Dilemma of the Contemporary African Artist

Abstract

Looking back recently into my development as a painter I was amazed 'y my early works in the 60's when I was preoccupied with depicting my immediate surroundings in diversified styles. As far as I know (and I have made attempts to find other African painters involved extensively in this field), it seems only some black South Africans are interested in depicting contemporary urban life in their part of Africa. I have undergone a lot of criticisms (mostly from African academicians and westerners) that I was borrowing too much from the West and not digging into my own traditional art. Unknown to many I had done a lot of experiments in the mid 60's using archaic African art as inspiration, and this influence is discernible in my realistic work. Although some good works resulted from taking inspiration from only traditional art I found it clumsy and limiting, retrieving a past art into a painting form. Later on I found myself in acute abstractions inspired by a very personal interest in Eastern religious philosophies, the resultant art similar to the work of the American painter Mark Tobey. This kind of art was out of place in my society and I found myself in a blind alley. I took a fresh look at the early realistic experiments and was amazed by their freshness and authenticity. I felt they best represent the contemporary aesthetic needs of my society, although the experiments are now moving further and further from the early illustrative naivety. Almost every literate African artist undergoes some kind of Western art training. We however throw it aside to find the so-called 'African style' (i.e. bizzare figures, grotesque faces and snarling mouths, vacant eye-sockets!) in vain attempts to recapture the powerful, sublime art of the past. I now do not wholly agree with the conscientious involvement with the historic past. I find myself born in an environment partly westernized and partly retaining its traditional culture. All my life I have seen cars, western-styled buildings, dresses, etc., as well as indigenous buildings, dresses, behaviour and other accoutrements. So being a socially-conscious artist I try to express the environment, the whole physical and spiritual concept of my society in the flux of change, using both my knowledge of western and traditional concepts to make my imageries on a two-dimensional surface effective and significant. If Picasso, Modigliani, Klee and the German expressionist could produce significant art partly inspired from African art, so could African artists interested in representation produce beautiful works inspired by western art-forms. Just as the present African society finds it necessary to combine indigenous and western way of life for survival, so can the African artist fuse foreign influences with his own talent for a significant art.