The Art of Benin - Essay Example

? The Art of Benin The art of Benin Part Option B The text that was provided from Gallwey (1893) for a discussion about the historic nature of Benin also provides insight into the effect that one culture can have on the memory that exists of another culture. Gallwey (1893) suggests that both the Portuguese and the Dutch visited the city of Benin in Africa, writing about the nature of the metropolis and providing the Europeans with a written history without which European history might have no reference from which to remember the place. The way in which it was written about suggests that the city gained the respect of European travellers. The Portuguese called it the Great Benin where the Dutch writer Nyendale referred to it as “prodigious long and broad” which suggests that the writer was impressed with what he had observed (Gallway 1893, p. 128). History only exists when it is related to the following generations; otherwise it must be considered lost. Certeau and Conley (1988) refer to the creation of history as an interpretation that lies between both the conveying of facts and the interpretation of those facts in a social dimension. In other words, history becomes the interpretation of the evidence into a context that can be related into modernity. Certeau and Conley (1988: p. 21) also write that “History is probably our myth. It combines what can be thought, the ‘thinkable,’ and the origin, in conformity with the way in which a society can understand its own working”. This can also be discussed in terms of how one society will interpret what it sees within another society. As the writers that were contemporary saw the kingdom of Benin as prosperous in relationship to their own standards of prosperity, it was written about in those types of terms. The evidence of such a city is no longer accessible to Gallwey (1983) as he writes about how when walking the streets during his time period there is nothing left but ruins and little evidence of the city that was written about in European writings about the region. He writes that there is no evidence of the great weaving and brass works of the past and that there is not great streets filled with a market, but only a small market outside the king’s residence. This suggests that the place that was Benin no longer is the same as it was when historic visits captured the essence of prosperity in interpretations in relationship to how it was viewed by those relating their experiences. Through the collision of cultures, the evidence of one culture that would not otherwise be captured in the histories of another can be remembered when a place has long since been a reflection of its former glory. Benin is remembered in Western histories which have helped to preserve it as part of the understanding that Western cultures can develop about the part of the world in which it once held its glory. Even though prosperity of the city is remembered as it is related to Western ideals, it means that Western cultures have a perspective on how the place existed within the framework of its own meanings and understandings about a city culture. Part 2 The way in which a museum is more likely to present a body of works is related to the culture in which it is being displayed rather than the culture from which the works are being taken. As an example, when museums first began to show the works of the Benin, the focus was on representing it as a primitive culture because the culture in which it was being displayed considered African cultures to have a lack of sophistication and to be essentially primitive. The artworks that were available from the Benin culture did not relate well with the images that had been promoted with the Benin civilization (Brown 2008). The society was not considered a civilization as Western cultures were still trying to reconcile their own participation in slavery of the African people and could not yet accept that cultures that did not reflect the European ethnicity could be truly civilized (Parker and Rathborn 2007). Histories that are used to create a record of Benin art within European contexts are available from the chronicles of travellers, trade records, and from the colonial period official administrative records. Benin was first discovered by European travellers in the 15th century by Portuguese explorers. These explorers, however, made no reference to the art and culture of the Benin, but the 17th century explorers had very different types of reports about Benin. The first writings about the city from the 17th century do not have a direct authorship, but is commonly thought to have been written by Dierick Ruiters. Writings exist from a German who was a surgeon-barber for an army, Italian Capuchin missionaries, and from David van Nyendale of the West Indian Trading Company. While the writings give extensive accounts of the political and economic status of the city, they fail to mention the monarchy which would be valuable in understanding more about the art of the culture of Benin. They do discuss the art, however (Ben-Amos 1999). Religion and political context is always helpful in interpreting art. Investigation of a genre of art requires critical literacy which provides for a meaningful overview of the aspects of a culture in which interpretation is taking place (Prentice 2002). Earlier displays that represented Benin consisted of displays of spears and other artefacts that pointed to the idea of a primitive culture. The bronzes that had come from the region were a problem for those who placed objects in the exhibits because they could not place the sophistication of the works in context with their beliefs about the culture. The bronzes were a result of colonialism in which the region where Benin had stood was ‘sacked’ and the bronzes removed (Herskovitz 1967). According to Brown (2008, p.52) “There was speculation that the artworks were ‘relics’ of a lost African civilization, which had since degenerated into savagery and brutality”. It was also speculated that the people of Benin had been in contact with the people of Egypt who were considered more ‘civilized’. Augustus Pitt-Rivers concluded that the sophistication of the Benin bronzes could only be the result of influences by European travellers, but Henry Ling Roth discovered that the bronzes pre-dated any influence by European travellers, thus they were of African origins (Brown 2008, p. 52). Honor and Fleming (2005, p. 56) describe the nature of the bronzes as distinct from European works, stating that “the plaques have little in common with European art at the time. Isolated against patterned flat backgrounds, the figures are frontally posed, still in gestures, scaled according to importance; yet packed with compressed energy”. Evidence provided from European discussions with Benin leaders by Captain Roupell from the British expeditionary force constructed a clear history of the Benin society in which the casting of the bronze artworks likely was an independent development of the art form (Brown 2008, p. 52). The acknowledgement of an independent emergence of bronze casting created a new theory on the idea of primitivism within the Benin culture. As these realizations of a different perspectives on the emergence of this art form began to take hold, the curators of exhibits in museums began to reflect this new understanding of the works of art. As a result the art of the Benin culture was the first African art to be given a broad stage in European art at the turn of the century (Grande 2003, p. 43). The art was something new to the European audience, however, as brutality and spirituality were blended with the art in a profound manner. Grande (2003, p. 43) states that “as a sacred and symbolic representation of life, Benin artists traditionally dripped blood onto alter furniture”. This new combination of what was considered primitive behaviour in relationship with sophisticated pieces of art turned from a source of conflict to one of fascination with this diversity of social manifestations. Coombes (1994) discusses the difficulty in reinventing the African material culture for the Western audience as through the 20th century the misunderstandings of cultures from Africa and the ethnic heritage of African descendents about the human nature of those cultures has been plagued with a sense of ‘otherness’ that has created a barrier that has been difficult to breach. Diaspora of the African culture has been such that the diminishment of their history into the concept of ‘primitivism’ has prevented an invention of civilized or sophisticated frameworks for the development of those cultures within Western understanding. The nature of exhibits previous to the discoveries of the 1890s was to place the city of Benin into the structure of primitivism and to dismiss the idea of the originality of the bronzes to the Benin culture. Post the discoveries and conclusions of Roth and subsequent scholars, the originality of the bronzes to the Benin allowed for a re-invention of the perception of the culture, thus exhibits reflected these re-interpretations of the history of Benin from within Western knowledge. Bibliography Ben-Amos, P. (1999). Art, innovation, and politics in eighteenth-century Benin. London: Lawrence King Publishing Ltd. Brown, Richard D. (ed). (2008). Book 3: Cultural encounters. Milton Keynes: The Open University. Certeau, Michel de, and Tom Conley. The writing of history. West Sussex: Columbia University Press. Coombes, Annie. E. (1994). Reinventing Africa: Museums, material culture, and popular imagination in late Victorian and Edwardian England. New Haven: Yale University Press. Gallwey, H.L. (1893) ‘Journeys in the Benin country, West Africa’, Geographical Journal, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 128–30; reprinted in Book 3, Chapter 1, Reading 1.5. Grand, John K. (2003). Balance: Art and nature. Montreal: Black Rose Books. Herskovitz, Melville, J. (1967). The backgrounds of African art. New York: Biblo and Tannen Publishers. Honour, Hugh and John Fleming. (2005). A world history of art. Parker, J., and Rathbone, R. (2007). African history: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Prentice, R. (2002). Teaching art and design: Addressing issues and identifying directions. London: Continuum. Read More