OF ANOTHER PLACE AND TIME

Cleveland Museum of Arts puts on display ‘African Master Carvers: Known and Famous’

Thirteen artists from another region of the world are the focus at a new Cleveland Museum of Art exhibition, “African Master Carvers: Known and Famous.”

According to a news release from CMA, the 13 “exceptional” sculptors are from sub-Saharan Africa, and nine of them are known by name. The exhibition boasts 15 pieces from artists working in West, Central and Southern Africa, and the works are accompanied by the artists’ biographies and, when available, portrait photographs.

“African Master Carvers: Known and Famous” is on view in the Julia and Larry Pollock Focus Gallery through July 16.

“This exhibition celebrates the creative talents of several individuals who have contributed to the incredible stylistic diversity of the arts of Africa,” says Constantine Petridis,

former curator of African art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, in the news release.

“Signature works by some of the most famous traditionbased carvers from sub-Saharan Africa call into question the presumed anonymity of African art,” adds Petridis, who is no longer at CMA.

Historical works of African art in European and American museums and private collections are generally ascribed to unknown or unidentified artists, or more broadly to cultures or peoples, the release continues,

that having much to do with the fact that when such objects were first acquired and exhibited they were considered ethnographic specimens or crafts, rather than fine art. Early scholars of African art devoted cursory research into the lives of the artists they met during fieldwork in the 1930s; sustained interest in artists’ identities did not begin in earnest until the 1950s and ’60s, the release states.

To identify the hand of a particular sculptor, scholars analyze an artwork’s stylistic

features, studying and comparing the way that anatomical details such as eyes and ears are rendered. Sometimes, even though an artist’s name may remain elusive, a group of works bear such striking stylistic similarities that they are attributed to a master with a nickname, sometimes referencing the location where the alleged master was believed to have been active, or alluding to a characteristic formal feature of that master’s works, according to the release.

For example, the Baboon Master was a name coined for the artist of the Tsonga or Zulu culture of South Africa or Mozambique who made “Cleveland’s magnificent staff.” This anonymous carver produced a body of work featuring baboon iconography.

Through a selection of works carved in wood and ivory by artists of various sub-Saharan cultures, “African Master Carvers: Known and Famous” aims to illustrate the wide-ranging individuality of the artistic legacy of the African continent. Three of the best-known master carvers presented in the exhibition were members of the Yoruba culture in Nigeria. One of the most prominent historical Yoruba artists is a man called Bamgboye (1893—1978), who lived in the Ekiti region in northeastern Yorubaland, the release states. The Cleveland Museum of Art’s monumental helmet mask, formerly in the collection of American actor Vincent Price, is generally considered to be among Bamgboye’s most virtuosic and exuberant realizations of the Epa mask genre. His contemporary Agbonbiofe (died 1945) was the leading exponent of the Adesina family in the same Ekiti region. He exhibited a radically different style in works that are admired for their self-contained, quiet mood.

COURTESY OF THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART This male figure, carved by the Bangwa artist Ateu Atsa (1840 to 1910), is included in “African Master Carvers: Known and Famous” at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

IMAGES COURTESY OF THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART These are three perspectives of a staff, believed to have been carved about 1900 by an unidentified Tsonga or Zulu artist nicknamed the Baboon Master. It can be seen in “African Master Carvers: Known and Famous” at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

COURTESY OF THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART This forehead mask, crafted sometime before 1958 by the (Eastern) Pende artist Kiyova, is on display at the Cleveland Museum of Art.