Constructing African Art Histories for the Lagoons of C�te d'Ivoire

Abstract

Constructing African Art Histories for Lagoons of Cote d'Ivoire Review of: Monica Blackmun Visona, Constructing African Art Histories for Lagoons of Cote d'Ivoire, Farnham, Surrey and Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2010, 216 pp, 41 b/w illustrations (chart, maps, photographs), bibliography, index, $109.95 US hdbk. ISBN 978-1-4094-0440-8.I have already reviewed Monica Blackmun Visona's book: Constructing African Art Histories for Lagoons of Cote d'Ivoire, concentrating on its subject matter.1 However, this book deserves critical mention in this issue of Journal of Art Historiography for its historiographie content.In Chapters 1-3 of her book, Dr. Visona contributes a critical discussion of approaches to study of African Art History since origin of discipline in last century. She begins Chapter 1 with a discussion of relevance of Histories of African Art to other Art Histories: can same rubrics, theories and methodologies that were developed for studies of Western Art since 15th Century be successfully applied to African Art? Indeed, can these analytical techniques be applied to studies of at all times, and worldwide? This question will be argued, and arguable, for some time to come. Even definition of term 'art' needs careful rethinking in today's academic world. Returning to expressive material culture (or, as she labels it, humanity's impulse to manipulate materials to create visually compelling images, Visona concludes that objects and events in different media get different labels in these cultures. However, it seems that for peoples of Ivoirian Lagoons, 'art' is collectively the products of talented individuals. Festivals, she contends, should be discussed as performance art, noting that they are often present occasions for display of visually compelling images (page 4).Visona's Chapter 2 begins with a chronological discussion of various approaches to study of African Art, beginning with identification of style regions in European publications of early 20th Century, and notions of tribal styles, followed by two schools of American scholarship: Roy Sieber's students, trained at African Studies Center of Indiana University, and students of Paul Wingert and Robert Goldwater, both historians who specialized in history of European Art of late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The latter group tended in early days to use term primitive, as it had been used since early twentieth century by collectors, anthropologists, colonial officers and dealers. It lumps African Art in with other non-Western arts. This rubric came under severe criticism during 1960s and subsequently, and has now been dropped from most scholarly publications. However, tensions between primitive art approach of modernists and direct studies of African's arts based on fieldwork by scholars since 1960s continues to animate study of African Art to this day. She also notes that recent Francophone equivalent of Primitive Art, Arts Premiers, leads to same tensions (page 8). A description of her personal research, conducted in field between 1981 and 1989, and assumptions that informed it, follows: basically, assumptions were that all and performance served a function within traditional lagoon cultures, that each culture had a discreet style that could be identified, and that changes that came with colonialism caused a disruption and deterioration of traditional arts (page 9). Visona states that these assumptions have all been challenged in recent years. They were based in functionalist and structuralist anthropological theories, both of which came under critical scrutiny with advent of postmodern thought. Postmodernism, deconstruction and postcolonialism have complicated African Art scholarship in remarkable ways, and politics and economics of Africa (and economics of research funding agencies) in recent decades have rendered field studies in Africa much more difficult to realize than they were in 1960s, 70s and 80s. …