African Art and Authenticity - A Text With A Shadow

African Art and Authenticity: A Text with a Shadow
Author(s): Sidney Littlefield Kasfir

Source: African Arts , Apr., 1992, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Apr., 1992), pp. 40-53+96-97
Published by: UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3337059
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African Art
and Authenticity
A Text with a Shadow
SIDNEY LITTLEFIELD KASFIR
There are those who want a text (anand collectors (Araeen 1989; Clifford tively isolated, internally coherent, and
art, a painting) without a shadow, 1988; McEvilley 1984, 1990; Michaud highly integrated has been such a pow-
without the "dominant ideology";1989). Meanwhile most mainstream erful paradigm and so fundamental to
but this is to want a text without institutions and a surprising number the of West's understanding of Africa that
fecundity, without productivity, a scholars continue to think about African we are obliged to retain it even when we
sterile text....The text needs its shad- art and its public presentation as if thisnow know that much of it is an oversim-
ow....subversion must produce its debate were not taking place at all. In plified fiction.
own chiaroscuro. most of the major exhibitions of African This assumed combination of isola-
Roland Barthes art currently circulating in the Unitedtion and a tightly knit inner coherence
The Pleasure of the Text, p. 32 States there is little attempt, either
has given rise to a presupposition of
explicit or implicit, to subvert omni-
uniqueness in material cultures (William
scient curatorial authority.' Perhaps it is
Fagg's "tribality," leading to unique trib-
A controversial debate about African
art that has surfaced in the past time to cast a shadow on this authority al styles), ritual systems, and cosmolo-
few years concerns its role as by reexamining the way it operates in gies. Nowhere has this orthodox and
a mirror of Western colonial history. defining African art, both as commodity conservative view of African culture
The criticism prompted first by the and as aesthetic act. been so obvious as in Dogon studies
"'Primitivism' in 20th Century Art" ex- where the Dogon were made to seem
hibition at the Museum of Modern Art unique not only in Mali but in all o
The West and the Rest2
(Rubin 1984) was reopened and also Africa.4 Such ideas are losing their cur-
subverted by "Magiciens de la Terre" Twoat questions are central to this debate: rency, but only slowly.
Who creates meaning for African art?
the Centre Pompidou in 1989. In the for- In African art studies our most uncrit-
And who or what determines its cultur-
mer, precolonial African and Oceanic art ical assumption has been the before/after
was presented as a set of powerful al authenticity? The authenticity issue scenario of colonialism, in which art
divining rods for proto-Cubists, Ex- has been raised many times in the pagesbefore colonization, occurring in most
pressionists, and Surrealists. In the lat-
of this journal,3 but I want to examine itplaces from the mid-nineteenth to early
specifically in the light of the current twentieth century, exhibited qualities
ter, the enigmatic (to Westerners) nature
discussion of cultural appropriation,that made it authentic (in the sense of
of contemporary African, Asian, and
Diaspora art was translated into the art
since in the past it has been reviewed inuntainted by Western intervention). Most
of the conjurer (magicien), and at theterms of fakes, forgeries, and imita-crucially it was made to be used by the
same time this act of conjuring was tions-terms that themselves are heavily same society that produced it. In this sce-
equated (quite misleadingly) with the laden with the weight of earlier ideasnario, art produced within a colonial or
about African art and culture, most
cultural production of a Western avant- postcolonial context is relegated to an
garde. In both exhibitions there was specifically
an the primacy of "traditional awkward binary opposition: it is inau-
society." To talk about authenticity it is thentic because it was created after the
attempt to demonstrate the "affinities"
between "the tribal and the modern," first necessary to unpack the meanings advent of a cash economy and new forms
Third World and First World. assumed for "traditional society," and of patronage from missionaries, colonial
Postmodern critics have used these by extension, "traditional art." administrators, and more recently,
exhibitions (the first a powerful articu-A major underpinning for the argu- tourists and the new African elite.
lation of the Modernist paradigm, the ment I am making here is that what we This view of authenticity, though
second a flawed attempt at paradigm- call "traditional society" is a legacy ofnow questioned by many scholars, is still
our Victorian past, owing as much toheld firmly by major art museums and
breaking) to comment upon the intellec-
nineteenth-century Romanticism and the most prominent dealers and collec-
tual appropriation of African and other
Third World art by Western museums the social-evolutionary notion of disap- tors. It is, almost by necessity, the implic-
pearing cultures as to any reality found it principle of selection for the art seen
T: in Africa itself. In African studies it con- on display in large-budget, foundation-
L
tinues to function as a more benign, supported circulating exhibitions such as

euphemistic version of that recentlythe recent "Yoruba: Nine Centuries of
1. RENEGOTIATING THE PAST IN THE PRESENT:
w
u WHAT WAS ONCE THE HOME OF A WEALTHY ARAB
shelved artifact, "primitive society"African Art and Thought" and "Gold of
z
.
b MERCHANT, WITH ITS INTRICATELY CARVED
F-
0
19TH-CENTURY POSTS AND LINTEL, IS NOW A PLACE (Kuper 1988). The idea that before colo- Africa" as well as in the permanent dis-
x
CL
WHERE VIDEO SHOWS ARE HELD. LAMU, 1991. nialism most African societies were rela-plays of the National Museum of African
41

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PHOTOS SIDNEY L KASFIR
LEFT: 2. BONIFACE KIMANI, MASTER CARVER

IN SHED #A-2, AKAMBA HANDICRAFT COOPERATIVE.
CHANGAMWE, MOMBASA, 1991.
local ruler to a colonial administrator
Art, the Metropolitan Museum's Rocke-
feller Wing, and the National Museum
(Ruxton in the Benue), to a missionary RIGHT: 3. LAWRENCE KARIUKI, THE ONLY KIKUYU MEM-
in Lagos. In addition such art, ideally
(Sheppard in Kuba country), or to
BERan
OF THE KAMBA CARVERS' COOPERATIVE. NAIROBI,
KENYA, 1987.
precolonial or more often dating from explorer (Vasco da Gama on the Swahili
coast)
the early colonial period, is the subject of might seem noninterventionist.s
virtually all the advertisements placed But we know from Frobenius's diaries
by dealers in the pages of African Arts how very acrimonious, even hostile, few examples exist in collections, since
and Arts d'Afrique Noire. such exchanges could become within these were not "art" by any stretch of
Ironically, what we could call canoni- the colonial imagination. Those few still
the web of conflicting interests that sur-
cal African art-that which is collected rounded them. The notion that they extant are starkly real skulls over-mod-
and displayed and hence authenticated were somehow devoid of political eledor with mimetic touches such as hair
and valorized as "African art"-was and economic motive on either side seems and false eyes, or rearticulated lower
is only produced under conditions that patently ridiculous now, yet that is jaws.
the As the pax Britannica depleted the
implicit assumption in the "invisible
ought to preclude the very act of collect- availability of enemy skulls, these were
collector" required of paradigmatic
ing. Seen from an anticolonial ideologi- replaced by carved wooden imitations,
cal perspective, collecting African art "authentic"
is art. in some areas (Cross River) covered
a hegemonic activity, an act of appropri-A second fiction in the construction with skin for greater realism and in oth-
of the canon is that no important
ation; seen historically, it is a largely ers (Igede, Idoma) painted white with
colonial enterprise; and seen anthropo- changes occurred in artistic production black cicatrization patterns (Kasfir 1988).
logically, it is the logical outcome of during
a the period of early-contact col-It is these, and not the truly precolonial
social-evolutionary view of the Other: decorated skulls, which have been
lecting-that is, neither style nor iconog-
the collecting of specimens as a corol- raphy nor the role or position of the accepted into the canon and are highly
lary of "discovery." Even if none of this
artist was affected in any important waysought after by collectors as authentic.
were acknowledged, one cannot escape by the initial European presence. That Here Western taste, not WeStern con-
the internal contradiction in the work- this is an equally dangerous and naive tamination, has dictated what is art and
ing definition of authenticity-namely assumption can be shown by looking what at is merely ethnographic specimen.
that it excludes "contamination" (to the radical transformation in warrior Another example is Yoruba resist-
continue the specimen metaphor) while masquerades in the Cross River and dyed textiles. Prior to the importation of
at the same time requiring it in the form Ogoja region of southeastern Nigeria factory cloth from Manchester, these
of the collector. were made from handspun, handwoven
with the coming of the British. The early
It is possible, in wishful thinking, to documentation of these masks described cotton that was too coarsely textured,
circumvent this collector or at least neu- them as skulls worn atop the dancer'stoo soft, and too thick for complex adire
tralize him or her: a simple gift from ahead (Talbot 1926, vol. 3: 788-89). Very techniques and patterns to develop. Yet
42
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the elaboration of adire in the heavily in the authenticity test used to constructthe absurdity of the former may fre-
missionized town of Abeokuta and the the canon of African art. quently cling to the latter as their puta-
growth of its production were in no way The third fiction concerning African tive time frame. In doing so they
art is that it has a timeless past, that in privilege this artificially constructed eve
thought of as inauthentic by collectors
the long interlude before colonialism, of contact as if what came afterward is
until the 1960s, when it began to be pro-
forms
duced for a Peace Corps and tourist remained more or less static over by definition less relevant, and (one
market in colors other than indigo. centuries.
In Occasional pieces of evidencehardly need say) less authentic. Yet only
both of these examples it was not that
the support this view, such as thesocieties in which all change was com-
Yoruba-derived divination board col-
intervention of Europeans and subse- pressed into a cataclysmic surge of
quent modification of a tradition thatlected at Ardra before 1659 (Vansina Western penetration could be imagined
marked its "authentic" and "inauthen- to cease to exist after that moment. For
1984:2), have been extrapolated to create
tic" phases. Rather, "authentic" was nonexistence, in the cultural sense, is
a mythic steady-state universe of canon-
defined in terms of the collectors' taste. assumed when change is read as
ical art. The logical corollary of the
If there were no such thing as collec- "timeless past" is the fiction of the destruction of a way of life, rather than
tions, if the processes of appropriation, "ethnographic present," that eve of con- its transformation. And indeed, in much
reclassification, and public display did tact forever fixed in the narrative struc- of the writing on African art, this after-
not exist, it might be possible to push tures of contemporary ethnography.contact period is simply a blank white
back the before/after scenario to a much Even scholars who readily acknowledge space on the page.
earlier date-say, to the advent of Islam
in West Africa or to the coming of the
Portuguese. Seen strictly in terms of
their cultural impact, these earlier
encounters were surely as important as
colonialism. But because such a revision
would limit authenticity to a handful of
collected objects, almost none of which
would be sculpture in wood, it could
not possibly find acceptance in the
world of museums and collectors. The
canonical "before" therefore was de-
fined originally in terms of a Victorian
ideology fed by a felicitous combination ;im
of imperial design, social Darwinism,

and collecting zeal. 000?
But the fact is that Africa is a part of

the world and has a long history. There
are innumerable befores and afters in
this history, and to select the eve of
European colonialism as the unbridge-
able chasm between traditional, authen-
tic art and an aftermath polluted by
foreign contact is arbitrary in the
extreme. While it is very true that both
the nineteenth and the twentieth cen-
turies were periods of "fast happening,"
in Kubler's phrase (1962:84-96), it would
be naive to assume that no other such
periods existed in African art history.
What is far more likely is that there
were several-some associated with the
spread of new technologies (brasscast-
ing, weaving, tailoring, the introduction
of the horse), others with the spread of
ideas (Islam, a sky-dwelling creator
god, the concept of masking). I am sug-
gesting that there is no point in time
prior to which we could speak of the
ascendancy of "traditional culture" and
after which we could speak of its
decline. The old biological model of
birth, flowering, decay, and death
imposes on culture not only an order
that is seldom there but also, in this
case, the strong temptation to identify
the onset of "decay" with the onset of
colonialism. This is the historicist flaw
4. EXAMPLES OF BRICOLAGE: OIL LAMPS

MADE FROM DISCARDED METAL CANS.
NAIROBI, KENYA, 1991.
PHOTO SIDNEY L. KASFIR
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Thus intive feelings of aesthetic choice. In such
typical
of Yoruba art,
an equation, the Western connoisseur isw
orisas the essential missing
and factor that trans-
their
rule there is no mention of how these fit forms artifact into art.8 Brian Spooner, in
into the complex twentieth-century a seminal essay on issues surrounding
renegotiation of orisa discipleship, Islam, the authenticity of Oriental carpets
and Christianity that now characterizes (1986:199, 222), argues that an important
Yoruba religious life. Instead the reader aspect of the carpets' appeal to Western
is invited into a fictional ethnographic collectors is this marked cultural dis-
present where these radical changes do tance between maker and collector, and
not intrude.6 the corresponding lack of information
Just as casting African art in an about the artist that this usually implies.
ambiguous ethnographic present denies In such situations the collector is able
it history, insistence on the anonymity to construct a set of attributes that
of African artists denies it individuality describes the "real thing." Ironically it is
(Kasfir 1984, Price 1989). Far from seeing not knowledge but ignorance of the sub-
this anonymity as a result of the way ject that ensures its authenticity.
African art is usually collected in the The corollary of this all-in-one ano-
first place-stolen or negotiated through nymity is that one artist's work can
the mediation of traders or other out- stand for a whole culture, since the
siders-we have come to accept it as whole culture is assumed to be homoge-
part of the art's canonical character. Theneous (though at the same time unique).
nameless artist has been explained as aAlthough it is a tautology, this has long
necessary precondition to authenticity,beena a major argument for the concept
of a tribal style: an identifiable cultural
footnote to the concept of a "tribal style"
that he has the power neither to resist style is a major ingredient in defining
nor to change (Kasfir 1984, 1987).ethnicity, and a Yoruba (Idoma, Kala-
bari, etc.) artist is one who works in
Although the principal architect of the
tribal style notion, William Fagg, that identifiable style. In a video ac-
nonetheless recognized that "the work companying one currently circulating
exhibition, a pleasant-voiced narrator
of art is the outcome of a dialectic
between the informing traditionexplains,
and "The Yoruba believe...." I
couldn't help wondering, Which Yor-
the individual genius of the artist"
I
(1982:35), it has been more common uba?
to Muslims? Baptists? Aladura?
speak of the artist as simply bound Those
to who still follow the orisas? Lagos
and by tradition (Biebuyck 1969:7).7businessmen? Herbalists?9 Omniscient
curatorial authority has the power to
Among French dealers and collectors
flatten out these hills and valleys, but
of African art, "authentic" frequently
means "anonymous," and anonymity should it? Is the public really incapable
precludes any consideration of the of understanding that African cultures,
indi-
and the arts they produce, are not
vidual creative act. One Parisian collec-
monolithic? Do we really want a "text
tor told Sally Price (1989:69): "It gives
without
me great pleasure not to know the a shadow"?
artist's name. Once you have found out The faraway collector also reinvents
each mask or figure as an object of
the artist's name, the object ceases to be
desire: a projection of alterity (in earlier
primitive art." In other words, the act of
ascribing identity simultaneously erases times, the colonized "primitive"), seen
in whatever intellectual fashion prevails
mystery. And for art to be "primitive" it
must possess, or be seen to possess,at a the moment. The Kongo nail figure
became a "fetish," every female image a
certain opacity of both origin and inten-
tion. When those conditions prevail, it "fertility
is emblem," and so on. Naming
and categorizing are interventions as
possible for the Western collector to
important as connoisseurship. When
reinvent a mask or figure as an object of
connoisseurship. But when Price askedcatalogues of collections appear, they
one such connoisseur whether he are most frequently organized under a
thought the creator of such a dual
work "tribal style" and "culture area"
rubric. While classificatory principles
might be aware of these same aesthetic
considerations, the answer was an may be necessary to organize a large
body of material, they obscure certain
emphatic denial (1989:70). The "primi-
tive" artist, in this Africa of the mind,correspondences
is as well as illuminate
others. Although Yoruba Gelede and
controlled by forces larger than himself
Maconde Mapiiko masks often bear
and consequently knows not the subjec-
striking visual similarities, these are
never recognized or commented upon
TOP: 5. SHETANI FIGURE IN AN OPENWORK STYLE.
because the masks appear in widely
COLLECTION OF ANTHONY J. STOUT, separated parts of any catalogue or
WASHINGTON, D.C. exhibition: the Guinea Coast and East
African sections, respectively.
z BOTTOM: 6. AN UNFINISHED SHETANI FIGURE
0
IN THE "DRIFTWOOD" STYLE.

The most powerful of the classificato-
COLLECTION OF ANTHONY J. STOUT, ry interventions are the words "tradi-
tional" and "authentic," which become
I-
0
WASHINGTON, D.C.
44
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7. THE FUNDI (ARTISAN) AT WORK:
A BLACKSMITH IN KAMAKUNJI MARKET.
8. THE FUNDI AT WORK:

DRUM MAKERS IN A NAIROBI ALLEY. 1991.
PHOTO SIDNEY L KASFIR
by the buyer. Given the absence of a

shorthand designations for "good," and
their negations "nontraditional" and
signature or known artist's hand in
"inauthentic," which become synony-
most cases, intentionality is seemingly
mous with "bad." In the same way, a
crucial in deciding what is authentic
Dogon mask to which a recognizedand what is fake.
expert applies the epithet "export piece"But it is not so clear that these
is instantly transformed from an object Western collectors' distinctions are very
PHOTO SIDNEY L KASFIR
of desire with a high market value to resonant

a in the mind of the African
piece of flotsam afloat in the postcolo- artist. Asante carvers are an interesting
nial world. The language of classifica- case in which artists' attitudes toward over into colonial and postcolonial rela-
tion used to canonize or decanonize a copying successful forms have been tions with new patrons, including for-
piece of African sculpture is powerful, well documented (Silver 1980, Ross & eigners. It is unclear why making what
one sided, and usually final. A sculp- Reichert 1983). For Asante (and many the buyer prefers should be regarded by
ture's worth as an aesthetic object, a
other10) carvers, imitating a well-known Western collectors as acceptable in the
piece of invention, a solution to a puzzle model is considered neither deceptive past but opportunistic now. One reason
of solids, voids, and surfaces, is left nor demeaning; rather, it is viewed as may be that they see types of payment
totally unexamined unless it first passes both economically pragmatic and a way for traditional commissions-yams,
the authenticity test. No Kamba carving, of legitimating the skill of a predecessor goats, iron rods-as less commercial
however brilliant or extraordinary, (if an old model) or paying homage to a than currency transactions, and this has
would get past the front door of any fellow artist (in the case of a recent the effect of "softening" the economic
reputable New York gallery specializing innovation) (Silver 1980:6). motive for the transaction. But the more
in African art. It would be said to "lack This attitude stems directly from the likely reason is the Western collector's
integrity," implying that somehow non- way carving is regarded as a livelihood. failure to recognize that even precolo-
traditional artists have detached them- While this view is well known, it bears nial African art was essentially "client-
selves from their cultures and that their repeating in this context: whereas driven" (Vogel 1991:50).
work is therefore inauthentic. Western artists often see their work pri- The other major difference between
In the earlier debates about authentic- marily as a vehicle for self-realization, African artist and foreign collector is the
ity in African art, much discussion cen-that attitude is as unfamiliar to African antiquarianist mindset of the latter.
tered on copies, replication, and fakes. artists as it is in African culture general- African art in a Western (or equally,
We may ask what kind of assumptions ly, unless we refer to elite artists trained Japanese) collection takes on greater sig-
underlies such questions. What is being in Western-type art schools. Typicallynificance, prestige, and market value if it
falsified? And in whose eyes? On the onethe carving profession, or any other that is old. While most Africans do not share
hand the construction of the idea of results in the construction of artifacts this attitude toward their art, they are
"tribal" style presumes a fairly high (brasscasting, weaving, pottery-making willing to accept the fact that collectors
degree of uniformity from one artist's etc.), is seen as a form of work, not qual-prefer "antiquities"" and consequently
work to another, and such replication itatively very different from farming, see nothing wrong with replicating
has been accepted as part of the "tradi- repairing radios, or driving a taxi. This them. The intentional deception (and it
tional art" paradigm. But when adoes
con-not mean that it is not "serious"- happens with regularity) occurs more
temporary carver from another ethnic work is indeed serious-but that it is frequently in the marketing of a work by
group (or "tribal style area") intention-viewed matter-of-factly as aiming totraders
sat- and later by art dealers. It is usu-
isfy the requirements set downally
ally takes up this same style, the result- byless a matter of collusion between
ing object is said to be a fake because, it
patrons. artist and trader than of the marked dif-
One does whatever is necessary
is claimed, there is conscious intentto tobecome a successful practitioner.ference between African and Western
deceive. The same claim is made even Furthermore, in precolonial patron-thinking about the significance of one-of-
if the carver is a member of the "tradi- client interactions, it was the custom for originality.
a-kind
tional" culture that produced the object artists to try openly to please patrons, On the question of imitation and its
in the first place, if he artificially ages
even if this meant modifying form. relation
Not to deception, we could con-
the piece or allows it to be thought old clude, first, that Western collectors have
surprisingly, that attitude has carried
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9. SAMAKI LIKONKOA, THE MACONDE CARVER
WHO INTRODUCED FIGURES OF THE SPIRITS
CALLED SHETANI IN DAR ES SALAAM IN 1959.
DAR ES SALAAM, 1970.
the film is the interaction of costume

and movement that is central to this par-
ticular dance:
The dresses in the original dance,

all flounced and starched out in
circular hems around the knees,
provided a moving circumference
against which knee bends, elbow
actions and neck angles could
counterpoint themselves....the
removal of pith helmets from the
heads of the dance co-leaders
seems a petty suppression to com-
plain of until one realizes that two
pivotal hubs that literally cap the
presentation and balance the skirt
circles are missing....Not only were
the central symbols of a "rite of mod-
ernization" taken away or repressed,
but the power of Tiv tradition to mas-
ter those symbols, incorporate them
into Tiv metaphor, was being denied.
African art (mainly precolonial and
nothing against imitation in the sense of
(Keil 1979:250; emphasis added)
artists following time-worn proto-sculptural). But the implications of
types-in fact a completely unsurprising authenticity extend even further into anHaving been shown David Atten-
mask or figure in a well-documented ideology of recording culture, whetherborough's film Behind the Mask, my stu-
"tribal" style is usually preferable to through film or through writing. The dents are always shocked to learn that
something wildly original and idiosyn-ethnographic film is particularly vulner-tourists regularly visit certain Dogon vil-
cratic, since there are no standards for able to this form of selective perception.lages. The film artfully presents the
judging the worth of the latter. Second, In 1978 in Ibadan I watched a crew of Dogon as a "pure" culture, untainted by
the same Western collector (or museum contact with outsiders. In an equally
perfectly serious German filmmakers
professional) is distinctly uncomfortablesystematically eliminating the Jimmy popular film, Peggy Harper and Frank
with any tampering with the prototypi- Cliff T-shirts, wristwatches, and plastic
Speed's Gelede, the western Yoruba mask
cal imitation, through attempts to make in various forms from a Yoruba crowd festival is performed in a nearly empty
it look old or through imitation by an scene at an Egungun festival. They were space with almost no audience, even
artist outside the group with whom the attempting to erase Westernization from though we know that in fact it takes
prototype is thought to have originated. Yoruba culture, rewriting Yoruba place in a crowded marketplace amidst
Either of these serves to inauthenticate ethnography in an effort to reinvent a noise, dust, and confusion (Drewal &
the piece, regardless of its merits as apast free of Western intervention-a Drewal 1983). Presumably, clear camera
work of art. Third, most (I am guessing pure, timeless time and space, an angles took precedence over contextuali-
here, but based on fairly broad experi- "authentic" Yoruba world. ty. By strict definition these are not doc-
ence) non-elite African artists, whether Charles Keil relates the story of the umentary films, because they control
rural or urban, would find these ideas Tiv women's dance known as Icough and regulate the participants. Yet they
arbitrary rather than obvious, and more and how it was modified by filmmakers are widely used in both museums and
than a little baffling in their seeming (in the face of considerable Tiv resis- university classrooms. Despite their
inconsistency toward imitation. tance) to fit the requirements of cultural
flaws they have defined and authenticat-
If we now go back to the question of authenticity and the attention span of eda the performative aspect of African art
what is being falsified in the case of Western audience (1979:249-50). A for a generation of students.
"fakes," we might wish to look beyond dance sequence of eight segments last-
I have quoted at length the instance
the short range. In a center versus of the
ing well over an hour was reduced to filming of the Icough dance
periphery view of cultural production, three; the usual audience of "enthusias- because it provides such a striking anal-
the center defines legitimate means and tic supporters pushing forward for a ogy to the redefining of objects such as
ends, to which the periphery can only better look or breaking into the dance to masks in the process of removing them
respond. If we allow that collecting then press coins on perspiring brows" was from the scene of their production and
became the colonizer's role, can it be completely absent (Keil 1979:249). But use and installing them in a museum.
surprising that the colonized responded most serious, the aesthetics governing This reduction and stripping away of
with the willing supply of what the cen- the dance itself-what Keil refers to as meaning by the removal of "extraneous"
ter seemed to demand? That the "antiq- the Tiv expressive grid-were modified facts-whether a decaying masquerade
uity" may have been new both complied by the insistence of the filmmakers that costume or a starched dress and pith hel-
and retaliated-subversion producing the women change their costumes from met-serve seemingly opposite purpos-
its own chiaroscuro. es in the two cases. In the dance it
the Western-style circle-skirted dresses
Authenticity as an ideology of collec-and pith helmets usually worn for this self-consciously traditionalizes the perfo
tion and display creates an aura of cul-dance to the more common Tiv "native" mance for a film audience that expec
tural truth around certain types ofwrappers. What is subsequently lost inthe exotic; in the example of the mas
46
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installed in a museum, the removal of (where it is wrapped in burlap and
history in the late nineteenth century;
and following their "discovery" byhung out of the reach of white ants
accoutrements reduces it to uncluttered
Picasso and his friends in the earlywhen not in use), the trader's kiosk in
sculpture that can be displayed in the
Modernist idiom, as pure form. But both an African city (where it rests among
decades of the twentieth century, they
cases involve the same act of erasure and
underwent a second promotion into arthundreds of other de/recontextualized
imposition of new meaning. And both museums and galleries where they objects and is first given an "art" identi-
were recontextualized as art objectsty), the Madison Avenue gallery (where
are so frequently done that we take them
wholly for granted. (Clifford 1988: 227-28). it is put through the "quality" sieve and
This migration of objects through aestheticized with other "quality"
classificatory systems can be mapped objects), and finally the home of the
Art and Artifact:
topologically as well as diachronically.
wealthy collector (where it is reincorpo-
The Creation of Meaning
The experienced museum-goer knows rated into a domestic setting, but unlike
This leads to a very troubling question:that the art-museum display policy inthe situation in the village, is on con-
who creates meaning for African art? Itwhich an isolated mask or figure isstant display, "consumed" visually by
encased in a vitrine or lit with track
is difficult not to conclude that it is large- collector and friends). Taken in se-
ly Western curators, collectors, and crit-lights means to convey the information quence the definitions overlap at least
ics (whose knowledge, as we will see, isthat the object is to be apprehended somewhat,
as but between the first and last
deftly mediated by entrepreneurial"art"; the same object embedded inthere the is an almost total reinvention of
African traders along the way) rather busy diorama of a natural history muse- how and what the object signifies.
than the cultures and artists who pro- um display is meant to be read differ-
duce it. This is not to suggest that theently, as a cultural text. In the former its
Tourist Art and Authenticity
original work possesses no intentionali-uniqueness is stressed, in the latter its
ty. It is fully endowed with intention by (con)textuality. Yet, as museums, both Of all the varieties of African art that
its creator as well as by its patrons. Butconfer cultural authenticity upontrigger the the distaste of connoisseurs and
the successive meanings an object isobjects displayed there, which are can- subvert the issue of authenticity, surely
given are fluid and negotiable, fragile onized in the popular coffee-table title, so-called tourist art is the worst-case
and fully capable of erasure as it passesTreasures of the -. scenario. In the biological model of
from hand to hand and ultimately into a That from an African perspective, stylistic development it exemplifies
foreign collection. Here it must be these objects are not art in the current "decay" or even "death"; in discussions
invented anew, most often in the context Western sense is too well known to dis- of quality it is dismissed as crude, mass
of a museum culture dominated either cuss here. Our museum collections, on produced and crassly commercial; in the
by a Modernist aesthetic that looks for the other hand, are constituted by crite- metaphors of symbolic anthropology it
"affinities" from the Third World or by riaa that we, and not they, devise. The is impure, polluted; in the salvage
potentially deadening "material culture" fact that the various Idoma (Alago, etc.) anthropology paradigm it is already
approach. A handful of museums have lexical terms for "mask" are wholly non- lost. The Center for African Art in New
found other ways of reinventing African aesthetic will not perturb even the most York decided to omit it from its suppos-
art that strive consciously to be anti- inexperienced museum docent. As edly definitive contemporary art exhibi-
Modernist and anti-hegemonic, such Maquet as suggests (1986:15), why not tion "Africa Explores," presumably for
the Centre Pompidou's 1989 installation define art as those objects which are dis- some or all of the above reasons.
of "Magiciens de la Terre" (McEvilley played on museum walls? At the same time it is a richly layered
1990:19-21), or richly contextualist, such Every collected mask or figure is example of how the West has invented
as the Museum of Mankind's Yoruba defined and given boundaries by its sur- meaning (and in this case denied authen-
installation of the mid-'70s; they areroundings:
rein- the village shrine house ticity) in African art. Without Western
ventions nonetheless, since that is an
inescapable aspect of what museums do.
Even the contextual approaches that are
consciously designed to preserve the
integrity of cultures represented are far
from neutral. Barbara Kirschenblatt-
Gimblett reminds us that designing the
exhibition is also constituting the subject,
and that "in-context approaches exert
strong cognitive control over the objects,
asserting the power of classification and
arrangement..." (1991:389-90).
James Clifford further reminds us
that prior to the twentieth century,
African artifacts were not "art" in either
African or Western eyes (1988:226-29).
Jacques Maquet made the same point
earlier (1979:32), referring to African art
as "art by metamorphosis." In Western
museums these objects underwent a
double taxonomic shift-first from exot-
ica to scientific specimens when the ear-
lier "cabinets of curiosities" gave way
to newly founded museums of natural
10. A MACONDE CARVER AT WORK

ON THE BAGAMOYO ROAD IN TANZANIA. 1970.
PHOTO: SIDNEY L. KASRR
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patronage it would not exist. It is a artist's intention: they were made to be
Their ability to take up curio carving on
Marxist's nightmare, hegemonic appro- used by a Yoruba patron in a sacreda wide scale did not suddenly appear
priation gone wild. But what actually is context. The fact that they are sold to
one day out of thin air, but was made
"it"? The rubric "tourist art" seems to tourists nowadays cannot dislodge their
possible by their long collective experi-
include all art made to be sold which place in the canon. Yet even intentionali-ence as craftsmen.
does not conveniently fit into other clas- ty is not a reliable test for admission to, John Povey's comments on Kamba
sifications. It is easier to state what it or exclusion from, the canon. Let us take carvers are typical of the inaccurate way
excludes: "international" art made the
by frequently cited case of the Afro-
carvers' cooperatives are envisioned:
Portuguese ivories. While clearly made
professionally trained African artists and "The conveyor-belt system of their pro-
sold within the gallery circuit, "tradi- duction prevents any suggestion that
for foreign consumption, they suffer no
tional" art made for an indigenous com- disapprobation and are not classified as
they can offer career options for local
munity, and "popular" art that istourist art by museums or collectors.13 artists. They require factory workers"
For one thing they are precolonial in
nontraditional but is also sold to, per- (1980:5). There is role specialization in
date and therefore do not fit the view of
formed for, or displayed to "the people." many cooperatives, which leads to repe-
To someone only passingly familiar tourist art as a colonial and postcolonial tition of certain forms in response to
with the African urban scene, this defini-
phenomenon. The antiquarianism of consumer demand. On the other hand
tion might seem to leave only curios- Western museums and collectors strong- there are also superior carvers (Fig. 2) as
"airport art"-the carved giraffes and ly predisposes toward their admission well as "hacks" in these groups-every-
elephants seen in any Woolworth's or to in the canon on the basis of age. But one does not work at the same technical
front of any tropical Hilton. In factthere it is another, equally important rea- level. This fact is well documented for
leaves a great deal more, from the inge- son: they are technically works of great the Kamba (Jules-Rosette 1986), Asante
nious (embroidered helicopters and jew- virtuosity and they are carved from (Silver 1980), Kulebele (Richter 1980),
elry from recycled engine parts); to the ivory, a material associated with ex- and Maconde (Kasfir 1980). Working
inevitable (Samburu beaded watchstrap pense and rarity in Western taste. alongside a young apprentice who
Tourist art is thought to be both crude
covers), as well as various types of sculp- carves only spoons may be a master
and cheap. Objects seemingly escape carver such as Lawrence Kariuki (the
ture and painting. But by assigning
only Kikuyu member of the Nairobi
this classification by being old, very
everything else under one classificatory,
and inevitably dismissive, label, Western
expensive, or technically complex.14 Kamba cooperative), who may work on
art museums and galleries cause all We have seen then that the "tourist" the same piece for weeks and carves
in "tourist art" is not the crucial distinc-
other "unassigned" forms to become only on individual commission (Fig. 3).
invisible, to fall through the canonical tion that keeps Western authorities from But once again it would appear that the
sieve. The erasure is as complete as the admitting it to the canon. Rather it is the forced anonymity that results from a
remaking, on film, of the Icough dancebelief
or that it is cheap, crude, and mass- collective group identity-the "tribal
the Gelede festival. produced. But all African art is cheap, in style"-causes Western critics to lump
Conversely, the fact that considerableart market terms, prior to its arrival in together the good, the bad, and the
numbers of tourists buy a type of art the West. Much "authentic" art is crude- indifferent under a single rubric.
does not make it tourist art by current ly fashioned-Dogon Kanaga masks, for Even originality, the sine qua non for
definitions. Osogbo art is sold mainlyexample-but
to this seems no deterrent to"significant" Western art, occurs as fre-
tourists and expatriates resident its in popularity with collectors. And whatquently in tourist art as in other types.
Nigeria, but having been canonized as of mass production? Even a humbleInnovation, after all, is fundamental to a
authentic contemporary art back in the curio is hand crafted. Mass production genre that depends upon its novelty for
1960s, most writers do not treat it asimplies the use of standardization tech-acceptance by the foreign patron. Yet
niques and assembly lines-hardly a this very inventiveness is found offen-
tourist art.12 Yoruba ibeji figures, origi-
nally used to commemorate dead twins description of what goes on in a carvers'sive by connoisseurs of African art.
but frequently transformed into art cooperative. What the Western connois-Why? Perhaps because it violates the
objects in galleries from Abidjan seur to imagines, with obvious distaste, is canonical model of a timeless and event-
Nairobi, are also sold to tourists in great
a kind of machine-like efficiency, a per- less past. Paula Ben-Amos, in an incisive
numbers (being small and usuallyception that totally obscures the fact thatcomparison of tourist art and pidgin
cheaper than masks) but are not consid-the working relationship among these languages, argued for another impor-
carvers is fundamentally no different tant difference between traditional and
ered by anyone to be tourist art. The rea-
sons are different in the two cases. from, say, that of a group of Yoruba tourist arts: a different set of rules for
Osogbo art escapes the tourist label apprentices
by in an Ife workshop turningthe manipulation of form itself (1977:
being the work of several individually out everything from Epa masks to nativ- 130, 132). Whereas precolonial African
known artists, each with a recognizableity scenes (Kasfir 1987). Even in very sculpture was characterized by "rigid
style. The most famous of these, Twins large Kamba cooperatives, such as that symmetry and frontality," the deviance
Seven Seven, was included in the at Changamwe outside Mombasa, theof tourist art from that norm results in
"Magiciens de la Terre" exhibitionhundreds
in of carvers are broken down either "surreal distortion" or a move
1989. When he first came to prominence toward naturalism. The former is often
into separate sheds of a dozen or fewer
in the 1960s, he received the same men who maintain close ties over manyseen as "grotesque" by connoisseurs of
extravagant praise and adulation fromyears, who train new apprentices, and traditional art-a normative judgment
the art world as Ch&ri Samba garnerswho may even be relatives from the based on the preference for the more
today. But what of the host of imitations same village in Ukambani, the Kamba "classic," self-contained precolonial
Twins's work has spawned, each beinghomeland. Within these cooperatives styles. This comes down to the problem
peddled on the sidewalks of Lagos andapprentices learn from, and are perma- of taste, an important issue often
Ibadan? Most are lacking in skill and nently indebted to, master carvers neglected
in in the authenticity debate and
inventiveness, but one or two are almostmuch the same way as in the past. one that I have treated elsewhere
as good as the work of Twins himself. Is Although the Kamba were not makers (Kasfir, in press).
that work tourist art? Neither patronageof wood sculpture in the precolonialBehind and beneath many of th
period, they were celebrated as black-
nor quality seems to be the crucial factor. attempts to dismiss the authenticity
In the case of the ibejis, this statussmiths, ivory carvers, and by the lateso-called tourist art is its inability t
resist
nineteenth century, as beadworkers.
demotion is avoided by virtue of the commodification. No collector
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11. MAASAI WOMEN MAKING BEADWORK.
NAMANGA, KENYA, 1987.
cows' tails become flywhisks, safety pins

and zippers become jewelry (Cover).
This inventiveness, which requires a
constant shifting about of means and
ends, causes the products of the fundi's
labor to be constantly in flux.
This habit of mind, making a virtue of
necessity, is as true of the woodcarver as
it is of the man who repairs bicycles. The
first Maconde shetani carving is attribut-
ed by the carvers themselves to Samaki
Likonkoa (Fig. 9), who in 1959 was car-
rying a "normal" binadamu figure to the
trader Mohamed Peera in Dar es Salaam
when, accidentally, one arm was broken
off (Kasfir 1980). Disconsolate, Samaki
PHOTO: JEN BOTSOW
returned home where he dreamed that
night of his dead father. In his dream his
father instructed him to smooth the bro-
wishes to see a piece nearly identical to of the canon, since "traditional" sculp- ken shoulder socket and gouge out the
his or her own in a shop window, since ture lacks a narrative character. eyes. It would then represent a bush
in Western culture there is no prestige Fundi's art is indeed "grotesque" by spirit, a djinn (KiSwahili: jini, shetani ).
(and little investment potential) in own- the prevailing canon of taste that pre- The fact that none of the Dar es
ing a thing that is not one-of-a-kind. colonial art has generated. It is also an Salaam immigrant Maconde had made
Spooner calls attention to the "obsession act of bricolage. What this means is per- shetani before was immaterial, since this
for distinction" that motivates many col- haps clearer if we begin with the artist'swas not intended for use within the
lectors of Oriental carpets (1986:200). name, one more "subversion which cre-
Kirschenblatt-Gimblett notes the same
ates its own chiaroscuro." In KiSwahili, a PHOTO. SIDNEY L KASFIR
fundi 18 is an artisan (Figs. 7, 8), but the
problems of commodification in the col-
lection of American folk art (1988:148) word also carries the connotation of
and relates this to the Modernist agenda "one who fixes things." If my bicycle
as it is spelled out by the critic Fredric chain is broken, I take it to the bicycle
Jameson: "Modernism conceives of its fundi. Also to the point, it may connote a
formal vocation to be the resistance to person who has the peculiar skill or tal-
commodity form, not to be a commodity, ent needed to "bring things off."19 He is
the East African equivalent of Levi-
to devise an aesthetic language inca-
Strauss's bricoleur (1966:16ff.), mending
pable of offering commodity satisfac-
tion...." It would be difficult not to see what is broken with whatever materials
the relevance of these arguments to thecome to hand. In the Third World every-
thing useful is collected and recycled
fears of collectors or to the acquisition
policies of art museums.15 (Fig. 4): old rubber tires become sandals,
Maconde16 sculpture, which since
1959 has been produced in two sub-
styles, one naturalistic (binadamu,
"human beings") and one anti-naturalis-
tic (shetani or jini, "spirits"), is a perfect
illustration of the bifurcation between a
precolonial self-contained symmetry
and a postcolonial expressionism (Figs.
5, 6). It is routinely rejected by fine art
museums and owned mainly by those
who do not collect canonical African
art.17 But not all museums are concerned
with canonicity. A Maconde collection
has been accepted by the Smithsonian's
National Museum of Natural History, as
testimony to the role played by aesthet-
13. MAASAI WOMEN AT THE AFRICAN HERITAGE
ics in the processes of cultural change. GALLERY, WEARING THE BEADED JEWELRY
The ecumenically inclined organizers of THAT IS ALSO SOLD AT THE GALLERY.
"Magiciens de la Terre" at Centre NAIROBI, KENYA, 1987.
Pompidou also ignored precedent and

included the work of one Maconde
sculptor, John Fundi. He is quoted in the 12. MAASAI WOMEN AT THE AFRICAN HERITAGE
GALLERY. ON TUESDAY MORNINGS ARTISANS LIKE
catalogue with a single sentence: THESE WOMEN BRING IN THEIR WORK TO BE
"Toutes mes oeuvres ont une histoire"
PURCHASED BY AFRICAN HERITAGE BUYERS
(Centre Pompidou 1989:137). This story- (HOLDING CLIPBOARDS).
telling is one more violation of the rules PHOTO SIDNEY L KASFIR
49
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Maconde community. It would be sold resents the head of a spirit, not a human tion" (Jules-Rosette 1987a:3). Significant-
by Peera to anyone who walked into his being. Its purpose is to instill fear and it is ly the subject here is painting, not sculp-
shop and fancied it. Samaki's act of made for a shrine. No one was ever afraid ture. Painting has a more literary,
bricolage came to him in a dream in of an ebony head!" (emphasis added). This "message bearing" character than the
which tradition (his father) sanctioned example likens tourist art (the ebony
plastic arts and is also a greater artifice,
innovation by relating it back to tradition. head) to pidgin languages, Ben-Amos
collapsing three dimensions onto a flat
(Bush spirits are an integral part of concludes, because in both cases there is surface. As such it is riper for semiotic
Maconde belief.) This spiraling off into a restricted semantic level and a limited analysis than sculpture. Building upon
new forms would have been much more range of subject matter (1977:129). the classificatory system of Ilona Szom-
difficult in the precolonial past. But the Questioning these limitations, Ben- bati-Fabian and Johannes Fabian (1976),
radically different situation introduced netta Jules-Rosette has argued that the Jules-Rosette extends it to include tourist
by foreign patronage opened the waysemiotic content of tourist art does not as well as popular art. In her argument,
for invention. In precolonial art, object, disappear but only becomes hidden both tourist and popular Zairian painting
symbol, and function have been repre- (1987a:3; 1987b:93). Although operating express collective memory and con-
sented as tightly bound up with eachin a few standard formats and a more or sciousness through the employment of
other in a highly structured system, less "generic" style of representation, stereotypic themes such as idyllic land-
leaving little room for either subverting both tourist and popular painting "use scapes ("things ancestral"), colonie belge
or extending meanings (e.g., Levi- metaphor, metonymy, and allegory to paintings ("things past"), and scenes of
Strauss 1966:26).20 But the new genres point to an unvoiced layer of meaning city life ("things present") (1987a:4).
developed under colonialism (and I that remains implicit in the artist's rendi- An interesting question then is how
include in this category both "popular" PHOTO SIDNEY L KASFIR applicable these categories are to other
and "tourist" art) feed upon the fluid, forms of so-called tourist art. Trans-
highly situational patronage of the ferring this typology to Maconde sculp-
African city, not the more predictable ture, one might classify ujamaa poles
needs of chiefs, age grades, and descent (family trees) and Mama Kimakonde
groups. This city is linked in turn to the ("Mother of the Makonde," derived
former colonial center, with its foreign from the matrilineal ancestor) as "things
patrons and exotic culture, and to the ancestral," the well-known caricatures
villages to which its inhabitants regular- of Europeans, especially priests, as
ly return and from which they draw an "things (of the colonial) past," and genre
important part of their identity.21 pieces such as the barber giving a hair-
Paula Ben-Amos marshalled Levi- cut as "things present."
Strauss's argument that the semantic Unfortunately, the most innovative
function of art tends to disappear in the sculptures, the shetani figures, are too
transition from "primitive" to modern
(Ben-Amos 1977:131). In modern art (or
more accurately, Renaissance to nine- PHOTO: SIDNEY L. KASFIR
teenth-century European art), it is

replaced by a mimetic function. That
this has happened in Benin tourist art is
clear from her interview with Samson
Okungbowa: "The commemorative
head [made by a traditional guild] rep-
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP:
14. KAMBA AND KIKUYU MATS.

AFRICAN HERITAGE GALLERY, NAIROBI, KENYA, 1987.
15. MAASAI RUNGU (THROWING STICKS) AND BEADED

KEYRINGS; ON THE LEFT ARE NON-MAASAI BEADS.
THESE ITEMS ARE SOLD AT THE AFRICAN HERITAGE
GALLERY. NAIROBI, KENYA, 1987.
16. MAASAI GOURDS AND LEATHER FORAGING BAG,

BOTH MADE AND DECORATED BY WOMEN.
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17. MAASAI BEADWORK, SHIELDS, AND
KENYAN KHANGA CLOTH FOR SALE NEAR
THE ROAD TO THE AMBOSELI GAME RESERVE.
NAMANGA, KENYA, 1987.
complex to work into a simple chrono-

logical scheme such as this. In a memory
frame they represent a qualitatively dif-
ferent dimension, a persistent "past in
the present." Yet except for the "things
ancestral," they are the most powerful
examples of collective memory at work
in Maconde sculpture, referring as they
do to a set of beliefs about nature spirits,
nnandenga, embedded in Maconde oral
traditions and masquerade perfor-
mance. At the same time, as shetani, they
are inventions for a modern audience of
foreigners. As effective as this schema is
for eliciting the "messages" of popular
and tourist paintings in Zaire and
Zambia, it requires recasting to fit the
problem of Maconde sculpture. The
issue of collective memory, I will argue,
is crucial in this rethinking, though not
in quite the same way as it works for the
patrons of Zairian popular painting.
The Maconde carvers of Dar es
Salaam and its environs are immigrants
from Cabo Delgado province in their
Mozambican homeland. They reinvent
their culture in the alien landscape of
Tanzania, usually in scattered settle-
ments outside Dar and Mtwara (Fig. 10).
In the early 1970s they still harbored a
reputation for fierceness among the
local Tanzanians, partly because they
chose to live apart and partly because
they alone continued to cicatrize their
faces and file their teeth: the same acts
of cultural inscription that appear on
their mapiiko initiation masks. This high
visibility is shared by their shetani fig-
ures, which deviate so radically from
the typical curio shop repertoire. One
might say that the uneasiness felt by the
Dar es Salaam locals is equivalent to the
discomfort of "proper" art collectors,
both of whom see the Maconde as cul-
turally alien to their landscape. How
then are we to understand what the PHOTO SIDNEY L KASFIR
Maconde are doing? And why should it

be rejected by Western cultural institu-
tions as inauthentic? tain number of carvings of a certain typeform of mediation between the old life,
My own sense is that they are in a certain number of days. To the con-still very much alive in collective memo-
engaged in a complex renegotiation of sternation of the traders, they regardedry ("We come from Mueda, we all come
Maconde identity, particularly the iden- themselves as "artists," meaning thatfrom Mueda"), and the new one outside
the Maconde homeland. Some carvers
tity of the artist, in this new cultural set- they made whatever they felt like mak-
ting. It is this which gives shetani ing that day, week, or month. Theycontinue to make the mapiiko masks for
carvings their "emergent" quality, iden- would also travel back and forth fre- initiation rituals while fashioning
quently, crossing the Rovuma River binadamu
tified by Karin Barber (1987) as the most and or shetani figures for sale to for-
distinctive feature of the popular arts ascending the Maconde Plateau in eigners. There is no overlap in style, con-
(which, ironically, are rejected by finenorthern Mozambique. tent, or clientele between these two types
art museums and collectors for this very This seemingly casual attitude toward of transactions.
reason).22 In Dar es Salaam the Maconde carving could not have improved their But it would be wrong to conclude,
carvers were at pains to separate them- financial status, since an unpredictable as Vogel has done (1991:41-42, 238), that
selves from local Zaramo carvers who output could only make an already mea- only the mapiiko masks are authentic cul-
produced small curios. The Maconde, ger living more precarious. Rather it had tural expressions. In the artists' eyes all
unlike the Zaramo, could not be com- to do with the Maconde carvers' self-per- of their sculptures are equally so: one
missioned by a trader to produce a cer- ception. Carving is work, but it is also a makes "what people want," whether in
51
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the indigenous or the foreign patronage almost as much West African and nearby overflow markets, and finally
system.23 Barber's example of West Zairian art for sale in Nairobi as there from street hawkers. Between the side-
African bands who record different is art emanating from Kenya, Tanzania,walk entrepreneur and the well-
Uganda, and Ethiopia. Yet these areappointed boutique or gallery there may
music for the local and the foreign mar-
surface differences: underneath, the
kets is an excellent analogy (1987:27). be a ten-fold difference in price. But
same principles apply as in Abidjan,
On the one hand, as Jean Comaroff com- technical quality will vary too, because
ments (1985:119), in a situation of con-
Douala, or Kano. The dealer, whether a boutiques are willing to pay artists more
tradictory values introduced through Kamba market trader, a Gujarati shop- than a street hawker would. For exam-
radical social change, " 'traditional' ritu-
keeper, or an expatriate gallery owner, ple, Maasai women from the Ngong
al [or here, art] serves increasinglyplays
as a the same role in framing, contex- hills outside Nairobi (Fig. 11) go to the
symbol of a lost world of order and tualizing,
con- and authenticating the arti- city once a week to sell their beaded
facts that are for sale.
trol." But we might also hypothesize neck rings and ear pendants. First, they
that new forms of cultural expression For example, a brisk business exists take their work to Alan Donovan's
serve to anchor the immigrant's experi- in Maconde sculpture as well as in African Heritage Gallery where his
ence in a series of mediations required copies of it. The Maconde do not live in buyer will evaluate it and purchase only
by the adopted culture and its setting. Kenya, but it is still profitable to take the best pieces (Figs. 12, 13). What is left
The shetani carvings do this very suc- their work across the Kenyan-Tan- over is then taken to street vendors, who
cessfully because they are in demand zanian
by border from Dar es Salaam. will pay considerably less for it (and sell
a new clientele and also serve to legiti- First, there is the full-fledged gallery it for less). Finally the women visit Lalji
mate a set of beliefs about the Wild that treatment given to major works andbySons, the trade-bead shop that has
encompass both the old and new home- established Maconde sculptors. These been in business on Biashara Street since
lands. Like the carved door illustrated in are displayed in isolation under spot- the early 1900s. Here they stock up on
Figure 1, they are "signs ...disengaged lights and authenticated by stories bead supplies for the coming week and
from their former contexts" that "take about origin myths concerningreturn
the to Ngong.26
on transformed [and visually concrete] image of Mama Kimakonde, the "first Inside African Heritage, a combina-
meanings in their new associations" woman." 25 As with Zairian painting, tion of sophisticated marketing tech-
(Comaroff 1985:119). In short, the artist sellers understand that the storytelling
niques and superior-quality merchandise
continues to play the role of the fundi or aspect of the figure is importantmakestoit an irresistible beacon for both
the bricoleur. Western buyers. As a result, ingenious
collectors of ethnic jewelry and collectors
Why this role should be regarded by hagiographies of this or that shetani of art.27 Original designs by Angela
Western connoisseurs as inauthentic is abound ("the shetani who causes road Fisher (author of Africa Adorned) as well
perhaps because authenticity, until now, accidents," "the shetani who lurks in the as new and old pieces of Maasai,
has been intimately associated with that pit latrine and causes dysentery," etc.). Samburu, Rendille, and Turkana bead-
"lost world of order and control," but Everyone is satisfied: the gallery owner work are sold in an ambience of authen-
not with any of the cultural renegotia- makes his sale, the buyer feels she has ticity and casual chic (Figs. 14-16).
tions following that loss. We need first bought an authentic artifact, and the Mijikenda grave markers sprout in the
of all to recognize that the precolonial Maconde carver is allowed to keep his garden beside the coffeeshop (Fig. 18).
past, seen from the present, is an ideal- own cultural knowledge to himself. West African sculpture, from the strictly
ization for Europeans and Africans There is also an active book market for canonical (Yoruba ibejis) to the recently
alike; second, it is crucial to relocate the
Maconde sculpture. Its inventiveness invented (large Akan masks), graces
notion of authenticity in the minds of knows no bounds, and every year the another section. Decorated gourds and
those who make art and not those on the pile of romanticized fiction (mainly by intricately woven baskets mediate the
other side of the Atlantic Ocean who German authors) written about the art/craft boundary. Upstairs there are
collect it. Maconde grows a bit higher. batik shifts and safari clothes. Like a
While a practiced eye can tell the dif-Ralph Lauren advertisement, African
ference, street hawkers in both Nairobi Heritage evokes the quintessentially
Context Is Everything: The Street,
and Mombasa manage to sell "Maconde" Kenyan Settler/Hunter style of Karen
the Trader, and the Market
carvings that are made by non-Maconde Blixen or Denys Finch-Hatton. It reminds
It is not only in museum displays andcarvers
in working in the industrial area ofus that objects have the ability to create
the houses of connoisseurs that the the two cities. Various hardwoods can be personalities for their owners, not just for
made to look like ebony by a judicious their makers. And no one is more aware
meanings of African art are reinvented.
Until now, I have focussed on the application
con- of black shoe polish. (The of this than the trader. Not only is the
temporary artist and the collector.Maconde
But themselves do not use these Maasai woman renegotiating her own
unless we consider the intermediary other
in woods, but ebony is scarcer in identity as an artist by selling her work to
this transaction, the description is than in Tanzania.) Smaller in scale
Kenya a boutique, but the woman buying and
incomplete in an important way. and price and more clearly commodified,subsequently wearing it is also inventing
Christopher Steiner in two seminal these are often the "Maconde" carvings a new persona for herself. That the
essays (1989a, 1989b) has drawn atten-
that make their way to American depart-Maasai make subtle differentiations in
tion to the mediation of knowledge by stores. All of these marketing
ment the colors and patterns of things made
traders in African art, using as his exam-
strategies correspond closely to Steiner's
for strangers versus those made for each
ple the Hausa, Mande, and Wolof observations on the presentation, other does not matter here. What is
traders in C6te d'Ivoire. I will attempt to description, and alteration of objects by
salient is the playing out of new identi-
expand this world to encompass their Ivorian traders (1989b:3). ties on both sides.
counterparts in Nairobi. Not only Maconde and pseudo- In the none-too-distant past (say, fif-
Unlike most cities in West Africa, Maconde sculpture but other popular teen years ago) it would have been
Nairobi is awash with tourists every artifacts can be purchased, on a sliding claimed that both of these renegotiations
day of the year.24 It has many more price and quality scale, in galleries or were culturally spurious and that only a
boutiques and galleries than one finds boutiques near the large international Maasai woman making beadwork for
in a typical West African capital, and hotels, from dukawallahs (petty traders) herself and other Maasai could lay claim
these exist at every rung of the econom- in small Indian shops near the city cen- to cultural authenticity: anything else
ic ladder. Most noticeably, there is ter, in the City Market or in one of the would be an illustration of the cultural
52

163.200.81.46 on Tue, 27 Apr 2021 14:16:46 UTC
"decay and death" theme that inevitably ther David Byrne playing at being denominator
a of what is thought by
follows colonial contact.28 But this mambo king (Cosentino 1990:1) nor the Westerners to be inauthentic in African
nomadic jewelry, now much in demand, folkloric "Indian" of cigar-selling days.art, can be deconstructed in ways that
coexists simultaneously in four or Hefive
has lived in cattle camps and been make the definition of authenticity full
distinct cultural settings in Nairobiinitiated
alone. with his age group into moran- of self-contradictions, then the same
Unlike precolonial African sculpture,hood, which does not normally include kinds of questions can be asked even
which migrated over time from cabinetwage employment. But perhaps he more readily about other noncanonical
needs money for school fees or to pay categories
of curiosities to natural history museum a such as "elite" or "interna-
to fine art museum with accompanying fine. By the act of standing outside the tional" art. Now, in the closing years of
changes of status, we can, on thecurio same the twentieth century, it is perhaps
shop he has become, in effect, a liv-
day, see all of this and more. Beginning
ing sign of himself.29 time to bring the canon into better
at the ethnographic gallery of the I began with the questions of who alignment with the corpus, with what
creates
National Museum in Nairobi, we African artists actually make, and to
may meaning for African art and
view Maasai or Samburu beadwork dis- what determines its cultural authentici- leave behind a rather myopic classifica-
played as part of a standard "natural ty.
his-In one sense they are rhetorical, tory system based so heavily on an
tory" functionalist array with gourds,because we already suspect the answer.Africa of the mind. D
spears, and the like. Near the front If "tourist art," the lowest common Notes, page 96
entrance, the museum shop does a brisk
business in pastoralist jewelry, especially
earrings, as souvenirs. At African
Heritage we may see not only this same
work being sold as aesthetic objects but
also (on Tuesday mornings) the Maasai
women selling it to the buyer and at the
same time wearing it themselves. Or the arti-
facts may be seen on dancers performing
at the Nairobi tourist village, Bomas of
Kenya. Finally, bookshops all over
Nairobi sell Tepilit Ole Saitoti and Carol
Beckwith's Maasai, Mirella Ricciardi's
Vanishing Africa, Angela Fisher's Africa
Adorned, Mohamed Amin's Last of the
Maasai, and most recently, Nigel Pavitt's
Samburu, in which photographs of the
same objects and their wearers are now
recast as evocations of a vanishing
"golden land." (In fact we recognize that
coffee-table books such as these are the
twentieth century's "cabinets of curiosi-
ties.") Each of these realities-functional
artifact, art object, souvenir, article of
dress, and body arts refracted through
the lens of the camera-exists simultane-
ously in a dialogic relationship to the
others, each with its own fragment of the
truth (Fig. 17).
But the ultimate artifacts in this
freeze-frame view are the Maasai them-
selves. In 1987 one enterprising Mom-
basa curio shop employed a Maasai
moran (warrior), resplendent in all his
finery, to stroll about the premises and
attract potential buyers. Tourism itself is
a form of collecting, and taking pho-
tographs its most aggressive act of
appropriation. The Kenyan parliament
finally felt impelled to pass a law forbid-
ding tourists to take pictures of Maasai, a
self-defensive act analogous to those
taken by tribal councils much earlier in
the American Southwest. But where is
the "authentic" Maasai culture in all
this? As with the Maconde shetani carv-
ings, if we shift the locus of authenticity
to the minds of the makers and not the
collectors, the issue must be recast. The
moran in the curio shop is real; he is nei-
18. MIJIKENDA GRAVE MARKERS.

PHOTO: SIDNEY L KASFIR
53

163.200.81.46 on Tue, 27 Apr 2021 14:16:46 UTC
ART FROM ANTIQUITY
notes
grant Mozambican carvers from the indigenous Tanzanian
AND TRIBAL CIVILIZATIONS Makonde whose cultural production is distinct and who are
Musee Barbier-Mueller, Geneva, Switzerland only marginally involved in the carving profession.
AFRICAN ART 17. The typical collectors of Maconde sculpture are aca-
demics and journalists, people who can not easily afford to
Musee d'Ethnographie collect "traditional" African art. Thus there is a class distinc-
STANLEY: Selected bibliography of writings by Jean Kennedy,
Neuchatel, Switzerland from page 38 tion implicit in the purchase and display of an accepted
canon on the one hand and "tourist-art" on the other. The
AFRICAN AND OCEANIC ART
Forthcoming. New Currents, Ancient Rivers: Contemporary latter is much cheaper to own.
The von der Heydt Collection African Artists in a Generation of Change. Washington, 18.
DC:The KiMakonde term is puundi (Wembah-Rashid 1989:5),
Museum Rietberg, Zurich, Switzerland Smithsonian Institution Press. Expected pub. date May but in Dar es Salaam the language of dominant discourse is
1992. KiSwahili.
1991. "Haitian Art: Inspired by Vodun," American Visions 19. I am grateful to Allen Roberts for this second meaning.
africa bvcour (Washington, DC) 6, 3:14-18, June.
1987a. "Visionen vom Baum des Lebens," Tendenzen
East African and Zairian usage appear to be similar, though
not identical, on this point.
(Munich) 158:71-75. 20. This formulation is necessary to LUvi-Strauss's argument,
1987b. "Wosene Kosrof of Ethiopia," African Arts 20, 3:64-67, but is overdrawn. As I indicated earlier, this sense of "one-
SANAA GATEJA 89 (May). ness" about precolonial art is as much a Western predisposi-
Barkcloth paintings from Uganda 1986. "The Art of Kiure Msangi," The Special (published by tion to idealize Primitive Society as it is an observable fact.
The Daily Californian) 1, 2:3, 11 (Feb. 11). 21. I am grateful to my colleague David Brown for urging
African Heritage Gallery, Nairobi, Kenya
1984. "Bruce Onobrakpeya: An Art of Synthesis," Printnews me to re-examine the concept of bricolage in this context.
EXPRESSIONS OF AFRICA (The World Print Council) 6, 5:8-11 (Sept.-Oct.). "John Fundi" was of course a happy coincidence. For a treat-
Crafts exhibit 1981. "Speaking of Myths" (rejoinder to Stephen Naifeh's ment of bricolage in an Afro-Cuban Diaspora context, see
Kim Sacks Gallery "The Myth of Oshogbo"), African Arts 14, 4:78-80 (Aug.). Brown's description of the self-conscious cultural style of los
1973. "Muraina Oyelami of Nigeria," African Arts 6, 3:32-33 negros curros in early-nineteenth-century Havana
Johannesburg, South Africa (1989:35-38).
(spring).
AFRICAN ART AND ANTIQUITIES 1972a. "Bruce Onobrakpeya," African Arts 5, 2:48-49 (win- 22. Barber's typology does not demote tourist art to a liminal
Totem-Meneghelli Gallery ter). category but refers to it as commercially motivated popular
Johannesburg, South Africa 1972b. "The City as Metaphor" (on Adebisi Fabunmi), Africa art, "produced but not consumed by the people" (1987:26).
Report 17, 4:27-29 (April). 23. Vogel herself makes this point earlier in the same text
WEST AFRICAN AND SOUTH AFRICAN ART
1971. "Senabu Oloyede, Kikelomo Oladepo: New Heirs to (1991:50). Part of the difficulty is that very few art historians
Totem Rosebank Talent in Oshogbo," African Arts 4, 4:24-27 (summer). have done field interviews with those who make tourist art.
Johannesburg, South Africa 1968a. "I Saw and I Was Happy: Festival at Oshogbo," 24. Tourism has now replaced coffee as the major source of
African Arts 1, 2:8-16, 85 (winter). foreign exchange earnings.
TRADITIONAL AFRICAN ART
1968b. "Renaissance in Oshogbo: Part 1: The Shrines," West 25. Although this story has been published several times, I
National Museum African Builder and Architect (Ibadan) 8, 3:71-74. was never able to find a Maconde carver who had any
Pietermaritzburg, South Africa 1968c. "Printmaking in Nigeria," Artist's Proof (New York) 7. knowledge of it.
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT 1968d. "Two Nigerian Artists" (Asiru Olatunde and Jimoh 26. I am grateful to Maasai art specialist Donna Klumpp for
OF SOUTH AFRICAN ART Buraimoh), Nigeria Magazine (Lagos) 96:2-11 (March-May). numerous insights concerning the bead trade in Nairobi, and
to Melania Kasfir, who was then a secondary-school student,
Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria, South Africa for helping me to trace the Ngong-Nairobi bead circle out-
AFRICAN ART lined by Klumpp.
KASFIR: Notes, from page 53
Les Art International, Saxonwold, South Africa 27. Donovan is in a position to do both very well: he is
trained in marketing and is also a field collector and connois-
PERMANENT COLLECTION 1. A partial exception to this is the contemporary-art exhibi- seur of pastoralist arts. See his essay on Turkana containers
National Gallery of Zimbabwe tion "Africa Explores," organized by Susan Vogel for the in African Arts, vol. 21, no. 3, 1988.
Harare, Zimbabwe Center for African Art in New York. I have tried to address 28. The parallel debate in folklore studies ("folklore versus
the somewhat different problems raised by this exhibition in
fakelore") engaged many of the same issues, though the bat-
another article, "Taste and Distaste: The Loaded Canon of tle-lines were drawn somewhat differently, between purists
asia New African Art" (Kasfir, in press).

2. Chinweizu, The West and the Rest of Us, 1978.
and popularizers rather than their texts. See Dorson
1976:1-29.
3. See especially the symposium in African Arts, vol. 9, no. 3, 29. See also Kirschenblatt-Gimblett 1991:388 for a discus-
1976. sion of this same phenomenon in the sponsored cultural
MATISSE'S SECRET 4. An important recent restudy (van Beek 1991) attempts to festival.
80 Kuba textiles return the Dogon to the same universe as other Sudanic
West African cultures.
April 7-28 5. Seen in Gramscian terms, the giving of such gifts simply
References cited
Gallery Nogizaka underscores the hegemonic relationship of the colonizer overAmin, Mohamed, et al. 1987. The Last of the Maasai. London:
Roppongi, Tokyo, Japan the colonized. Bodley Head.
6. Diaspora studies are of course the exception. Here change Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1991. "Is the Post- in
is the sine qua non of aesthetic activity of all kinds and isPostmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?" Critical Inquiry
australia (by closinadate thought to be axiomatic.

7. Anonymity is an issue on which scholars (who in most
17 (winter):336-57.
Araeen, Rasheed. 1989. "Our Bauhaus, Others' Mudhouse,"
cases have done field-collecting themselves) tend to part Third Text 6 (spring):3-14.
company with dealers and collectors, who in turn are far Barber, Karin. 1987. "Popular Arts in Africa," African Studies
ART OF TIBET from homogeneous on both sides of the Atlantic. A number Review 30, 3:1-78.
of American collectors take pains to discover the authorshipBarthes, Roland. 1975. The Pleasure of the Text. Trans. Richard
Through May 15 of pieces they own, while the conversations Price reportsMiller. New York: Hill & Wang.
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth would seem to reflect a more European (and more romantic)Bascom, William. 1976. "Changing African Art," in Ethnic
CONTEMPORARY ABORIGINAL ARTISTS sensibility toward the art of "exotic" people. and Tourist Arts: Cultural Expressions from the Fourth World,
FROM THE KIMBERLEY REGION 8. Price quotes the well-known dealer Henri Kamer, who ed. Nelson Graburn, pp. 320-33. Berkeley.
makes this point precisely: "The object made in Africa...onlyBen-Amos, Paula. 1977. "Pidgin Languages and Tourist
August 20-October 31 becomes an object of art on its arrival in Europe" (in PriceArts," Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication 4,
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 1989:70). 2:128-39.
9. The problem is historical as well as sociological: the very
Biebuyck, Daniel. 1969. Tradition and Creativity in Tribal Art.
continuing exhibitions idea of "being Yoruba" as a commonly held cultural identity Berkeley: University of California Press.
dates only from the nineteenth century (Doortmont
Brown, David H. 1989. "Garden in the Machine: Afro-Cuban
1990:102). Sacred Art and Performance in Urban New Jersey and
ART FROM ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIA
10. My own fieldwork was based on many Idoma, a few Tiv, New York." Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University.
Australian National Gallery, Canberra Afo, and other carvers in Nigeria, Maconde immigrant Centre Pompidou. 1989. Magiciens de la terre. Paris.
AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL ART carvers from Mozambique in Tanzania, and Kamba carvers Chinweizu. 1978. The West and the Rest of Us. New York: Nok
in Kenya; all support the Asante data. Publishers.
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth 11. Because Nigeria has an antiquities law and considerableClifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture. Cambridge:
illegal trafficking in sculpture, "antiquity" has become theHarvard University Press.
pidgin term for any artifact that changes hands illegally. Cole, Herbert M. et al. 1976. "Fakes, Fakers, and Fakery:
middle east 12. The Nigerian art historian Babatunde Lawal has beenAuthenticity in African Art," African Arts 9, 1:20-31, 48-74.
arguing since 1975 that it is, but once again, this is an Comaroff, Jean. 1985. Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance.
attempt to deny it authenticity by associating it with thisChicago: University of Chicago Press.
label. Cosentino, Donald J. 1990. "First Word," African Arts 23, 2:1.
FAITH-DORIAN AND MARTIN WRIGHT 13. They are included for example in the current exhibition Donovan, Alan. 1988. "Turkana Functional Art," African Arts
GALLERY OF AFRICAN ART "Circa 1492," a show intended to display masterworks 21, 3:44-47.
Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel from around the world, at the National Gallery in Doortmont, Michel R. 1990. "The Invention of the Yorubas:
Washington. Regional and Pan-African Nationalism Versus Ethnic
14. A parallel example is the intricately carved Chinese ivory Provincialism," in Self-Assertion and Brokerage: Early
south america puzzles intended for the export trade but now seen as works
of art in their own right.
Cultural Nationalism in West Africa, eds. P. F. de Moraes
Farias and Karin Barber. Birmingham University African
15. For an incisive treatment of the issue of collectors and Studies Series 2.
commodification in African art, see K. Anthony Appiah's
Dorson, Richard M. 1976. Folklore and Fakelore. Cambridge:
review of Perspectives: Angles on African Art (exhibition cata- Harvard University Press.
ACERVO AFRICANO E AFRO-BRASILEIRO
logue, The Center for African Art, New York, 1987) in
Drewal, Henry John and Margaret Thompson Drewal. 1983.
Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia Critical Inquiry (1991:338-42). Gelede. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Sao Paulo, Brazil 16. I use the spelling "Maconde" to differentiate the immi-
Fagg, William and John Pemberton III. 1982. Yoruba Sculpture
96
163.200.81.46 on Tue, 27 Apr 2021 14:16:46 UTC
of West Africa. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Art. New York: The Center for African Art. invest them with new meanings, and then re-create and re-
Fisher, Angela. 1984. Africa Adorned. New York: Abrams Wembah-Rashid, J.A.R. 1989. "Makonde Art: The Mask andpresent them in new and dynamic ways to serve their own
Publishers. Masked Dance Tradition." Institute of African Studies, aesthetic, devotional, and social needs" (Drewal 1988:160).
Hainard, Jacques and Rolland Kaehr. 1986. " Temps Perdue, University of Nairobi. Equally stimulating is Herbert Cole's writing on the exuber-
Temps retrouv6...," Gradhiva 1 (autumn):33-37. antly constructive/deconstructive expression of Igbo peo-
Jules-Rosette, Bennetta. 1986. "Aesthetics and Market ples, who, for example, constantly invent new characters for
Demand: The Structure of the Tourist Art Market in Three their dramas such as "World Cup," "One Nigeria," and
African Settings," African Studies Review 29, 1:41-59. ROBERTS: Notes, from page 63 "High Court" (Cole & Aniakor 1984:214 and passim).
Jules-Rosette, Bennetta. 1987a. "What is 'Popular'? The 8. The growing literature on "the invention of tradition"
Relationship Between Zairian Popular and Tourist This paper was submitted to African Arts in April 1991 and (e.g., the essays in Hobsbawm & Ranger 1983 and Vail 1989,
Paintings." Paper presented at the Workshop on Popular accepted for publication in June 1991. It is substantially and the broad studies of Wagner 1981 and Mudimbe 1988)
Urban Painting from Zaire, Smithsonian Institution, revised from one presented at the first "Redefining the is, to my mind, one of the most fruitful developments in the
Washington, DC. Artisan" conference sponsored in the spring of 1989 by the interdisciplinary study of social process. Still, Blauner's earli-
Jules-Rosette, Bennetta. 1987b. "Rethinking the Popular Arts University of Iowa Museum of Art and Center for er, specific grounding of a concept of "culture-building" in
in Africa" (commentary), African Studies Review 30, International and Comparative Study (Greenough 1991). My the oppressive circumstances of (neo)imperialist political
3:91-97. thanks to the participants and to Professor Richard Schectner economy is especially apposite to an understanding of art
Kasfir, Sidney L. In press. "Taste and Distaste: The Loadedof New York University, discussant for the conference, for forms such as those presented here.
Canon of New African Art," Transition. their pertinent comments. A teaching packet of text and 9. Julius Lips's remarkable book, The Savage Hits Back
Kasfir, Sidney L. 1988. "Celebrating Male Aggression: The slides based on the original presentation has been prepared (1937), documents non-Western arts of the colonial period
Idoma Oglinye Masquerade," in West African Masks andby Kay Turney (1991) for distribution to Iowa secondary that caricatured the colonizer. Christopher Steiner (1991)
Cultural Systems, ed. Sidney L. Kasfir. Tervuren: Mus~eschools; this and related materials are available as indicated provides an update of an ironically related art form, the
Royal de l'Afrique Centrale. in the bibliography. statues colons in vogue at Abidjan tourist markets. The irony
Kasfir, Sidney L. 1987. "Apprentices and Entrepreneurs," in Thanks are extended to Dana Rush and the students of is derived from the African artists' clever manipulation of
Iowa Studies in African Art, vol. 2, ed. Christopher Roy, pp. my "Myth, Magic and Mind" seminar; and to Drs. Joseph what Steiner calls the "marketable fantasy of the colonial
25-47. Iowa City. Adande, Marla Berns, William Dewey, Laura Graham, experience" (p. 43), which stands in stark opposition to the
Kasfir, Sidney L. 1984. "One Tribe, One Style? Paradigms inEvan Maurer, Don Merten, and Christopher Roy for their representation of colonial oppressors lampooned by many
the Historiography of African Art," History in Africa comments on the present paper. Despite the generosity of objects Lips presented. In both cases, as Lips had it,
of the
11:163-93. these colleagues, all responsibility for this article remains "as the negro began to discover the secret [of white peo-
Kasfir, Sidney L. 1980. "Patronage and Maconde Carvers," my own. ple's] mortality and weakness,...the keener and the more
African Arts 13, 3:67-70, 91. Revision and submission of this paper for publication annihilating was the scrutiny bestowed" (1937:114).
Keil, Charles. 1979. Tiv Song. Chicago: University of Chicagowere delayed by the illness and death of my wife, Mary Bronislaw Malinowski's comment in his introduction to The
Press. Hagihara Kujawski Roberts. Like all my work, "Chance Savage Hits Back, that "anthropology is the science of the
Kirschenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1991. "Objects of Encounters, Ironic Collage" is dedicated to her memory and sense of humour" (p. vii), deserves renewed attention as
Ethnography," in Exhibiting Cultures, eds. Ivan Karp and to our children, Avery and Seth. well, for humor is based on just the sorts of chance encoun-
Steven Lavine. Washington: Smithsonian Press. 1. More recently, Albert de Surgy has explored commonali- ters, ironic collage, and subversion of expectation that
Kirschenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1988. "Mistaken ties among African systems of thought, Surrealism, and occupy us here. See Mary Douglas's stimulating essay,
Dichotomies," Journal of American Folklore 101,anthropology 400 in his remarkable study, De l'universalite d'une "Jokes" (1975:94-95), on the relationship between aesthetic
(April-June):140-54. forme africaine de sacrifice (1988). De Surgy contrasts and pleasure and humor.
Kubler, George. 1962. The Shape of Time: Remarks onexplicates the sacrifice among Mwaba-Gurma of Burkina Faso 10. The African National Museums Project (ANMP) project
History of Things. New Haven. and Evhe of Togo through a close consideration of "la visbe on recycling in Benin described below was discussed with
Kuper, Adam. 1988. The Invention of Primitive Society. surrialiste." As he suggests, "ethnologists and Surrealists Samuel Sidib6, director of the Mus~e National in Bamako,
London: Routledge. were predestined to encounter each other" through their Mali, during his visit to the University of Iowa in the fall of
Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1966. The Savage Mind (La Pensdee
consideration of African thought (1988:119), precisely 1988. In June 1989, I visited an exhibition of recycled materi-
Sauvage). London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. because of a shared sense of irony and a desire "to take the als at the Musee National that exemplified the perspective of
Maquet, Jacques. 1986. The Aesthetic Experience:marvelous
An seriously," as the Belgian structuralist Luc de the original ANMP project. See Philip Ravenhill's review of
Anthropologist Looks at the Visual Arts. New Haven:Heusch
Yale would have us do (1982:8). My thanks to Roy Willis the exhibition (1989). A comparison and dissemination of the
University Press. for bringing the de Surgy book to my attention. good ideas studied in Benin and exhibited in Bamako would
Maquet, Jacques. 1979. "Art by Metamorphosis," African 2. To cite but one example, in an article titled "African Art be an appropriate development project in its own right. I
Arts
12, 4:32-37,90-91. and Authenticity," Joseph Cornet has written that "authen- have also been told of but have not seen a catalogue or book
McEvilley, Thomas. 1990. "Marginalia," Artforum tic African art is that which is produced by a traditional on African and Asian recycled objects published in Germany
Mar.:19-21. artist for a traditional purpose and conforms to traditional (Grothues 1988); my thanks to Professor William Dewey for
McEvilley, Thomas. 1984. "Doctor Lawyer Indian Chief," forms" (1975:55, his emphasis). He fails to define the contin- bringing this to my attention.
Artforum Nov.:59. gent term "traditional," thus rendering the concept utterly 11. These points are discussed brilliantly by Barbara Smith in
Michaud, Yves. 1989. "Doctor Explorer Chief Curator," Thirdstatic. In so doing, Cornet asserts a position of imperious ways pertinent to the study of expressive innovation and
Text 6:83-88. authority regarding what is "traditional" and what is culture-building in Africa. Smith suggests that "the specific
Pavitt, Nigel. 1991. Samburu. London. "authentic" (cf. Clifford 1988b). He then proceeds "to con- 'existence' of an object or event, its integrity, coherence, and
Povey, John. 1980. " The African Artist in a Traditional demn without hesitation innumerable objects whose manu- boundaries, the category of entities to which it 'belongs,' and
Society," Ba Shiru 11, 1:3-8. facture specifically for the market is growing day by day," its specific 'features,' 'qualities,' or 'properties' are all the
Price, Sally. 1989. "Our Art, Their Art," Third Text 6 referring to such "fakes" as "chronological swindles" variable products of the subject's [that is, ego's] engagement
(Spring):65-72. (Cornet 1975:52, 54). There is biting irony in Cornet's refer- with his or her environment under a particular set of condi-
Ricciardi, Mirella. 1978. Vanishing Africa. London. ence to "authenticity," given the peculiarly abusive political tions....Each experience of an entity frames it in a different
Richter, Dolores.1980. Art, Economics and Change. La Jolla: sense the term has in Mobutu's Zaire, where Cornet has had role and constitutes it as a different configuration, with dif-
Psych/Graphic Publishers. such a remarkable career serving the national museums. ferent 'properties' foregrounded or repressed" (1988:31-32).
Roberts, Allen F. 1991. "Chance Encounters, Ironic Collage." Mobutu's political slogan in the 1970s was a call for 12. In 1984, Mary Kujawski Roberts and I founded the
Paper presented at "Redefining the Artisan" conference, "recourse, not a return, to authenticity," implying a dynam- ANMP at the University of Michigan where we then both
University of Iowa Museum of Art, 1989. ic sense of invented tradition for ideological purpose (see worked. Through the ANMP, we collaborated with staffs of
Ross, Doran H. and Raphael Reichert. 1983. "A Modern Roberts 1986, 1988a). An antidote to Cornet's static position national museums in Benin, Mali and Gabon to help define
Kumase Workshop," in Akan Transformations, eds. Doran is provided in the excellent and sensitive scholarship of strategies, policies, and programs in the delicate and chal-
H. Ross and Timothy F. Garrard. Los Angeles: UCLA Enid Schildkrout and Curtis Keim (1990) concerning the lenging area of the Africanization of African museums; for
Museum of Cultural History. processual nature of expressive culture among northeastern the most part, these museums were created during the colo-
Rubin, William (ed). 1984. "Primitivism" in Modern Art: Zairian peoples. nial period to serve expatriate audiences. The 1987 project
Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern. 2 vols. New York: 3. See Suzanne Blier's (1988/89) and Susan Vogel's (1988) was funded by an Academic Specialist Grant offered to
Museum of Modern Art. useful reviews of the topic, and Sally Price's related discus- Mary Kujawski Roberts by the U.S. Information Agency, and
Saitoti, Tepilit Ole. 1980. Maasai. Photographs by Carol
sion (1989). Price gallingly ignores the many Africanist by a Mellon Foundation Faculty Development Grant at
Beckwith. London: Elm Tree. scholars who have long shared her suspicion of and discom- Albion College awarded to me. I would like to thank these
Silver, Harry R. 1980. "Calculating Risks: The Socioeconomicfort with the ways that non-Western arts and expressive cul- agencies and especially Amelia Broderick and the staff of the
Foundations of Aesthetic Innovation in an Ashanti ture have been exploited, and who have written, taught, and U.S. Cultural Center in Cotonou who arranged and coordi-
Carving Community." Paper presented at the 23rd Annual organized exhibitions making their position abundantly nated our 1987 stay in Benin. An earlier ANMP project in
Meeting of the African Studies Association, Philadelphia. clear. See Philip Ravenhill's review (1990) of her book. Benin in the fall of 1984, during which present and potential
Spooner, Brian. 1986. "Weavers and Dealers: The 4. On the manner in which symbols instigate action, see national museums were surveyed and plans were formulat-
Authenticity of an Oriental Carpet," in The Social Life ofVictor Turner (1970, especially chapter one). This same asser- ed for the 1987 visit, was partially funded through a USIA
Things, ed. Arjun Appadurai. Cambridge University Press. tion is echoed from a different perspective by Jean Laude Linkage Grant between the National University of Benin and
Steiner, Christopher B. 1989a. "African Art in Movement: (1973) when he writes of the way that Dogon sculpture pro- the University of Michigan. The ANMP has been brought to
Traders, Networks and Objects in the West African Art vokes ideas. the University of Iowa as one component of the Project for
Market," in Discussion Papers in the Humanities 3, Boston 5. This point has been debated for many years now. For Advanced an Study of Art and Life in Africa (PASALA) that I
University African Studies Center. interesting discussion contemporary with Griaule's work co-direct with Christopher Roy, curator of the Stanley
Steiner, Christopher B. 1989b. "Worlds Together, Worlds cited above, see Rivibre 1930; and for a recent view in which Collection of African Art at the University of Iowa Museum
Apart: The Mediation of Knowledge by Traders in African a call is made for a broader definition of African art that of Art on which PASALA is based.
Art." Paper presented at the 32nd Annual Meeting of thewould collapse Western aesthetic and materialist categories, 13. This photograph, like Figure 17, was taken with the per-
African Studies Association, Atlanta. see Silverman 1989. mission of the subject.
Szombati-Fabian, Ilona and Johannes Fabian. 1976. "Art, 6. Smith further notes the attempt by aestheticians to efface 14. Following conventions established by the American
History and Society: Popular Painting in Shaba, Zaire," "both the historicity and cultural specificity of the term 'art' Anthropological Association for the protection of infor-
Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication 3,and also the institutionally and otherwise contingent vari- mants, the name and village of the artist will not be revealed
1:1-21. ability of the honorific labeling of cultural productions" here because of the political implications of my speculation.
Talbot, P. Amaury. 1926. Peoples of Southern Nigeria. 4 vols. (1988:35). Her argument would be a useful framework for"Iroko," a the name of a tall and strong tree that grows in
London: Oxford University Press. discussion of the continued, selective exhibition of African southern Benin, is a pseudonym for the artist. Any associa-
van Beek, Walter E.A. 1991. "Dogon Restudied: A Field "masterpieces" (and the gender bias that term reflects). tion with real persons named Iroko is coincidental. My
Evaluation of the Work of Marcel Griaule," Current 7. A brilliant example is Margaret and Henry Drewal's ongo-thanks to Dr. Marla Berns for useful discussion of the need
Anthropology 32, 2 (April):139-67. ing study of "transcultural" African religious practices con- to strike the difficult ethical balance between revealing the
Vansina, Jan. 1984. African Art History: An Introduction to cerning Mami Wata, through which "peoples from Senegal names and biographical details of African artists and pro-
Method. New York: Longman. to Tanzania take exotic [European and Hindu] images and tecting their identities.
Vogel, Susan et al. 1991. Africa Explores: 20th Century Africanideas, interpret them according to indigenous precepts, 15. "Iroko" was born in 1954 and is the grandson of an artist;
97
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African Art and Authenticity - A Text With A Shadow

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African Art and Authenticity: A Text with a Shadow

Author(s): Sidney Littlefield Kasfir

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3337059

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tinues to function as a more benign, supported circulating exhibitions such as

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LEFT: 2. BONIFACE KIMANI, MASTER CARVER

of imperial design, social Darwinism,

But the fact is that Africa is a part of

4. EXAMPLES OF BRICOLAGE: OIL LAMPS

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IN THE "DRIFTWOOD" STYLE.

8. THE FUNDI AT WORK:

PHOTO SIDNEY L KASFIR

by the buyer. Given the absence of a

of desire with a high market value to resonant

the film is the interaction of costume

The dresses in the original dance,

10. A MACONDE CARVER AT WORK

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cows' tails become flywhisks, safety pins

Pompidou also ignored precedent and

teenth-century European art), it is

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP:

14. KAMBA AND KIKUYU MATS.

15. MAASAI RUNGU (THROWING STICKS) AND BEADED

16. MAASAI GOURDS AND LEATHER FORAGING BAG,

complex to work into a simple chrono-

Maconde are doing? And why should it

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18. MIJIKENDA GRAVE MARKERS.

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asia New African Art" (Kasfir, in press).

australia (by closinadate thought to be axiomatic.

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