African Art and Authenticity a Text With a Shadow

5/28/2018 African Art and Authenticity a Text With a Shadow

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African Art and Authenticity: A Text with a ShadowAuthor(s): Sidney Littlefield KasfirSource: African Arts, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Apr., 1992), pp. 40-53+96-97Published by: UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center

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fricanr ta n d uthenticity

T e x t w i t h a ShadowSIDNEYLITTLEFIELDASFIR

There re thosewho want a text (anart, a painting)withouta shadow,without the "dominantideology";but this is to want a text withoutfecundity, without productivity,asterile ext....The ext needs ts shad-ow....subversion must produce tsown chiaroscuro. Roland BarthesThePleasureoftheText,p. 32

controversialebate boutAfricanart that has surfaced in the pastfew years concerns its role asa mirror of Western colonial history.The criticism prompted first by the"'Primitivism' in 20th Century Art" ex-hibition at the Museum of Modern Art(Rubin 1984) was reopened and alsosubverted by "Magiciens de la Terre" atthe Centre Pompidou in 1989. In the for-mer, precolonial African and Oceanic artwas presented as a set of powerfuldivining rods for proto-Cubists, Ex-pressionists, and Surrealists. In the lat-ter, the enigmatic (to Westerners) natureof contemporary African, Asian, andDiaspora art was translated into the artof the conjurer (magicien), and at thesame time this act of conjuring wasequated (quite misleadingly) with thecultural production of a Western avant-garde. In both exhibitions there was anattempt to demonstrate the "affinities"between "the tribal and the modern,"Third World and First World.Postmodern critics have used theseexhibitions (the first a powerful articu-lation of the Modernist paradigm, thesecond a flawed attempt at paradigm-breaking) to comment upon the intellec-tual appropriation of African and otherThird World art by Western museums

and collectors (Araeen 1989; Clifford1988; McEvilley 1984, 1990; Michaud1989). Meanwhile most mainstreaminstitutions and a surprising number ofscholars continue to think about Africanart and its public presentation as if thisdebate were not taking place at all. Inmost of the major exhibitions of Africanart currently circulating in the UnitedStates there is little attempt, eitherexplicit or implicit, to subvert omni-scient curatorial authority.' Perhaps it istime to cast a shadow on this authorityby reexamining the way it operates indefining African art, both as commodityand as aesthetic act.The West and the Rest2Two questions are central to this debate:Who creates meaning for African art?And who or what determines its cultur-al authenticity? The authenticity issuehas been raised many times in the pagesof this journal,3but I want to examine itspecifically in the light of the currentdiscussion of cultural appropriation,since in the past it has been reviewed interms of fakes, forgeries, and imita-tions-terms that themselves are heavilyladen with the weight of earlier ideasabout African art and culture, mostspecifically the primacy of "traditionalsociety." To talk about authenticity it isfirst necessary to unpack the meaningsassumed for "traditional society," andby extension, "traditional art."A major underpinning for the argu-ment I am making here is that what wecall "traditional society" is a legacy ofour Victorian past, owing as much tonineteenth-century Romanticism andthe social-evolutionary notion of disap-pearing cultures as to any reality foundin Africa itself. In African studies it con-tinues to function as a more benign,euphemistic version of that recentlyshelved artifact, "primitive society"(Kuper 1988). The idea that before colo-nialism most African societies were rela-

tively isolated, internally coherent, andhighly integrated has been such a pow-erful paradigm and so fundamental tothe West's understanding of Africa thatwe are obliged to retain it even when wenow know that much of it is an oversim-plified fiction.This assumed combination of isola-tion and a tightly knit inner coherencehas given rise to a presupposition ofuniqueness in material cultures (WilliamFagg's "tribality," eading to unique trib-al styles), ritual systems, and cosmolo-gies. Nowhere has this orthodox andconservative view of African culturebeen so obvious as in Dogon studies,where the Dogon were made to seemunique not only in Mali but in all ofAfrica.4 Such ideas are losing their cur-rency, but only slowly.In African art studies our most uncrit-ical assumption has been the before/afterscenario of colonialism, in which artbefore colonization, occurring in mostplaces from the mid-nineteenth to earlytwentieth century, exhibited qualitiesthat made it authentic (in the sense ofuntainted by Western intervention). Mostcrucially it was made to be used by thesame society that produced it. In this sce-nario, art produced within a colonial orpostcolonial context is relegated to anawkward binary opposition: it is inau-thentic because it was created after theadvent of a cash economy and new formsof patronage from missionaries, colonialadministrators, and more recently,tourists and the new African elite.This view of authenticity, thoughnow questioned by many scholars, is stillheld firmly by major art museums andthe most prominent dealers and collec-tors. It is, almost by necessity, the implic-it principle of selection for the art seenon display in large-budget, foundation-supported circulating exhibitions such asthe recent "Yoruba: Nine Centuries ofAfrican Art and Thought" and "Gold ofAfrica" as well as in the permanent dis-plays of the National Museum of African

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Art, the MetropolitanMuseum'sRocke-feller Wing, and the National Museumin Lagos. In addition such art, ideallyprecolonial or more often dating fromthe earlycolonialperiod,is the subjectofvirtually all the advertisements placedby dealers in the pages of AfricanArtsand Artsd'Afrique oire.Ironically,what we could call canoni-cal Africanart-that which is collectedand displayed and hence authenticatedand valorized as "African rt"-was andis only produced under conditions thatought to precludethe very actof collect-ing. Seen from an anticolonialideologi-cal perspective,collectingAfrican art isa hegemonic activity,an act of appropri-ation; seen historically, it is a largelycolonial enterprise;and seen anthropo-logically, it is the logical outcome of asocial-evolutionary view of the Other:the collecting of specimens as a corol-laryof "discovery."Evenif none of thiswere acknowledged,one cannot escapethe internal contradictionin the work-ing definition of authenticity-namelythat it excludes "contamination" (tocontinue the specimenmetaphor)whileat the same timerequiring t in the formof the collector.It is possible, in wishful thinking,tocircumvent his collectoror at least neu-tralize him or her: a simple gift from a

local ruler to a colonial administrator(Ruxtonin the Benue), to a missionary(Sheppard in Kuba country), or to anexplorer(Vascoda Gama on the Swahilicoast) might seem noninterventionist.sBut we know from Frobenius'sdiarieshow very acrimonious, even hostile,such exchanges could become withinthe web of conflicting nterests that sur-rounded them. The notion that theywere somehow devoid of political oreconomic motive on either side seemspatently ridiculousnow, yet that is theimplicit assumption in the "invisiblecollector" required of paradigmatic"authentic" rt.A second fiction in the constructionof the canon is that no importantchanges occurredin artisticproductionduring the period of early-contactcol-lecting-that is, neitherstylenoriconog-raphy nor the role or position of theartistwas affected n any importantwayby the initial European presence. Thatthis is an equally dangerous and naiveassumptioncan be shown by lookingatthe radical transformation in warriormasquerades in the Cross River andOgoja region of southeastern Nigeriawith the comingof the British.Theearlydocumentationof thesemasks describedthem as skulls worn atop the dancer'shead (Talbot1926,vol. 3: 788-89).Very

LEFT:. BONIFACEIMANI, ASTER ARVERINSHED A-2,AKAMBAANDICRAFTOOPERATIVE.CHANGAMWE,OMBASA,991.RIGHT:. LAWRENCEARIUKI,HEONLYKIKUYU EM-BEROFTHEKAMBAARVERS'OOPERATIVE.AIROBI,KENYA,987.

few examples exist in collections,sincethese were not "art"by any stretchofthe colonialimagination.Thosefew stillextant are starklyreal skulls over-mod-eled with mimetic touchessuch as hairand false eyes, or rearticulated lowerjaws. As the paxBritannicadepleted theavailabilityof enemy skulls, these werereplacedby carved wooden imitations,in some areas (Cross River) coveredwith skin for greaterrealismand in oth-ers (Igede, Idoma) painted white withblackcicatrizationpatterns Kasfir1988).It is these, and not the trulyprecolonialdecorated skulls, which have beenaccepted into the canon and are highlysought after by collectorsas authentic.Here Western taste, not WeSterncon-tamination,has dictated what is artandwhat is merelyethnographic pecimen.Another example is Yoruba resist-dyed textiles.Priorto the importationoffactory cloth from Manchester, thesewere made fromhandspun,handwovencotton that was too coarsely textured,too soft, and too thick for complexadiretechniquesand patternsto develop. Yet

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the elaboration of adirein the heavilymissionized town of Abeokuta and thegrowthof its productionwere in no waythought of as inauthentic by collectorsuntil the 1960s,when it beganto be pro-duced for a Peace Corps and touristmarket in colors other than indigo. Inboth of these examples it was not theintervention of Europeans and subse-quent modification of a tradition thatmarked its "authentic"and "inauthen-tic" phases. Rather, "authentic" wasdefinedin terms of the collectors' aste.If therewere no such thing as collec-tions, if the processes of appropriation,reclassification,and public display didnot exist, it might be possible to pushback the before/afterscenario o a muchearlierdate-say, to the advent of Islamin West Africa or to the coming of thePortuguese. Seen strictly in terms oftheir cultural impact, these earlierencounterswere surely as importantascolonialism.But because such a revisionwould limit authenticity o a handful ofcollected objects,almost none of whichwould be sculpture in wood, it couldnot possibly find acceptance in theworld of museums and collectors. Thecanonical "before" therefore was de-fined originally in terms of a Victorianideology fed by a felicitous combinationof imperial design, social Darwinism,andcollectingzeal.But the fact is that Africa s a partofthe world and has a long history.Thereare innumerable befores and afters inthis history, and to select the eve ofEuropeancolonialism as the unbridge-able chasm between traditional,authen-tic art and an aftermath polluted byforeign contact is arbitrary in theextreme.While it is very true that boththe nineteenth and the twentieth cen-turies were periodsof "fasthappening,"in Kubler'sphrase(1962:84-96),t wouldbe naive to assume that no other suchperiodsexistedin Africanarthistory.What is far more likely is that therewere several-some associatedwith thespread of new technologies (brasscast-ing, weaving, tailoring,the introductionof the horse),others with the spread ofideas (Islam, a sky-dwelling creatorgod, the conceptof masking).I am sug-gesting that there is no point in timeprior to which we could speak of theascendancyof "traditional ulture"andafter which we could speak of itsdecline. The old biological model ofbirth, flowering, decay, and deathimposes on culture not only an orderthat is seldom there but also, in thiscase, the strong temptation to identifythe onset of "decay"with the onset ofcolonialism. This is the historicist flaw

in the authenticity est used to constructthe canonof Africanart.The third fiction concerningAfricanart is that it has a timeless past, that inthe long interlude before colonialism,formsremained more or less staticovercenturies.Occasionalpieces of evidencethat support this view, such as theYoruba-derived divination board col-lected at Ardra before 1659 (Vansina1984:2),have been extrapolated o createa mythicsteady-stateuniverseof canon-ical art. The logical corollary of the"timeless past" is the fiction of the"ethnographic resent," hat eve of con-tact foreverfixed in the narrativestruc-tures of contemporary ethnography.Even scholarswho readilyacknowledge

the absurdity of the former may fre-quently cling to the latter as theirputa-tive time frame. In doing so theyprivilegethis artificiallyconstructedeveof contactas if what came afterward sby definition less relevant, and (onehardlyneed say) less authentic.Yetonlysocieties in which all change was com-pressed into a cataclysmic surge ofWesternpenetrationcould be imaginedto cease to exist afterthat moment. Fornonexistence, in the cultural sense, isassumed when change is read asdestructionof a way of life, ratherthanits transformation.And indeed, in muchof the writing on Africanart, this after-contact period is simply a blank whitespaceon the page.

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4. EXAMPLESOF BRICOLAGE:OILLAMPSMADE FROM DISCARDEDMETALCANS.

NAIROBI,KENYA,1991. PHOTOIDNEY. ASFIR43



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Thus in typical exhibition cataloguesof Yoruba art, we learn that there areorisas and their ritual objects, but as arule there is no mention of how these fitinto the complex twentieth-centuryrenegotiation of orisadiscipleship, Islam,and Christianity that now characterizesYoruba religious life. Instead the readeris invited into a fictional ethnographicpresent where these radical changes donot intrude.6Just as casting African art in anambiguous ethnographic present deniesit history, insistence on the anonymityof African artists denies it individuality(Kasfir 1984, Price 1989). Far from seeingthis anonymity as a result of the wayAfrican art is usually collected in thefirst place-stolen or negotiated throughthe mediation of traders or other out-siders-we have come to accept it aspart of the art's canonical character. Thenameless artist has been explained as anecessary precondition to authenticity, afootnote to the concept of a "tribalstyle"that he has the power neither to resistnor to change (Kasfir 1984, 1987).Although the principal architect of thetribal style notion, William Fagg,nonetheless recognized that "the workof art is the outcome of a dialecticbetween the informing tradition andthe individual genius of the artist"(1982:35), it has been more common to

speak of the artist as simply bound toand by tradition (Biebuyck 1969:7).7Among French dealers and collectorsof African art, "authentic" frequentlymeans "anonymous," and anonymityprecludes any consideration of the indi-vidual creative act. One Parisian collec-tor told Sally Price (1989:69): "It givesme great pleasure not to know theartist's name. Once you have found outthe artist's name, the object ceases to beprimitive art." In other words, the act ofascribing identity simultaneously erasesmystery. And for art to be "primitive" itmust possess, or be seen to possess, acertain opacity of both origin and inten-tion. When those conditions prevail, it ispossible for the Western collector toreinvent a mask or figure as an object ofconnoisseurship. But when Price askedone such connoisseur whether hethought the creator of such a workmight be aware of these same aestheticconsiderations, the answer was anemphatic denial (1989:70). The "primi-tive" artist, in this Africa of the mind, iscontrolled by forces larger than himselfand consequently knows not the subjec-

tive feelings of aesthetic choice. In suchan equation, the Western connoisseur isthe essential missing factor that trans-forms artifact into art.8Brian Spooner, ina seminal essay on issues surroundingthe authenticity of Oriental carpets(1986:199, 222), argues that an importantaspect of the carpets' appeal to Westerncollectors is this marked cultural dis-tance between maker and collector, andthe corresponding lack of informationabout the artist that this usually implies.In such situations the collector is ableto construct a set of attributes thatdescribes the "real thing." Ironically it isnot knowledge but ignorance of the sub-ject that ensures its authenticity.The corollary of this all-in-one ano-nymity is that one artist's work canstand for a whole culture, since thewhole culture is assumed to be homoge-neous (though at the same time unique).Although it is a tautology, this has longbeen a major argument for the conceptof a tribal style: an identifiable culturalstyle is a major ingredient in definingethnicity, and a Yoruba (Idoma, Kala-bari, etc.) artist is one who works inthat identifiable style. In a video ac-companying one currently circulatingexhibition, a pleasant-voiced narratorexplains, "The Yoruba believe...." Icouldn't help wondering, Which Yor-uba? Muslims? Baptists? Aladura?Those who still follow the orisas? Lagosbusinessmen? Herbalists?9 Omniscientcuratorial authority has the power toflatten out these hills and valleys, butshould it? Is the public really incapableof understanding that African cultures,and the arts they produce, are notmonolithic? Do we really want a "textwithout a shadow"?The faraway collector also reinventseach mask or figure as an object ofdesire: a projection of alterity (in earliertimes, the colonized "primitive"), seenin whatever intellectual fashion prevailsat the moment. The Kongo nail figurebecame a "fetish," every female image a"fertility emblem," and so on. Namingand categorizing are interventions asimportant as connoisseurship. Whencatalogues of collections appear, theyare most frequently organized under adual "tribal style" and "culture area"rubric. While classificatory principlesmay be necessary to organize a largebody of material, they obscure certaincorrespondences as well as illuminateothers. Although Yoruba Gelede andMaconde Mapiiko masks often bearstriking visual similarities, these arenever recognized or commented uponbecause the masks appear in widelyseparated parts of any catalogue orexhibition: the Guinea Coast and EastAfrican sections, respectively.The most powerful of the classificato-ry interventions are the words "tradi-tional" and "authentic," which become

TOP:5. SHETANIFIGUREIN AN OPENWORKSTYLE.COLLECTIONOF ANTHONYJ. STOUT,WASHINGTON,D.C.BOTTOM: . AN UNFINISHEDSHETANIFIGUREINTHE "DRIFTWOOD"TYLE.COLLECTIONOF ANTHONYJ. STOUT,WASHINGTON,D.C.

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PHOTO SIDNEY L KASFIR

7. THEFUNDI(ARTISAN)ATWORK:A BLACKSMITHN KAMAKUNJIMARKET.NAIROBI,KENYA,1991.

8. THE FUNDIATWORK:DRUMMAKERS N A NAIROBIALLEY.1991.


shorthand designations for "good," andtheir negations "nontraditional" and"inauthentic," which become synony-mous with "bad." In the same way, aDogon mask to which a recognizedexpert applies the epithet "export piece"is instantly transformed from an objectof desire with a high market value to apiece of flotsam afloat in the postcolo-nial world. The language of classifica-tion used to canonize or decanonize apiece of African sculpture is powerful,one sided, and usually final. A sculp-ture's worth as an aesthetic object, apiece of invention, a solution to a puzzleof solids, voids, and surfaces, is lefttotally unexamined unless it first passesthe authenticity test. No Kamba carving,however brilliant or extraordinary,would get past the front door of anyreputable New York gallery specializingin African art. It would be said to "lackintegrity," implying that somehow non-traditional artists have detached them-selves from their cultures and that theirwork is therefore inauthentic.In the earlier debates about authentic-ity in African art, much discussion cen-tered on copies, replication, and fakes.We may ask what kind of assumptionsunderlies such questions. What is beingfalsified? And in whose eyes? On the onehand the construction of the idea of"tribal" style presumes a fairly highdegree of uniformity from one artist'swork to another, and such replicationhas been accepted as part of the "tradi-tional art" paradigm. But when a con-temporary carver from another ethnicgroup (or "tribal style area") intention-ally takes up this same style, the result-ing object is said to be a fake because, itis claimed, there is conscious intent todeceive. The same claim is made evenif the carver is a member of the "tradi-tional" culture that produced the objectin the first place, if he artificially agesthe piece or allows it to be thought old

by the buyer. Given the absence of asignature or known artist's hand inmost cases, intentionality is seeminglycrucial in deciding what is authenticand what is fake.But it is not so clear that theseWestern collectors' distinctions are veryresonant in the mind of the Africanartist. Asante carvers are an interestingcase in which artists' attitudes towardcopying successful forms have beenwell documented (Silver 1980, Ross &Reichert 1983). For Asante (and manyother10)carvers, imitating a well-knownmodel is considered neither deceptivenor demeaning; rather, it is viewed asboth economically pragmatic and a wayof legitimating the skill of a predecessor(if an old model) or paying homage to afellow artist (in the case of a recentinnovation) (Silver 1980:6).This attitude stems directly from theway carving is regarded as a livelihood.While this view is well known, it bearsrepeating in this context: whereasWestern artists often see their work pri-marily as a vehicle for self-realization,that attitude is as unfamiliar to Africanartists as it is in African culture general-ly, unless we refer to elite artists trainedin Western-type art schools. Typicallythe carving profession, or any other thatresults in the construction of artifacts(brasscasting, weaving, pottery-makingetc.), is seen as a form of work, not qual-itatively very different from farming,repairing radios, or driving a taxi. Thisdoes not mean that it is not "serious"-work is indeed serious-but that it isviewed matter-of-factly as aiming to sat-isfy the requirements set down bypatrons. One does whatever is necessaryto become a successful practitioner.Furthermore, in precolonial patron-client interactions, it was the custom forartists to try openly to please patrons,even if this meant modifying form. Notsurprisingly, that attitude has carried

over into colonial and postcolonial rela-tions with new patrons, including for-eigners. It is unclear why making whatthe buyer prefers should be regarded byWestern collectors as acceptable in thepast but opportunistic now. One reasonmay be that they see types of paymentfor traditional commissions-yams,goats, iron rods-as less commercialthan currency transactions, and this hasthe effect of "softening" the economicmotive for the transaction. But the morelikely reason is the Western collector'sfailure to recognize that even precolo-nial African art was essentially "client-driven" (Vogel 1991:50).The other major difference betweenAfrican artist and foreign collector is theantiquarianist mindset of the latter.African art in a Western (or equally,Japanese) collection takes on greater sig-nificance, prestige, and market value if itis old. While most Africans do not sharethis attitude toward their art, they arewilling to accept the fact that collectorsprefer "antiquities"" and consequentlysee nothing wrong with replicatingthem. The intentional deception (and ithappens with regularity) occurs morefrequently in the marketing of a work bytraders and later by art dealers. It is usu-ally less a matter of collusion betweenartist and trader than of the marked dif-ference between African and Westernthinking about the significance of one-of-a-kind originality.On the question of imitation and itsrelation to deception, we could con-clude, first, that Western collectors have

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PHOTO SIDNEYL. KASFIR

9. SAMAKILIKONKOA,THEMACONDECARVERWHO INTRODUCEDFIGURES OF THESPIRITSCALLEDSHETANIIN DAR ES SALAAMIN 1959.DAR ES SALAAM,1970.

nothing against imitation in the sense ofartists following time-worn proto-types-in fact a completely unsurprisingmask or figure in a well-documented"tribal" style is usually preferable tosomething wildly original and idiosyn-cratic, since there are no standards forjudging the worth of the latter. Second,the same Western collector (or museumprofessional) is distinctly uncomfortablewith any tampering with the prototypi-cal imitation, through attempts to makeit look old or through imitation by anartist outside the group with whom theprototype is thought to have originated.Either of these serves to inauthenticatethe piece, regardless of its merits as awork of art. Third, most (I am guessinghere, but based on fairly broad experi-ence) non-elite African artists, whetherrural or urban, would find these ideasarbitrary rather than obvious, and morethan a little baffling in their seeminginconsistency toward imitation.If we now go back to the question ofwhat is being falsified in the case of"fakes," we might wish to look beyondthe short range. In a center versusperiphery view of cultural production,the center defines legitimate means andends, to which the periphery can onlyrespond. If we allow that collecting thenbecame the colonizer's role, can it besurprising that the colonized respondedwith the willing supply of what the cen-ter seemed to demand? That the "antiq-uity" may have been new both compliedand retaliated-subversion producingits own chiaroscuro.

Authenticity as an ideology of collec-tion and display creates an aura of cul-tural truth around certain types of

African art (mainly precolonial andsculptural). But the implications ofauthenticity extend even further into anideology of recording culture, whetherthrough film or through writing. Theethnographic film is particularly vulner-able to this form of selective perception.In 1978 in Ibadan I watched a crew ofperfectly serious German filmmakerssystematically eliminating the JimmyCliff T-shirts, wristwatches, and plasticin various forms from a Yoruba crowdscene at an Egungun festival. They wereattempting to erase Westernization fromYoruba culture, rewriting Yorubaethnography in an effort to reinvent apast free of Western intervention-apure, timeless time and space, an"authentic" Yoruba world.Charles Keil relates the story of theTiv women's dance known as Icoughand how it was modified by filmmakers(in the face of considerable Tiv resis-tance) to fit the requirements of culturalauthenticity and the attention span of aWestern audience (1979:249-50). Adance sequence of eight segments last-ing well over an hour was reduced tothree; the usual audience of "enthusias-tic supporters pushing forward for abetter look or breaking into the dance topress coins on perspiring brows" wascompletely absent (Keil 1979:249). Butmost serious, the aesthetics governingthe dance itself-what Keil refers to asthe Tiv expressive grid-were modifiedby the insistence of the filmmakers thatthe women change their costumes fromthe Western-style circle-skirted dressesand pith helmets usually worn for thisdance to the more common Tiv "native"wrappers. What is subsequently lost in

the film is the interaction of costumeand movement that is central to this par-ticular dance:The dresses in the original dance,all flounced and starched out incircular hems around the knees,provided a moving circumferenceagainst which knee bends, elbowactions and neck angles couldcounterpoint themselves....theremoval of pith helmets from theheads of the dance co-leadersseems a petty suppression to com-plain of until one realizes that twopivotal hubs that literally cap thepresentation and balance the skirtcircles are missing....Not only werethe central ymbols fa "riteof mod-ernization"akenawayor repressed,but thepower fTiv traditiono mas-ter thosesymbols, ncorporateheminto Tivmetaphor,asbeingdenied.(Keil 1979:250;emphasis added)

Having been shown David Atten-borough's film Behind the Mask, my stu-dents are always shocked to learn thattourists regularly visit certain Dogon vil-lages. The film artfully presents theDogon as a "pure"culture, untainted bycontact with outsiders. In an equallypopular film, Peggy Harper and FrankSpeed's Gelede, he western Yoruba maskfestival is performed in a nearly emptyspace with almost no audience, eventhough we know that in fact it takesplace in a crowded marketplace amidstnoise, dust, and confusion (Drewal &Drewal 1983). Presumably, clear cameraangles took precedence over contextuali-ty. By strict definition these are not doc-umentary films, because they controland regulate the participants. Yet theyare widely used in both museums anduniversity classrooms. Despite theirflaws they have defined and authenticat-ed the performative aspect of African artfor a generation of students.I have quoted at length the instanceof the filming of the Icough dancebecause it provides such a striking anal-ogy to the redefining of objects such asmasks in the process of removing themfrom the scene of their production anduse and installing them in a museum.This reduction and stripping away ofmeaning by the removal of "extraneous"facts-whether a decaying masqueradecostume or a starched dress and pith hel-met-serve seemingly opposite purpos-es in the two cases. In the dance itself-consciously traditionalizes he perfor-mance for a film audience that expectsthe exotic; in the example of the mask

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installed in a museum, the removal ofaccoutrements reduces it to unclutteredsculpture that can be displayed in theModernist idiom, as pure form. But bothcases involve the same act of erasure andimposition of new meaning. And bothare so frequently done that we take themwholly for granted.Art and Artifact:The Creation of MeaningThis leads to a very troubling question:who creates meaning for African art? Itis difficult not to conclude that it is large-ly Western curators, collectors, and crit-ics (whose knowledge, as we will see, isdeftly mediated by entrepreneurialAfrican traders along the way) ratherthan the cultures and artists who pro-duce it. This is not to suggest that theoriginal work possesses no intentionali-ty. It is fully endowed with intention byits creator as well as by its patrons. Butthe successive meanings an object isgiven are fluid and negotiable, fragileand fully capable of erasure as it passesfrom hand to hand and ultimately into aforeign collection. Here it must beinvented anew, most often in the contextof a museum culture dominated eitherby a Modernist aesthetic that looks for"affinities" from the Third World or by apotentially deadening "material culture"approach. A handful of museums havefound other ways of reinventing Africanart that strive consciously to be anti-Modernist and anti-hegemonic, such asthe Centre Pompidou's 1989 installationof "Magiciens de la Terre" (McEvilley1990:19-21), or richly contextualist, suchas the Museum of Mankind's Yorubainstallation of the mid-'70s; they are rein-ventions nonetheless, since that is aninescapable aspect of what museums do.Even the contextual approaches that areconsciously designed to preserve theintegrity of cultures represented are farfrom neutral. Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett reminds us that designing theexhibition is also constituting the subject,and that "in-context approaches exertstrong cognitive control over the objects,asserting the power of classification andarrangement..." (1991:389-90).James Clifford further reminds usthat prior to the twentieth century,African artifacts were not "art" in eitherAfrican or Western eyes (1988:226-29).Jacques Maquet made the same pointearlier (1979:32), referring to African artas "art by metamorphosis." In Westernmuseums these objects underwent adouble taxonomic shift-first from exot-ica to scientific specimens when the ear-lier "cabinets of curiosities" gave wayto newly founded museums of natural

history in the late nineteenth century;and following their "discovery" byPicasso and his friends in the earlydecades of the twentieth century, theyunderwent a second promotion into artmuseums and galleries where theywere recontextualized as art objects(Clifford 1988: 227-28).This migration of objects throughclassificatory systems can be mappedtopologically as well as diachronically.The experienced museum-goer knowsthat the art-museum display policy inwhich an isolated mask or figure isencased in a vitrine or lit with tracklights means to convey the informationthat the object is to be apprehended as"art";the same object embedded in thebusy diorama of a natural history muse-um display is meant to be read differ-ently, as a cultural text. In the former itsuniqueness is stressed, in the latter its(con)textuality. Yet, as museums, bothconfer cultural authenticity upon theobjects displayed there, which are can-onized in the popular coffee-table title,Treasuresof the-.That from an African perspective,these objects are not art in the currentWestern sense is too well known to dis-cuss here. Our museum collections, onthe other hand, are constituted by crite-ria that we, and not they, devise. Thefact that the various Idoma (Alago, etc.)lexical terms for "mask" are wholly non-aesthetic will not perturb even the mostinexperienced museum docent. AsMaquet suggests (1986:15), why notdefine art as those objects which are dis-played on museum walls?Every collected mask or figure isdefined and given boundaries by its sur-roundings: the village shrine house

(where it is wrapped in burlap andhung out of the reach of white antswhen not in use), the trader's kiosk inan African city (where it rests amonghundreds of other de/recontextualizedobjects and is first given an "art" identi-ty), the Madison Avenue gallery (whereit is put through the "quality" sieve andaestheticized with other "quality"objects), and finally the home of thewealthy collector (where it is reincorpo-rated into a domestic setting, but unlikethe situation in the village, is on con-stant display, "consumed" visually bycollector and friends). Taken in se-quence the definitions overlap at leastsomewhat, but between the first and lastthere is an almost total reinvention ofhow and what the object signifies.Tourist Art and AuthenticityOf all the varieties of African art thattrigger the distaste of connoisseurs andsubvert the issue of authenticity, surelyso-called tourist art is the worst-casescenario. In the biological model ofstylistic development it exemplifies"decay" or even "death"; in discussionsof quality it is dismissed as crude, massproduced and crassly commercial; in themetaphors of symbolic anthropology itis impure, polluted; in the salvageanthropology paradigm it is alreadylost. The Center for African Art in NewYork decided to omit it from its suppos-edly definitive contemporary art exhibi-tion "Africa Explores," presumably forsome or all of the above reasons.At the same time it is a richly layeredexample of how the West has inventedmeaning (and in this case denied authen-ticity) in African art. Without Western

10. A MACONDE CARVERATWORKON THE BAGAMOYOROAD INTANZANIA.1970. PHOTO:IDNEY.KASRR

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patronage it would not exist. It is aMarxist's nightmare, hegemonic appro-priation gone wild. But what actually is"it"? The rubric "tourist art" seems toinclude all art made to be sold whichdoes not conveniently fit into other clas-sifications. It is easier to state what itexcludes: "international" art made byprofessionally trained African artists andsold within the gallery circuit, "tradi-tional" art made for an indigenous com-munity, and "popular" art that isnontraditional but is also sold to, per-formed for, or displayed to "the people."To someone only passingly familiarwith the African urban scene, this defini-tion might seem to leave only curios-"airport art"-the carved giraffes andelephants seen in any Woolworth's or infront of any tropical Hilton. In fact itleaves a great deal more, from the inge-nious (embroidered helicopters and jew-elry from recycled engine parts); to theinevitable (Samburu beaded watchstrapcovers), as well as various types of sculp-ture and painting. But by assigningeverything else under one classificatory,and inevitably dismissive, label, Westernart museums and galleries cause allother "unassigned" forms to becomeinvisible, to fall through the canonicalsieve. The erasure is as complete as theremaking, on film, of the Icoughdance orthe Gelede estival.

Conversely, the fact that considerablenumbers of tourists buy a type of artdoes not make it tourist art by currentdefinitions. Osogbo art is sold mainly totourists and expatriates resident inNigeria, but having been canonized asauthentic contemporary art back in the1960s, most writers do not treat it astourist art.12Yoruba ibeji figures, origi-nally used to commemorate dead twinsbut frequently transformed into artobjects in galleries from Abidjan toNairobi, are also sold to tourists in greatnumbers (being small and usuallycheaper than masks) but are not consid-ered by anyone to be tourist art. The rea-sons are different in the two cases.Osogbo art escapes the tourist label bybeing the work of several individuallyknown artists, each with a recognizablestyle. The most famous of these, TwinsSeven Seven, was included in the"Magiciens de la Terre" exhibition in1989. When he first came to prominencein the 1960s, he received the sameextravagant praise and adulation fromthe art world as Ch&riSamba garnerstoday. But what of the host of imitationsTwins's work has spawned, each beingpeddled on the sidewalks of Lagos andIbadan? Most are lacking in skill andinventiveness, but one or two are almostas good as the work of Twins himself. Isthat work tourist art? Neither patronagenor quality seems to be the crucial factor.In the case of the ibejis, this statusdemotion is avoided by virtue of the

artist's intention: they were made to beused by a Yoruba patron in a sacredcontext. The fact that they are sold totourists nowadays cannot dislodge theirplace in the canon. Yet even intentionali-ty is not a reliable test for admission to,or exclusion from, the canon. Let us takethe frequently cited case of the Afro-Portuguese ivories. While clearly madefor foreign consumption, they suffer nodisapprobation and are not classified astourist art by museums or collectors.13For one thing they are precolonial indate and therefore do not fit the view oftourist art as a colonial and postcolonialphenomenon. The antiquarianism ofWestern museums and collectors strong-ly predisposes toward their admissionto the canon on the basis of age. Butthere is another, equally important rea-son: they are technically works of greatvirtuosity and they are carved fromivory, a material associated with ex-pense and rarity in Western taste.Tourist art is thought to be both crudeand cheap. Objects seemingly escapethis classification by being old, veryexpensive, or technically complex.14We have seen then that the "tourist"in "tourist art" is not the crucial distinc-tion that keeps Western authorities fromadmitting it to the canon. Rather it is thebelief that it is cheap, crude, and mass-produced. But all African art is cheap, inart market terms, prior to its arrival inthe West. Much "authentic" art is crude-ly fashioned-Dogon Kanagamasks, forexample-but this seems no deterrent toits popularity with collectors. And whatof mass production? Even a humblecurio is hand crafted. Mass productionimplies the use of standardization tech-niques and assembly lines-hardly adescription of what goes on in a carvers'cooperative. What the Western connois-seur imagines, with obvious distaste, isa kind of machine-like efficiency, a per-ception that totally obscures the fact thatthe working relationship among thesecarvers is fundamentally no differentfrom, say, that of a group of Yorubaapprentices in an Ife workshop turningout everything from Epa masks to nativ-ity scenes (Kasfir 1987). Even in verylarge Kamba cooperatives, such as thatat Changamwe outside Mombasa, thehundreds of carvers are broken downinto separate sheds of a dozen or fewermen who maintain close ties over manyyears, who train new apprentices, andwho may even be relatives from thesame village in Ukambani, the Kambahomeland. Within these cooperativesapprentices learn from, and are perma-nently indebted to, master carvers inmuch the same way as in the past.Although the Kamba were not makersof wood sculpture in the precolonialperiod, they were celebrated as black-smiths, ivory carvers, and by the latenineteenth century, as beadworkers.

Their ability to take up curio carving ona wide scale did not suddenly appearone day out of thin air, but was madepossible by their long collective experi-ence as craftsmen.John Povey's comments on Kambacarvers are typical of the inaccuratewaycarvers' cooperatives are envisioned:"The conveyor-belt system of their pro-duction prevents any suggestion thatthey can offer career options for localartists. They require factory workers"

(1980:5). There is role specialization inmany cooperatives, which leads to repe-tition of certain forms in response toconsumer demand. On the other handthere are also superior carvers (Fig. 2) aswell as "hacks" in these groups-every-one does not work at the same technicallevel. This fact is well documented forthe Kamba (Jules-Rosette 1986), Asante(Silver 1980), Kulebele (Richter 1980),and Maconde (Kasfir 1980). Workingalongside a young apprentice whocarves only spoons may be a mastercarver such as Lawrence Kariuki (theonly Kikuyu member of the NairobiKamba cooperative), who may work onthe same piece for weeks and carvesonly on individual commission (Fig. 3).But once again it would appear that theforced anonymity that results from acollective group identity-the "tribalstyle"-causes Western critics to lumptogether the good, the bad, and theindifferent under a single rubric.Even originality, the sine qua non for"significant" Western art, occurs as fre-quently in tourist art as in other types.Innovation, after all, is fundamental to agenre that depends upon its novelty foracceptance by the foreign patron. Yetthis very inventiveness is found offen-sive by connoisseurs of African art.Why? Perhaps because it violates thecanonical model of a timeless and event-less past. Paula Ben-Amos, in an incisivecomparison of tourist art and pidginlanguages, argued for another impor-tant difference between traditional andtourist arts: a different set of rules forthe manipulation of form itself (1977:130, 132). Whereas precolonial Africansculpture was characterized by "rigidsymmetry and frontality," the devianceof tourist art from that norm results ineither "surreal distortion" or a movetoward naturalism. The former is oftenseen as "grotesque" by connoisseurs oftraditional art-a normative judgmentbased on the preference for the more"classic," self-contained precolonialstyles. This comes down to the problemof taste, an important issue oftenneglected in the authenticity debate andone that I have treated elsewhere(Kasfir,in press).Behind and beneath many of theattempts to dismiss the authenticity ofso-called tourist art is its inability toresist commodification. No collector

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PHOTO:JEN BOTSOW

11. MAASAIWOMENMAKINGBEADWORK.NAMANGA,KENYA,1987.

wishes to see a piece nearly identical tohis or her own in a shop window, sincein Western culture there is no prestige(and little investment potential) in own-ing a thing that is not one-of-a-kind.Spooner calls attention to the "obsessionfor distinction" that motivates many col-lectors of Oriental carpets (1986:200).Kirschenblatt-Gimblett notes the sameproblems of commodification in the col-lection of American folk art (1988:148)and relates this to the Modernist agendaas it is spelled out by the critic FredricJameson: "Modernism conceives of itsformal vocation to be the resistance tocommodity form, not to be a commodity,to devise an aesthetic language inca-pable of offering commodity satisfac-tion...." It would be difficult not to seethe relevance of these arguments to thefears of collectors or to the acquisitionpolicies of art museums.15Maconde16 sculpture, which since1959 has been produced in two sub-styles, one naturalistic (binadamu,"human beings") and one anti-naturalis-tic (shetani or jini, "spirits"), is a perfectillustration of the bifurcation between aprecolonial self-contained symmetryand a postcolonial expressionism (Figs.5, 6). It is routinely rejected by fine artmuseums and owned mainly by thosewho do not collect canonical Africanart.17But not all museums are concernedwith canonicity. A Maconde collectionhas been accepted by the Smithsonian'sNational Museum of Natural History, astestimony to the role played by aesthet-ics in the processes of cultural change.The ecumenically inclined organizers of"Magiciens de la Terre" at CentrePompidou also ignored precedent andincluded the work of one Macondesculptor, John Fundi. He is quoted in thecatalogue with a single sentence:"Toutes mes oeuvres ont une histoire"(Centre Pompidou 1989:137). This story-telling is one more violation of the rules

of the canon, since "traditional" sculp-ture lacks a narrative character.Fundi's art is indeed "grotesque" bythe prevailing canon of taste that pre-colonial art has generated. It is also anact of bricolage.What this means is per-haps clearer if we begin with the artist'sname, one more "subversion which cre-ates its own chiaroscuro." In KiSwahili, afundi 18 is an artisan (Figs. 7, 8), but theword also carries the connotation of"one who fixes things." If my bicyclechain is broken, I take it to the bicyclefundi. Also to the point, it may connote aperson who has the peculiar skill or tal-ent needed to "bring things off."19He isthe East African equivalent of Levi-Strauss's bricoleur(1966:16ff.), mendingwhat is broken with whatever materialscome to hand. In the Third World every-thing useful is collected and recycled(Fig. 4): old rubber tires become sandals,

cows' tails become flywhisks, safety pinsand zippers become jewelry (Cover).This inventiveness, which requires aconstant shifting about of means andends, causes the products of the fundi'slabor to be constantly in flux.This habit of mind, making a virtue ofnecessity, is as true of the woodcarver asit is of the man who repairs bicycles. Thefirst Maconde shetanicarving is attribut-ed by the carvers themselves to SamakiLikonkoa (Fig. 9), who in 1959 was car-rying a "normal" binadamufigure to thetrader Mohamed Peera in Dar es Salaamwhen, accidentally, one arm was brokenoff (Kasfir 1980). Disconsolate, Samakireturned home where he dreamed that

night of his dead father. In his dream hisfather instructed him to smooth the bro-ken shoulder socket and gouge out theeyes. It would then represent a bushspirit, a djinn (KiSwahili:jini, shetani).The fact that none of the Dar esSalaam immigrant Maconde had made ashetani before was immaterial, since thiswas not intended for use within the

PHOTO SIDNEYL KASFIR

12. MAASAIWOMENAT THEAFRICANHERITAGEGALLERY.ON TUESDAYMORNINGSARTISANS LIKETHESE WOMEN BRINGINTHEIRWORKTO BEPURCHASEDBY AFRICANHERITAGEBUYERS(HOLDINGCLIPBOARDS).NAIROBI,KENYA,1987.

PHOTO. SIDNEY L KASFIR

13. MAASAIWOMENAT THEAFRICANHERITAGEGALLERY,WEARINGTHE BEADEDJEWELRYTHATIS ALSO SOLD AT THEGALLERY.

NAIROBI,KENYA,1987.

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Macondecommunity.It would be soldby Peera to anyonewho walked into hisshop and fancied it. Samaki's act ofbricolagecame to him in a dream inwhich tradition (his father) sanctionedinnovationby relating t back o tradition.(Bush spirits are an integral part ofMacondebelief.) This spiralingoff intonew forms would have beenmuchmoredifficultin the precolonialpast. But theradicallydifferentsituation introducedby foreign patronage opened the wayfor invention. In precolonialart, object,symbol, and function have been repre-sented as tightly bound up with eachother in a highly structured system,leaving little room for eithersubvertingor extending meanings (e.g., Levi-Strauss 1966:26).20But the new genresdeveloped under colonialism (and Iinclude in this categoryboth "popular"and "tourist"art) feed upon the fluid,highly situational patronage of theAfrican city, not the more predictableneeds of chiefs,age grades,and descentgroups.This city is linked in turn to theformer colonial center, with its foreignpatrons and exotic culture, and to thevillages to which its inhabitantsregular-ly returnand from which they draw animportantpartof theiridentity.21Paula Ben-Amos marshalled Levi-Strauss's argument that the semanticfunction of art tends to disappear n thetransition from "primitive"to modern(Ben-Amos1977:131). n modern art (ormore accurately, Renaissance to nine-teenth-century European art), it isreplaced by a mimetic function. Thatthis has happened in Benintouristart isclear from her interview with SamsonOkungbowa: "The commemorativehead [madeby a traditionalguild] rep-

resentsthe head of a spirit,not a humanbeing.Itspurposes to instill earand it ismade for a shrine.No onewaseverafraidofanebonyhead "emphasisadded).Thisexample likens tourist art (the ebonyhead) to pidgin languages, Ben-Amosconcludes,because in bothcases thereisa restricted emantic evel and a limitedrangeof subjectmatter 1977:129).Questioning these limitations, Ben-netta Jules-Rosettehas argued that thesemiotic content of tourist art does notdisappear but only becomes hidden(1987a:3;1987b:93).Although operatingin a few standard ormatsand a more orless "generic"style of representation,both tourist and popular painting "usemetaphor, metonymy, and allegory topoint to an unvoiced layer of meaningthat remains mplicit n the artist'srendi-

tion"(Jules-Rosette987a:3). ignificant-ly the subjecthere is painting,not sculp-ture. Painting has a more literary,"message bearing" characterthan theplasticarts and is also a greaterartifice,collapsing three dimensions onto a flatsurface. As such it is riper for semioticanalysis than sculpture. Building uponthe classificatory ystem of Ilona Szom-bati-Fabian nd JohannesFabian(1976),Jules-Rosettextends t to includetouristas well as popularart.In her argument,bothtouristandpopularZairianpaintingexpress collective memory and con-sciousness through the employment ofstereotypicthemes such as idyllic land-scapes ("thingsancestral"), oloniebelgepaintings ("things past"),and scenes ofcitylife("thingspresent") 1987a:4).An interestingquestion then is howapplicablethese categoriesare to otherforms of so-called tourist art. Trans-ferringthis typology to Macondesculp-ture, one might classify ujamaapoles(family trees) and Mama Kimakonde("Mother of the Makonde," derivedfromthe matrilinealancestor)as "thingsancestral,"the well-known caricaturesof Europeans, especially priests, as"things ofthe colonial)past,"andgenrepieces such as the barbergiving a hair-cut as "thingspresent."Unfortunately, the most innovativesculptures, the shetanifigures, are too

PHOTO IDNEY.KASFIR

PHOTO IDNEY KASFIR

PHOTO:IDNEY.KASFIR

CLOCKWISEROM OP:14.KAMBANDKIKUYU ATS.AFRICAN ERITAGEALLERY,AIROBI, ENYA,987.15. MAASAIUNGUTHROWINGTICKS) NDBEADEDKEYRINGS;NTHELEFT RENON-MAASAIEADS.THESE TEMS RESOLDATTHEAFRICAN ERITAGEGALLERY.AIROBI, ENYA,987.16.MAASAI OURDS NDLEATHERORAGINGAG,BOTHMADE NDDECORATEDYWOMEN.AFRICAN ERITAGEALLERY,AIROBI, ENYA,987.

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17. MAASAIBEADWORK,SHIELDS,ANDKENYANKHANGACLOTH FOR SALE NEARTHEROAD TO THEAMBOSELIGAME RESERVE.

NAMANGA, KENYA,1987.

complex to work into a simple chrono-logical scheme such as this. In a memoryframe they represent a qualitatively dif-ferent dimension, a persistent "past inthe present." Yet except for the "thingsancestral," they are the most powerfulexamples of collective memory at workin Maconde sculpture, referring as theydo to a set of beliefs about nature spirits,nnandenga, embedded in Maconde oraltraditions and masquerade perfor-mance. At the same time, as shetani,theyare inventions for a modern audience offoreigners. As effective as this schema isfor eliciting the "messages" of popularand tourist paintings in Zaire andZambia, it requires recasting to fit theproblem of Maconde sculpture. Theissue of collective memory, I will argue,is crucial in this rethinking, though notin quite the same way as it works for thepatrons of Zairian popular painting.The Maconde carvers of Dar esSalaam and its environs are immigrantsfrom Cabo Delgado province in theirMozambican homeland. They reinventtheir culture in the alien landscape ofTanzania, usually in scattered settle-ments outside Dar and Mtwara (Fig. 10).In the early 1970s they still harbored areputation for fierceness among thelocal Tanzanians, partly because theychose to live apart and partly becausethey alone continued to cicatrize theirfaces and file their teeth: the same actsof cultural inscription that appear ontheir mapiiko nitiation masks. This highvisibility is shared by their shetani fig-ures, which deviate so radically fromthe typical curio shop repertoire. Onemight say that the uneasiness felt by theDar es Salaam locals is equivalent to thediscomfort of "proper" art collectors,both of whom see the Maconde as cul-turally alien to their landscape. Howthen are we to understand what theMaconde are doing? And why should itbe rejected by Western cultural institu-tions as inauthentic?

My own sense is that they areengaged in a complex renegotiation ofMaconde identity, particularly the iden-tity of the artist, in this new cultural set-ting. It is this which gives shetanicarvings their "emergent" quality, iden-tified by Karin Barber (1987) as the mostdistinctive feature of the popular arts(which, ironically, are rejected by fineart museums and collectors for this veryreason).22In Dar es Salaam the Macondecarvers were at pains to separate them-selves from local Zaramo carvers whoproduced small curios. The Maconde,unlike the Zaramo, could not be com-missioned by a trader to produce a cer-


tain number of carvings of a certain typein a certain number of days. To the con-sternation of the traders, they regardedthemselves as "artists," meaning thatthey made whatever they felt like mak-ing that day, week, or month. Theywould also travel back and forth fre-quently, crossing the Rovuma River andascending the Maconde Plateau innorthern Mozambique.This seemingly casual attitude towardcarving could not have improved theirfinancial status, since an unpredictableoutput could only make an already mea-ger living more precarious. Rather it hadto do with the Maconde carvers' self-per-ception. Carving is work, but it is also a

form of mediation between the old life,still very much alive in collective memo-ry ("We come from Mueda, we all comefrom Mueda"), and the new one outsidethe Maconde homeland. Some carverscontinue to make the mapiikomasks forinitiation rituals while fashioningbinadamuor shetanifigures for sale to for-eigners. There is no overlap in style, con-tent, or clientele between these two typesof transactions.But it would be wrong to conclude,as Vogel has done (1991:41-42, 238), thatonly the mapiikomasks are authentic cul-tural expressions. In the artists' eyes allof their sculptures are equally so: onemakes "what people want," whether in

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the indigenous or the foreign patronagesystem.23 Barber's example of WestAfrican bands who record differentmusic for the local and the foreign mar-kets is an excellent analogy (1987:27).On the one hand, as JeanComaroff com-ments (1985:119), in a situation of con-tradictory values introduced throughradical social change, " 'traditional' ritu-al [or here, art] serves increasingly as asymbol of a lost world of order and con-trol." But we might also hypothesizethat new forms of cultural expressionserve to anchor the immigrant's experi-ence in a series of mediations requiredby the adopted culture and its setting.The shetanicarvings do this very suc-cessfully because they are in demand bya new clientele and also serve to legiti-mate a set of beliefs about the Wild thatencompass both the old and new home-lands. Like the carved door illustrated inFigure 1, they are "signs ...disengagedfrom their former contexts" that "takeon transformed [and visually concrete]meanings in their new associations"(Comaroff 1985:119). In short, the artistcontinues to play the role of the fundi orthe bricoleur.

Why this role should be regarded byWestern connoisseurs as inauthentic isperhaps because authenticity, until now,has been intimately associated with that"lost world of order and control," butnot with any of the cultural renegotia-tions following that loss. We need firstof all to recognize that the precolonialpast, seen from the present, is an ideal-ization for Europeans and Africansalike; second, it is crucial to relocate thenotion of authenticity in the minds ofthose who make art and not those on theother side of the Atlantic Ocean whocollect it.Context s Everything:TheStreet,theTrader, ndthe MarketIt is not only in museum displays and inthe houses of connoisseurs that themeanings of African art are reinvented.Until now, I have focussed on the con-temporary artist and the collector. Butunless we consider the intermediary inthis transaction, the description isincomplete in an important way.Christopher Steiner in two seminalessays (1989a, 1989b) has drawn atten-tion to the mediation of knowledge bytraders in African art, using as his exam-ple the Hausa, Mande, and Woloftraders in C6te d'Ivoire. I will attempt toexpand this world to encompass theircounterparts in Nairobi.Unlike most cities in West Africa,Nairobi is awash with tourists everyday of the year.24 It has many moreboutiques and galleries than one findsin a typical West African capital, andthese exist at every rung of the econom-ic ladder. Most noticeably, there is

almost as much West African andZairian art for sale in Nairobi as thereis art emanating from Kenya, Tanzania,Uganda, and Ethiopia. Yet these aresurface differences: underneath, thesame principles apply as in Abidjan,Douala, or Kano. The dealer, whether aKamba market trader, a Gujarati shop-keeper, or an expatriate gallery owner,plays the same role in framing, contex-tualizing, and authenticating the arti-facts that are for sale.For example, a brisk business existsin Maconde sculpture as well as incopies of it. The Maconde do not live inKenya, but it is still profitable to taketheir work across the Kenyan-Tan-zanian border from Dar es Salaam.First, there is the full-fledged gallerytreatment given to major works byestablished Maconde sculptors. Theseare displayed in isolation under spot-lights and authenticated by storiesabout origin myths concerning theimage of Mama Kimakonde, the "firstwoman." 25 As with Zairian painting,sellers understand that the storytelling

aspect of the figure is important toWestern buyers. As a result, ingenioushagiographies of this or that shetaniabound ("the shetani who causes roadaccidents," "the shetaniwho lurks in thepit latrine and causes dysentery," etc.).Everyone is satisfied: the gallery ownermakes his sale, the buyer feels she hasbought an authentic artifact, and theMaconde carver is allowed to keep hisown cultural knowledge to himself.There is also an active book market forMaconde sculpture. Its inventivenessknows no bounds, and every year thepile of romanticized fiction (mainly byGerman authors) written about theMaconde grows a bit higher.While a practiced eye can tell the dif-ference, street hawkers in both Nairobiand Mombasa manage to sell "Maconde"carvings that are made by non-Macondecarvers working in the industrial area ofthe two cities. Various hardwoods can bemade to look like ebony by a judiciousapplication of black shoe polish. (TheMaconde themselves do not use theseother woods, but ebony is scarcer inKenya than in Tanzania.)Smaller in scaleand price and more clearly commodified,these are often the "Maconde" carvingsthat make their way to American depart-ment stores. All of these marketingstrategies correspond closely to Steiner'sobservations on the presentation,description, and alteration of objects byIvorian traders(1989b:3).Not only Maconde and pseudo-Maconde sculpture but other popularartifacts can be purchased, on a slidingprice and quality scale, in galleries orboutiques near the large internationalhotels, from dukawallahs(petty traders)in small Indian shops near the city cen-ter, in the City Market or in one of the

nearby overflow markets, and finallyfrom street hawkers. Between the side-walk entrepreneur and the well-appointed boutique or gallery there maybe a ten-fold difference in price. Buttechnical quality will vary too, becauseboutiques are willing to pay artists morethan a street hawker would. For exam-ple, Maasai women from the Ngonghills outside Nairobi (Fig. 11) go to thecity once a week to sell their beadedneck rings and ear pendants. First, theytake their work to Alan Donovan'sAfrican Heritage Gallery where hisbuyer will evaluate it and purchase onlythe best pieces (Figs. 12, 13). What is leftover is then taken to street vendors, whowill pay considerably less for it (and sellit for less). Finally the women visit Laljiand Sons, the trade-bead shop that hasbeen in business on BiasharaStreet sincethe early 1900s. Here they stock up onbead supplies for the coming week andreturn to Ngong.26Inside African Heritage, a combina-tion of sophisticated marketing tech-niques and superior-qualitymerchandisemakes it an irresistible beacon for bothcollectors of ethnic jewelry and collectorsof art.27 Original designs by AngelaFisher (author of AfricaAdorned)as wellas new and old pieces of Maasai,Samburu, Rendille, and Turkana bead-work are sold in an ambience of authen-ticity and casual chic (Figs. 14-16).Mijikenda grave markers sprout in thegarden beside the coffeeshop (Fig. 18).West African sculpture, from the strictlycanonical (Yoruba ibejis)to the recentlyinvented (large Akan masks), gracesanother section. Decorated gourds andintricately woven baskets mediate theart/craft boundary. Upstairs there arebatik shifts and safari clothes. Like aRalph Lauren advertisement, AfricanHeritage evokes the quintessentiallyKenyan Settler/Hunter style of KarenBlixenor Denys Finch-Hatton.It remindsus that objects have the ability to createpersonalitiesfor their owners, not just fortheir makers. And no one is more awareof this than the trader. Not only is theMaasai woman renegotiating her ownidentity as an artistby selling her work toa boutique, but the woman buying andsubsequently wearing it is also inventinga new persona for herself. That theMaasai make subtle differentiations inthe colors and patterns of things madefor strangersversus those made for eachother does not matter here. What issalient is the playing out of new identi-ties on both sides.

In the none-too-distant past (say, fif-teen years ago) it would have beenclaimed that both of these renegotiationswere culturally spurious and that only aMaasai woman making beadwork forherself and other Maasai could lay claimto cultural authenticity: anything elsewould be an illustration of the cultural

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"decay and death" theme that inevitablyfollows colonial contact.28 But thisnomadic jewelry, now much in demand,coexists simultaneously in four or fivedistinct cultural settings in Nairobi alone.Unlike precolonial African sculpture,which migrated over time from cabinetof curiosities to natural history museumto fine art museum with accompanyingchanges of status, we can, on the sameday, see all of this and more. Beginningat the ethnographic gallery of theNational Museum in Nairobi, we mayview Maasai or Samburu beadwork dis-played as part of a standard "natural his-tory" functionalist array with gourds,spears, and the like. Near the frontentrance, the museum shop does a briskbusiness in pastoralist jewelry, especiallyearrings, as souvenirs. At AfricanHeritage we may see not only this samework being sold as aesthetic objects butalso (on Tuesday mornings) the Maasaiwomen selling it to the buyer and at thesame timewearingit themselves.Or the arti-facts may be seen on dancers performingat the Nairobi tourist village, Bomas ofKenya. Finally, bookshops all overNairobi sell Tepilit Ole Saitoti and CarolBeckwith's Maasai, Mirella Ricciardi'sVanishing Africa, Angela Fisher's AfricaAdorned, Mohamed Amin's Last of theMaasai, and most recently, Nigel Pavitt'sSamburu, in which photographs of thesame objects and their wearers are nowrecast as evocations of a vanishing"golden land." (In fact we recognize thatcoffee-table books such as these are thetwentieth century's "cabinets of curiosi-ties.") Each of these realities-functionalartifact, art object, souvenir, article ofdress, and body arts refracted throughthe lens of the camera-exists simultane-ously in a dialogic relationship to theothers, each with its own fragment of thetruth (Fig. 17).But the ultimate artifacts in thisfreeze-frame view are the Maasai them-selves. In 1987 one enterprising Mom-basa curio shop employed a Maasaimoran (warrior), resplendent in all hisfinery, to stroll about the premises andattract potential buyers. Tourism itself isa form of collecting, and taking pho-tographs its most aggressive act ofappropriation. The Kenyan parliamentfinally felt impelled to pass a law forbid-ding tourists to take pictures of Maasai, aself-defensive act analogous to thosetaken by tribal councils much earlier inthe American Southwest. But where isthe "authentic" Maasai culture in allthis? As with the Maconde shetani carv-ings, if we shift the locus of authenticityto the minds of the makers and not thecollectors, the issue must be recast. Themoran in the curio shop is real;he is nei-

ther David Byrne playing at being amambo king (Cosentino 1990:1) nor thefolkloric "Indian" of cigar-selling days.He has lived in cattle camps and beeninitiated with his age group into moran-hood, which does not normally includewage employment. But perhaps heneeds money for school fees or to pay afine. By the act of standing outside thecurio shop he has become, in effect, a liv-ing sign of himself.29I began with the questions of whocreates meaning for African art andwhat determines its cultural authentici-ty. In one sense they are rhetorical,because we already suspect the answer.If "tourist art," the lowest common

denominator of what is thought byWesterners to be inauthentic in Africanart, can be deconstructed in ways thatmake the definition of authenticity fullof self-contradictions, then the samekinds of questions can be asked evenmore readily about other noncanonicalcategories such as "elite" or "interna-tional" art. Now, in the closing years ofthe twentieth century, it is perhapstime to bring the canon into betteralignment with the corpus, with whatAfrican artists actually make, and toleave behind a rather myopic classifica-tory system based so heavily on anAfrica of the mind. D

Notes,page96

18. MIJIKENDAGRAVEMARKERS.AFRICANHERITAGEGALLERY,NAIROBI,KENYA,1987. PHOTO:IDNEYKASFIR53



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ARTFROMANTIQUITYANDTRIBALCIVILIZATIONSMusee Barbier-Mueller, eneva,SwitzerlandAFRICANARTMuseed'EthnographieNeuchatel,SwitzerlandAFRICANAND OCEANICARTThe von der HeydtCollectionMuseumRietberg,Zurich,Switzerlandf r i c bvcour

SANAAGATEJABarkcloth aintings romUgandaAfricanHeritageGallery,Nairobi,KenyaEXPRESSIONSOFAFRICACrafts xhibitKimSacksGalleryJohannesburg, outhAfricaAFRICANARTANDANTIQUITIESTotem-MeneghelliGalleryJohannesburg,South AfricaWESTAFRICAN NDSOUTHAFRICAN RTTotemRosebankJohannesburg,South AfricaTRADITIONALFRICANARTNationalMuseumPietermaritzburg,outh AfricaHISTORICAL EVELOPMENTOF SOUTHAFRICANARTPretoriaArtMuseum,Pretoria, outhAfricaAFRICANARTLes ArtInternational,axonwold,SouthAfricaPERMANENT OLLECTIONNationalGalleryof ZimbabweHarare,ZimbabweasiaMATISSE'S ECRET80 Kuba extilesApril7-28GalleryNogizakaRoppongi,Tokyo,Japanaustralia (by losinadateARTOFTIBETThroughMay15ArtGalleryofWesternAustralia,PerthCONTEMPORARYBORIGINALRTISTSFROMTHEKIMBERLEYEGIONAugust20-October 31NationalGalleryof Victoria,MelbournecontinuingxhibitionsARTFROMABORIGINAL USTRALIAAustralianNationalGallery,CanberraAUSTRALIAN BORIGINALRTArtGalleryof WesternAustralia,PerthmiddleastFAITH-DORIANND MARTINWRIGHTGALLERY F AFRICANARTIsraelMuseum,Jerusalem,Israelsouth americaACERVOAFRICANO AFRO-BRASILEIROMuseude Arqueologia EtnologiaSao Paulo,Brazil96

notesSTANLEY: Selected bibliography of writings by Jean Kennedy,frompage38Forthcoming. New Currents, Ancient Rivers: ContemporaryAfrican Artists in a Generationof Change. Washington, DC:Smithsonian Institution Press. Expected pub. date May1992.1991. "Haitian Art: Inspired by Vodun," American Visions(Washington, DC) 6, 3:14-18, June.1987a. "Visionen vom Baum des Lebens," Tendenzen(Munich) 158:71-75.1987b. "Wosene Kosrof of Ethiopia," AfricanArts 20, 3:64-67,89 (May).1986. "The Art of Kiure Msangi," The Special (published byTheDaily Californian)1, 2:3, 11 (Feb. 11).1984. "Bruce Onobrakpeya: An Art of Synthesis," Printnews(The World Print Council) 6, 5:8-11 (Sept.-Oct.).1981. "Speaking of Myths" (rejoinder to Stephen Naifeh's"The Myth of Oshogbo"), AfricanArts 14, 4:78-80 (Aug.).1973. "Muraina Oyelami of Nigeria," AfricanArts 6, 3:32-33(spring).1972a. "Bruce Onobrakpeya," African Arts 5, 2:48-49 (win-ter).1972b. "The City as Metaphor" (on Adebisi Fabunmi), AfricaReport17, 4:27-29 (April).1971. "Senabu Oloyede, Kikelomo Oladepo: New Heirs toTalent in Oshogbo," AfricanArts 4, 4:24-27 (summer).1968a. "I Saw and I Was Happy: Festival at Oshogbo,"AfricanArts 1, 2:8-16, 85 (winter).1968b. "Renaissance in Oshogbo: Part 1: The Shrines," WestAfricanBuilderand Architect(Ibadan)8, 3:71-74.1968c. "Printmaking in Nigeria," Artist's Proof(New York) 7.1968d. "Two Nigerian Artists" (Asiru Olatunde and Jimoh

Buraimoh), Nigeria Magazine(Lagos) 96:2-11 (March-May).

KASFIR:Notes,from page531. A partial exception to this is the contemporary-art exhibi-tion "Africa Explores," organized by Susan Vogel for theCenter for African Art in New York. I have tried to addressthe somewhat different problems raised by this exhibition inanother article, "Taste and Distaste: The Loaded Canon ofNew African Art" (Kasfir,in press).2. Chinweizu, The West and theRestof Us, 1978.3. See especially the symposium in AfricanArts, vol. 9, no. 3,1976.4. An important recent restudy (van Beek 1991) attempts toreturn the Dogon to the same universe as other SudanicWest African cultures.5. Seen in Gramscian terms, the giving of such gifts simplyunderscores the hegemonic relationship of the colonizer overthe colonized.6. Diaspora studies are of course the exception. Here changeis the sine qua non of aesthetic activity of all kinds and isthought to be axiomatic.7. Anonymity is an issue on which scholars (who in mostcases have done field-collecting themselves) tend to partcompany with dealers and collectors, who in turn are farfrom homogeneous on both sides of the Atlantic. A numberof American collectors take pains to discover the authorshipof pieces they own, while the conversations Price reportswould seem to reflect a more European (and more romantic)sensibility toward the art of "exotic" people.8. Price quotes the well-known dealer Henri Kamer, whomakes this point precisely: "Theobjectmade in Africa...onlybecomes an object of art on its arrival in Europe" (in Price1989:70).9. The problem is historical as well as sociological: the veryidea of "being Yoruba" as a commonly held cultural identitydates only from the nineteenth century (Doortmont1990:102).10. My own fieldwork was based on many Idoma, a few Tiv,Afo, and other carvers in Nigeria, Maconde immigrantcarvers from Mozambique in Tanzania, and Kamba carversin Kenya; all support the Asante data.11. Because Nigeria has an antiquities law and considerableillegal trafficking in sculpture, "antiquity" has become thepidgin term for any artifact that changes hands illegally.12. The Nigerian art historian Babatunde Lawal has beenarguing since 1975 that it is, but once again, this is anattempt to deny it authenticity by associating it with thislabel.13. They are included for example in the current exhibition"Circa 1492," a show intended to display masterworksfrom around the world, at the National Gallery inWashington.14. A parallel example is the intricately carved Chinese ivorypuzzles intended for the export trade but now seen as worksof art in their own right.15. For an incisive treatment of the issue of collectors andcommodification in African art, see K. Anthony Appiah'sreview of Perspectives:Angles on African Art (exhibition cata-logue, The Center for African Art, New York, 1987) inCriticalInquiry(1991:338-42).16. I use the spelling "Maconde" to differentiate the immi-

grant Mozambican carvers from the indigenous TanzanianMakonde whose cultural production is distinct and who areonly marginally involved in the carving profession.17. The typical collectors of Maconde sculpture are aca-demics and journalists, people who can not easily afford tocollect "traditional" African art. Thus there is a class distinc-tion implicit in the purchase and display of an acceptedcanon on the one hand and "tourist-art" on the other. Thelatter is much cheaper to own.18. The KiMakonde term is puundi (Wembah-Rashid 1989:5),but in Dar es Salaam the language of dominant discourse isKiSwahili.19. I am grateful to Allen Roberts for this second meaning.East African and Zairian usage appear to be similar, thoughnot identical, on this point.20. This formulation is necessary to LUvi-Strauss's argument,but is overdrawn. As I indicated earlier, this sense of "one-ness" about precolonial art is as much a Western predisposi-tion to idealize Primitive Society as it is an observable fact.21. I am grateful to my colleague David Brown for urgingme to re-examine the concept of bricolage in this context."JohnFundi" was of course a happy coincidence. For a treat-ment of bricolage in an Afro-Cuban Diaspora context, seeBrown's description of the self-conscious cultural style of losnegros curros in early-nineteenth-century Havana(1989:35-38).22. Barber'stypology does not demote tourist art to a liminalcategory but refers to it as commercially motivated popularart, "produced but not consumed by the people" (1987:26).23. Vogel herself makes this point earlier in the same text(1991:50). Part of the difficulty is that very few art historianshave done field interviews with those who make tourist art.24. Tourism has now replaced coffee as the major source offoreign exchange earnings.25. Although this story has been published several times, Iwas never able to find a Maconde carver who had anyknowledge of it.26. I am grateful to Maasai art specialist Donna Klumpp fornumerous insights concerning the bead trade in Nairobi, andto Melania Kasfir, who was then a secondary-school student,for helping me to trace the Ngong-Nairobi bead circle out-lined by Klumpp.27. Donovan is in a position to do both very well: he istrained in marketing and is also a field collector and connois-seur of pastoralist arts. See his essay on Turkana containersin AfricanArts, vol. 21, no. 3, 1988.28. The parallel debate in folklore studies ("folklore versusfakelore") engaged many of the same issues, though the bat-tle-lines were drawn somewhat differently, between puristsand popularizers rather than their texts. See Dorson1976:1-29.29. See also Kirschenblatt-Gimblett 1991:388 for a discus-sion of this same phenomenon in the sponsored culturalfestival.

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ROBERTS: Notes,frompage63This paper was submitted to African Arts in April 1991 andaccepted for publication in June 1991. It is substantiallyrevised from one presented at the first "Redefining theArtisan" conference sponsored in the spring of 1989 by theUniversity of Iowa Museum of Art and Center forInternational and Comparative Study (Greenough 1991). Mythanks to the participants and to Professor Richard Schectnerof New York University, discussant for the conference, fortheir pertinent comments. A teaching packet of text andslides based on the original presentation has been preparedby Kay Tu

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