

What is in the masks? Living spirits. Whose?
Yours.
If you pay attention to the voices.

“Thus the closing of the eyes and the freezing of the face in one form of Akan possession in Ghana can be compared to the closed eyes and cold features of a Baoule mask. Even more to the point, the backward tilt of the head in Akan possession and statuary is sometimes compared to the proverb, ‘face looking down shows sorrow, face looking up shows ecstasy and trust in God.’ It is important to add that some Akan terra cotta heads represent priests or priestesses, specialists in possession, and many of these show the ecstatic angle of the head.”
(Thompson, Motion, page 126)

Face looking up sees
joy sees
truth
sees hope
balance
in the face

of broken dreams

sees death and will never forget
such power to live

Rising up, we see the faces of heroes, those we know, Mandela, Jackson, Malcolm, Martin. There is nothing cool about the fractured faces, the disconnected lives, the exploding tattered dreams. There is everything there: we must find the balance. We must reconstruct our own, supply our own, become our own....

There is nothing for it but to dance.

She is being transformed by the spirits he brought into the house. They watch her, call her daughter, mother. She cares for the children. She has always heard the voices. Sitting around the quilting table, she absorbed the murmuring stories. The wind of women’s voices. She plays them like drums. Each beat a color, a shape, a shard. Each dance within the fabric breaking the stitch, shattering the frame.

That is the secret.
Confront the dance.

Become the butterfly-angel-spirit-guide. Awesome and terrible.
No resurrection takes place without stones being blasted into dust.

Rock-a my soul in the bosom of Edna
Let her fingers re-design cosmic jokes
that have more respect than a forest of children
bowing down before the elder ghosts

Even the chairs conversate
big old girl with too much everything
splay foot and gap-legged looking loud and common
Looking for all the world like she belongs, towering over the stools of the ancestors
the stools (who are ancestors) protect the young girl who speaks so softly and plays her woman game in the middle of the room

Around the tree-of life, holding the water for the evening meal, we carry you in our embrace.

We dance.

We carry you in our head. We carry you. In our head.

We demand.

You dance.

Are you drunk enough to let go?
Are you dizzy with colors?
Have we told you enough about yourself that you have seen how to spin like sand in the roadway during the storm? Have you tasted the color red on your tongue, felt the color blue on your brow? Have you felt crowded in the boat with all the strangers who can fit?

Do you wish to blanket yourself with your past

And rest

VII.

“Learn the positive events of one’s racial family, and family history
Learn to plan for the future. It is important to have knowledge of the past upon which to build.
Open all of your senses to the arts
As early as possible develop a God sense; details can come later

There are many gates to Heaven

What you will learn in life relative to the whole is minuscule
Accept it

God will find you at the strangest times, places
Just be open

Genuine love will cross racial, cultural, or ethnic lines if you are open to it

be open”
(Reginald Petty, Memories of Days Gone By)

VII. [Again. You can never have too many 7s.]

Oh. And one thing more:

Never turn your back on art
(Legba can sneak into your pocket)

Mind my sister, brother, how you walk on the cross.
It could turn into a wheel

And then where would you be

Way up in the middle of -

Exactly

- Luke

Joseph A. Brown, SJ, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Africana Studies
SIUC

(Photo: Leonard Gadzekpo)

In viewing the Carbondale exhibition, I came to the conclusion that our preoccupation in the field with fakes and forgeries, authenticity and hyperbole are, to lean on Robert Plant Armstrong, relevant mainly to collectors.  Should university museums be dragged into this matter?  Should colleges refuse donations of African art on the hunch that the objects have not been “used” in the parent culture?  I believe that university museums have a responsibility to align their attitude with a progressive educational mission that values diversity, multiculturalism and plurality.  To collectors should be conceded the right to hanker after the most exquisite objects.  There should be little discussion about the fact that collectors earn the pleasure to enjoy their conquests and many are, indeed, benefactors of private and public institutions.

The discussions on fakes and forgeries should neither intimidate university museums nor stampede them into rejecting works that could be set aside for educational purposes.  A good copy of Senufo sculpture, a faithful replica of a Chi Wara, a dignified re-creation of a gelede headpiece: any of these could be used as laboratory prototypes and with salutary results.  A contemporary rendition of a Benin Oba's head or a terracotta look-alike ascribed to Ife could be productively utilized as educational tools in university museums.  The essence of African art transcends the gorgeousness of the objects or their antiquity.  Whether genuine or copy, African art, particularly in a university setting, has the uncontestable potential of engendering conversations.  It has a transformative power to mold impressionable minds, sensitize them to their own unacknowledged prejudices and expose them to systems and world views that are manifestly different from theirs.

Yoruba Gelede Mask 
C20th. Wood and Paint. 
11 x 12 x 15 inches.

Yoruba Gelede Mask
C 20th. Wood and Paint.
15 x 15 x 19 inches.

(Photos: Leonard Gadzekpo)

 The Reginald Petty Collection.

Some of the purposes of art are to entertain, enlighten, challenge, stimulate, and shock.  In an educational setting, the display and study of African art is unquestionably one of the most effective, fun-filled ways of promoting understanding and fostering respect and appreciation for other cultures.  African art provides an engaging platform through which students can obtain insights about the existence of other worlds.  For students who have come to internalize the media hype, best exemplified in sports, to the effect that there is only one world, which is spelled U. S. A, the arts become an invaluable tool for introducing the existence of other worlds; they become passports that facilitate journeys into the astonishing recesses of the African continent.  The beauty of African art lies in the fact that it provides us with windows through which we can glean a look at other existences.  What is the connection between religion and art, for example?  Indeed, should we not talk of a multitude of religious practices, rather than “religion?”  How deeply embedded within the social fabric is art?  What is the connection between ancestral veneration and annual festivals?  What is the status of women and how does art mediate conjugal relationships?  How is art an instrument in social organization, health care delivery, and the enforcement of law?  The fact is that art is central to various situational mileposts: birth, initiation, education, marriage, social responsibilities, and final transformation.

Through the arts of Africa, we learn about the sum and substance of diversity.  We learn about the criticalness of art to an understanding of traditional religious, social, educational, and political systems.  We appreciate, above all, that much of the art is not decorative; that it is deeply entrenched in African systems of thought, and becomes intensely relevant in the socialization process; in the judicial systems and in health care management.  From the cradle to the grave, African art is performance art.  While it may be used to symbolize social class and authority, to confer aesthetic prestige on personages or institutions, it is also very much tied to instances that, in Western societies, have very little to do with art.  Within this context, African art is art for life's sake.  In terms of performance, the arts of Africa manifest extremely fluid boundaries and interrelationships.  To perceive a mask, for example, is to enjoy the music, dance, poetry, and costumes that accompany its performance.

Although we refer to them as African art, if only because they originated in Africa, their purposes, uses and histories are as rich and varied as the styles in which they are made.  When we visit museums to view African art, it must be borne in mind that what we often see is only a fraction of the total object.  When we appreciate quilted textiles or appliqué works used by masquerades, it should be understood that these were items in what used to be a vibrant performance staged by human beings who, through appropriate agencies, have been transformed into mediums of communication with ancestors.  Despite the strategies employed in major museums to present African art in its totality, the fact remains that African artworks in Euro-American museums are no more than decapitated spirits.  Certainly, many who are privileged to view the arts in museums are touched by their visual presence, their aesthetic power and formal attributes.  But these do not compare with seeing the works in actual context.  Masks are more than simple carvings, and masquerades embody much more than colorful costumes.  In real time, masqueraders command an impressive aura, particularly where music, dance, and poetry are invoked during performance.

As for the makers of these objects themselves-the artists and performers who give life to the works-they are men and women who have gender-specific roles: specialists who acquired their skills either within their lineage, or through the apprenticeship method.  It is customary to find that the blacksmith who made the implement used by farmers on their farms was the same person who created the emblems used by various age groups or religious associations.  This could also be the same person who carved the house-posts used to decorate the palace of the ruler, and carved the spectacular masks worn during the annual festivals.  This blacksmith/carver could also be a herbalist with specialization in curing common ailments.  His could also be an important voice in the way local politics is played.  Because the distinctions that are made in the arts are fluid, crossovers are common.  This attitude also extends to the way that categories are constructed within the arts.  The distinctions that we make in Euro-American culture regarding high art and craft are hardly applicable in traditional Africa, since function and form are prized interchangeably.

In traditional African cultures, considerable emphasis is placed on fecundity.  A marriage is not considered successful until the woman has had children.  A man is considered unfulfilled who died without children.  This fecundity is not limited to human reproduction.  Since most societies are agrarian, agricultural fertility is also very essential.  But what if a woman were to be barren and a village were to be ravaged by a drought?  Enter the diviner.  He would be consulted to divine the cause of this social malady.  Invariably, the prescription involves the creation of a work of art, to be used as a votive.  Concomitant with the issue of fertility and increase is the idea of respect, continuity and survival.  The belief is strong in many African cultures that ancestors are the living dead who use their otherworldly powers to mediate between. the living and the dead.  It is the need to pacify ancestors, to supplicate and memorialize them that is at the center of masquerades.  Regarded as ancestors reincarnated, masquerades offer perhaps the best example of African art as performance art and total theater.

In a stealthy way, it would appear that in Euro-American societies, museum-goers have been primed to think that African masks are gorgeous and cute artworks.  This is often a misleading notion, as masks derive their beauty from how effectively their characters are portrayed: how hideous or intimidating, how friendly or athletic, how spiritually powerful, they are.  Some masks send chills down the spines of uninitiated onlookers.  In many instances, women are forbidden from setting eyes on certain masquerades.  Through masks, it is possible to appreciate the virtuosity of the carvers who sculpt some of the most intricate, often larger than life, pieces all from one piece of wood, without the aid of any sketches, nails, or glue.

Given the onslaught of modernity and the infusion of Western ideas, the production of some traditional sculptures has declined considerably.  Western education has radically changed the apprenticeship system through which artists learn the trade, while the introduction of cash economy has altered the concept of patronage.  In spite of these changes, masks as a genre remain popular.  Their popularity is a testimony to the resilience of African art, and its ability to adapt and re-define itself.

The inroads that Islam and Christianity have made combined with Western education and the growth of technology compel modification of masking traditions on the African continent.  Stripped of the original context that regulated the production of masks in Africa, what emerges is art that has become truly contemporary: enjoyed essentially for its aesthetic rather than religious or apotropaic significance.  In a way, the exhibition, Conversation: African Art from Reginald Petty Collection and the Works of Edna J. Patterson-Petty did justice to the fundamental issues at stake.  It facilitated a series of conversations, students, faculty, staff, and the lay public were afforded the opportunity to view African art, and to appreciate the creations by Edna Patterson-Petty.  Education consists in gestures like this: bringing Africa to people in a way that stimulates visual perception at the same time that it allows them to question age-long assumptions about the people of the African continent.

Dele Jegede, Ph.D.
African Art/Art History Consultant
Professor Emeritus
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.

(Photo: Leonard Gadzekpo)

Masks
The Reginald Petty African Art Collection.

[1] See African Arts IX (3) April 1976 for a comprehensive dialogue on this topic.