The Point Isn’t Just African Art, but How It’s Perceived

When New York’s Museum for African Art moved downtown in 1993, officials came up with an exhibit to appeal to their new neighbors, Soho’s celebrated enclave of contemporary artists.

“Western Artists/African Art,” which went on the road--it currently is at the Newport Harbor Art Museum--showcases African artifacts (sculpture, masks, textiles, musical instruments and furniture) collected by two dozen well-known American contemporary artists.

Such names as Frank Stella, Francesco Clemente, Eric Fischl, Helen Frankenthaler, Jasper Johns and Martin Puryear undeniably sell this show, even though their own work isn’t the focus (some of it is included, however, along with large photographs showing how these artists and others display African artifacts in their homes and studios).

Some might disagree with this approach. Why, in the multicultural ‘90s, when colonialism is a no-no, focus on Westerners’ (albeit both white and African American Westerners’) likes and dislikes? Why not stage an exhibit about African art in its own right?

Because the show isn’t as much about Western artists’ taste as it is about “the reception of African art in the West, and the perception of African art in the West. And I think that’s a perfectly legitimate subject for consideration,” says Susan Vogel, who was founding director of the Museum for African Art when the show originated.

“You can look at Japanese prints and study what they mean in Japan, or you can look at what they meant for the Impressionists,” Vogel said recently, on the phone from Connecticut, where she now directs the Yale University Art Gallery. This exhibit “isn’t the whole story, but it’s an important part of the story.”

With objects from such countries as Gabon, Mali, Nigeria and Zaire, “Western Artists/African Art” doesn’t reinforce a Eurocentric stance, Vogel continued. Rather, by exploring how the collectors respond and relate to the objects they’ve amassed, it lays the groundwork for a better understanding of what African art means in Africa, which should be the “maybe unachievable” goal of every exhibit of such work.

“I don’t think it’s possible for an American to look at a piece of African art without having the screen of Picasso’s use of that material somewhere between himself and the object,” Vogel said. “And the whole history of colonialism, as well as appropriation, is part of what we look through when we look at these objects.”

But “until you know where you’re coming from, until you know what informs the way you look at things, you can’t begin to even try to capture the way things look to someone else.”

*

The 24 collectors in “Western Artists” differ vastly in their thoughts and feelings about the objects they own. Philip Pearlstein admits to “letting them influence my progress as an artist.”

“Frequently,” he writes, “my appreciation and isolation of a particular form, in the abstract sense of shape, is conditioned by my memory of a shape that is part of one of these objects.”

Fischl, conversely, has “always felt a little uncomfortable with artists who borrow from other cultures to solve formal problems in art. I don’t believe in the practice or the value of separating form from content, which is exactly what happens when you take from other cultures.”

Terry Adkins, an African American, goes a step further. He collects only musical instruments, believing that acquisition of African objects for display effectively deadens them. By playing his instruments, “they somewhat can still be re-enlivened,” he says in a videotape that is part of the exhibit.

Mel Edwards gives another African American artist’s point of view. In college, he writes, “there was a [sculpture] from Gabon, a male figure with muscular shoulders, generally strong and dynamic, and this work sat on the art history lecture table. I drew it many times; it felt right. After that, African art was special because I knew I was a part of its reality. Eye to eye, African art is like a deep conversation with family.”

What many of these artists do share, Vogel said, is the way in which their collecting habits, just as their work, differs from previous artist-collectors of African art, most notably Picasso.

Whereas earlier artists mostly amassed sculpture and masks and favored figuratism, she said, “many artists today are collecting functional items--textiles, furniture, fly wisks, the house posts--all the things that don’t fit the Western definitions of high art. That’s because this generation has moved past those definitions, and it’s echoed in their own work.”

For instance, Puryear, who owns vividly colored textiles from Ghana, makes wholly non-figurative work that “partakes of craftsmanship and alludes to functional objects,” Vogel pointed out.

Not all contemporary artists are leaning toward functionalism and away from figurative work, of course, but many are “steering away from what has been canonized and sanctified,” Vogel said.

“They are making a different kind of art and looking for a different inspiration,” she said. “They have different questions than earlier artists, and they are looking for different answers. That’s why an exhibit of African art collected by artists is more interesting than a show of work collected by (non-artists). These objects are their working tools, archives, their references.”