portraiture in africa jean m. borgatti african arts, vol. 23, no. 3,...

8
Portraiture in Africa Jean M. Borgatti African Arts, Vol. 23, No. 3, Special Issue: Portraiture in Africa, Part I. (Jul., 1990), pp. 34-39+101. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0001-9933%28199007%2923%3A3%3C34%3APIA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R African Arts is currently published by UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/jscasc.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Fri Apr 13 13:17:44 2007

Upload: others

Post on 07-Aug-2020

1 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Portraiture in Africa Jean M. Borgatti African Arts, Vol. 23, No. 3, …jborgatt/smfa/borgatti_portraitureAA.pdf · 2008-08-07 · Portraiture Africa JEAN M. BORGATTI A portrait depicts

Portraiture in Africa

Jean M. Borgatti

African Arts, Vol. 23, No. 3, Special Issue: Portraiture in Africa, Part I. (Jul., 1990), pp.34-39+101.

Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0001-9933%28199007%2923%3A3%3C34%3APIA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R

African Arts is currently published by UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/jscasc.html.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. Formore information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

http://www.jstor.orgFri Apr 13 13:17:44 2007

Page 2: Portraiture in Africa Jean M. Borgatti African Arts, Vol. 23, No. 3, …jborgatt/smfa/borgatti_portraitureAA.pdf · 2008-08-07 · Portraiture Africa JEAN M. BORGATTI A portrait depicts

Portraiture

Africa JEAN M. BORGATTI

A portrait depicts a specific person, and the idea of portrai- ture springs from a common impulse to remember and be

remembered, whether the reasons are personal or political, rit- ual or social. The nature of portrayal differs from culture to culture, however, subject to concepts of individualism, the pre- vailing aesthetic, and a host of social or ritual beliefs particular to a given time period, people, or place.'

Western culture emphasizes individual identity, Western art features representation, and the portrait canon stresses physiog- nomic likeness-notably, the communication of personality through facial features and expression. We do not know what John Harvard looked like, yet a quite realistic sculpted image bearing his name surveys Harvard Yard. In contrast, African culture emphasizes social identity, the African aesthetic is a generalizing one, and the portrait image is individuated by name and context. Thus such widely disparate visual configu- rations as Kurumba antelope headdresses (Roy 1987) and dressed houses (Fig. 4) work as portraits in Africa alongside representational (Fig. 3) and stylized (Fig. 10) human images.2

Recognition of the portrait genre in Africa stems from the same interaction of situations and events that has expanded the range of African images now generally considered appropriate to study under the rubric "artn-notably developments in Western art since the late 1800s, field study in Africa by Euroamerican scholars, and the increasing participation of scholars from Africa in the academic disciplines concerned with material culture (Borgatti 1976a).

The modern period in Western art is rich in examples of portraiture that convey personal identity without resorting to literal physical description-making them more like African portraits and making it easier for us to recognize comparable images in Africa. For example, reliance upon literary reference and indirection creates a conceptual and cross-cultural bond between such works as Charles Demuth's I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (Fig. 7), a symbolic portrait of William Carlos Williams that refers to his poetry (Aiken 1987), and Fon applique por- traits (Fig. 8) that draw upon the imagery of a proverb to sug-

2. COMMEMORATIVE MASK (OLIMI NIKEKE) REPRESENTING ZlBlRl ATEKPE'S FATHER. ATEKPE.

CARVED BY JAMES JOHN. 1978. OKPELLA. NORTHERN EDO. NIGERIA. ZlBlRl ATEKPE'S COMPOUND. OGlRlGA VILLAGE. 1979.

PHOTO: JEAN M. BORGATTI.

ALTHOUGH THlS MASK TAKES THE FORM CHARACTERISTIC OF A "DEAD MOTHER.' A FEMALE MASK WlTH THE ATTRIBUTES

OF WEALTH AND STATUS, IT IS IDIOSYNCRATIC IN BEING USED TO COMMEMORATE A MAN.

OPPOSITEPAGE: 1. HELMET MASK. 20TH CENTURY. YAO. MOZAMBIQUE. WOOD. HAIR. BARK. RATTAN: 30.5cm. JEAN WILLIS COLLECTION. SAN FRANCISCO.

ALTHOUGH THE DESCRIPTIVE NATURALISM OF YAO MASKS SUGGESTS PORTRAITURE, NO DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE SUBSTANTIATES THlS INTERPRETATION. BECAUSE OF WESTERN BIASES, WE MUST BE JUST A S CAUTIOUS ABOUT MISINTERPRETING REPRESENTATIONAL IMAGES AS WE ARE ABOUT GENERALIZED OR IDEALIZED ONES.

WlTH THE EXCEPTION OF FIGURE 2. ALL CAPTIONS DERIVE FROM LIKENESS AND BEYOND: PORTRAITURE IN AFRICA AND THE WORLD (BORGATTI 8 BRILLIANT 1990).

Page 3: Portraiture in Africa Jean M. Borgatti African Arts, Vol. 23, No. 3, …jborgatt/smfa/borgatti_portraitureAA.pdf · 2008-08-07 · Portraiture Africa JEAN M. BORGATTI A portrait depicts
Page 4: Portraiture in Africa Jean M. Borgatti African Arts, Vol. 23, No. 3, …jborgatt/smfa/borgatti_portraitureAA.pdf · 2008-08-07 · Portraiture Africa JEAN M. BORGATTI A portrait depicts

ABOVE: 3. ROYAL PORTRAITS IN SITU, 1961. BAMILEKE. CAMEROON. THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK. THE ROBERT GOLDWATER LIBRARI. PAUL GEBAUER COLLECTION. NEG. NO. PG-291-22.

AMONG THE BATUFAM (BAMILEKE). A NEW KING WOULD COMMISSION A PORTRAIT SCULPTURE OF HIMSELF A S WELL AS OTHER MEMBERS OF HIS FAMILY AND IMPORTANT RETAINERS. THESE FIGURES FORMED PART OF A PERMANENT DISPLAY OF RANK OUTSIDE THE PALACE, POSITIONED ADJACENT TO THE ENTRYWAY OR WORKED INTO THE FACADE SCULPTURE.

. ad . i' '*, LEFT 4 HOUSE DRESSED WlTH FUNERAL CLOTHS BATAMMALIBA, TOGO KOUFITOUKOU VILLAGE. MARCH 4. 1977 PHOTO SUZANNE PRESTON BLlER

BATAMMALIBA FAMILIES HONOR THEIR ELDERS WlTH THE SYMBOLS OF YOUTH, PORTRAYING THEM IN THE FORM OF HOUSES WlTH THE GARMENTS OF INITIATION.

gest name and character. Personal artifact and emphasis on name characterize such contemporary works as Eleanor Antin's portrait of Margaret Mead (Goldin 1975) and Armand Arman's portrait of Andy Warhol (Fig. 5), and recall African modes of portraiture that rely on the property or clothing of the subject to evoke the individual, as in Bwa commemorative forms (Fig. 61, Ibibio funerary shrines (Salmons 19801, or Baule portrait masks (Vogel1977). Siting reinforces the actual identity of the subject in certain portraits, and today, photographs of the subject are added to the configuration, confirming it, as in the Bwa example shown here.

The literature does not agree on what constitutes a "true" portrait, except that it depicts a specific individual. Western scholars have had to address the gap between their own expec- tations that portrait images be literally representational, as in a Yao headdress mask from Mozambique (Fig. I), and the identi- fication of many generalized images as portraits in African communities, illustrated by Bembe commemorative statuary (Fig. 10). The hedging of the term "portrait" with such quali- fiers as "portrait by designation," or a tag line like "but of course they are not true portraits" stems from this gap between Western expectation and African actuality.

In my own work among the Okpella (Nigeria); I had to come to grips with the identification of commemorative mas-

querades as portraits. Some of these were nonanthropomor- phic. Others wore generalized human masks (Fig. 2; Borgatti 1976b). I did not think of these as portrait images during my initial research, although I documented their identities. The perception of these images as portraits depended upon my developing sufficient familiarity with the culture to recognize the social exchanges that took place between individual per- sonified ancestors (masquerades) and their living associates (the titled elders). "Portrait" was the only category that accounted for the evocation of personality accomplished by these forms or that recognized the level of reality they held for the community.

African scholars like Rowland Abiodun and Babatunde Lawal bring yet new insights into the nature of representation- al imagery in particular, its parameters and its appropriate- ness in certain Yoruba portrait forms. Abiodun (1976) notes that completeness rather than verisimilitude is a representa- tional ideal for the commemorative Ako figures used by the Owo Yoruba. Writing about the same tradition, Lawal (1977) notes the danger inherent in verisimilitude, and the equiva- lence of name and representation in attracting and fixing a spiritual force-the function of many memorial portraits in Africa. The durable object may be seen as a more efficacious kind of name than its ephemeral verbal counterpart.

Page 5: Portraiture in Africa Jean M. Borgatti African Arts, Vol. 23, No. 3, …jborgatt/smfa/borgatti_portraitureAA.pdf · 2008-08-07 · Portraiture Africa JEAN M. BORGATTI A portrait depicts

LEFT. 5 PORTRAIT OF WARHOL BY ARMAND ARMAN. UNITED STATES.1987 MIXED MEDIA ON BOARD. 188 X 9 1 . 4 ~ 1 ~ THE ESTATE OF ANDY WARHOL. CROZIER FINE ARTS. INC.. NEW YORK.

WARHOL, AN ICON OF HIS AGE, IS IMMEDIATELY IDENTIFIABLE NOT ONLY BY THE SHOCK OF WHITE-BLOND HAIR AND THE BLACK CLOTHING. BUT BY THE SURROUNDING COLLAGE OF OBJECTS ASSOCIATED WITH HIM.

BELOW: 6. PORTRAIT OF AN ELDER IN SlTU BWA, BURKINA FASO. BONI VILLAGE. 1985. PHOTO: CHRISTOPHER D. ROY.

THE USE OF SITE. CLOTHING. AND OTHER PERSONAL ITEMS TO ACHIEVE A RESEMBLANCE BETWEEN SUBJECT AND PORTRAIT IN AFRICA IS REINFORCED BY THE CONTEMPORARY PRACTICE OF ADDING A PHOTOGRAPHIC LIKENESS TO THE IMAGE.

According to Kalabari Ijo sources, the spirits come and stay in their names, meaning their particular sculpted figure or head- dress (Horton 1965; Barley 1988).

That portraits depict specific individuals appears to be the only undisputed issue in the literature on portraiture, even though the means used to specify the image or the mode of depiction may vary according to culturally held conceptions of the person, ideas about individualism, and aesthetic prefer- ences. This is the point of departure that each essay in this issue takes in its exploration of the portrait mode in a particu- lar African culture. As a background against which these essays may be read, the arguments about African portraiture as a genre, developed in my recent publication, Likeness and Beyond: Portraiture in Africa and the World (The Center for African Art, New York, 1990), are summarized here.

African portraits depict real people, people whose lives form part of the historical narrative of a family, a community, or a nation. Portrait images are identified by name, sometimes verbally and through use, or at other times via such depicted attributes as physiognomic likeness, personal ornamentation, and emblems particular to the person represented. African por- traits emphasize social identity rather than personal identity and evidence an aesthetic preference for the general and ideal rather than the idiosyncratic and representational, which is

consistent with African cultural conceptions about personhood and ideas about individualism.

Nonetheless, portraits identify individuals who have demonstrated their capabilities during a lifetime of success. As those most likely to be efficacious ancestral forces, such men and women are selected to be memorialized in portrait form. With the economy characteristic of all African sculpture, these portraits reference individual and social identities simultane- ously, so that the image of a king may represent a particular king and all kings; a commemorative mask for a woman, a par- ticular woman and all titled women.

African portrait images fall into three broad and slightly overlapping categories. The largest category by far is the gen- eralized anthropomorphic image that is individuated through naming, such as an Okpella Dead Mother (Borgatti 1979) or a Fon memorial altar figure (Bay 1984); through specific sculp- tural reference to the deceased's coiffure and personal decora- tion, as in Akan commemorative statuary (Sieber 1972; Soppelsa 1988); through attributes or insignia specific to the subject, a mode exemplified by Kuba statuary (Vansina 1972); through the incorporation of relics, as noted for the Bembe (Fig. 10; Soderberg 1975); through visual narrative or bio- graphical references such as those characterizing Antanosy memorials (Fig. 9) and Ijo funerary screens (Barley 1988); or

Page 6: Portraiture in Africa Jean M. Borgatti African Arts, Vol. 23, No. 3, …jborgatt/smfa/borgatti_portraitureAA.pdf · 2008-08-07 · Portraiture Africa JEAN M. BORGATTI A portrait depicts

simply through contextual association with the individual portrayed or with his or her family, as in Baule portrait masks (Voge11977).

Representational images, the second category (e.g., Fig. 3), are physiognomic likenesses based on a confrontation between artist and subject. In some cases the subject (or an appropriate relative) sits for the artist, serving as a model. In other cases the artist may simply familiarize himself with the individual to be portrayed (his appearance, personality, and biography), exe- cuting the work without further visual reference to the person. Bangwa and Bamileke royal portraits (Brain & Pollock 1971; Harter 19761, Hemba ancestor figures (Neyt & de Stryker 1975), and Dan images of favorite wives (Himmelheber & Fischer 1976) all fall into this category. Even the most representational African portraits idealize and generalize their subjects, demon- strating what Rowland Abiodun has called a "controlled natu- ralism" (1976) in contrast to the idiosyncratic or literal naturalism of much Western portraiture.

Just as the most representational images may be seen to draw upon the generalizing aesthetic that informs all African portraits, the emblematic portrait takes the cultural and histor- ical markers present in all the images and raises them to another degree of abstraction. Portraits in this third category make use of symbolic devices to evoke an image of the subject

in the mind's eye of the viewer. They are often nonanthropo- morphic and may include an assemblage of goods or visual referents that recall the individual to the spectator, as in Batammaliba dressed houses (Fig. 4) or Fon works in cloth applique (Fig. 8). Generally they may be said to represent an intellectualized vision of the subject and his personality or spiritual side not normally visible. The imagery may be per- sonal and subtle, dependent upon the viewer's specialized knowledge, or it may be public and dramatic to impress more firmly on the audience particular characteristics or achieve- ments of the person portrayed.

The boundaries between the three categories are fluid, fluc- tuating according to the quality of the documentary evidence, in some instances, or personal interpretation. The categories themselves are an analytical convenience.

Idealized but recognizable images like the Owo Yoruba ako figures (Abiodun 1976)-that is, images that look as if they could be real persons even to eyes unaccustomed to reading African images and distinguishing African faces-and unabashedly symbolic ones, like the Bwa effigy (Fig. 6) docu- mented by Roy (1987), are less surprising to the Western observer than the notion of a generalized image representing a specific individual, as is the case with Yoruba twin figures (Drewal 1984). The Western viewer comes to these portraits

r LEFT: 7.1 SAW THE FIGURE 5 IN GOLD BY CHARLES DEMUTH. UNITED STATES. 1929. OIL ON COMPOSITION BOARD, 91 4 X 75 5cm THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK. THE ALFRED STlEGLlTZ COLLECTION

REFERENCES TO THE SUBJECT, POET WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS, ARE READILY RECOGNIZED BY VIEWERS FAMILIAR WITH HIS POETRY.

- \ - ABOVE 8 WALL HANGING DEDICATED TO KING AGADJA FON. PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF BENIN CLOTH MUSEE HISTORIOUE. ABOMEY REPRODUCED FROM ADAMS 1980 FIG 9

THE IMAGE OF A SHIP DOMINATES THE WORK BY ITS RELATIVE SIZE AND BY ITS PLACEMENT IN THE COMPOSITION, PRESENTATION TECHNIQUES INDICATING CLEARLY THAT AGADJA IS THE VISUAL AND INTELLECTUAL SUBJECT ~ ~ - ---- ~ - - - -

OF THE PIECE. AGADJA WAS THE FIRST KING OF ABOMEY TO EXTEND THE BOUNDARIES OF THE KINGDOM TO THE COAST, GIVING HIS COUNTRY AN OUTLET TO THE SEA AND ACCESS TO THE RICH EUROPEAN TRADE

38

Page 7: Portraiture in Africa Jean M. Borgatti African Arts, Vol. 23, No. 3, …jborgatt/smfa/borgatti_portraitureAA.pdf · 2008-08-07 · Portraiture Africa JEAN M. BORGATTI A portrait depicts

with a conception of identity that stresses individual difference rather than conformity and from a visual background that is representational in emphasis. It is unquestionably difficult for such an observer to relate to many of the African images dis- cussed here or in Likeness and Beyond as portraits, despite an intellectual appreciation of the issues. Nonetheless, these images represent specific people, and they are invested with identity in ways that are meaningful to their audience. We must accept that they are appropriate "relational models," as art historian Ernst Gombrich refers to portraits in his classic 1972 article, and that they serve the same purposes in their own cultures as more representational images do in Western culture.

Name and use are clearly the keys to locating portraits in Africa. Investing the images with personal identity for an out- sider audience remains the challenge for those who study them, whether African scholars or Western ones. Art historian Henry Drewal's detailed biographical data on the twins memo- rialized by figures in one family's shrine (1984) and historian Edna Bay's exegesis of a Fon memorial (1985) that places it into a particular context reinforce an interpretation of these images as evocative of individual identity. Such cases suggest the background missing for many other examples of African por- traiture, a background we must take on faith until scholars

involved in the arts of Africa take up the challenge to investi- gate the relationship between name, image, and identity in their own research.

The essayists in this issue of African Ar ts are not the first authors to investigate portraiture in a thoughtful way.* Anthropologists Hans Himmelheber (1972) and Eberhard Fischer (1984 119701) were pioneers in field investigation of the topic. Nor are they the first to comment on images that refer to specific individuals, for without the considerable commentary found in the literature, Likeness and Beyond could not have been written. But each author here is among the first to accept the idea of an African portrait genre with conven- tions of identification distinct from the Western genre, and to take the next logical step and investigate the nature of the portrait image in a particular African cultural context. The importance of these essays lies not in their being able to con- vince the reader that a certain African sculpture serves as a portrait image. Rather it lies in their asking the kind of ques- tion that compels both author and reader to look in an inno- vative way at works of African art in relation to human beings, in forcing a reassessment of the limitations of our past vision, and in making possible new insights into the nuancing of imagery in African culture.

Notes, page 101

LEFT 9. MEMORIAL SCULPTURE BY FESIRA. CA. 1935. ANTANOSY, MADAGASCAR. PHOTO: JOHN MACK.

FESIRA SHOWS HIS SUBJECT SEATED BESIDE TWO IMAGES THAT RECALL IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF THE DECEASED'S LIFE-HIS SERVICE WITH THE FRENCH AUTHORITIES AND HIS PURCHASE OF THE FIRST AUTOMOBILE IN THE VILLAGE.

BELOW: 1O.MALE FIGURE. 19TH-20TH CENTURY BEMBE. ZAIRE. WOOD, PORCELAIN, 17.8cm. MARSHA AND SAUL STANOFF COLLECTION .

BEMBE MEMORIAL PORTRAITS IN WOOD ARE BELIEVED TO CONTAIN NOT ONLY THE SPIRIT BUT ALSO THE PERSONALITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL COMMEMORATED. RELICS FROM THE SUBJECT'S BODY ARE INSERTED INTO THE FIGURE, AND SCARIFICATION PATTERNS WORN BY THE DECEASED MAY BE REPLICATED.

Page 8: Portraiture in Africa Jean M. Borgatti African Arts, Vol. 23, No. 3, …jborgatt/smfa/borgatti_portraitureAA.pdf · 2008-08-07 · Portraiture Africa JEAN M. BORGATTI A portrait depicts

tion was devoid of symbolic significance. The western Athapaskans, who used design sym-bolically, only selectively adopted ~ d r o ~ e a n ideas. Floral bead embroidery also denoted affiliation with the white culture at a time when the Athapaskans were under pressure to "civilize"; the most accomplished bead-workers were those most c lo~e lyaffiliated with European culture (pp. 189-90). Again, however, this is not a new or unique story, and these observations would have been even more meaningful in the context of other tribal groups with similar stories.

Despite Duncan's identification of the affiliation between beadwork and European culture, others have argued that beadwork, as distinguished from other forms of embroi-dery, retained distinctively "Indian" mean-ings, and was fully integrated into native culture. The Indian meanings of Athapaskan beadwork remain, for the most part, unex-plored in this book. For example, Duncan does not develop her intriguini observation

that beadwork was one of the main activities of the period of seclusion Athapaskan women underwent during puberty and at menses. Dogrib informants told an ethnogra-pher that they welcomed this period and its opportunity to work without interruption (p. 70). Although it may be undeniable that in-dividual motifs may have had European origins, the work was carried out in a partic-ularly native or indigenous context.

The gender implications of this work also remain unexplored. By equating northern Athapaskan ar t with beadwork, Duncan essentially equates northern Athapaskan art with women. The issue raised by this bold and intriguing assertion is skirted, as are the issues of acculturation and artistic identity and the full range of meanings the work has to the women who executed it.

Northern Athapaskan Art is still a valuable book. It treats an underrepresented topic and draws on a wealth of ethnographic literature. Duncan is well steeped in her subject and

brings careful, considered attention to region-al styles and specialties. With rich color illus-trations that make the beaded articles seem to leap off the page, as well as evocative and informative historical photographs, the book is visually stunning. It also includes a list of museums with Athapaskan collections and a comprehensive bibliography. Further, it is written in a straightforward, readable style. Africanists will find it interesting to follow the story of a supposedly acculturated art form, especially because there are many par-allels between both the beadwork of native Americans and Africans and their attitudes toward clothing adornment. Anyone inter-ested in beadwork will find the explanations and illustrations of technique to be clear and understandable. It is unfortunate that the work promises more than it delivers and raises a host of unanswered questions, but one hopes it will s t imulate interest in a neglected area and serve as an impetus for future investigation.

notes BORGATTI: Notes, f rom page 39

1. The essays on African portraiture published here belong to a group that has evolved over a period of six years. Many in this group were presented on panels I organized at the Seventh Triennial Symposium on African Art in Los Angeles, 1986, and at the eighth in Washington, D.C., 1989. Others have grown out of the discussion engendered by these pre-sentations. Rather than publishing the essays as an edited book, I offered them to Afrrcnn Ar ts because the ioumal meets four important criteria: breadth of audience and distribution, quality of production (especially in the reproduction of illus-trations), affordability, and relative s p e d of publication. 2. My work on African portraiture began with a slide lecture developed in 1977 for the Outreach Program at the Center for African Studies at the University of Florida, Gainesville. It took a comparatlve form In a paper delivered to the Art History department at the University of Pennsylvania dur-ing my tenure as a Mellon Fellow (academic year 1979-80). That paper was distributed to a wider audience through the Boston University African Studies Center Working Paper Series (1980). My colleagues Paula Ben-Amos (Indiana University) and Suzanne Blier (Columbia University) criti-cized versions of this paper, and I am grateful for their com-ments. At both the 1986 and the 1989 Triennial Symposium on African Art, I organized sessions on African portraiture to encourage my colleagues to explore the issues of identity and image in the context of field research. Response was suf-ficlently mixed to assure me that the ideas were Innovative but clearly credible-despite a limited literature prior to 1 9 S a n d I am grateful to Susan Vogel and the Center for African Art for inviting me to develop my arguments as an exhibition with an associated publication ("Likeness and Beyond: Portraits from Africa and the World"). 3. Research in Nigeria was carried out from 1971 to 1974 under the auspices of the Nigerian Federal Department of Antiquities and was partially funded by the following agen-cies: Museum of Cultural History, UCLA-Ralph Altman Award; Regents of the University of California-Patent Fund Award; and Ndea Title VI grants via the African Studies Center, UCLA. Additional field research in 1979 was sup-ported by a grant from the combined American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council. Analysis of data collected in 1979 was funded through a National Science Foundation grant in anthropology awarded in 1981. 4. Editorial comments on the particular focus of each essay and the patterns of identity they suggest with regard to the portrait image will constitute an introduction to a sequel issue.

References cited Abiodun, R. 1976. "A Reconsideration of the Function of

Ako, Second Burial Effigy in Owo," Afrrca 46, 1:4-20. Adams, M.J. 1980. "Fon Appliqued Cloths," Afrrcorl A r t s 13,

228-41. Aiken, E. 1987. "'I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold': Charles

Demuth 's Emblematic Portrait of William Carlos Williams," in Por t rn r t s : T l t r Lrmrtot ions of Lrkrness, ed.

Richard Brilliant. New York: A r t /o1rrnal46,3 (Fall):178-84. Barley, Nigel. 1988. Forelteads of the Dead: A n Anthropologrcal

Vreul of K n l n b n r i Ances t ra l Screens. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.

Bay, Edna. 1985. Iron Al tars of the Fon People of Bmrn . Atlanta: Emory University.

Blier, Suzanne. 1987. Ti le Anatomy of Arcltrtectrrrr: Ontology and Metaphor i n Batammalrha Arc l r i t r c tu ro l Exprrssron. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Borgatti, Jean M. 1979. "Dead Mothers of Okpella," Africon Ar ts 12, 4:48-57

Borgatti, Jean M. 1976a. "The Festival as Art Event--Form and Iconography: Oliml Festival in Okpella (Midwest State, Nigeria)." Ph.D. dissertation, UCLA.

Borgatti, Jean M. 1976b. "Okpella Masking Traditions," African Ar ts 9,4:24-33.

Borgatti, Jean and R. Brilliant. 1990. Likertess nrtd Beyond: Portrarturr i n Africa and tlre World. New York: The Center for African Art.

Brain, Robert & Adam Pollock. 1971. Bongnlo F ~ r n e r n r y Sculpture. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co.

Drewal, Henry. 1984. "Art History and the Individual: A New Perspective for the Study of African Visual Traditions," in loola Strrdrrs rn Afrrcnn A r t I, ed. C Roy, pp. 87-114. Iowa City: University of Iowa.

Fischer, E. 1984. "Self-Portraits, Portraits, and Copies among the Dan: The Creative Process of Traditional African Mask Carvers," in Ionla Strrdres 111 Afrrcon A r t I , ed. C. Roy, pp. 5-28. First published in 1970 in Boessl~r-Archio18:15-41 (in German).

Goldin, A. 1975. "The Post Perceptual Portrait," A r t rrl Americo (Jan.-Feb.):79-82.

Gombrich, E.H. 1972. "The Mask and the Face: The Perception of Physiognomic Likeness in Life and Art," In E.H. Gombrich, J. Hochberg, and M. Black, A r t , Percrptron nnd Reality, pp. 1-46. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.

Harter, Pierre. 1986. Ar ts onciens drr Conlrroun. Arnouville, France: Arts d'Afrique Noire.

Himmelheber, Hans. 1972. "Das Portrat in der Negerkunst," Boessler Arc l t iz~20:261-311

Himmelheber, H. and E. Fischer. 1976. DIP Krrrtst der Dnrt. Zurich: Museum Rietberg.

Horton, Robin. 1965. Knlobori Scrrlphrre. Apapa: Nigerian National Press.

Lawal, 8 . 1977. "Art and Immortality among the Yoruba," Afrrco 47, 1:52-60.

Lehuard, R. 1974. Stntrrorrp drr S t n r ~ l r yPool. Villiers-le-bel, France: Arts d'Afrique Noire.

Mack, John. 1986.Modngnscor: lslond o f t l r ~Ancestors. London: British Museum Publications.

Neyt, F. and L. d e Stryker. 1975. A{lpn~cIr?des or ts 1rt.rrrhn. Villiers-le-bel, France Arts d'Afrique Noire

Roy, Christopher. 1987. A r t of t i l e U p p e r V o l t o R izwrs . Meudon, France: Alain et Francoise Chaffin

Salmons, J111 1980. "Funerary Shrine Cloths of the Annang Iblbio, South-east Nigeria" in Trxtrles of Afrrco, eds. Dale ldiens and K.G. Ponting, p p . 119-41. Bath: Pasold Research Fund.

Sieber, R. 1972. "Kwahu Terracottas, Oral Traditions, and Ghanaian History" in Africnn A r t ond Lendersltr{~,eds. D. Fraser and H. Cole, pp. 173-84.Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

Soderberg, B. 1975 "Les Figures d 'ancetres chez les Bambembe," A r t d 'A f r i q l r~Norrc' I3 (Spring).

Soppelsa, Robert T. 1988. "Western Art-Historical Methodology and African Art: Panofsky's Paradigm and lvoirian Mma," A r t /orrrrtoI 47, 2: 147-153.

Vansina, J. 1972. "Ndop: Royal Statues among the Kuba" in Africort A r t ond Lenderslrip, eds. D. Fraser and H. Cole, pp. 41-56:Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

Vogel, Susan M. 1977. "Baule Art as the Expression of a World View." Ph.D. dissertation, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

DREWAL: Notc,s, f rom /loge 49

Research for this paper was conducted with the generous s u p port of the National Endowment for the Humanities in the form of grants for fieldwork both in 1982 (#RQ20072-81-2184) and 1986 (#RQ21030-85), for which I was a corecipient with Henry John Drewal and John Pemberton Ill. I wlsh to thank Wilhelm Zimmerman for the photograph used in Figure 14. An earlier version was presented at the Seventh Triennial Symposium on African Art, Los Angels, April 5,1986.

R~f~~re r t c t~scrted Babayemi, S. 0 . 1980. Egrrrlgrrrr nrrrorrg tkc O!/11 Xrrrrho. Ibadan:

Board Publications. Bascom, William R. 1944. "The Sociological Role of the

Yoruba Cult-Group," Mc7rrrorrs of t l rc Arrrcricnrr Arttlrropologrcol Assocmtrorr 63.

Borgatti, Jean. 1990. Peo},le orrd Portrnrts: Africo orrd the World. New York: The Center for African Art.

Borxatti, Jean. 1980.k z v l s of Rpnl i t~/ :Portroitrrre irr Africorl A r t . i f r l i an Sludlrs Cc.ntrr LVork~ngPapc.r\, no 3h Bo>t,,n A f n a nStud~zsCznlrr.Boston Ln~vc.rs~rv

Drewal, Henry John. 1988. "Performing the other: Mami Wata Worship in West Africa," Tlre Drorrro Rcrrino 32,2: 160-85.

Drewal, Margaret Thompson. 1989a. "Dancing for Ogun in Yombaland and in Brazil," in Afr icok Ogrrrr: O l d World nrrd New, ed. Sandra T. Barnes, pp. 199-234. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Drewal, Margaret Thompson. 1989b. "Performers, Play, and Agency: Yoruba Ritual Process." Ph.D. dissertation, New York University.

Drewal, Margaret Thompson. 1986. "Art and Trance among Yoruba Shango Devotees," Afrrcnrr A r t s 20, 1:60-67,9849.

Gbadamosi, T. G. 0. 1978. Tlrc Grozl,th of Is lnm orrrorlg tlre X>rrrbo, 1841-1908. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press.

Innes, Christopher. 1981. Hob Tllmtrt,: Rrtrrnl orrd tlre Azior~t Gnrde. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

lohnson, Samuel. 1973 [19211. Tlrr H r s t o r ~ ~of Hie Yorrrbos.. ' Lagos: CSS Bookshops.

Kuku, Fatai Adeshina. 11977.1 Itort lgbesi Ai!/e Ologbt.: O h y e Bello Krrkrr, Boloxrrr~ Kelr, 1111I ~ ~ b r r - O d e ,1845-1907, liebu-Ode, Nlgeria: Pu,blished by thhauthor.

Morton-Williams, Peter 1960. "Yoruba Responses to the Fear of Death," Africn 30:34-40.

Rapport , Amos. 1982. "Sacred Places, Sacred Occasions, and Sacred Environments," Arcl t r t rct~rro lD a r g n 9-10:75-82.

Rubin, William. 1984. "Modernist Primitivism: An Intro-duction." in " P r r m r t i z ~ i s m "i n 20th C e n t u r y A r t , ed. W Rubin, vol. 1, pp. 1-81.New York: The Museum of Modem Art.