Why African Art is Having a Renaissance

(CNN) -- African art has long been about more than just tribal masks and traditional carvings, and now contemporary African artists are being recognized globally.

The Johannesburg Art Fair recently showcased the works of 400 African contemporary artists, attracting more than 10,000 visitors. Organizer Ross Douglas told CNN there had been an explosion of interest in African art in recent years.

"Africa has always had a strong tribal art and a strong craft component, and that will always stay, he said.

"But that doesn't mean there can't be a contemporary market existing alongside that, and if you look in South Africa at the contemporary market in the last four or five years, it's absolutely exploded.

"If you look at the number of young black artists doing well, making a living, it's extraordinary. Five years ago it just didn't exist."

But the attention being bestowed on contemporary African art is a relatively new phenomenon. Auction house Bonhams says its New York sale last month was the first commercial auction dedicated solely to contemporary African art in the United States, and it says the UK's first auction only took place last year.

While auction house Phillips de Pury's Africa art sale and exhibition will take place on May 15 in New York. The sale will include works of contemporary art, photographs, design and editions which reflect the spirit of the continent.

Giles Peppiatt, director of African art at Bonhams, said these kinds of sales were still too rare. "In some ways it's remarkable -- here we are in 2010 and this is the first auction of its type in New York," he told CNN. "It's never been done before. Actually I was very surprised by that,"

But he says he's not surprised by the growing interest in African art. Bonhams says the auction has generated considerable buzz. Prince Yemisi Shyllon, who has an extensive collection of Nigerian art, was one of those in attendance.

Shyllon told CNN, "I don't promote Nigerian art in terms of the value. I promote in terms of the benefits and the joy it can confer to the world."

But monetary value is unavoidable at an art auction. About half of the 140 pieces at the Bonhams auction sold, with prices ranging from $1,000 to $92,000. The value of African art could increase as international interest develops and the buying pool expands.

"At the moment the majority of the collectors are people who have an interest or contact with Africa," said Peppiatt. "We aren't yet seeing these people buying these works without that connection.

"Look at the other markets -- no one buys a van Gogh because he's Dutch or because the buyer's Dutch. It doesn't matter where the artist was born or what nationality he was. But I think with the African art it still does matter. It hasn't yet broken into the international market."
Ghana's beads back in vogue

While the rest of the world is catching up with African art, the artists themselves continue to push artistic boundaries.

South African Lawrence Lemaoana was one of the artists exhibiting at last month's Johannesburg Art Fair. His work is all about challenging the traditional.

"I look at the ideas of stereotypes, and the idea of men sewing and the idea of how that's a feminine activity ... [and ask] how do we subvert that into something that's really not feminine? So I am sewing and I am making artwork that's quite edgy," Lemaoana told CNN.

"Artists are not limited to painting and traditional ways of making art. There are other possibilities of speaking a language and finding new and innovative ways of communicating."

African Art Celebrated at Joburg Art Fair Last Week

Recession or not, the art world goes on, and never was this more obvious than at the Joburg Art Fair this past weekend.

For those of us who thought that the tough economic times would put a damper on the occasion, we couldn’t have been more wrong.

The price tags were certainly not shy (a particularly unique and gorgeous Kentridge work at the Goodman Gallery stand was going for a weighty R1 083 000) and among the 23 galleries participating, there were quite a few red “sold” dots to behold.

This is a phenomenon that Ross Douglas, director of the company Artlogic, which runs the Joburg Art Fair, commented on during the media walkabout on Friday March 26.

“For me, one of the really interesting things about the Fair is that if you’d tried to do an art fair in SA eight years ago, there wouldn’t have been enough galleries,” he says.

“But in the last four or five years, suddenly a whole lot of galleries started up.

“Last year was a really difficult year financially, and what we’ve seen is that these galleries, despite this really difficult recession, have managed to sustain themselves,” Douglas says.

“We’ve lost two SA galleries between last year and this year – Warren Siebrits and Bell Roberts – but I’ve been amazed at how galleries have managed to sustain themselves through what has been a very long and difficult year.”

However, it’s not just the buyers and art connoisseurs who got their two cents worth from the Fair.

There has always been an educational angle to the weekend, which is why there were a series of free art talks by experts in the field running throughout all three days of the Fair.

“One of the ideas behind the Fair is to make it really accessible to people, to get people inquisitive about art, and interacting with art, and the talks are a nice way to understand art,” explains Douglas.

Chili Hawes, director of the October Gallery in London, which has exhibited at the Fair for three consecutive years, says that she can see people’s enthusiasm for art increasing.

“Especially this year, I see a lot of people really keenly looking at the work, and so that’s very refreshing to us,” she says.

“People really appreciate it and love it and seem to be interested in it and learning about it.”
Arguably of the best offering that the Fair provides is access to international galleries’ stands, because as Douglas says, SA galleries focus on SA art, whereas some of the international galleries focus on art from the rest of the continent.

For those folks who spent part of their weekend at the Fair, the chance to see works never before seen in SA would certainly not have gone unappreciated.

To read our original posting on the 2010 Joburg Art Fair, click here.



Source: The Citizen
By: Natalie Bosman