By LISY-MARTA HELOÍSA LEUBA SALUM & RENATO ARAÚJO DA SILVA*

Authors' introduction to the newly published book

The idea of ​​the term “legacies,” the title of this publication, easily leads to the concept of heritage. We live in a world where there are no more places, except for the transitory and mostly constructed ones, such as those of the so-called African diasporas, forced by slavery in the Americas and colonization in Africa. How, then, can we continue to associate memory and heritage? How can we refine, make transparent, and pluralize the monolithic meaning of legacy, and how can we apply this term to all the perspectives we owe to the subject?…

Because there is not just one, but there are — there must be — multiple and diverse perspectives on African art without losing sight of its entirety, and of our entirety before it. Many scholars of African art elevate art and life to a single level, as part of a binomial. Not because art is life, or life is art, but because, in anthropocentric cultures such as non-Western ones, art is part of life in the same dimension in which life is part of art. As a phenomenon with multiple directions, the Swiss ethnologist Jean Gabus of Neuchâtel Museum He described African art as a “testimony object” due to its varied functions: from religious, educational, mnemonic, or, in many cases, the recording of history itself, both material and visual, among others.

Would these functions survive capitalism since the division of the continent, the process of colonization for 60 years? To never forget, we need to piece together the fragments of this poorly written history. We must consider that objects circulate; people are not isolated, culture is dynamic, and, over time, some categories of artistic production change function, some of their formal elements may change, but there is a meaning that endures and is reflected in territories with mixed political and linguistic borders, as was observed even before the political modernization of the countries on the continent from the 1960s onwards.

Documentary treatment of the Collection

Often, the establishment of boundaries, whatever they may be, is arbitrary, as are many classification criteria. This is what happens when using classification systems, which are necessary for cataloging the holdings of most collections and museums, at least the oldest ones. This concern is even more glaring when it comes to the arts, peoples and cultures of Africa represented in the Cerqueira Leite African Art Collection (CCL), which is almost encyclopedic in nature. The criterion of “continuity of form”, adopted by UNESCO and the Scientific Research National Center, from Paris, however, applied to a traveling exhibition of panels that traveled the world from 1971 onwards, seemed to be quite applicable to the treatment of so-called “traditional” African arts.

On the occasion, anthropologist Jacqueline Délange, one of the organizers of the Trocadéro Museum and founders of Museum of human, said: “The plastic work is first and foremost a material creation”, which, in other words, corresponds to what is primarily important for us to highlight here: the materiality of the work as the foundation of plastic creation. Added to the materials and techniques is the history of the creators of what constitutes the broad repertoire of looting, without sufficient information available and often distorted — looting that exceeded the capacity of the safeguarding purposes of Western museums before the liberation struggles in Africa and even during the post-colonial movements.

The Cerqueira Leite African Art Collection, which has been in existence for forty years, goes beyond the pieces forcibly removed from Africa. However, the works that make it up have a value that, in addition to allowing the enjoyment of the diversity of African art forms, also implies considering the colonial heritage of a corpus that represents, in the catalogues of dissemination, productions that are today considered classics of African art. Among them are those that, in the West, before the colonization of Africa, were preserved in the so-called “cabinets of curiosity”. Monarchs of the European Renaissance were among the first customers of the studios located on the central-western coast of Africa when the first navigators arrived; many centuries earlier, Arab chroniclers anticipated the existence of art on the continent from its northern and eastern parts.

Thus, we decided to maintain as the first criterion for structuring this catalogue its grouping by geographic, linguistic and stylistic regions, without forgetting that the historical records of “ethnic territories” are ideologically manipulated constructions, ignoring dynamics of belonging. Likewise, the designation of forms and styles of African art, as well as of the cultures and societies from which they originate (even so we say “to which they belong”), is made here based on a broad literature, by multiple authors and guided by disparate methodologies — this could not be otherwise, since taken together. This criterion alone would never overcome the arbitrariness of classification systems.

The fluid boundaries of the stylistic centers of each sociocultural group overlap with their political-geographical boundaries, but it is necessary to take into account the distortion and also the review of what has been done about this type of delimitation. These, in turn, are drawn — also approximately — within and between the contours of the countries of the African continent, which were divided, considering the variability of territorial and identity boundaries resulting from the internal social dynamics before the colonial partition, especially because they were driven by foreign rule, and those that followed.

To identify the origin of the works, we cross-referenced typological data from rare catalogues “raisonnés" (such as statuary or armory, for example) with categories of classification of the history of art applied by anthropology museums, even though they are already largely outdated due to the periodization that it implies, but still universally adopted. After all, the very universality of art is in principle denied by the diversity of relationships between men, and between them and objects — to which art, in a broad sense, awakens us.

Adopted writing and language standards

The names of the societies or cultures to which we identify the works published here are spelled in the most common form in the main accredited sources on the subject and phonetically translated into Portuguese when necessary. Their location on the map and population data, obtained through various sources, are merely illustrative and do not correspond to the historical dynamics experienced by each of them or the relationship between them.

In the spelling of specific words related to the arts, societies and cultures of the Bantu linguistic complex, we use the prefixation determined by one of the processes specific to the formation of these words — ki- in the case of the local languages ​​mentioned; ba-, wa- and bena-, among other prefixes, in the case of gentilic adjectives —; and we keep the radicals without affixation, using them only to qualify nouns (objects, people, places, as well as immaterial concepts or notions). Thus, Kongo art (or the art of the Bakongo) comes from artists of the Kongo cultural complex — from them come the Kongo styles, but also the Yombe (of the Bayombe) and Vili (of the Bavili) styles.

The Benakalebwe, who are one of the sociocultural branches of the Bassongue, are renowned for their Kalebwe styles of Songue statuary. It is noted that, in our writing, instead of the anglicism songye, a spelling now universally popularized by catalogs, we use Songue and, as such, Bassongue — a transcription that is closer to the phonetics of the term, as first literalized in French and German, Basonge. We proceed in this way in relation to some other native names. To consider, still taking the Bantu languages ​​as an example, forms of Kongo art may have stylistic characteristics of the Bavili and the Bayombe, but, given the current intertwining of these and other styles attributed to them for cultural and historical reasons, many of their works may be considered generically as Bakongo, including particular forms or styles of the other subgroups eventually represented (Bassundi, Bassolongo, Bawoyo). Furthermore, we must consider this norm for most Bantu-speaking societies and cultures, but not all (for example, those within the boundaries of Gabon, Congo Brazza, Cameroon).

It should also be noted that the names of groups, societies or cultures are written in the singular and in lower case, on the one hand because the marking of gender and number differs in each language and, on the other, because (unlike English) in Brazilian Portuguese the words sociedade brasileira or brasileiros are not written with an initial capital letter.

Some names of African societies are already included in our dictionaries, such as Yoruba, which is written with an i instead of a y, but without an accent, since this name is pronounced not only as an oxytone word, but sometimes as a paroxytone as well. Because of this, which occurs differently in all African languages, we decided not to accentuate all the names and vernacular terms mentioned.

Presentation and organization of works

The catalogue is organised into five parts. Each work or set of works presented corresponds to an analytical-descriptive text, with historical and ethnographic data referenced in a specific bibliography suggested at the end. Firstly, the works of the CCL that refer to the arts of Arabised northern Africa are presented, as well as those of the eastern side of the continent, which also had strong Islamic penetration through trade routes and political-economic exchanges.

The large number of works attributed to peoples from Central Africa allows us to better understand the interconnections of technological and aesthetic traditions that circulated on the continent. West Africa is also amply represented in the CCL with works of a vast and expanding typology, with a great diversity of styles and artistic forms associated with the economy and daily life, in addition to the statuary, furniture and ornaments that predominate in the first two parts. The catalogue concludes with two thematic parts, one highlighting the art of metal and the other of ivory, emphasizing the importance of the dialectical approach of African art between tradition and modernity.

Circular and intertwined Africa. As Fernando Augusto de Albuquerque Mourão, founder of the Center for African Studies at the School of Philosophy, Literature and Human Sciences at the University of São Paulo, said, “the relationship between the African world and the conception of historical events has its own nature. To put it more clearly, this relationship resides in the central concept of totalizing circularity, involving time and space. The genesis of the past emerges as a marvelous legend from the perspective of an ancient memory in a new time — the oral epic, the living history of the African people, constitutes the beginning of written history. […] Architectural sculpture, furniture, and the structure of buildings are elements that, if intertwined, could provide important information of a broad nature. […] The general conception of these works is very close to the vision of the African world, which makes the relationship between architectural structure and thought revealing (Mourão, 1996, p. 6; p. 17-18).

In addition to the arabesques in artifactual production from much of the northern and eastern part of the continent, which also occur in traditional architecture, we can mention here, as patterns of circularity, those found in the bifwebe masks of the Baluba and Bassongue, from central Africa, with similar shapes and functions, or, from west Africa, the baulê, yaurê and guro styles. Memorials and other material supports of funerary contexts of intrinsically related societies such as the Obamba, Betsi, Okak, Ntumu, Bulu, from the borders between central and west Africa, are also examples of this circulation, from a conceptual and formal point of view.

The same can be said of the abstraction of certain Ethiopian and Akan forms, even though they seem to be placed before the almost always explicit anthropomorphism of masks and statues. Resulting from a supposed Mohammedan iconoplasty fixed on the African continent since the ancient periods of invasion of its territories, the abstraction of forms, in fact, reconstructs in a decorative and abstract, conceptual and aesthetic way, the representation of the human figure as center and periphery of the image, with the same force on which the creation of anthropomorphic figures is based — quite the opposite of the stereotype by which African art is still identified.

The design, between the ephemeral and the tangible

Traditional studios and artists have had little impact on the historiography of African art, as they were not properly documented due to neglect and prejudice. It was only in favor of colonial propaganda and the growth of the international art market that the race to identify the “hands of artists” (many of whom have already disappeared) began, through the morphological analysis of objects preserved in museums and collections.

Copies? — It has been well over 100 years since Africans began creating “copies” for Europeans and North Americans. However, the dynamics of African art have overcome all the ruptures resulting from the atrocities and ambition of invaders — this can be seen in Afro-Americas or in the interior of present-day Africa, where traditional art survives and is being remade.

In current studies of African art, the discussion dominates about its current value as commodity and its authenticity, which in fact already comes from the first scholars of the subject concerned with the advent of modernity, with colonization and its repercussions on traditional religions and arts. If there is something that has, in fact, been “falsified”, the question turns to the intention or interest of those who seek to know if this or that art object is “authentic”.

The most important thing to consider when approaching African art is its diversity and plurality within social and historical changes. And this can only be achieved by recovering knowledge of the past built on these productions, with a critical spirit, which is essential for new surveys on related technical-artistic contexts of the present.

We once heard a phrase from collector Rogério Cezar de Cerqueira Leite that we hold dear: “Collecting African art requires a somewhat detective and very missionary spirit.”

Figuratively, it could only come from the perception, among all of us, of an implicit identity, so diverse in our society, imbued with a “something to discover”, always on the verge of erupting, of manifesting itself. This is expressed in the cover image that he himself chose, with which he offers us all. To those dedicated to the appreciation and study of nuclear, original expressions; to those who identify with the problems involved and are committed to them; to the artists represented here.

 “Who are we, where do we come from and where are we going?” — these are questions formulated by Professor Kabengele Munanga that enable us to recognize differences in the fight to eliminate inequalities in our society. In a Brazil with a population that is more than 50% of African descent, the Cerqueira Leite African Art Collection, with works from Africa from north to south and from east to west, is yet another instrument for reconnecting with the universe from which we came, so that we can become what we truly came to be.

*Lisy-Marta Heloísa Leuba Salum is a professor of African Ethnology at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at USP.

*Renato Araujo da Silva is a researcher at the Afro Brazil Museum Association. Author of, among other books, Afro-Brazilian art: ups and downs of a concept (Ferreavox).

Reference

Lisy-Marta Heloisa Leuba Salum & Renato Araujo da Silva. Legacies — the Cerqueira Leite African art collection. Campinas, Unicamp Publishing House, 2024, 388 pages. [https://amzn.to/4gFX9Ij]

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