Nigeria's art collectors: A niche new market

In a suburb of Lagos, Nigeria's business capital, Yemisi Shyllon lives in a house full of bronze statues of African tribal rulers and brightly colored beadwork landscapes. He may be Nigeria's biggest art collector, with some 6,000 pieces by his count. "I don't go out much," he says, "I have enough to look at here."

Mr. Shyllon, who runs an engineering company, is one of a small circle of Nigerian businessmen who own huge collections of local art. Sammy Olagbaju, a 70-year-old retired stockbroker who has lived in London and New York, is another avid collector. One Lagos-based banker has over 600 pieces.

With 250 ethnic groups and around 150 million people, Africa's most populous country has many sources of artistic inspiration. A number of artists from western Nigeria use the bright colors and beadwork of the Yoruba, south-east sometimes look to their region's uli style, with simpler drawings on walls or pots.

The collectors say their government cares little about preserving this artistic heritage. They share the cynicism of many Nigerians, who think the politicians are more eager to grab a share of the revenues of sub-Saharan Africa's biggest oil producer. Instead, the collectors prefer to put their own money into gathering and cataloguing thousands of works of art. "For me, this is a philanthropic act," says Mr. Olagbaju, who notes that Nigeria's top public galleries struggle with power cuts that leave masterpieces gathering dust in the dark.

More recently, these collectors have realized that they have also been canny investors. Their hobby has started to attract foreign attention - and cash. At an auction of African art in New York in March, the five most expensive lots were Nigerian. A painting by the late Ben Enwonwu went for $91,000.

Some buyers are speculating that the Nigerian works are still undervalued. Giles Peppiatt, director of contemporary African art at Bonhams, a British auction house that hosted the New York sale, says prices will rise in this niche market.

Auctions are also happening in Lagos, where oil and banking have made a few very rich, though most people still live in grinding poverty. "There's a lot of money in Nigeria," says Mr. Peppiatt. "And though it might sound cynical, money and art are inextricably linked."

Source: The Economist Online

The African sculptures mistaken for remains of Atlantis

A hundred years ago when German explorer Leo Frobenius visited West Africa and came across some sculpted bronze heads and terracotta figures, he was sure he had discovered remains of the mythical lost city of Atlantis.

He refused to believe that the sophisticated and ornately carved bronze sculptures were made in Africa.

In his book, Voice of Africa, Frobenius wrote: "Before us stood a head of marvellous beauty, wonderfully cast in antique bronze, true to the life, incrusted with a patina of glorious dark green. This was, in very deed, the Olokun, Atlantic Africa's Poseidon."

"I was moved to silent melancholy at the thought that this assembly of degenerate and feeble-minded posterity should be the legitimate guardians of so much loveliness," he added.

Frobenius was referring to the people who lived in the Kingdom of Ife and whose artists, in fact, created the sculptures over the course of some four centuries. Leading art experts believe they are among the most aesthetically striking and technically sophisticated in the world.

The Ife kingdom was believed to have flourished from the 12th to the 15th centuries in the lush forests of the lower Niger in West Africa in what is today the south western region of Nigeria.
Frobenius' assertions helped reinforce long held assumptions of African art as primitive and inferior to European art.

However, 30 years later, Europeans were forced to revise these previously held assumptions when 18 brass and copper sculptures were discovered in the Ife kingdom. The works were later brought to London, where they were enthusiastically received.

A 1948 article in the Illustrated London News was headlined: "African art worthy to rank with the finest works of Italy and Greece" and "Donatellos of medieval Africa."

As critic Michael Glover notes in the UK's Independent newspaper, "At the same historical moment that Andrea del Verrocchio was doing his wonderfully painstaking, high-Renaissance drawing of a female head, anonymous artisans in Ife were working with brass, bronze, copper and terracotta to produce a series of exquisite heads that are not only the equal of Donatello in technical brilliance, but also just as naturalistic in their refinement. So much for African primitivism."

Now, a worldwide touring exhibition is bringing the show to modern audiences in the first-ever show dedicated to the Ife sculptures.

The exhibition features more than 100 bronze, terracotta and stone sculptures, ranging in date from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries.

Many of these have never been on display outside Nigeria. Most of the works are on loan from the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments.

The sculptures are currently on display at the British Museum in London until 4th July and will move to various states in the United States from September.

According to Neil Macgregor, Director of the British Museum, there was a conscious effort to display the Ife sculptures at the same time as an exhibition of Italian Renaissance drawings at the museum because he wanted to highlight the "relationship between Nigerian culture and the rest of the world."

"We wanted to make the point that nobody, when they learn European art history, studying Italy and Renaissance in the fourteenth, fifteenth centuries, is taught that at exactly the same time in West Africa, artistic production of the same level and the same quality is going on," he said during a talk on Nigeria at the museum.

The sculptures depict human figures from a cross-section of Ife society and provide a fascinating insight into local customs and beliefs of the time.

However, not much is known about the origins of the Ife casts or who they were made for or for what purpose.

Macgregor said: "This is a history that is still very much in the making. And it's not, of course, just the history of Ife. The bronze casting world of West Africa is an astonishingly large and rich one.

"The quality of the objects continues to astound and particularly the objects that have never been seen before," Macgregor continued. "On any view they are a masterpiece, not just of observation but of sculpting and casting."

Source: CNN
BY: Stephanie Busari