By Nii B. Andrews.
Today, we return to ancient Egypt in order to help us place in perspective the current trend of large scale portraiture in CAA featuring throughout many auction houses and galleries worldwide.
Realistic paintings of people’s faces on wooden panels – ‘mummy portraits’ – became the new trend for burials when Egypt became part of the Roman Empire after the Battle of Actium in 31 BC.
There is some strong indication that the emergence of these ‘mummy portraits’ was on account of the merging of two traditions; Egyptian funerary art and Roman experimentation with portraiture and painting techniques perhaps with a precedent in Greek practices.
Maria Svoboda who has conducted extensive research on these ‘mummy portraits’ explains: “When they entered collections in the 19th century, mummy portraits were viewed more as curiosities because no one really knew what to make of them……They weren’t completely Egyptian and they weren’t completely Classical — they were both”.
She also noted that in large part, they depict young people; most look to be in their twenties, thirties, and forties.
Their large, exaggerated eyes suggest an effort by artists to capture someone very much alive rather than recently deceased.
Yet CT scans used for studying mummies’ interiors reveal that the ages of the deceased mostly match the ages of the corresponding portraits.
These findings “also support the census of that time, where they describe that most people died young,” Svoboda explained, “because the lifespan was typically cut short due to infection or childbirth.”
Fast forward 2000 years and portraits of Africans are the rage; and just as when the mummy portraits entered the international market 200 years ago, ditto for the CAA portraits with escalating prices and increasing acclaim for the artists.
Again most of the images are of young people – even though we must hasten to add that life expectancy today in Africa is tremendously improved from the situation in ancient Egypt.
Today’s artists mirror the great artistic skill and techniques of those of yore.
Just like in the striking portraits discovered at Al Fayyum, today’s subjects are generally depicted in a three-quarter rather than frontal view.
Shadows and highlights are employed to reveal contours and curves of facial features.
The names of the artists of antiquity are lost; but today for CAA, we can name them – Kwesi Botchway, Kye Quaicoe, Aaron Tamakloe, Adjei Tawiah, Amoako Boafo etc..
There is at least one important question that we ought to ask; are today’s images as highly customized as they appear to be?
Or are they similar to the earlier Egyptian ones which on close examination by art historians, many were found to be schematic drawings on to which individualized traits would be mapped?
Careful examination of various earlier portraits reveal that there is a basic structure: an oval shape for the face, the position of mouths and noses, and even the poses are often identical.
It is the eyebrows, eyes, hair, and accessories that distinguish the subjects from one another.
Animals and plants are often depicted with vivid naturalism, while people are usually rendered in a flat, two-dimensional style. The body and head are almost always shown in profile while the eyes and shoulders face forward.
Today’s images show marked variation in color, texture and composition.
They also indicate the far reaching communication networks and exposure available to people living in contemporary Africa – no different at all from the situation in ancient Egypt as evidenced from the materials used in executing the mummy portraits and their stylized accessories.
CAA portraits are influenced by global culture and technological advancement.
The thrust of the artists is a dynamic combination of personal perspectives and societal collectives and focusing on cultural dialogues, identities, characters and memories.
It is important that we also remember that there are other extant examples of portraiture in Africa’s art tradition apart from Egypt.
This genre embellished the “Garima Gospels” which date to AD 494 when Abba Garima arrived from Constantinople to the Tigray region not far from Aksum and rendered the Gospels into Ge’ez.
Legend says that he miraculously accomplished this task in one single day.
Carbon dating places the manuscript to between AD 330 and 650.
The illustrations within Garima 2 have affinities with Coptic painting and contain some very fine evangelist portraits.
In the true sense the CAA portraits spring from a proud African artistic tradition of figurative painting and portraiture which should be reasonably understood as the precursor to the Western painting tradition.
What urgently needs to be accomplished is the systematic construction of visual and verbal narratives in the works of specific contemporary African artists in order to establish the individuals as valid subjects of inquiry in art history.
Without it, modern African art and CAA will continue to be misinterpreted and African artists will continue to be absent from the narratives of modernity in art history; the cliché of “gris gris sculpture” as the main genre of African art will continue.
