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Enigmas of the crossroad: Vision and Light, Reception and distribution of African Art * ERY CÁMARA To begin with, I want to express my gra-titude to the authoríties that have invited me to particípate in this debate. The occasion seems similar to the kind of joyful celebra-tion expeñenced by Afrícans upon the reen-counter with their talent and genius during the artistic manifestations that took place at the first World Festival of the African Arts, in Dakar in 1966. The Musée Dynamique held during this occasion an exhibition organizaed by Iba N'Daye: Teadeacies and Confroatations, the Contemporary Arts. This event stimulated, among others, one of the most Senegalese vir-tues: Teranga, hospitality or availability, and especially, utter probity and generosity when consideting the master works of African Art. Art, is indeed, the image of the soul. As a path to essence, it leads>man most intimately to the fuUilment of love. For this reason, the reception of a work of art in our traditional societies was put to the test within a symbo-lically determined ritual. Poetry, dance and music fused in a law that belonged to that moment of communion with the invisible. Nothing would be more true than this inner trembling and the harmonious reaction that stenuned from the idenity that symbolic images in initiation rites or any other vitalistic celebration possess and provoke. Art and edu-cation reciprocally strengthened the commu-nity's well-being. I wouldn't mind if the painter, the resto-rer, the museum expert all had their say, but I'm a son of this earth, and Tve always felt the need to be myself. To broach the subject of the reception given to African Art within its context abroad enables us to evalúate the State of preservation of its virtues. It is per-tinent to remember, inspite of the bad taste • This lecture was given as part of the debates that took place in Dakar, Sene¿ü, on the occasion of Dak'Art 92. it leaves most historians, that the genocides and the colonialism that have sadly disrupted Africa's history, have simultaneously determined certain of our reactions towards our cultural valúes. The alteration of our territory by these tra-gic invasions, to which we must add the for-ceful influence of foreign religjons and certain contríbutíons of industrial civilization have had great repercussions on our sensibility. They are facts that have perturbed and vexed the development of African Arts. However, and I don't say it in vain, none of these manifestations will lose neither the spirit ñor the strengh of their oríginality. Our aspiration to independence reveáis one of the stages of this history; regained free-dom to choose the most adequate means that secare the best continuity for our tradi-tions and our heritage. This privilege confers on US the responsability, of protecting and increasing these valúes, for future generations. To carry a bit further and humbly, like in a caravan, the memory of those we love, pas-sing on to the new generation that eventual responsibility; that's what we can all achieve united. To preserve this heritage means to prepare the way for its reception, its distribution and its appreciation. To measure the capacity of its present Information and the initiative of host institutions, foments simultaneously, rat-her than a change, progress based on truth and precisión, making all aggression futile and impotent. To the extent that we are able to deploy our sttength with greater efficiency, this recovery of the vigour and the resistence of our art to any manipulation by speculative phantasy will represent a transformation and an innovation, and the most sane behaviour. The renovation or the revolution of creativity traces the history of the art work, of the ori-gin of its changes and its incombustible sur-prises. This dynamic encourages criticism oriented to stimulation and thought armed with mani-fold criteria of the perception of the art work as common property and not as the exclusive right of a minority. To conserve our cultural legacy is to revitalize it in the memory and in the heart of people. We fínd traditional references in the collective subconscious that appear as concems to be divulged to the new generations. In 1945, referríng to the state of conservation of our heritage, Léopold Sedar Senghor said: "Oíd África is dying. Customs and lan-guage are being transformed at incredible speed. There's only enough time left to pho-tograph its face at this moment, a visage that stül mirrors its etemal features. Tomorrow shall be too late." Imagine my astonishement when reading in the catalogue of the exhibition África Today: "Being African doesn't imply the fact of belonging to any community." Actually, in Senegalese society, animist, moslem and christian traditions coexist. The racial plurality that characterizes our society, is accelerated daily by the annexation derived from economic and technological progress. To detect the imprint of its impact on the situation, public opinión and adopted behaviour gives US a far more precise approach'to the cultural phenomenom. Under this condi-tion of economic sub-development, we can, without generalizing, imagine the obstacles cleared by africans responsible for effecting a fairer and more rational reevaluation of our heritage than the one conducted by ethno-graphy at the service of colonialism, or the black slave trade and the prime products derived from it that favoiu«d the industrial revolution. AA- Though History's time leads our way, to sitúate the beginnings of contemporary Afri-can art withiu the framework of indepen-dence may not be very accurate. For us, ancestois are contemporary. They have never gone, they keep guard over their descendents. Sighs, exiled as we are (the poet sings), they refuse to die. Their art is a necessary refe-rence in History, though encyclopedias of universal art, don't find it convenient, when refe-rring to their qualities, to justify the ambi-guous pretext of Arthur de Gobineau in his book: Essay on the inequality of the human races, conceming the "superlative degree of the sensual faculty the negro is endowed with and without which no art can possibly exist". Yet, he also stated, "he required the help of the white race to promote its valúes". History took no time in proving the contrary. Our art has proved it, surviving as a vehicle for memory, sensibility and the human ima-gination. Therein lies its oríginahty. With its rhythm, its charm, its indomitable power of fascination and its classical forcé, negro art triggered off the fascination of wes-tern artists with a new aesthetics of surpri-sing spontaneity if compared with the mecha-nical systematizations of academies and with a clarity that somehow acted as a redeeming spell for art and artists trapped in one way or another by positivism, and later by mate-rialism. This perturbing charm, though fre-quently distorted by certain isolated and ill-adapted formulas, rather than spirítual inspi-ration, remains as a strange, curious object for the absent minded. See what Michel Lei-ris says about Cubism: "...the suppoTt these works could give to european artists in search of new techniques. Fauvists like Vlaminck and Derain (in fact, Picasso attributes the true discovery of cubism to Vlaminck), anxious to return to the origins observed with sympathy, popular or primitive works which moved away from the greco-roman ideáis extant since the Renaissance, and apparently created with utter innocence seemed examples of an art devoid of sophistication." We regret the fact that today the most beautiful examples of these works are to be found in museums and coUections far away from US. The scarcity of Information about the knowledge they cumulatively possess, con-demn the few surviving pieces to the icono-clasm of the invaders, to being the constant prey of poaching, to unlimited commercial speculation or irreverent imitation that vilifies the appearance of airports with tourist galle-ríes in África and throughout the world. We might think we were in the heat of discovery, when masterpieces in gold by original crea-tors were melted down into lingots in order to feed mercantilism. Pnce substitutes all valúes and becomes economic and political power. The works, labelled and distríbuted in commercial and market forums. The sanctua-ries of desecration and its priests are able to fmd with the same stiategic energy appíied to all International relations a price for everyt-hing. All of this represents a serious handi-cap for US Africans. I imagine it is the same type of handicap that most of our masterpieces suffer condemned to oblivion in crates, in inadequate repositories, in museums jampac-ked with objects or in offices. The absence of African Art in the academic programmes of schopls is simultaneously mirrored by the inefficiency of the teaching models used. The clinical history or the diagnosis of these works analized in terms of the femenine or the masculine, the organic and the inorganic, the tangible and the intangible, point out just how much work has to be done in order to secure their integrity and to free the effi-ciency they contain. In the preface to the book of the Dakar Museum, André Malraux says that we wouldn't know how to find the state of grace, that enabled the hands and the eyes of the traditional artist to engender the forms and the colours of the invisible. Our search, far from imitating the ancestors, is made evi-dent by the foUowing quotation by Senghor from the same book: "It is still impossible, contemplating to the point of hallucinatioa, the masterpieces of African Art at the Dakar Museum, to reen-counter not only the forms and colours of the ancient artists, but their style that flows from the very source of négritude. As this is not impaired, we only have to make an iimer return, to sink to the depths of our soul, till we reach the place where the underground river flows beneath the saad, so that visión emerges and the rhythm of the Kingdom of Childhood begins to beat. That's the advice we've given our young artists. "Visit fre-quently our Museum", /Ve told them, "Behold these violent and puré forms until they possess you obsessively. This is the idea with which we've built, on the west coast of Dakar, facing the Atlantic ocean, a modem museum of Negro-African art where the more than 26.000 pieces that are still packed will fínd a place." Museography in this part of the world is far less eloquent than the Master of Words. We regret that the modem museum has remained a project. The coUections of the contemporary cultural heritage similarly share the same conditions of conservation. The fai-lure, or the frustration of this kind of invest-ments, even in the case of a staff devoted to the conservation of cultural heritage, (estáte or chattels), or to its continuity, approaches the turbulent image of the present that informs and illustrates most of the articles of the Anthologie des Arts Plastiques Contem-porains au Sénégal. Furthermore, certain notorious contradic-tions of the cultural politics within the con-text of Senegalese artistic reality are lengthily debated in two articles of the exhibition's catalogue: África explores: 20th Ceatury African Art, organized by the Centre for African Art and the New York Museum of Contemporary Art, and The Ofñcial History, by Susan Vogel, and Négritude: Between Mask and Flag, Senegalese cultural ideology and the École de Dakar. Later on I'd like to come back to these articles. As far as the Musée Dynamique goes, where our contemporary art meets masterpieces of twentieth century art like internatío-nally released credit notes, the strange func-tion that currently distorts it, reduces the space symbolically prepared for stimulating processes of familiaiization, attendance, adap-tation and the deference we demand for our ancient or contemporary art. This monument is awaiting the restoration of its purpose and style. It hasn't been adapted to our needs; thus the silence that has condemned it to its present circumstances. The study of the reac-tions of Senegalese people to works of art is • pending so that we can effect a better museo-graphic reform of our heritage. The lack of competent staff in the field of conservation, restoration of cultural heritage and museology makes the situation for prívate and State coUections more difficult. We have examples that explain the absence of investigating the state of our art's conservation and our aesthetic education in schools and universities. There aren't national or regional museums that house permanent or temporary exhibitions of our ancestors' masterpieces. The scarce bibliographical referen-ees published by africans to protect the wealth of perpetuable traditions which trans-mitted art from one generation to another, monographical studies with illustrations of the Ufe and work of the artist that distin-guish our history, make these less known at home than in other places. Exhibitions organized by the state, artists and prívate galleties, though surprisingly cove-red by the press, avoiding the Umitations of type-casting, are received indifferently by the pubUc and the critics. Criticism that is assem-bled by itinerant exhibitions organized by the state abroad, only reach us through the fUter of sensationalist press communiqués. Abroad, in art history books, catalogues and exhibitions, there is hard críticism of cultural poli-cies and the contemporary arts in África. For André Magnin, curator of the itinerant exhibition África Today, his adventures are resumed in this depiction of the continent at the present moment: "...When politicians lament profusely the loss of African identity, due to colonial and neo-colonial oppresion, there's a lack ofini-tiatives and money to set up permanent coUections." Susan Vogel, curator of the exhibition África explores: 20th century African Art and director of the New York Centre for African Art where it was held, states: "A serious problem, thougfi less for artists and offícials, is the absence of compromised críticism. Artists in África, are limited by a lack of perspective in their work. They hardly see any art works produced by artists outside their environment. The official infra-structure is monolithical and unavoidable, and it dispenses indiscriminate support, that counts on critical reception in the press that wallows in ílattery. The only opinions avai-lable to artists, come vía fríends or teachers, and artist associations where críticism is limi-ted by poUtics and closeness. Isolation, frus-tration and complacency are the gravest pro-blems that beset African International Art." Taking the opinión of these specialist entrusted with the task of contextualizing the coUections of African Art, we can imagine easily how the foreign pubhc is ideologically oriented towards knowledge of our art, our artists and our cultural politics. These catalogues progressively become books of increa-sing importance, by the careful selection of author and edition, that sometimes are better than the exhibition. They are sacralized by experts, specialists and leading intellectuals (fortunately some fine sensibilities appear among them), for the collector and the specialist. The production of spectacles for the profane is abundant in supermarkets and librarles. The impact of the deficiencies and absen-ces recorded as interferences in the develop-ment of the artistic education of artists, stu-dents and public, is made evident by the lack of a constant organized and institutionalized criticism that includes different manifold cri-teria of approximation to black African art and the aesthetics that gives it substance. This blank gives rise to the following westem statements on the panorama of African Art today: "...With the exception of rare examples, we don 't fínd there museums, coUections, galle-ríes or art críticism...". "...The arríval of the europeans was necessary to give painting the standing it required". "I searched for art and artists. This explora tion was somewhat ill-fated. I had to observe, to what extent, art (or should I say magic), had been uprooted from the very central and existential place that it had once occupied in the Ufe of African man. Some tried to keep up my expec-tations, in... For even in the most sophistica-ted circles, art appeared as an alibi to con-ceal the loss of ethnic personality, cultural ignorance or indifference. Not only conside-ration but even respect were missing for art." "This also carríes, however paradoxical it may seem, an implied danger. The main client of the Third World's new art is stiU the First World, and this sitúa tion dated from decolonization. From the time when freedom of movement had no boundaríes. It is European travellers, north Americans and Japanese, or foreigners with temporary contraéis, who at the most spend only a brief time, that determine the African artistic mar-ket. A series of factors, like the lack of culture poverty, the absence of a large educated middle-class and tendency of cultured people to imítate European models and to organize consummerism round the products of industrial society (especially cars, electrical goods, sports wear and luxury upholstered furni-ture), have led developing countries to unde-rrate their own art. Given that most of the population StiU Uve in rural communities, it has no contact with art created in the cities. Only a very reduced group of the African élite ís devoted to coUectionism. Fot most Africaas, art is still sometbing apparentiy futile, since it has lost its ancient magic powers. For this reasotí, art is reserved to foreigaeis, without any regrets or jealousies". "The Oldenbiug Kuastverein dares to exhibit Seaegalese art." Similar statements about an art diéntele could already be read in Marshall Ward Mount's book: African art, the years since 1920, published by Indiana University Press, in Bloomington and London, in 1973. This batrage of quotes comes from the dif-ferent authois of the catalogue Añica Today, organized in Paiis with the works of the Con-temporary African Art CoUection and in coUaboration with the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, with the itinerary, Las Palmas, México and God knows where else. Though its selective principie may appear arbitrary with respect to the altruism of the organizers, it only wants to project a prodi-gious event that breaks the castrating silence of the taboos imposed on African artistic creation and also plays down the rídicule of the artists that particípate in this kind of exhi-bition. These opinions can be read in French, Spanish, English and in almost all European languages and generally the world over since some time ago, with the solé purpose of favouring the annulment and exploitation of the Otber. Is the silence on behajf of African authoríties a sign of tolerance, indiíference or lack of Information on the subject? I would like to ask why in the catalogues of exhibi-tions organized by the state, wc find the ñames and the unbelievable opinions of those who in other contexts denígrate it. Even worse, in shameful cases, these attitudes and denigrating arguments are adopted by local offícials who shake off allegiances and score own-goals. This corrodes the sporting spirit that Art requires. Günter Peus said in con-nection with the 1977 FESTAC: "In tbe context of tbis pan-afrícan exbibi-tiott, wbere tbe artists were abosen by tbe official representatives of fuadamentally dictatorial govemments, an art exclusively des-tined to tbe ^ory of tbe povferñú bas prevai-led, creating a martial kitscb." Can we generalize so easily? We realize that the disinformation accumiüated on anth-ropological discoveries, ethnohistory and archaeology in Senegal, leads many misinfor-med writers to afílrm imprudently that the fine arts don't have any real tradition in the country. We quote, precisely in order to reflect justly on the problem, the excellent article by Ibrahim Baba Kaké: African culture, cultura] identity, development and dialogue betweea cultures, that appeared in the magazine Etbiopiques. The historian reminds US that: "...The rural paintings of Tassili in the Sahara, and those of the Kalaharí desert pro-vide a testimony of a pictorial art sepárate from architecture where painting can be con-sidered an art per se. The arts of communi-cation have enjoyed a similar status in Afíican societies. Furthennore, many ritual ceremonies and many popular gatherings include a thea-trícal and communicative element where dances and music frequently are integrated in ritual procesions and poetic recitáis, making up a dynamic whole that derives its meaning from the ritual character of the event. If we examine the religious dimensión we can only confírm that África is the paradise of ani-mism." With the foUowing reference the historian concludes his analysis of the predominant situation in presentday African Arts: "...Black African culture is not the appa-rent synchretism conceived and supported by the mass-media of western countries or of new african states." Starting from a critical and objective visión of current african reality, he adds later: "It is worthwhile defíning the contemporary social structure of África and fínding out if it contains elements of valid reform..." Having proved in a rigorous analysis the persistence of a notably infiltrated colonial mentality, bent on perverting the development of the arts with the aid of certain offícials who have replaced the ttaditional chiefs, he States: "...The African believes that political and economic domination don't necessarily imply the destruction of the other's cultural valúes. The West, with its universalist conquest, doesn't sepárate territorial conquest from cultural invasión." Since the Uth century weVe inherited this same memory that many africans beheve genetic while it is solely historical. This rela-tive ignorance, compared to the avidity of the International Empire of profit and its lucrative operations, and especially with real cooperation, proves that the inadequacy of the methods applied to cultural investment, the inadaptation of museographic institutions, together with the notorious rift between culture and education, hinder the just reception due to African art at home and in other parts. To the contrary, the growing void crea-ted by the lack of decolonization of the ima-gination brings the bombardment of new ste-reotypes, new temptations that overeóme us helplessly. In his article, Black Aáican creation under superior tutorsbip, Mamadou Traoré Diop, críes out in favour of establishing replies sui-table to the demands of cultural creativity, for "...a new model of more limiting rela-tions tends to be dramatically imposed, in terms of a deviation from creation and artists, pursuing only the interests of a hege-monic policy of presence and influence..." International exhibitions, better curated by some, are increasingly prcferred by govemments than national ones. Within a frame-work of cooperation, they are more efficient for the development of cultural exchanges. But, let US be sure for once, that only through knowledge of our own valúes shall we be known by others and this awareness gives US a better knowledge of the other. Our artists, ignored by criticism in the most part, yet recorded by geopolitics that pretends to establish a self-proclaimed cultural standardization, are tracked down and damaged in their development by wily mer-chants who would like to reduce them to those formulas that have guarantueed their success and the hegemonic aspirations already mentioned. The pitiful conditions that mar-ginalize these artists to the bohemian and the exotic, simultaneously leads to the extrover-sion of their cultural valúes. Depríved of status and means, their aban-don and their dubious integration propitiates alienation of their sensibility, and opens the way to the criticisms of the mentioned catalogues. Harrassed by the huge barrage of pre-fabricated illusions, of stereotypes alien to our reality, exported or imported as models, they favour, beyond the mere aesthetic appre-ciation, an assimilation of implied figurative ideologies: Superman, Batman, Badpainting, and also violence and power. These iconographic doctrines ensure our interior decorating. In our homes, the works which stem from our imagination and enhance the habitat are substituted by chromolitographic reproduc-tions, posters, nudes, plástic ware, foreign cinema, pop and sport stars; calendars and hyperkitsch associations. For an altemative history of art, the North American Susan Vogel comments: "A far more useful bistory of art could be structured round two great ideologies we bave just discussed (Autbenticity and Black-ness). Tbe íirst defends tbe rigbt of tbe Africans to créate wbatever art tbey want, inclu-ding works ressembling European art, and the idea tbat tbeir art sbould be accepted as "african". Tbe second, well-deíined by Seng-bor as négritude, tnaintains tbat tbe artists sbould reject tbe inñuences and tbe materials from abroad and ddve into tbeir own añican- After indicating that it is difiScult for us to find materials and space appropiate for creativity in África, and noting with surprise that a poU reveáis Üiat no african artist subscribes to Art Forum, we have, according to her, the reasons that explain why the bcst International artists prefer to Uve abroad, especially in the First World, because it is the best and perhaps the only road to salvation recommendable for their careers. What's more, the Afro-American Ima Ebong, Susan Vogcl's aide-de-camp, whom I saw in Dakar, in June 1990 assures us: "Négritude became a national discourse tbat decided wbicb groups and wbicb individuáis in tbe world of tbe arts were incorpo-rated into tbe principal trend and wbicb were marginaliged." Further on, after mentioning the deplorable desertions of artists from the Village des Artistes, the ruining of the Musée Dynami-que, condemning the fact its archives have A ' i A ^ i i í A ^ become repositories distant from the city, she compares the École de Dakar and the AGIT-ART lab with the alledged manipula-tions of cultural politics after independence. Senghor is seen as the idealist, but after his loss, the artists are badly treated by Abdou Dioufs pragmatism. I would rather read what she says to avoid confusions: "Nevertheless, négrítude was ¡imited in many cases as an aesthetic, not only due to its consideration of ancestral afrícan art forrns but to the abstract characterization of the valúes it reckoned to be intrinsically afrícan, like intuition, emotivity, rhythm and vital forcé. These valúes followed an order established by a specifíc and foimalist agenda conceived for contemplating the metaphysical dimensión attríbuted to them. Négrítude also seemed to act as a litmus test, valuing the capacity of any artistic manifestation to satisfy the requisites of Senghor for a natio-nal culture. That's how Senghor in efíect ¡imited the aesthetic options of the École de Dakar to a formal and strictly ideológica! alloted área." She elaborates further: ! "The departure of Senghor as president in 1980 revealed that the favourable position he had given artists was really fragile. The images and identities the artists had created to support national cultural politics were not interpreted as superíluous symbols that could no longer fínd support in the new spirit of economic and political pragmatism, and were ideologically at odds with the reality of Ufe after Senghor. In fact, it seems that towards the 80's, the historical importance of the École de Dakar's work was exhausted." k> VsJ According to her, neither of our presidents has managed to solve the crisis of the artists, AGIT-ART does it better. Between Flag and Mask, a work by Issa Samb, is the evidence. The iconographic interpretation that this individual construes of the flag and the mask hanging from a tree and swaying in the wind reveal that: "...In a certain way these objects are a group of ideas that act as reference to con-temporary art in Senegal... This grouping is a paradigm that suits Senegal's case admi-rably." Faced with such rigidity of spirit, I think that the least effort undertaken by these au-thors causes grave damage to África and to the whole world. Similar facts forcé us to recommend to the authorities that cooperate with institutions, patience and prudence. It's best to do things well than to do them wi-thout thinking of their possible effects, impli-cations and repercussions. The quoted refe-rences are the product of a superficial men-tality that delights more in quantity than in quality. For it, the number of exhibitions and their publicity are superior curricular valúes than investment in the formation of staff for the conservation and the continuity of african artistic and cultural heritage. Though there is a certain margin of disagree- ^P >^W 9 A ment bctween both Americans, we can per-ceive the sarcasm and the absurdity of these debates that tour the world as if they were our tnie history in the absence of something better. Isn't it time we read the history of contemporary senegalese art from the pen of a compatriot? Can the lack of material means eventually blind our spiñt? All the spe-culation and senseless experimentation that come from misinformation or from bad inten-tion can be denied by our wül, in my opinión, to combat ignorance and overeóme this aggressive passion that forecasts destruction. All together we can replace it with creati-vity. These catalogues are aimed at creating the idea that Africans tread on their own mine field. Like televisión, a model media that day by day replaces the traditional teller, these trap-exhibitions, disguised under the mask of impartiality, with an aura of idolatry, philan-trophy and patemalism, are very good at taking in the less wary. There's no person alive who's written with so much originality and precisión about african art as Léopold Sedar Senghor. This, has always been admit-ted by Issa Samba. His prose, and above all his poetry, his visión and sensibility have emancipated, the one inextricable from the other, forms and colours in preeminent cla-rity, a transparent opaqueness that only fool-hardy antagonism ignores. As a political man, history sets him among those who defend and reinforce our culture with intui-tion and intelligence; with a lucidity inherent to the well-being of our mental and spiritual faculties. I think that these authors and their informers haven't read Senghor due to an intellectual blindness that confuses them. The publicity of their marketing is nuanced in the words of Jean Pigozzi, coUector and promotor, as he points out, of artists with foreign ñames and ignorant of the West's valúes, ñnancer of the safari África Today, he says: "/ hope África Today will briag you as mucb pleasure and deligbt as it has to me. Watcb out! CoUectiag contemporary african art can tum into a passion and requires much time, but it's mucü cbeaper tban coUec-ting Van Gogb and Cy Twombly! (Let's not forget tbe ead). P.D. We siacerely bope that André Magnin isn't devoured by a lion. Tbat would seriously set back tbe development of tbis passioaate coUection!..." As you may see, this strategy doesn't differ very much from Marketing, animal skins, ebony or ivory smuggjing, or from brain was-hing. These agents of a new fashion that make eclecticism the exotic menú of the mar-ket, think they are Christopher Columbus. AfiUcted by mental amnesia, the worshippers of "savage thou^t", provoking amóng tiiem-selves and others \Aask hoks in memory Uan-keted by a strange innocence, believe obses-sively that seeing is living the illusion. It is difficult for them to distinguish between what is África, and what is the extra dimensión of their voracity. This observation is valid for the whole world. Their market has created and produced, starting with the art coUection of the past, profítable curiosities to please the demands of eccentricity. This same situation threatens the art of the present. Artists and artisans every-whcre have been the willing or the unwitting victiihs of the trap set by industrial or media-nized production. Their art means far less a group of ordered aesthetic valúes than ideo-logical or monetary profitability. The stated example of Van Gogh is the example that reveáis the power of the market over reason and art. The combination of the commercial and the creative demands caution and modera-tion, but, especially, thought on the lamentable consequences of projects like the craft village for tourists and on the genuine coope-ration that we all desire. This means achie-ving unity in our efforts within a harmony that is liberating and generates human energy. At the present moment, in ñame of a corrupted and deviated concept we can observe the proliferation of a range of projects of cultural standardizatíon that is everywhere presented as globalism, post-modemism, internationalism. The sub-products of this standardized culture, whose true ñame is alienation, are foisted on the group of dependent countries. Although effort is made to vary the menú in order to increase profít and control, we must remem-ber that the scars left by totalitarianism and the confusions that shake capitalist societies, question and contest the actual situation. This impasse, whose exit is the secret of an awareness-process, remains blocked (in the sense of effective correlation between a pro-blem and its most eficient and operative solu-tion in terms of real experience), by the lack of liberating solutions on behalf of the domi-nant ideologies, because, ideology, in short, can't be the origin of art. To the contrary, blessed are those that avoid its triviality, the demagogy and the arbitrariness that tend to giorify provocation as a banner, paralysing any attempt at originality. However, including all obstacles and para-doxes, that are interferences to be overeóme, nobody can deny the efforts made by the State. Thanks to its insistence in resolving these problems, it guarantees, in relation to its means, education. This biennial, this debate, are exemplary occasions that we would all like to see with greater frequency. The rest, pertains to us, it is our responsability to look after it and to contribute, because we have to realize that the state has limitations and limits that a community's will and initia-tive can develop with interest in mutual coUa-boration, and sublimate them for the benefit of society. The artists are voluntaríes of this community that offer the participation and the reception of their art's communion. Pri-vate enterprise has here an example to support and to defíne in all faimess. What this contríbution pretends is an invi-tation to revise thoughtfuUy the subject of the reception and distribution of african art, far from setting out to be a conclusión or a deterministic defínition, precisely this: the reactivation of research and the conservation of our cultures, of our history and of our art in a moment of change and world restructu-ring, which is for us more than an instru-ment of knowledge. A symbol of our iden-tity, it is a source of wisdom and of faith in our own complexity, in our cultural wealth, that is, among other central priorities, a hard, but dynamic succession of crossfertili-zation, coUisions and integration; but above all a succession of acts of faith. It is also interesting to note that despite the lack of direct contact and frequent contad that we would wish with the work of artists that have preceded us and access to theoretical formulations of aesthetics, Afríca's contemporary art, within its diversity and its unity reveáis certain peculiar characterístics that mark its aesthetic and its spontaneity. Our traditions, actions and reactions íncor-porated into the accumulated wisdom of man-kind, are the fírst factors of this result. Wit-hout artistic sensibility, the intuition and emo-tive power required by these object-subjects that continué to represent their creators and perpetúate their presence among the living, wouldn't exist. Our tribute will be constant to the wise creators of this herítage that is gaining defmition. How we would like to have the opinión of those artists who have had considerable prac-tice and experience when transmitting our aesthetic valúes! To be able to find it illus-trated in books, newspapers, magazines, audiovisual media, naturally accessible to all homes. And what about the opinión of those other intellectuals, the whole of society? We can be sure that our music, our dances, our literature and also our story-telling have a vigour that maintains the power of language, and its correspondent diffusion through the media in the senegalese home. Why do the fíne arts lack this privileged publicity space? Can we disregard the mani-festation of our present valúes? André Magnin, collaborator of the Geor-ges Pompidou Centre, says about his selec-tion: "There are hundresds of creators living and working throughout África; it would be rídiculous, with fifteen artists, to give an idea of a whole continent's art, with such a com-plex history, a defínitive or exhaustive idea. I don't know if they are the best artists. I don't know what the word best means when we apply it to an artist. This selection is the result of compromise and afiinity; I have cer-tainly trusted my Western memory, but I've tried to forget its mirror-image in a Europe far too blinded by sacred hallucination, that simultaneously dominates its narcissistically enclosed art." Let him discem the dissonance between the works and the functions he attríbutes to them to avoid the utopia of forgetting his mirror. To forget means repression, and remembering too, and this should be noted by the new Africanists searching new Social Sciences. Let them consider what Paul Eluard tells us: "...artists give us new eyes, art critics new glasses." África is more than a visión, its reality goes beyond the promised good visión of the binoculars that believes it is mirrored as a mirage, as an object or as another merchan-dise. Let's medítate this, without the onus of Cartesian objectivity or the Hegelian scheme where África didn't fit in. I believe, that for everybody's just benefit, a better reception at home and a better national distribution will make African art the symbol of recognized progress forged by all of society. It is this that would enable a better cooperation bet-ween artists and the world as the hindú sage Rabindranath Tagore wished: "...towards a future so difíerent from the past as is the tree from its seed." As a Mandinga that has travelled through the verdant Casamance, I can assure you that the succulence of ripe fruit comes from the fact that the tree has been planted in the most fertile soil and has received the best attention. Art, as the most fertile land of África, can't conceive artistic creation as sub-developed or peripheral. This truth, that thank God is firm, we must turn into our presence: "..To admire black art badly, is to run the risk of gathering no fruit." To stop at the superficial appearances of art suppresses the quality of the sincere dialogue we can build with its richness. Let's listen to Léopold Sedar Senghor's advice in his article, Black African Aesthetics. Its genero-sity, like new sap, surges again, isolating and displacing the parasites that invade the tree. Our art is only the expression of an intrin-sically african spirituality. Imbued with its past, that the work appropiates, an emanci-patory longing reactualizes it and purifies it anew, transforms it and tums it into an infinite reply similar to the one Amadou Ham-paté Ba defended: "...To take África to its máximum expansión, by the path of genteleness, good beha-viour, respect for our neighbour's ideas, none of which exeludes firmness, constancy, perse-verance in our own ideas and the unrelenting pursuit of their realization. Such is the voca-tion of twentieth century Africans." We can't turn this ancestral wealth and its mystery, into a passtime for the amateurs of exoticism. Its magic isn't importable. We want our heritage to be rid of formulas and clichés that make it mediocre, lead it to con-venience and banality; to repetition and to terminal folklorism. How can a curator affirm that art in África has nothing to do with a progressive history, made up of the succes-sion of real problems that are solved, accor-ding to him, when one talks about western art because artists have believed in the dimen- Kairouan flat-woveii textile motif: Banaers. sion opened up by Picasso and Duchamp? Our art dates from before prehistory and duiing its life it has never stumbled over false problems; it merely resumes that which fulfills US and gives us faith in life. Our works have denied the impossible and given it form. Francine N'diaye has underU-ned it: "...tbe Afrícan patiimooy is recupera-ted by a universal pictorial language tbat geaerates a powerfuUy personal expression". Also, Iba N'diaye states: "...tbe artists of New África mil belp tbeir fellows to get out of tbe cultural ghetto wbere certain people would like to see tbem coníüied more or less consciousfy". The poet Joe Bousquet defends the same attitude: "...tbe soul shines naturally with the geneo-rity that it has been able to fínd. I'tn impo-tent; Man is grotesque when he fears man." For us, man is the principie of remedy. Art takes us nearer to him without creating distance simultaneously. It is thanks to vir-tualities that have survived that our feelings have found in artistic creation a natural model of expression. Far from setting out to explain, these works only communicate and present their own essence, the interpretation of destiny. At least, our's is never absent. Youssou N'dour sang this in the melodies of "Set" and "Yaru", clear visión, limpidity, propriety, respect, courtesy and humility, essential valúes for any recuperation and any intelligent revisión. Source and recapitulation of the true and the real, the works corres-pond to our need of expressing sensibility and our knowledge of foreign and national traditions. Therein lies the significance of our art. True to itself despite the smallest change and celebration. Perpetual abstraction, bridge or road between the absolute and the tran-sient; about its rythm, the Senegalese poet says: "...The architecture of beíng, the inner dynamics that gives it shape, the pattem of waves it emitts for the attention of others, the puré expression of strength, the vibrant colusión, that through our senses, touches the very fibre of being." This constellation, a prism through which the spirit takes shape, is a path along which the etemal enters human reality in order to have effect, transformed in new appearances. Incamate spirituality, artistic african creation also makes man: "...the crossroads of symbolic corraponden-ces, that go from the world to man, and vice versa." In sympathy with the Senegalese philoso-pher Alassane N'Dew, the poet from Marti-nique, Aimé Cesaire sings, calming us: Eia for the royal Kailcedrat Eia for tbose who've never invented any-tbing For tbose wbo bayen't explored For tbose wbo haven't conquered But abandon themselves, inspired, to tbe essence of all tbings Caieless of domination, tbougb tbey follow tbe rules of tbe world. Truly, older sons of tbe world Sensitive to all tbe world's stirring Fraternal wind of all tbe world's stirring Puré bed of all tbe world's waters Spark of tbe world's sacred fíre Flesb of tbe ílesb of tbe world pulsating witb it. Amadou Hampaté Ba similarty takes pan in the celebration of island and continent: "...Synthesis of the universe and crossroads of vital energies, man is therefore called upon to be a point of balance, where, through him, all of the diffeient dimensions he represents may flow. Then he will deserve the ñame of Mea-Kumanyon, the interiocutor of Maa-Ngala (the supieme bdng), and defender of creation's harmony." To quench one's thirst in this wisdom that identifíes the source of its existence in the roots of being and that, also, has known to exalt in its art and thou^t, the imagination becomes the secret law of the real, which is to incorpórate it more intimately and actively into our creativity. It is to valué the underl-ying unity and Üie superior coherence that articulates it. The clear sighted will and the enthusiasm to explore these terrítories, some-times mysteriousty mutilated by Histoty, requi-res from us, preparation, purifícation and uni-fication without confusi^ the passage between levéis of this vast symbolic network. Only the wise recovery of our languages that pits known sensations against leamed formulas can open the way to a reality that we can experience and express forcefuUy, with love and respect when explored. It is clear for us that the artist instructs us how to look not only through his works, but through the best part of his personality, with the honesty and generosity that all truth con-tains, and with love; at least, that of the artist. His work ptuifies of all influence what is intrinsically his. He therefore expresses in the most original way which is most singular and universal. Longing to surpass himself continually to satisfy this essential need, to créate sincerely, excuses him from accumula-ting useless knowledge through work and purifícation. He develops transgressing the application of assimilated techniques, purging them of artifíciality, of arbitrariness and of the parasites that disturb the legitímate cla-rities of the spirit. It is there, better than in any other part, that conscience, that organi-zing will, when it illumines passions reveáis unity within multiplicity, the simple within the complex, order in disorder, in one word, animates "the intelligibility of the living". Our much missed Gera NTbengue, virtuoso of the suweer, said: "I like, especially, talking with draughts-men, with those who love drawing. I can't explain it to anybody who doesn't feel love. A draughtsman is always a student, he sear-ches, and he is also a man of good heart. The pen must be left on its own, shapes will come, and that is all." This advice, immediately takes us to the boundary where the realm of valúes, where beauty and generosity of the work meet, for those that can master the rebellion of sight, like the Dogon lock that scares indiscreet onlookers away. He who is able to unite the soul with the heart of matter, as Gastón Bachelard says, defending, "a really alive material imagination", cióse to the one de-void of sophistication and complex that Mi-chel Leiris suggested in relation with black afrícan art and artists, an imagination that is able to possess the irmer essence of universal matter, the great natural substances of Na-ture: water, night, sun light, substances that presuppose a "refined taste", and require no additives. This locus that we explore has the same generosity that it proposes as an answer to our wish for adoming it emotionally. That is how the controUing and moderating task of museography is defined, that tríes to show us an exhibition in a more intelligent way. However, as you well know, the materialism of this society, though it reyolutionizes our knowledge beyond any doubt, fails in the territory of art. It will be futile to travel through the world seeking art, for he who doesn't carry beauty within will never find it. For this reason, art has always been a mark of beauty and goodness. Here Teranga is manifested. I can't help quoting Baudelaire, who wrote in August 1851, in Au fur et á mesure que l'homme avance dans la vie: "...Beauty shall only be the promise of hap-piness (Stendhal, I believe, said this). Beauty will be the form that guarantuees máximum goodness, faith fidelity to oath, loyalty in the execution of a contract, ñnesse in the intelli-gence of relationships. Ugliness will be cruelty, avance, stupidity and dishonesty. Most young people ignore these things and assume them as their own risk. Among us, some have already leamed it, but it is somet-hing we_ leam only by ourselves. What effi-cient means could I use to persuade a young rake that the irresistible aÁection I feel for oíd ladies, these people who have suffered for their lovers, their husbands, their childien and also for their own errors, carnes no sexual desire? If the idea of universal love and virtue accompany us during all our pleasures, these would become torment and remorse." Here is something that would do good to Jacques Soulillou and Stisan Vogel that daré to wish that Afrícan artists coimect with the main stream and the perenially open horizon that defínes Western actuality, tendentiously exemplifíed, where the new world order of the North Amerícans won't survive unless multiculturalism rectifies their visión. They daré to cast judgement, forgetting the icono-clast and the barbaríty, the despotism and tyranny perpetrated in all of the conquered terrítoríes. Jacques Soulillou comes out with the foUowing: "...Wanting to prove at any price that creativity is in good health, many exhibitions of so-called african an err on account of their quantative optimism and lack disoeming capa-city. Furthermore, this can be explained due AHA^^'-^ A to the absence of a market, of exhibition structures, in short, to everything that acts as a stimulant and catalyst for talents." This is the bait tendered to the Ul-informed, be they artists or authorities with positive or negative inclinations. To enjoy African art, we have to be acquainted with the widest impUcation of the term, as is indicated by our relationship with ancestors. Commercial greed and historicism aren't enough to love and communicate its artistic merits. Quite the oposite, this is only good for the missionaries of art, reward seekers, safan hunters and the clientéle who are the object of this pemicious promotion of the image that the merchants deem profitable for their country's or their global planet's hungry pockets. Let them not forget what Jean-Paul Sartre said in Orphée Noir: "...Seen from Senegal, globalism appears príncipally a beautiful dream." The vanity of the superior pretensions always subjacent in the monologues which certain western galleries and their associates have with artists from other cultures finds its máximum expression in the neutralization or the reduction of the other, while keeping the appropiate distances. In the preface to the exhibition Magiciens de la Teñe, inaugurated in the celebrations of the Bicentenary of the French Revolution, the head curator, Jean Hubert Martin, argües in order to prove that we are dealing with power relations and not with natural powers in this encounter fabri-cated round the word magic, that: "...We must distrust our schematic labels that carry the risk of concealing the comple-xity of certain local situations. The criteria used to select the artists are akin to those that would determine a Western selection, applied, however, with a considerable number of variations." ^ You can imagine the charlatan's market; there you can buy liberty, fraternity and equality. What perturbs us about these real facts, is the growing number of people who having seen this kind of exhibition, come to check the veracity of the Information recei-ved. What is disconcerting and ambiguous, is that in all the catalogues I have mentioned, insults and acknowledgements are found pell-mell, addressed to our artists and authorities, thanking them for their kind participation "in the success" of the event. To rub salt into the wounds, the authors of these irreve-rent remarks appear in catalogues of modem Senegalese art where the quality of edition and printing are clearly deficient. Spellings aren't checked, neither factual errors. These documents reflect the consideration we give to our aesthetics and to its contents, to our foremost banner in matters of cultural coope-ration. Meanwhile, in other parts, televisión programmes and articles on the subject continué. Though in the world we find sensitive people who can observe art, without having to read the accompanying text, it isn't the majority. To the contrary, the most part refer to the media and to guides for blinke-red tourists foUowing sensationalism. Is the responsability for this situation due to an incompetent system? Ibrahima Baba Kaké expressed it well: "...A country without a leader, unprotected, can only conserve fragments of a culture that has become inorganic and is given over to the formality of these officials, who have subs-tituted the traditional chiefs chosen in the past for their beliefs and their devotion to the protection of a community of interests inhe-rent to social "well-being", whether western or "advanced locáis", produces the same results: the denial of a traditional culture that is despised." As an example, we have the reply of Frans Haks, director of the Groninguen Museum to Giaconto di Pietrantonio, coUaborator of Flash Art: "G.D.P.: Referring to what we were saying about the colonizing absorbent West, that feels the need to appropiate the East or África in order to recharge its energies, do you think this crisis could be solved through loans or by ravaging other countries? F.H.: Yes. For instance, when the Japanese exhibition took place, we had another exhibition of contemporary Russian art at the same time, which seems a great shame to me. I think we must be patient until results come up. I mean, that it took África twenty years of democracy and postcolonialism before we had any results." Presentday cosmopolitism denles the ega-litarian right of difference, and internationa-lism only exists to the extent that each culture conserves its possibilities, its vitality and energy. The economic and cultural globaliza-tion demands from the Senegalese the redou-bled responsability of not letting their country become the object of powers alien to their interests. Which model of modemization are we heading for? It is vital to think about this, for given the loss of the native valúes of sensibility, the mimesis of the foreign beco-mes a generalized practise in all teaching ins-titutions. Thus, loss of identity and the chan-nels of expression can't be modernity, or modemization; quite the opposite, it's a regression that pivots on itself. Western utopias sink, yet the damned of the earth remain everywhere, become poten-tial refuse consummers, of the most toxic kind, victims of xenophobia and inequahty before the law and difference. The violation of the cultural integrity of the others continué, transforms their patrimony into monu-ments of signs, strong currencies, profane objects by virtue of the miracle of the new decodification laid down by the expert and readjusting eye of certain foreign merchants and some Africans oriented in business. Barbara Prezeau (Haití). Le polyptique dubon saurage. 1992. Their perfect projects decontextualize, through salón painting, the sacred atmosp-here of museums to idolatrize and descérate the visions and ideas contained there. Yet they can't help us noticing that the sermons and well designed cults conceived as mecha-nical practices of conversión cold-bloodedly imposed on us as symbols of cultural coope-ration, are projections of the unconscious that turn the Other into a big alibi. In the catalogue of Magiciens de la Terre, Fierre Gaudibert tells us, with great diñiculty, I imagine: "...The symbolic violence of the West's artistic power of legalization, with a naturally universal pretensión, is applied with terror to all artists of these "other" countries. They are judged immediately and almost automa-tically as followers and exponents, as poor imitators of Western artists, known and con-sidered as desirable visual objects apt for domestic collection but unworthy of being in real or imaginary museums. A dilemma that traps them diabolically, beyond real action and proposition, with the exception of very rare examples of brilliant synthesis or extreme individual singularities. What's more, it's true that to fínd the balanced attitude bet-ween consideration and contempt when ju-dging artists of cultures so different to ours is diffícult. The idea of decentralization is necessary without giving up any criteria of Creative quality. A cióse watch benevolently practised seems preferable, inspite of its sub-jectivity and arbitrariness, to the ofíicial selec-tions that we have been able to appreciate in certain biennials." Universality isn't the exclusive property of any civilization since we can only it identify it in the relationship between all civilizations. True dialogue presupposes the recognition of the Other, both in terms of identity and au-the Other, both in terms of identity and au-thority, and without this, any attempt at uni-versalizing reconciliation is futile. Such con-cepts appear in La Pensée Africaine by Alas-sane N'daw. r d like to remind these critics that they take a look at their own history before opening their mouths. Let them reread the history of the Impressionists, and see how the press kept on treating them as men-tally insane, affected by optical disfunctions that would be a challenge for specialized ophthalmologists: Joseph Emile Müller gives many examples of the persecution of these artists by the press that today are so magni-ficently priced: "In 1877 Albert Wolff, the Fígaro colum-nist, wrote: «...it's a case of madness», and another newspaper, on the same theme, «it's a compromise with the contemptible and the disgusting»..." Why did the Salón des Indépendents open? What was the principie of selection of the official Salón that forced the rebels to defend their freedom in heterodoxy? Today those that exhibited regularly in the official Salón aren't even spoken about. Let them reread the "damned poets", especially Baudelaire, in his critique of the salons, his posthumous work, L'Art Romantique, criticising the reti-cence of the French to Wagner's music and American society's to Edgar Alian Poe. Let them reread Daniel Henry Kahnweiler's Aest-hetic Curiosities and his Aesthetic Confes-sions. Or listen to Picasso telling Hélene Par-melin that when he painted he was surroun-ded by a brotherhood of artists like Paul Eluard's Fréres Voyants, and that they were aware of having spoiled the contemporaneity inaugurated by Picasso and Duchamp. Let them reflect on the rebellions of Miró, Mas-son, Max Emst, Victor Brauner and so many others against the admirable poet André Bretón. It's obvious they've leamt nothing from Mahaux or Kandinsky, or from Barthes' Cri-ticism of Truth. The phenomenom isn't new. It's a question of comparing the points of view adopted in the books by Elie Faure, Kenneth Clark, Klaus Honnef and Edward Lucie Smith; Gaudibert states: "The nostalgia of the South, isn't only that of the lost paradise, of nature refound and recomposed unity, but a search for spirituality and energies whose absence generales suffe-ring for an increasing number of the North's citizens. Furthermore, perhaps the journey through the art of the Other could stimulate the searchers. Or, if not, do western artists only hope to rejuvenate, revitalize and refresh themselves? To have a blood transfusión? To effect a return to the origins, the beginnings, the sources, to the Mother, to uterine life?, Perhaps." Do they really want to go on a regressive trip, after all that was done to imítate the cubist experience with oriental art? Let's not be astonished, because in all attempts at schism, what is contemptible, though universal, stands in the limelight alongside the mar-veis of art and aesthetics. From Manzoni to John Miller, including Arthur Graven, who in 1910, wrote, 'T'm going to eat my shit", to Jeff Koons who exhibits photo-murals of his sexual or pomographic activities with his wife, fecal expression has become a commonplace of contemporary Western art. The mosaic on the front cover of FLASH ART (International Ed), which no doubt you have seen, is called Panoramic View. Bits of shit making up a pattern reproduced in ceramic. The work is fit to decórate a dinning room, a ga- Uery, a museum or a palace. Can this be the horizon Soulillou intends for us? The work was shown in the selection by Jan Hoet, director of the Ghent Museum and general curator of the IX Dokumenta at Kassel. Eventually Jan Hoet decided that Africans could take part in Kassel. That's why we were able to see the sculpture of the Nouba wrest-lers by our compatriot Ousmane Sow. The conclusión of the article that considers this exhi-bition and its curator, Dokumenta IX, more is a mess, published in Art News states: "...Considering what may result from Hoet's ambitions concerning ecstasy, passion needs order to be comprehensible and balanced. Every art-loving person likes to think he is touched by divine power. The pity is that Hoet has been burnt out by it." I prefer the audacity, the boldness and the radicality of Picasso and Duchamp. This kind of deconstruction that contradicts the history of the European museum celebrates the triumph of its victory over the rigidity of a past that it rejected for its corruption. It's a local and not a world scale phenomenom. We recall, don't we, that the birth of the museum, after the Muses, comes from the accumulated loot of robbery sanctioned by the Church and the Nobility as example of their civilizing task. In the so-called third world, museums have been adopted, and they must be adapted to legitímate the rights of mdependence and cultural heritage. México 1992.
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Calificación | |
Título y subtítulo | Enigmas of the crossroad : vision and light. Reception and distribution of African Art |
Autor principal | Camara, Ery |
Publicación fuente | Atlántica : revista de las artes |
Numeración | Número 05 |
Sección | Territories |
Tipo de documento | Artículo |
Lugar de publicación | Las Palmas de Gran Canaria |
Editorial | Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno |
Fecha | 1993 |
Páginas | p. 085-104 |
Materias | Arte ; Etnografía ; África ; Teoría y crítica |
Copyright | http://biblioteca.ulpgc.es/avisomdc |
Formato digital | |
Tamaño de archivo | 6459712 Bytes |
Texto | Enigmas of the crossroad: Vision and Light, Reception and distribution of African Art * ERY CÁMARA To begin with, I want to express my gra-titude to the authoríties that have invited me to particípate in this debate. The occasion seems similar to the kind of joyful celebra-tion expeñenced by Afrícans upon the reen-counter with their talent and genius during the artistic manifestations that took place at the first World Festival of the African Arts, in Dakar in 1966. The Musée Dynamique held during this occasion an exhibition organizaed by Iba N'Daye: Teadeacies and Confroatations, the Contemporary Arts. This event stimulated, among others, one of the most Senegalese vir-tues: Teranga, hospitality or availability, and especially, utter probity and generosity when consideting the master works of African Art. Art, is indeed, the image of the soul. As a path to essence, it leads>man most intimately to the fuUilment of love. For this reason, the reception of a work of art in our traditional societies was put to the test within a symbo-lically determined ritual. Poetry, dance and music fused in a law that belonged to that moment of communion with the invisible. Nothing would be more true than this inner trembling and the harmonious reaction that stenuned from the idenity that symbolic images in initiation rites or any other vitalistic celebration possess and provoke. Art and edu-cation reciprocally strengthened the commu-nity's well-being. I wouldn't mind if the painter, the resto-rer, the museum expert all had their say, but I'm a son of this earth, and Tve always felt the need to be myself. To broach the subject of the reception given to African Art within its context abroad enables us to evalúate the State of preservation of its virtues. It is per-tinent to remember, inspite of the bad taste • This lecture was given as part of the debates that took place in Dakar, Sene¿ü, on the occasion of Dak'Art 92. it leaves most historians, that the genocides and the colonialism that have sadly disrupted Africa's history, have simultaneously determined certain of our reactions towards our cultural valúes. The alteration of our territory by these tra-gic invasions, to which we must add the for-ceful influence of foreign religjons and certain contríbutíons of industrial civilization have had great repercussions on our sensibility. They are facts that have perturbed and vexed the development of African Arts. However, and I don't say it in vain, none of these manifestations will lose neither the spirit ñor the strengh of their oríginality. Our aspiration to independence reveáis one of the stages of this history; regained free-dom to choose the most adequate means that secare the best continuity for our tradi-tions and our heritage. This privilege confers on US the responsability, of protecting and increasing these valúes, for future generations. To carry a bit further and humbly, like in a caravan, the memory of those we love, pas-sing on to the new generation that eventual responsibility; that's what we can all achieve united. To preserve this heritage means to prepare the way for its reception, its distribution and its appreciation. To measure the capacity of its present Information and the initiative of host institutions, foments simultaneously, rat-her than a change, progress based on truth and precisión, making all aggression futile and impotent. To the extent that we are able to deploy our sttength with greater efficiency, this recovery of the vigour and the resistence of our art to any manipulation by speculative phantasy will represent a transformation and an innovation, and the most sane behaviour. The renovation or the revolution of creativity traces the history of the art work, of the ori-gin of its changes and its incombustible sur-prises. This dynamic encourages criticism oriented to stimulation and thought armed with mani-fold criteria of the perception of the art work as common property and not as the exclusive right of a minority. To conserve our cultural legacy is to revitalize it in the memory and in the heart of people. We fínd traditional references in the collective subconscious that appear as concems to be divulged to the new generations. In 1945, referríng to the state of conservation of our heritage, Léopold Sedar Senghor said: "Oíd África is dying. Customs and lan-guage are being transformed at incredible speed. There's only enough time left to pho-tograph its face at this moment, a visage that stül mirrors its etemal features. Tomorrow shall be too late." Imagine my astonishement when reading in the catalogue of the exhibition África Today: "Being African doesn't imply the fact of belonging to any community." Actually, in Senegalese society, animist, moslem and christian traditions coexist. The racial plurality that characterizes our society, is accelerated daily by the annexation derived from economic and technological progress. To detect the imprint of its impact on the situation, public opinión and adopted behaviour gives US a far more precise approach'to the cultural phenomenom. Under this condi-tion of economic sub-development, we can, without generalizing, imagine the obstacles cleared by africans responsible for effecting a fairer and more rational reevaluation of our heritage than the one conducted by ethno-graphy at the service of colonialism, or the black slave trade and the prime products derived from it that favoiu«d the industrial revolution. AA- Though History's time leads our way, to sitúate the beginnings of contemporary Afri-can art withiu the framework of indepen-dence may not be very accurate. For us, ancestois are contemporary. They have never gone, they keep guard over their descendents. Sighs, exiled as we are (the poet sings), they refuse to die. Their art is a necessary refe-rence in History, though encyclopedias of universal art, don't find it convenient, when refe-rring to their qualities, to justify the ambi-guous pretext of Arthur de Gobineau in his book: Essay on the inequality of the human races, conceming the "superlative degree of the sensual faculty the negro is endowed with and without which no art can possibly exist". Yet, he also stated, "he required the help of the white race to promote its valúes". History took no time in proving the contrary. Our art has proved it, surviving as a vehicle for memory, sensibility and the human ima-gination. Therein lies its oríginahty. With its rhythm, its charm, its indomitable power of fascination and its classical forcé, negro art triggered off the fascination of wes-tern artists with a new aesthetics of surpri-sing spontaneity if compared with the mecha-nical systematizations of academies and with a clarity that somehow acted as a redeeming spell for art and artists trapped in one way or another by positivism, and later by mate-rialism. This perturbing charm, though fre-quently distorted by certain isolated and ill-adapted formulas, rather than spirítual inspi-ration, remains as a strange, curious object for the absent minded. See what Michel Lei-ris says about Cubism: "...the suppoTt these works could give to european artists in search of new techniques. Fauvists like Vlaminck and Derain (in fact, Picasso attributes the true discovery of cubism to Vlaminck), anxious to return to the origins observed with sympathy, popular or primitive works which moved away from the greco-roman ideáis extant since the Renaissance, and apparently created with utter innocence seemed examples of an art devoid of sophistication." We regret the fact that today the most beautiful examples of these works are to be found in museums and coUections far away from US. The scarcity of Information about the knowledge they cumulatively possess, con-demn the few surviving pieces to the icono-clasm of the invaders, to being the constant prey of poaching, to unlimited commercial speculation or irreverent imitation that vilifies the appearance of airports with tourist galle-ríes in África and throughout the world. We might think we were in the heat of discovery, when masterpieces in gold by original crea-tors were melted down into lingots in order to feed mercantilism. Pnce substitutes all valúes and becomes economic and political power. The works, labelled and distríbuted in commercial and market forums. The sanctua-ries of desecration and its priests are able to fmd with the same stiategic energy appíied to all International relations a price for everyt-hing. All of this represents a serious handi-cap for US Africans. I imagine it is the same type of handicap that most of our masterpieces suffer condemned to oblivion in crates, in inadequate repositories, in museums jampac-ked with objects or in offices. The absence of African Art in the academic programmes of schopls is simultaneously mirrored by the inefficiency of the teaching models used. The clinical history or the diagnosis of these works analized in terms of the femenine or the masculine, the organic and the inorganic, the tangible and the intangible, point out just how much work has to be done in order to secure their integrity and to free the effi-ciency they contain. In the preface to the book of the Dakar Museum, André Malraux says that we wouldn't know how to find the state of grace, that enabled the hands and the eyes of the traditional artist to engender the forms and the colours of the invisible. Our search, far from imitating the ancestors, is made evi-dent by the foUowing quotation by Senghor from the same book: "It is still impossible, contemplating to the point of hallucinatioa, the masterpieces of African Art at the Dakar Museum, to reen-counter not only the forms and colours of the ancient artists, but their style that flows from the very source of négritude. As this is not impaired, we only have to make an iimer return, to sink to the depths of our soul, till we reach the place where the underground river flows beneath the saad, so that visión emerges and the rhythm of the Kingdom of Childhood begins to beat. That's the advice we've given our young artists. "Visit fre-quently our Museum", /Ve told them, "Behold these violent and puré forms until they possess you obsessively. This is the idea with which we've built, on the west coast of Dakar, facing the Atlantic ocean, a modem museum of Negro-African art where the more than 26.000 pieces that are still packed will fínd a place." Museography in this part of the world is far less eloquent than the Master of Words. We regret that the modem museum has remained a project. The coUections of the contemporary cultural heritage similarly share the same conditions of conservation. The fai-lure, or the frustration of this kind of invest-ments, even in the case of a staff devoted to the conservation of cultural heritage, (estáte or chattels), or to its continuity, approaches the turbulent image of the present that informs and illustrates most of the articles of the Anthologie des Arts Plastiques Contem-porains au Sénégal. Furthermore, certain notorious contradic-tions of the cultural politics within the con-text of Senegalese artistic reality are lengthily debated in two articles of the exhibition's catalogue: África explores: 20th Ceatury African Art, organized by the Centre for African Art and the New York Museum of Contemporary Art, and The Ofñcial History, by Susan Vogel, and Négritude: Between Mask and Flag, Senegalese cultural ideology and the École de Dakar. Later on I'd like to come back to these articles. As far as the Musée Dynamique goes, where our contemporary art meets masterpieces of twentieth century art like internatío-nally released credit notes, the strange func-tion that currently distorts it, reduces the space symbolically prepared for stimulating processes of familiaiization, attendance, adap-tation and the deference we demand for our ancient or contemporary art. This monument is awaiting the restoration of its purpose and style. It hasn't been adapted to our needs; thus the silence that has condemned it to its present circumstances. The study of the reac-tions of Senegalese people to works of art is • pending so that we can effect a better museo-graphic reform of our heritage. The lack of competent staff in the field of conservation, restoration of cultural heritage and museology makes the situation for prívate and State coUections more difficult. We have examples that explain the absence of investigating the state of our art's conservation and our aesthetic education in schools and universities. There aren't national or regional museums that house permanent or temporary exhibitions of our ancestors' masterpieces. The scarce bibliographical referen-ees published by africans to protect the wealth of perpetuable traditions which trans-mitted art from one generation to another, monographical studies with illustrations of the Ufe and work of the artist that distin-guish our history, make these less known at home than in other places. Exhibitions organized by the state, artists and prívate galleties, though surprisingly cove-red by the press, avoiding the Umitations of type-casting, are received indifferently by the pubUc and the critics. Criticism that is assem-bled by itinerant exhibitions organized by the state abroad, only reach us through the fUter of sensationalist press communiqués. Abroad, in art history books, catalogues and exhibitions, there is hard críticism of cultural poli-cies and the contemporary arts in África. For André Magnin, curator of the itinerant exhibition África Today, his adventures are resumed in this depiction of the continent at the present moment: "...When politicians lament profusely the loss of African identity, due to colonial and neo-colonial oppresion, there's a lack ofini-tiatives and money to set up permanent coUections." Susan Vogel, curator of the exhibition África explores: 20th century African Art and director of the New York Centre for African Art where it was held, states: "A serious problem, thougfi less for artists and offícials, is the absence of compromised críticism. Artists in África, are limited by a lack of perspective in their work. They hardly see any art works produced by artists outside their environment. The official infra-structure is monolithical and unavoidable, and it dispenses indiscriminate support, that counts on critical reception in the press that wallows in ílattery. The only opinions avai-lable to artists, come vía fríends or teachers, and artist associations where críticism is limi-ted by poUtics and closeness. Isolation, frus-tration and complacency are the gravest pro-blems that beset African International Art." Taking the opinión of these specialist entrusted with the task of contextualizing the coUections of African Art, we can imagine easily how the foreign pubhc is ideologically oriented towards knowledge of our art, our artists and our cultural politics. These catalogues progressively become books of increa-sing importance, by the careful selection of author and edition, that sometimes are better than the exhibition. They are sacralized by experts, specialists and leading intellectuals (fortunately some fine sensibilities appear among them), for the collector and the specialist. The production of spectacles for the profane is abundant in supermarkets and librarles. The impact of the deficiencies and absen-ces recorded as interferences in the develop-ment of the artistic education of artists, stu-dents and public, is made evident by the lack of a constant organized and institutionalized criticism that includes different manifold cri-teria of approximation to black African art and the aesthetics that gives it substance. This blank gives rise to the following westem statements on the panorama of African Art today: "...With the exception of rare examples, we don 't fínd there museums, coUections, galle-ríes or art críticism...". "...The arríval of the europeans was necessary to give painting the standing it required". "I searched for art and artists. This explora tion was somewhat ill-fated. I had to observe, to what extent, art (or should I say magic), had been uprooted from the very central and existential place that it had once occupied in the Ufe of African man. Some tried to keep up my expec-tations, in... For even in the most sophistica-ted circles, art appeared as an alibi to con-ceal the loss of ethnic personality, cultural ignorance or indifference. Not only conside-ration but even respect were missing for art." "This also carríes, however paradoxical it may seem, an implied danger. The main client of the Third World's new art is stiU the First World, and this sitúa tion dated from decolonization. From the time when freedom of movement had no boundaríes. It is European travellers, north Americans and Japanese, or foreigners with temporary contraéis, who at the most spend only a brief time, that determine the African artistic mar-ket. A series of factors, like the lack of culture poverty, the absence of a large educated middle-class and tendency of cultured people to imítate European models and to organize consummerism round the products of industrial society (especially cars, electrical goods, sports wear and luxury upholstered furni-ture), have led developing countries to unde-rrate their own art. Given that most of the population StiU Uve in rural communities, it has no contact with art created in the cities. Only a very reduced group of the African élite ís devoted to coUectionism. Fot most Africaas, art is still sometbing apparentiy futile, since it has lost its ancient magic powers. For this reasotí, art is reserved to foreigaeis, without any regrets or jealousies". "The Oldenbiug Kuastverein dares to exhibit Seaegalese art." Similar statements about an art diéntele could already be read in Marshall Ward Mount's book: African art, the years since 1920, published by Indiana University Press, in Bloomington and London, in 1973. This batrage of quotes comes from the dif-ferent authois of the catalogue Añica Today, organized in Paiis with the works of the Con-temporary African Art CoUection and in coUaboration with the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, with the itinerary, Las Palmas, México and God knows where else. Though its selective principie may appear arbitrary with respect to the altruism of the organizers, it only wants to project a prodi-gious event that breaks the castrating silence of the taboos imposed on African artistic creation and also plays down the rídicule of the artists that particípate in this kind of exhi-bition. These opinions can be read in French, Spanish, English and in almost all European languages and generally the world over since some time ago, with the solé purpose of favouring the annulment and exploitation of the Otber. Is the silence on behajf of African authoríties a sign of tolerance, indiíference or lack of Information on the subject? I would like to ask why in the catalogues of exhibi-tions organized by the state, wc find the ñames and the unbelievable opinions of those who in other contexts denígrate it. Even worse, in shameful cases, these attitudes and denigrating arguments are adopted by local offícials who shake off allegiances and score own-goals. This corrodes the sporting spirit that Art requires. Günter Peus said in con-nection with the 1977 FESTAC: "In tbe context of tbis pan-afrícan exbibi-tiott, wbere tbe artists were abosen by tbe official representatives of fuadamentally dictatorial govemments, an art exclusively des-tined to tbe ^ory of tbe povferñú bas prevai-led, creating a martial kitscb." Can we generalize so easily? We realize that the disinformation accumiüated on anth-ropological discoveries, ethnohistory and archaeology in Senegal, leads many misinfor-med writers to afílrm imprudently that the fine arts don't have any real tradition in the country. We quote, precisely in order to reflect justly on the problem, the excellent article by Ibrahim Baba Kaké: African culture, cultura] identity, development and dialogue betweea cultures, that appeared in the magazine Etbiopiques. The historian reminds US that: "...The rural paintings of Tassili in the Sahara, and those of the Kalaharí desert pro-vide a testimony of a pictorial art sepárate from architecture where painting can be con-sidered an art per se. The arts of communi-cation have enjoyed a similar status in Afíican societies. Furthennore, many ritual ceremonies and many popular gatherings include a thea-trícal and communicative element where dances and music frequently are integrated in ritual procesions and poetic recitáis, making up a dynamic whole that derives its meaning from the ritual character of the event. If we examine the religious dimensión we can only confírm that África is the paradise of ani-mism." With the foUowing reference the historian concludes his analysis of the predominant situation in presentday African Arts: "...Black African culture is not the appa-rent synchretism conceived and supported by the mass-media of western countries or of new african states." Starting from a critical and objective visión of current african reality, he adds later: "It is worthwhile defíning the contemporary social structure of África and fínding out if it contains elements of valid reform..." Having proved in a rigorous analysis the persistence of a notably infiltrated colonial mentality, bent on perverting the development of the arts with the aid of certain offícials who have replaced the ttaditional chiefs, he States: "...The African believes that political and economic domination don't necessarily imply the destruction of the other's cultural valúes. The West, with its universalist conquest, doesn't sepárate territorial conquest from cultural invasión." Since the Uth century weVe inherited this same memory that many africans beheve genetic while it is solely historical. This rela-tive ignorance, compared to the avidity of the International Empire of profit and its lucrative operations, and especially with real cooperation, proves that the inadequacy of the methods applied to cultural investment, the inadaptation of museographic institutions, together with the notorious rift between culture and education, hinder the just reception due to African art at home and in other parts. To the contrary, the growing void crea-ted by the lack of decolonization of the ima-gination brings the bombardment of new ste-reotypes, new temptations that overeóme us helplessly. In his article, Black Aáican creation under superior tutorsbip, Mamadou Traoré Diop, críes out in favour of establishing replies sui-table to the demands of cultural creativity, for "...a new model of more limiting rela-tions tends to be dramatically imposed, in terms of a deviation from creation and artists, pursuing only the interests of a hege-monic policy of presence and influence..." International exhibitions, better curated by some, are increasingly prcferred by govemments than national ones. Within a frame-work of cooperation, they are more efficient for the development of cultural exchanges. But, let US be sure for once, that only through knowledge of our own valúes shall we be known by others and this awareness gives US a better knowledge of the other. Our artists, ignored by criticism in the most part, yet recorded by geopolitics that pretends to establish a self-proclaimed cultural standardization, are tracked down and damaged in their development by wily mer-chants who would like to reduce them to those formulas that have guarantueed their success and the hegemonic aspirations already mentioned. The pitiful conditions that mar-ginalize these artists to the bohemian and the exotic, simultaneously leads to the extrover-sion of their cultural valúes. Depríved of status and means, their aban-don and their dubious integration propitiates alienation of their sensibility, and opens the way to the criticisms of the mentioned catalogues. Harrassed by the huge barrage of pre-fabricated illusions, of stereotypes alien to our reality, exported or imported as models, they favour, beyond the mere aesthetic appre-ciation, an assimilation of implied figurative ideologies: Superman, Batman, Badpainting, and also violence and power. These iconographic doctrines ensure our interior decorating. In our homes, the works which stem from our imagination and enhance the habitat are substituted by chromolitographic reproduc-tions, posters, nudes, plástic ware, foreign cinema, pop and sport stars; calendars and hyperkitsch associations. For an altemative history of art, the North American Susan Vogel comments: "A far more useful bistory of art could be structured round two great ideologies we bave just discussed (Autbenticity and Black-ness). Tbe íirst defends tbe rigbt of tbe Africans to créate wbatever art tbey want, inclu-ding works ressembling European art, and the idea tbat tbeir art sbould be accepted as "african". Tbe second, well-deíined by Seng-bor as négritude, tnaintains tbat tbe artists sbould reject tbe inñuences and tbe materials from abroad and ddve into tbeir own añican- After indicating that it is difiScult for us to find materials and space appropiate for creativity in África, and noting with surprise that a poU reveáis Üiat no african artist subscribes to Art Forum, we have, according to her, the reasons that explain why the bcst International artists prefer to Uve abroad, especially in the First World, because it is the best and perhaps the only road to salvation recommendable for their careers. What's more, the Afro-American Ima Ebong, Susan Vogcl's aide-de-camp, whom I saw in Dakar, in June 1990 assures us: "Négritude became a national discourse tbat decided wbicb groups and wbicb individuáis in tbe world of tbe arts were incorpo-rated into tbe principal trend and wbicb were marginaliged." Further on, after mentioning the deplorable desertions of artists from the Village des Artistes, the ruining of the Musée Dynami-que, condemning the fact its archives have A ' i A ^ i i í A ^ become repositories distant from the city, she compares the École de Dakar and the AGIT-ART lab with the alledged manipula-tions of cultural politics after independence. Senghor is seen as the idealist, but after his loss, the artists are badly treated by Abdou Dioufs pragmatism. I would rather read what she says to avoid confusions: "Nevertheless, négrítude was ¡imited in many cases as an aesthetic, not only due to its consideration of ancestral afrícan art forrns but to the abstract characterization of the valúes it reckoned to be intrinsically afrícan, like intuition, emotivity, rhythm and vital forcé. These valúes followed an order established by a specifíc and foimalist agenda conceived for contemplating the metaphysical dimensión attríbuted to them. Négrítude also seemed to act as a litmus test, valuing the capacity of any artistic manifestation to satisfy the requisites of Senghor for a natio-nal culture. That's how Senghor in efíect ¡imited the aesthetic options of the École de Dakar to a formal and strictly ideológica! alloted área." She elaborates further: ! "The departure of Senghor as president in 1980 revealed that the favourable position he had given artists was really fragile. The images and identities the artists had created to support national cultural politics were not interpreted as superíluous symbols that could no longer fínd support in the new spirit of economic and political pragmatism, and were ideologically at odds with the reality of Ufe after Senghor. In fact, it seems that towards the 80's, the historical importance of the École de Dakar's work was exhausted." k> VsJ According to her, neither of our presidents has managed to solve the crisis of the artists, AGIT-ART does it better. Between Flag and Mask, a work by Issa Samb, is the evidence. The iconographic interpretation that this individual construes of the flag and the mask hanging from a tree and swaying in the wind reveal that: "...In a certain way these objects are a group of ideas that act as reference to con-temporary art in Senegal... This grouping is a paradigm that suits Senegal's case admi-rably." Faced with such rigidity of spirit, I think that the least effort undertaken by these au-thors causes grave damage to África and to the whole world. Similar facts forcé us to recommend to the authorities that cooperate with institutions, patience and prudence. It's best to do things well than to do them wi-thout thinking of their possible effects, impli-cations and repercussions. The quoted refe-rences are the product of a superficial men-tality that delights more in quantity than in quality. For it, the number of exhibitions and their publicity are superior curricular valúes than investment in the formation of staff for the conservation and the continuity of african artistic and cultural heritage. Though there is a certain margin of disagree- ^P >^W 9 A ment bctween both Americans, we can per-ceive the sarcasm and the absurdity of these debates that tour the world as if they were our tnie history in the absence of something better. Isn't it time we read the history of contemporary senegalese art from the pen of a compatriot? Can the lack of material means eventually blind our spiñt? All the spe-culation and senseless experimentation that come from misinformation or from bad inten-tion can be denied by our wül, in my opinión, to combat ignorance and overeóme this aggressive passion that forecasts destruction. All together we can replace it with creati-vity. These catalogues are aimed at creating the idea that Africans tread on their own mine field. Like televisión, a model media that day by day replaces the traditional teller, these trap-exhibitions, disguised under the mask of impartiality, with an aura of idolatry, philan-trophy and patemalism, are very good at taking in the less wary. There's no person alive who's written with so much originality and precisión about african art as Léopold Sedar Senghor. This, has always been admit-ted by Issa Samba. His prose, and above all his poetry, his visión and sensibility have emancipated, the one inextricable from the other, forms and colours in preeminent cla-rity, a transparent opaqueness that only fool-hardy antagonism ignores. As a political man, history sets him among those who defend and reinforce our culture with intui-tion and intelligence; with a lucidity inherent to the well-being of our mental and spiritual faculties. I think that these authors and their informers haven't read Senghor due to an intellectual blindness that confuses them. The publicity of their marketing is nuanced in the words of Jean Pigozzi, coUector and promotor, as he points out, of artists with foreign ñames and ignorant of the West's valúes, ñnancer of the safari África Today, he says: "/ hope África Today will briag you as mucb pleasure and deligbt as it has to me. Watcb out! CoUectiag contemporary african art can tum into a passion and requires much time, but it's mucü cbeaper tban coUec-ting Van Gogb and Cy Twombly! (Let's not forget tbe ead). P.D. We siacerely bope that André Magnin isn't devoured by a lion. Tbat would seriously set back tbe development of tbis passioaate coUection!..." As you may see, this strategy doesn't differ very much from Marketing, animal skins, ebony or ivory smuggjing, or from brain was-hing. These agents of a new fashion that make eclecticism the exotic menú of the mar-ket, think they are Christopher Columbus. AfiUcted by mental amnesia, the worshippers of "savage thou^t", provoking amóng tiiem-selves and others \Aask hoks in memory Uan-keted by a strange innocence, believe obses-sively that seeing is living the illusion. It is difficult for them to distinguish between what is África, and what is the extra dimensión of their voracity. This observation is valid for the whole world. Their market has created and produced, starting with the art coUection of the past, profítable curiosities to please the demands of eccentricity. This same situation threatens the art of the present. Artists and artisans every-whcre have been the willing or the unwitting victiihs of the trap set by industrial or media-nized production. Their art means far less a group of ordered aesthetic valúes than ideo-logical or monetary profitability. The stated example of Van Gogh is the example that reveáis the power of the market over reason and art. The combination of the commercial and the creative demands caution and modera-tion, but, especially, thought on the lamentable consequences of projects like the craft village for tourists and on the genuine coope-ration that we all desire. This means achie-ving unity in our efforts within a harmony that is liberating and generates human energy. At the present moment, in ñame of a corrupted and deviated concept we can observe the proliferation of a range of projects of cultural standardizatíon that is everywhere presented as globalism, post-modemism, internationalism. The sub-products of this standardized culture, whose true ñame is alienation, are foisted on the group of dependent countries. Although effort is made to vary the menú in order to increase profít and control, we must remem-ber that the scars left by totalitarianism and the confusions that shake capitalist societies, question and contest the actual situation. This impasse, whose exit is the secret of an awareness-process, remains blocked (in the sense of effective correlation between a pro-blem and its most eficient and operative solu-tion in terms of real experience), by the lack of liberating solutions on behalf of the domi-nant ideologies, because, ideology, in short, can't be the origin of art. To the contrary, blessed are those that avoid its triviality, the demagogy and the arbitrariness that tend to giorify provocation as a banner, paralysing any attempt at originality. However, including all obstacles and para-doxes, that are interferences to be overeóme, nobody can deny the efforts made by the State. Thanks to its insistence in resolving these problems, it guarantees, in relation to its means, education. This biennial, this debate, are exemplary occasions that we would all like to see with greater frequency. The rest, pertains to us, it is our responsability to look after it and to contribute, because we have to realize that the state has limitations and limits that a community's will and initia-tive can develop with interest in mutual coUa-boration, and sublimate them for the benefit of society. The artists are voluntaríes of this community that offer the participation and the reception of their art's communion. Pri-vate enterprise has here an example to support and to defíne in all faimess. What this contríbution pretends is an invi-tation to revise thoughtfuUy the subject of the reception and distribution of african art, far from setting out to be a conclusión or a deterministic defínition, precisely this: the reactivation of research and the conservation of our cultures, of our history and of our art in a moment of change and world restructu-ring, which is for us more than an instru-ment of knowledge. A symbol of our iden-tity, it is a source of wisdom and of faith in our own complexity, in our cultural wealth, that is, among other central priorities, a hard, but dynamic succession of crossfertili-zation, coUisions and integration; but above all a succession of acts of faith. It is also interesting to note that despite the lack of direct contact and frequent contad that we would wish with the work of artists that have preceded us and access to theoretical formulations of aesthetics, Afríca's contemporary art, within its diversity and its unity reveáis certain peculiar characterístics that mark its aesthetic and its spontaneity. Our traditions, actions and reactions íncor-porated into the accumulated wisdom of man-kind, are the fírst factors of this result. Wit-hout artistic sensibility, the intuition and emo-tive power required by these object-subjects that continué to represent their creators and perpetúate their presence among the living, wouldn't exist. Our tribute will be constant to the wise creators of this herítage that is gaining defmition. How we would like to have the opinión of those artists who have had considerable prac-tice and experience when transmitting our aesthetic valúes! To be able to find it illus-trated in books, newspapers, magazines, audiovisual media, naturally accessible to all homes. And what about the opinión of those other intellectuals, the whole of society? We can be sure that our music, our dances, our literature and also our story-telling have a vigour that maintains the power of language, and its correspondent diffusion through the media in the senegalese home. Why do the fíne arts lack this privileged publicity space? Can we disregard the mani-festation of our present valúes? André Magnin, collaborator of the Geor-ges Pompidou Centre, says about his selec-tion: "There are hundresds of creators living and working throughout África; it would be rídiculous, with fifteen artists, to give an idea of a whole continent's art, with such a com-plex history, a defínitive or exhaustive idea. I don't know if they are the best artists. I don't know what the word best means when we apply it to an artist. This selection is the result of compromise and afiinity; I have cer-tainly trusted my Western memory, but I've tried to forget its mirror-image in a Europe far too blinded by sacred hallucination, that simultaneously dominates its narcissistically enclosed art." Let him discem the dissonance between the works and the functions he attríbutes to them to avoid the utopia of forgetting his mirror. To forget means repression, and remembering too, and this should be noted by the new Africanists searching new Social Sciences. Let them consider what Paul Eluard tells us: "...artists give us new eyes, art critics new glasses." África is more than a visión, its reality goes beyond the promised good visión of the binoculars that believes it is mirrored as a mirage, as an object or as another merchan-dise. Let's medítate this, without the onus of Cartesian objectivity or the Hegelian scheme where África didn't fit in. I believe, that for everybody's just benefit, a better reception at home and a better national distribution will make African art the symbol of recognized progress forged by all of society. It is this that would enable a better cooperation bet-ween artists and the world as the hindú sage Rabindranath Tagore wished: "...towards a future so difíerent from the past as is the tree from its seed." As a Mandinga that has travelled through the verdant Casamance, I can assure you that the succulence of ripe fruit comes from the fact that the tree has been planted in the most fertile soil and has received the best attention. Art, as the most fertile land of África, can't conceive artistic creation as sub-developed or peripheral. This truth, that thank God is firm, we must turn into our presence: "..To admire black art badly, is to run the risk of gathering no fruit." To stop at the superficial appearances of art suppresses the quality of the sincere dialogue we can build with its richness. Let's listen to Léopold Sedar Senghor's advice in his article, Black African Aesthetics. Its genero-sity, like new sap, surges again, isolating and displacing the parasites that invade the tree. Our art is only the expression of an intrin-sically african spirituality. Imbued with its past, that the work appropiates, an emanci-patory longing reactualizes it and purifies it anew, transforms it and tums it into an infinite reply similar to the one Amadou Ham-paté Ba defended: "...To take África to its máximum expansión, by the path of genteleness, good beha-viour, respect for our neighbour's ideas, none of which exeludes firmness, constancy, perse-verance in our own ideas and the unrelenting pursuit of their realization. Such is the voca-tion of twentieth century Africans." We can't turn this ancestral wealth and its mystery, into a passtime for the amateurs of exoticism. Its magic isn't importable. We want our heritage to be rid of formulas and clichés that make it mediocre, lead it to con-venience and banality; to repetition and to terminal folklorism. How can a curator affirm that art in África has nothing to do with a progressive history, made up of the succes-sion of real problems that are solved, accor-ding to him, when one talks about western art because artists have believed in the dimen- Kairouan flat-woveii textile motif: Banaers. sion opened up by Picasso and Duchamp? Our art dates from before prehistory and duiing its life it has never stumbled over false problems; it merely resumes that which fulfills US and gives us faith in life. Our works have denied the impossible and given it form. Francine N'diaye has underU-ned it: "...tbe Afrícan patiimooy is recupera-ted by a universal pictorial language tbat geaerates a powerfuUy personal expression". Also, Iba N'diaye states: "...tbe artists of New África mil belp tbeir fellows to get out of tbe cultural ghetto wbere certain people would like to see tbem coníüied more or less consciousfy". The poet Joe Bousquet defends the same attitude: "...tbe soul shines naturally with the geneo-rity that it has been able to fínd. I'tn impo-tent; Man is grotesque when he fears man." For us, man is the principie of remedy. Art takes us nearer to him without creating distance simultaneously. It is thanks to vir-tualities that have survived that our feelings have found in artistic creation a natural model of expression. Far from setting out to explain, these works only communicate and present their own essence, the interpretation of destiny. At least, our's is never absent. Youssou N'dour sang this in the melodies of "Set" and "Yaru", clear visión, limpidity, propriety, respect, courtesy and humility, essential valúes for any recuperation and any intelligent revisión. Source and recapitulation of the true and the real, the works corres-pond to our need of expressing sensibility and our knowledge of foreign and national traditions. Therein lies the significance of our art. True to itself despite the smallest change and celebration. Perpetual abstraction, bridge or road between the absolute and the tran-sient; about its rythm, the Senegalese poet says: "...The architecture of beíng, the inner dynamics that gives it shape, the pattem of waves it emitts for the attention of others, the puré expression of strength, the vibrant colusión, that through our senses, touches the very fibre of being." This constellation, a prism through which the spirit takes shape, is a path along which the etemal enters human reality in order to have effect, transformed in new appearances. Incamate spirituality, artistic african creation also makes man: "...the crossroads of symbolic corraponden-ces, that go from the world to man, and vice versa." In sympathy with the Senegalese philoso-pher Alassane N'Dew, the poet from Marti-nique, Aimé Cesaire sings, calming us: Eia for the royal Kailcedrat Eia for tbose who've never invented any-tbing For tbose wbo bayen't explored For tbose wbo haven't conquered But abandon themselves, inspired, to tbe essence of all tbings Caieless of domination, tbougb tbey follow tbe rules of tbe world. Truly, older sons of tbe world Sensitive to all tbe world's stirring Fraternal wind of all tbe world's stirring Puré bed of all tbe world's waters Spark of tbe world's sacred fíre Flesb of tbe ílesb of tbe world pulsating witb it. Amadou Hampaté Ba similarty takes pan in the celebration of island and continent: "...Synthesis of the universe and crossroads of vital energies, man is therefore called upon to be a point of balance, where, through him, all of the diffeient dimensions he represents may flow. Then he will deserve the ñame of Mea-Kumanyon, the interiocutor of Maa-Ngala (the supieme bdng), and defender of creation's harmony." To quench one's thirst in this wisdom that identifíes the source of its existence in the roots of being and that, also, has known to exalt in its art and thou^t, the imagination becomes the secret law of the real, which is to incorpórate it more intimately and actively into our creativity. It is to valué the underl-ying unity and Üie superior coherence that articulates it. The clear sighted will and the enthusiasm to explore these terrítories, some-times mysteriousty mutilated by Histoty, requi-res from us, preparation, purifícation and uni-fication without confusi^ the passage between levéis of this vast symbolic network. Only the wise recovery of our languages that pits known sensations against leamed formulas can open the way to a reality that we can experience and express forcefuUy, with love and respect when explored. It is clear for us that the artist instructs us how to look not only through his works, but through the best part of his personality, with the honesty and generosity that all truth con-tains, and with love; at least, that of the artist. His work ptuifies of all influence what is intrinsically his. He therefore expresses in the most original way which is most singular and universal. Longing to surpass himself continually to satisfy this essential need, to créate sincerely, excuses him from accumula-ting useless knowledge through work and purifícation. He develops transgressing the application of assimilated techniques, purging them of artifíciality, of arbitrariness and of the parasites that disturb the legitímate cla-rities of the spirit. It is there, better than in any other part, that conscience, that organi-zing will, when it illumines passions reveáis unity within multiplicity, the simple within the complex, order in disorder, in one word, animates "the intelligibility of the living". Our much missed Gera NTbengue, virtuoso of the suweer, said: "I like, especially, talking with draughts-men, with those who love drawing. I can't explain it to anybody who doesn't feel love. A draughtsman is always a student, he sear-ches, and he is also a man of good heart. The pen must be left on its own, shapes will come, and that is all." This advice, immediately takes us to the boundary where the realm of valúes, where beauty and generosity of the work meet, for those that can master the rebellion of sight, like the Dogon lock that scares indiscreet onlookers away. He who is able to unite the soul with the heart of matter, as Gastón Bachelard says, defending, "a really alive material imagination", cióse to the one de-void of sophistication and complex that Mi-chel Leiris suggested in relation with black afrícan art and artists, an imagination that is able to possess the irmer essence of universal matter, the great natural substances of Na-ture: water, night, sun light, substances that presuppose a "refined taste", and require no additives. This locus that we explore has the same generosity that it proposes as an answer to our wish for adoming it emotionally. That is how the controUing and moderating task of museography is defined, that tríes to show us an exhibition in a more intelligent way. However, as you well know, the materialism of this society, though it reyolutionizes our knowledge beyond any doubt, fails in the territory of art. It will be futile to travel through the world seeking art, for he who doesn't carry beauty within will never find it. For this reason, art has always been a mark of beauty and goodness. Here Teranga is manifested. I can't help quoting Baudelaire, who wrote in August 1851, in Au fur et á mesure que l'homme avance dans la vie: "...Beauty shall only be the promise of hap-piness (Stendhal, I believe, said this). Beauty will be the form that guarantuees máximum goodness, faith fidelity to oath, loyalty in the execution of a contract, ñnesse in the intelli-gence of relationships. Ugliness will be cruelty, avance, stupidity and dishonesty. Most young people ignore these things and assume them as their own risk. Among us, some have already leamed it, but it is somet-hing we_ leam only by ourselves. What effi-cient means could I use to persuade a young rake that the irresistible aÁection I feel for oíd ladies, these people who have suffered for their lovers, their husbands, their childien and also for their own errors, carnes no sexual desire? If the idea of universal love and virtue accompany us during all our pleasures, these would become torment and remorse." Here is something that would do good to Jacques Soulillou and Stisan Vogel that daré to wish that Afrícan artists coimect with the main stream and the perenially open horizon that defínes Western actuality, tendentiously exemplifíed, where the new world order of the North Amerícans won't survive unless multiculturalism rectifies their visión. They daré to cast judgement, forgetting the icono-clast and the barbaríty, the despotism and tyranny perpetrated in all of the conquered terrítoríes. Jacques Soulillou comes out with the foUowing: "...Wanting to prove at any price that creativity is in good health, many exhibitions of so-called african an err on account of their quantative optimism and lack disoeming capa-city. Furthermore, this can be explained due AHA^^'-^ A to the absence of a market, of exhibition structures, in short, to everything that acts as a stimulant and catalyst for talents." This is the bait tendered to the Ul-informed, be they artists or authorities with positive or negative inclinations. To enjoy African art, we have to be acquainted with the widest impUcation of the term, as is indicated by our relationship with ancestors. Commercial greed and historicism aren't enough to love and communicate its artistic merits. Quite the oposite, this is only good for the missionaries of art, reward seekers, safan hunters and the clientéle who are the object of this pemicious promotion of the image that the merchants deem profitable for their country's or their global planet's hungry pockets. Let them not forget what Jean-Paul Sartre said in Orphée Noir: "...Seen from Senegal, globalism appears príncipally a beautiful dream." The vanity of the superior pretensions always subjacent in the monologues which certain western galleries and their associates have with artists from other cultures finds its máximum expression in the neutralization or the reduction of the other, while keeping the appropiate distances. In the preface to the exhibition Magiciens de la Teñe, inaugurated in the celebrations of the Bicentenary of the French Revolution, the head curator, Jean Hubert Martin, argües in order to prove that we are dealing with power relations and not with natural powers in this encounter fabri-cated round the word magic, that: "...We must distrust our schematic labels that carry the risk of concealing the comple-xity of certain local situations. The criteria used to select the artists are akin to those that would determine a Western selection, applied, however, with a considerable number of variations." ^ You can imagine the charlatan's market; there you can buy liberty, fraternity and equality. What perturbs us about these real facts, is the growing number of people who having seen this kind of exhibition, come to check the veracity of the Information recei-ved. What is disconcerting and ambiguous, is that in all the catalogues I have mentioned, insults and acknowledgements are found pell-mell, addressed to our artists and authorities, thanking them for their kind participation "in the success" of the event. To rub salt into the wounds, the authors of these irreve-rent remarks appear in catalogues of modem Senegalese art where the quality of edition and printing are clearly deficient. Spellings aren't checked, neither factual errors. These documents reflect the consideration we give to our aesthetics and to its contents, to our foremost banner in matters of cultural coope-ration. Meanwhile, in other parts, televisión programmes and articles on the subject continué. Though in the world we find sensitive people who can observe art, without having to read the accompanying text, it isn't the majority. To the contrary, the most part refer to the media and to guides for blinke-red tourists foUowing sensationalism. Is the responsability for this situation due to an incompetent system? Ibrahima Baba Kaké expressed it well: "...A country without a leader, unprotected, can only conserve fragments of a culture that has become inorganic and is given over to the formality of these officials, who have subs-tituted the traditional chiefs chosen in the past for their beliefs and their devotion to the protection of a community of interests inhe-rent to social "well-being", whether western or "advanced locáis", produces the same results: the denial of a traditional culture that is despised." As an example, we have the reply of Frans Haks, director of the Groninguen Museum to Giaconto di Pietrantonio, coUaborator of Flash Art: "G.D.P.: Referring to what we were saying about the colonizing absorbent West, that feels the need to appropiate the East or África in order to recharge its energies, do you think this crisis could be solved through loans or by ravaging other countries? F.H.: Yes. For instance, when the Japanese exhibition took place, we had another exhibition of contemporary Russian art at the same time, which seems a great shame to me. I think we must be patient until results come up. I mean, that it took África twenty years of democracy and postcolonialism before we had any results." Presentday cosmopolitism denles the ega-litarian right of difference, and internationa-lism only exists to the extent that each culture conserves its possibilities, its vitality and energy. The economic and cultural globaliza-tion demands from the Senegalese the redou-bled responsability of not letting their country become the object of powers alien to their interests. Which model of modemization are we heading for? It is vital to think about this, for given the loss of the native valúes of sensibility, the mimesis of the foreign beco-mes a generalized practise in all teaching ins-titutions. Thus, loss of identity and the chan-nels of expression can't be modernity, or modemization; quite the opposite, it's a regression that pivots on itself. Western utopias sink, yet the damned of the earth remain everywhere, become poten-tial refuse consummers, of the most toxic kind, victims of xenophobia and inequahty before the law and difference. The violation of the cultural integrity of the others continué, transforms their patrimony into monu-ments of signs, strong currencies, profane objects by virtue of the miracle of the new decodification laid down by the expert and readjusting eye of certain foreign merchants and some Africans oriented in business. Barbara Prezeau (Haití). Le polyptique dubon saurage. 1992. Their perfect projects decontextualize, through salón painting, the sacred atmosp-here of museums to idolatrize and descérate the visions and ideas contained there. Yet they can't help us noticing that the sermons and well designed cults conceived as mecha-nical practices of conversión cold-bloodedly imposed on us as symbols of cultural coope-ration, are projections of the unconscious that turn the Other into a big alibi. In the catalogue of Magiciens de la Terre, Fierre Gaudibert tells us, with great diñiculty, I imagine: "...The symbolic violence of the West's artistic power of legalization, with a naturally universal pretensión, is applied with terror to all artists of these "other" countries. They are judged immediately and almost automa-tically as followers and exponents, as poor imitators of Western artists, known and con-sidered as desirable visual objects apt for domestic collection but unworthy of being in real or imaginary museums. A dilemma that traps them diabolically, beyond real action and proposition, with the exception of very rare examples of brilliant synthesis or extreme individual singularities. What's more, it's true that to fínd the balanced attitude bet-ween consideration and contempt when ju-dging artists of cultures so different to ours is diffícult. The idea of decentralization is necessary without giving up any criteria of Creative quality. A cióse watch benevolently practised seems preferable, inspite of its sub-jectivity and arbitrariness, to the ofíicial selec-tions that we have been able to appreciate in certain biennials." Universality isn't the exclusive property of any civilization since we can only it identify it in the relationship between all civilizations. True dialogue presupposes the recognition of the Other, both in terms of identity and au-the Other, both in terms of identity and au-thority, and without this, any attempt at uni-versalizing reconciliation is futile. Such con-cepts appear in La Pensée Africaine by Alas-sane N'daw. r d like to remind these critics that they take a look at their own history before opening their mouths. Let them reread the history of the Impressionists, and see how the press kept on treating them as men-tally insane, affected by optical disfunctions that would be a challenge for specialized ophthalmologists: Joseph Emile Müller gives many examples of the persecution of these artists by the press that today are so magni-ficently priced: "In 1877 Albert Wolff, the Fígaro colum-nist, wrote: «...it's a case of madness», and another newspaper, on the same theme, «it's a compromise with the contemptible and the disgusting»..." Why did the Salón des Indépendents open? What was the principie of selection of the official Salón that forced the rebels to defend their freedom in heterodoxy? Today those that exhibited regularly in the official Salón aren't even spoken about. Let them reread the "damned poets", especially Baudelaire, in his critique of the salons, his posthumous work, L'Art Romantique, criticising the reti-cence of the French to Wagner's music and American society's to Edgar Alian Poe. Let them reread Daniel Henry Kahnweiler's Aest-hetic Curiosities and his Aesthetic Confes-sions. Or listen to Picasso telling Hélene Par-melin that when he painted he was surroun-ded by a brotherhood of artists like Paul Eluard's Fréres Voyants, and that they were aware of having spoiled the contemporaneity inaugurated by Picasso and Duchamp. Let them reflect on the rebellions of Miró, Mas-son, Max Emst, Victor Brauner and so many others against the admirable poet André Bretón. It's obvious they've leamt nothing from Mahaux or Kandinsky, or from Barthes' Cri-ticism of Truth. The phenomenom isn't new. It's a question of comparing the points of view adopted in the books by Elie Faure, Kenneth Clark, Klaus Honnef and Edward Lucie Smith; Gaudibert states: "The nostalgia of the South, isn't only that of the lost paradise, of nature refound and recomposed unity, but a search for spirituality and energies whose absence generales suffe-ring for an increasing number of the North's citizens. Furthermore, perhaps the journey through the art of the Other could stimulate the searchers. Or, if not, do western artists only hope to rejuvenate, revitalize and refresh themselves? To have a blood transfusión? To effect a return to the origins, the beginnings, the sources, to the Mother, to uterine life?, Perhaps." Do they really want to go on a regressive trip, after all that was done to imítate the cubist experience with oriental art? Let's not be astonished, because in all attempts at schism, what is contemptible, though universal, stands in the limelight alongside the mar-veis of art and aesthetics. From Manzoni to John Miller, including Arthur Graven, who in 1910, wrote, 'T'm going to eat my shit", to Jeff Koons who exhibits photo-murals of his sexual or pomographic activities with his wife, fecal expression has become a commonplace of contemporary Western art. The mosaic on the front cover of FLASH ART (International Ed), which no doubt you have seen, is called Panoramic View. Bits of shit making up a pattern reproduced in ceramic. The work is fit to decórate a dinning room, a ga- Uery, a museum or a palace. Can this be the horizon Soulillou intends for us? The work was shown in the selection by Jan Hoet, director of the Ghent Museum and general curator of the IX Dokumenta at Kassel. Eventually Jan Hoet decided that Africans could take part in Kassel. That's why we were able to see the sculpture of the Nouba wrest-lers by our compatriot Ousmane Sow. The conclusión of the article that considers this exhi-bition and its curator, Dokumenta IX, more is a mess, published in Art News states: "...Considering what may result from Hoet's ambitions concerning ecstasy, passion needs order to be comprehensible and balanced. Every art-loving person likes to think he is touched by divine power. The pity is that Hoet has been burnt out by it." I prefer the audacity, the boldness and the radicality of Picasso and Duchamp. This kind of deconstruction that contradicts the history of the European museum celebrates the triumph of its victory over the rigidity of a past that it rejected for its corruption. It's a local and not a world scale phenomenom. We recall, don't we, that the birth of the museum, after the Muses, comes from the accumulated loot of robbery sanctioned by the Church and the Nobility as example of their civilizing task. In the so-called third world, museums have been adopted, and they must be adapted to legitímate the rights of mdependence and cultural heritage. México 1992. |
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