Home » Art and Culture

From African wooden sculpture to Picasso’s painting

9 December 2011 39,227 views 4 Comments
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (40 votes, average: 4.98 out of 5)
Loading...

From the exaggerated lipstick used by topless models at London Fashion Week to the paintings of Picasso and Matisse, African artists have continually defined and redefined the trajectory of Western art since the Renaissance.

African Wooden Sculpture The Bridge MAG image

According to Denise Murrell, a PhD student and researcher at the Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University:

“In the contemporary postcolonial era, the influence of traditional African aesthetics and processes is so profoundly embedded in artistic practice that it is only rarely evoked as such. While these artists knew nothing of the original meaning and function of the West and Central African sculptures they encountered, they instantly recognized the spiritual aspect of the composition and adapted these qualities to their own efforts to move beyond the naturalism that had defined Western art since the Renaissance.”

 

The Renaissance also witnessed the discovery and exploration of new continents and historians consider it to have heralded the beginning of modern history – an age in which artistic, social, scientific and political thought turned in new directions.

 

The stylistic influences of African sculpture inspired some of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century – Matisse, Picasso and Gaugin, to name a few.

 

The Picasso (October 1881 – April 1973), African sculpture helped him…

 

Naked women oil painting by T. Savic The Bridge MAG image

In 1907, after hundreds of preparatory sketches, Picasso completed the seminal Les Demoiselles d’Avignon the painting to whose multifaceted female bodies and mask-like faces the birth of Cubism is attributed.

 

Western artists have mimicked west and sub-Saharan African arts and sculpture in their form…

 

 

Follow the links below to read more:

 

 

 

1)

https://www.lulu.com/en/gb/shop/rachel-tcheungna/arts-and-culture-global-news-that-never-fades-the-bridge-magazine-book-from-britains-news-to-world-exclusives/paperback/product-q764zz.html?page=1&pageSize=4

 

   2)

 

https://www.lulu.com/en/gb/shop/rachel-tcheungna/global-news-that-never-fades-from-britains-news-to-world-exclusives/paperback/product-ennmdm.html?page=1&pageSize=4

 

 

 

Rachel Tcheungna, Author, Writer of 

The Bridge Books and 

The Bridge Magazine Editor.

 

4 Comments »

  • Alex said:

    I always considered african people to be interconnected with this Earth at the highest levels possible…thus their creativeness shows a lot of …profoundness in it. you can see examples of what I mean on sunofafrica.com

    • rachtcheungna said:

      Dear Alex,

      Thanks ever so much for your kind words and for the useful link as well. I always rely on the readers comments to improve my pieces.

      Very best wishes for 2012
      Rachel

  • click here said:

    Recent Blogroll Additions……

    […]usually posts some very interesting stuff like this. If you’re new to this site[…]……

    • Rachel Tcheungna said:

      Many thanks for your comments.They are very much appreciated.
      With best regards.

      Rachel

Leave a comment!

Add your comment below, or trackback from your own site. You can also subscribe to these comments via RSS.

Be nice. Keep it clean. Stay on topic. No spam.

You can use these tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

This is a Gravatar-enabled weblog. To get your own globally-recognized-avatar, please register at Gravatar.