Ancient African art spanned from 8000 BCE to 2000 CE across the diverse continent of Africa. Art was often created for spiritual purposes like honoring ancestors or celebrating fertility, using materials like wood, ivory, and metal. Sculptures commonly depicted families and respected elders. Architecture usually utilized mud bricks and thatched roofs to provide cool shelter from the heat. Major artistic periods and civilizations included Nok, Great Zimbabwe, Ife, Aksum, Benin, Mende, and Kongo. Contemporary African artists now use new mediums like painting while retaining traditional African themes. Textiles communicate identities through techniques like adire cloth dyeing and kente weaving. Masks hold spiritual power to represent ancestors in ceremonies

1. Ancient African Art
By: Kavita Sinha, Jason Seidman, and Phil Hochman
(8000 BCE - 2000 CE)

2. Map of Africa
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2nd largest, most populated
continent
Includes 54 individual countries
Mediterranean Sea to the north
Suez Canal, Red Sea along the
Sinai Peninsula to the northeast
Indian Ocean to the east and
southeast
Atlantic Ocean to the west

3. Key Ideas
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Much African art is created around spirituality, the spirit world, and the role of ancestors
in our lives
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African artists prefer wood, but notable works are also done in ivory and metal
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African art is rarely decorative, but made for a purpose, often for ceremonies
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African architecture is predominantly made of mud-brick; stone is rare, but can be seen
in Zimbabwe and in Ethiopian churches

4. Issues Present in Art
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Family and Respect for Elders
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Believed both things were key components of life
Many sculptures are representations of family ancestors
● sculptures carved to venerate their spirits
Fertility of women and the land
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Highly regarded
Spirits of the forest or those associated with natural phenomenon were respected
and worshipped
Sculptures of suckling mothers are extremely common

5. Major Stylistic Periods
CIVILIZATION
TIME PERIOD
LOCATION
Nok
500 BCE - 200 CE
Nigeria
Great Zimbabwe
11th - 15th centuries
Zimbabwe
Ife Culture
11th - 12th centuries
Nigeria
Aksum
1200 - 1527
Ethiopia
Benin
13th - 19th centuries
Nigeria
Mende
19th - 20th centuries
Sierra Leone
Kongo
19th - 20th centuries
Congo

6. Historical Events
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1000 - 300 BCE
Phoenicians and Greeks form settlements along the
Mediterranean coast of North Africa to extend trade routes across the Sahara
600 - 700 CE
Islamic Empire spread across North Africa and Islamic merchants
often visited, spreading Islamic culture. Gold taken from West Africa helped Islamic
culture flourish
● East Africa was part of maritime trade in the Indian Ocean. The language of
Swahili developed from interactions (conflict) with Arabic-speaking merchants. Port
cities such as Kilwa, Mombasa, and Mogadishu arose
1400 CE
Europeans traveled down the Atlantic Ocean along the coast of Africa.
They rediscovered the continent.

7. Patronage and Artistic Life
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African objects are unsigned and undated (tradition relies on oral records of history)
Artists worked on commission
● lived with patrons until the commission was completed
Apprenticeship training was the standard
Artists had guilds that promoted their work and elevated their profession
Men were builders and carvers and could wear masks
Women painted walls and created ceramics
● In Sierra Leone and Liberia, women wore masks during coming-of-age ceremonies
Both were weavers
Most collectable art originated in farming communities - bronze and wood sculpture
Nomadic people produced more body art
Art imported into Europe during the Renaissance more as curiosities than artistic objects
● accepted into European artistic circles in the early twentieth century

8. Architecture
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Built to be cool and comfortable
● provide relief from the hot African
weather
Often built using mud-brick walls and thatched
roofs
Mud-brick was easy and inexpensive to make
● Had to be carefully maintained during
rainy seasons
Timbers were horizontally placed as
maintenance ladders
Usually avoided stonework in architecture and
sculpture
● makes the royal complex at Zimbabwe
unique

9. Great Zimbabwe
Great Zimbabwe, fourteenth century, Zimbabwe
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Prosperous trading center and royal complex
Stone enclosure, probably a royal residence
● said to be the capital of the Queen of Sheba
Constructed of granite slabs
Oldest stone monument of the Sahara
● Built between 1100 and 1450 CE
Walls 30 feet high
Conical tower modeled on traditional shape of grain
silos
Control over food symbolized wealth and power
Walls slope inward toward the top
● Provides support since no mortar was used
Internal and external passageway are tightly bounded,
narrow, and long

10. Images of Great Zimbabwe
Arial View
Internal Passageway

11. Sculpture
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Art is mostly portable - very few large sculptures
Wood is the favored material
● Trees were honored and symbolically repaid for the branches
taken from them
Ivory was used as a sign of rank or prestige
Metal shows strength and durability/restricted to royalty
Stone is extremely rare
Figures are usually frontal
Symmetry is used sometimes
No preliminary sketches
Stiffness to all works
Heads are disproportionately large - intelligence
Sexual characteristics are enlarged
Bodies are immature and small, fingers are rare
Physical reality is avoided
Important sculpture always created for a purpose
Nok heads were major works of African sculpture

12. Nok Head
Nok Head, 500 BCE-200 CE, terra-cotta, Nigeria
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May have been part of a full-sized figure
Triangular eyes
High arching eyebrows parallels sagging underside of
eyes; voids of the irises draws attention
Mouth indicates speech; nose barely modeled - widely
spaced flaring nostrils
Holes for airing out large ceramics during firing in eyes,
nostrils, mouth
Human head appears cylindrical
Each of the large buns of the hairstyle is pierced with a
hole that may have held ornamental feathers
May represent ordinary people dressed for special
occasions, or it may portray people of high status
Some figures had necklaces, bracelets, etc.
Used as ancestor portrayal, grave marker, charms

13. Contemporary Art
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Pioneered in 1950s and 1960s
Colonial period & Years after World War II
● African artists trained in the
techniques of European art
Most contemporary works have ties to
traditional African folklore, belief systems,
and imagery
Use of new mediums such as oils and silk
screening
● Break from the traditional wooden
masks/sculptures, cloths, and body
painting
Contemporary artists borrow from traditional
predecessors of the Western world
● Ex. Pablo Picasso
Julie Mehretu
Julie Mehretu
RENEGADE DELIRIUM
2002

14. Dispersion
Julie Mehretu, Dispersion, 2002
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Ink and acrylic on canvas
Collection of Nicolas and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn
New York
Start seeing abstract works of African art
Works show the transitional movement of people uprooted
by choice or force to create new identities during a time of
globalization and change
● change of African tradition
Work has a conceptual complexity
Suggests the difficulty of creating and negotiating a
communal space in the contemporary world
Also suggests a new kind of space - “cyberspace”
● results in room for artistic exploration
Rift divides the painting in half - separation of two worlds

15. Jackson Pollock
Similarities
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Western equivalent to the work of Julie Mehretu
Nonobjective
Abstract
Freedom of expression
Swooping lines
No defined figures
Differences
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Pollock leaves no open spaces
Does not paint over architectural plans
No predetermined size of painting
Jackson Pollock
UNTITLED NO. 3
1948

16. Textiles
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Made from cotton, animal fibers, grass fibers
Woven cloth made on narrow and horizontal
looms
Motifs and patterns of cloth produced by a
variety of techniques
● resist dyeing, tie dyeing, direct painting
on the fabric
Cloth indicates status, personal, and group
identity
Often worn to beautify, complement, and
enhance the body
Adire
● White cotton
● Painted with cassava starch and
dropped in indigo dye
● Areas covered in starch remain white

17. Kente Cloth
Kente Cloth, Ashanti Culture, Ghana
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20th century
Silk
Weaving introduced in Ghana during the seventeenth
century
Light, horizontal looms that produce long, narrow
strips of cloth
Originally reserved for state regalia
Man wore a single piece, wrapped like a toga with no
belt and the right shoulder bare
Women wore two pieces - skirt and shawl

18. Masks
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Masks carved in wood and metal
Costumed dancers don masks and assume the power of the
spirit it represents
Role of the mask is never decorative, but functional and
spiritual
Works have powers that are symbolically greater than their
visual representation
Mende Mask of Sierra Leone (Nowo), twentieth century, wood
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Female ancestor spirits
High forehead = wisdom
Used for initiation rites to adulthood
Symbolic of the chrysalis of a butterfly
Shiny black surface
Small horizontal features
Elaborate hairstyle decorated with combs

19. Glossary
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Ciré perdue: the lost wax process; a bronze casting method in which a figure is modeled
in clay and covered with wax and then recovered with clay; when fired in a kiln, the wax
melts away, leaving a channel between the two layers of clay which can be used as a
mold for liquid metal
Fetish: an object believed to possess magical powers
Finials: knoblike architectural decorations usually found at the top point of a spire,
pinnacle, canopy, or gable; also found on furniture or the top of a staff
Jijora: the idea of floating between the concrete and the abstract; not too realistic
Kente: Ashanti woven textiles
Nowo: black masks worn by the Mende women to initiate young girls into adulthood
Scarification: scarring of the skin in patterns by cutting with a knife; when the cut heals,
a raised pattern is created, which is painted
Shaman: keeper of the power figure