And courtesy of a generous loan from the Nigerian National Museum in Lagos, - one of more than a dozen in the show - we can see tools that Bamigboye actually used: two slim-bladed knives and a scraper, the handle of each ending in a finial carved, as if to conjure guiding spirits, in the shape of a human head. This dependency dictated a phased approach to the act of carving itself, from the roughing out of initial forms in the block of wood to the close detailing of the final product.Įach stage required the use of separate tools. Aesthetic value and spiritual efficacy were codependent. On the one hand, the sculptural conventions attached to ritual art that he inherited and adhered to were considered sacrosanct, “a gift from God,” as he put it. And that work, which exists in some indefinable terrain between off-the-rack categories like “traditional” and “modern,” is truly magnetic. The show also gives a sense of the material luxe of the Yoruba world at the time, with examples of elaborate beadwork and of Islamic-influenced woven fabrics from which Bamigboye adapted geometric patterning for his carved work. (In addition to running an art studio, he multitasked as a priest in a divination cult, an herbalist healer and, for the last dozen years of his life, the ruler of Kajola.) And there are types of ritual objects - divination instruments, ceremonial staffs - on which Bamigboye would put his imaginative stamp. We see sculptures by near-contemporary Yoruba carvers like Dadaolomo, Akiyode of Abeokuta, and Areo-ogun-yan-na, whom he regarded as inspirations and rivals. Organized by James Green, associate curator of African art at the Yale Gallery, the exhibition places us deep in the context of Bamigboye’s social culture. (He steadfastly held to Yoruba devotion, but in 1960 converted to Islam, taking the name Moshood.) And the mix of Indigenous religions with Islam and evangelical Christianity was a volatile one, equally destructive and fruitful, and it surely inspired the combined images of militancy and spirituality in Bamigboye’s art. From the 19th century onward, the part of present-day Nigeria that falls into the region called Yorubaland, was wracked by territorial conflict, first under Islamic dominion, then British control. Nearly 40 years ago, when the first big survey of contemporary African art opened in New York at what was then the Center for African Art, it included a selection of photographs from Mali, Togo and Ivory Coast, each picture attributed to an “unknown photographer.” Several of the entries were, in fact, by the great Malian studio portraitist Seydou Keïta (circa 1921-2001), whose authorship would be recognized and acknowledged only after the show opened, though he had been celebrated in his home city of Bamako for decades.Īnd with 30 pieces, large and small - every known major surviving work by the artist according to the Yale Gallery - the exhibition “Bamigboye: A Master Sculptor of the Yoruba Tradition” amounts to an unusually comprehensive career retrospective, mapping his path from the 1920s, when he opened his studio, to his death in 1975.Ī dynamic career it was, interweaving art, religion and politics. Not knowing the names of African artists, even the assumption that they didn’t have or use names, has been a Western tradition, at least till the recent sweep of contemporary artists from Africa onto the global auction stage. Carved in wood, it’s a dizzying panorama, fantastic but realistic And every detail, in many cases, is the work of a single artist, Moshood Olusomo Bamigboye. Equestrian beauties, male and female, loom large. Among the inhabitants are stoical farmers, gun-toting soldiers, singers and drummers, mothers with babies, and kids waving flags. There’s a mountain range rising in the middle of Yale University Art Gallery, with populations of cliff dwellers circling its heights.
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