Abstract
Commemorative and allegorical sculptures are very important constituents in the spatial, temporal and spatio-temporal art forms of any given community or people. This is because, not only are they symbolic, they also represent important landmarks in the history of the people. Constricting formal configuration of commemorative narratives in Ghana is the neoclassical concept of the monument which is heavily modelled on an “idealist myth” (Krauss , 1981,) However exhuming medieval spatial metaphors, this paper expounds how pole ideologies in history Vis a Vis current thought have informed and thus negotiated and expanded the frontiers of formal aesthetic dialogues. Attention will be drawn to the oversubscribed ‘idealist’ ideals (like frontality, the figure, the pedestal and preference for the noble media like stone, wood, bronze ivory cement etc.) in the expressing of commemorative sculpture in Ghana as if it were the modus- operandi. Finally, a research work which used ‘Fante’ proverbs as its principal reference point is introduced not to only seek a defiance of these academic conventions but also explore the vernacular qualities of found media (ready- made) specifically scrap metals which have had former lives before and thus fraught with in context meaning to a new aesthetic end. Keywords: narratives, readymade, hybridity, dualism, dialectic, idealism, materialism, minimalism. DOI: 10.7176/ADS/83-04 Publication date: July 31 st 2020
Highlights
Art historians and critics over the years have wondered and asked about the nature of sculpture and how this unique experience of art could be defined
On the contrary this document advocates for the promotion of hybridity, consisting of a co-existence and fusion of contrasts. In this light the dualism this paper seeks to endorse is a dualism which does not encompass an opposition of boundaries that dismisses each other; it is about boundaries that are added to each other . “a relationship not of ‘either or’ but of ‘both’” (Ernst Van Alphen)
Perhaps for the sake of administrative contingencies categorization of ideologies and disciplines may exist dialogue and dialectic discourses across dualistic divides, should be encouraged and considered as valid and necessary tools needed to help transcend any hostilities that there may be in the visual arts
Summary
Art historians and critics over the years have wondered and asked about the nature of sculpture and how this unique experience of art could be defined. If in this 21st century the same question is being asked, it is because this unique art form of sculpture keeps on taken forms which its contemporary viewer finds difficult to assimilate because of his pre-conceived ideas of what should constitute a work of sculpture. By the 1930s this sense of an expected antagonism between an art of time and an art of space had become a basic starting point from which to assess the unique accomplishment of sculpture (Krauss 1981). Sculpture has ceased to become a stasis but an organic entity with a life of its own
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