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TJ123-8-2009 LK VWD0011 Tradition Humanistic 6th Edition W:220mm x H:292mm 175L 115 Stora Enso M/A Magenta (V)The Arts of Africa and Oceania
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S0 1000 miles0 1000 kilometers132 CHAPTER 31 The Move Toward Modernism132
During the late nineteenth century, expanding Western
commercialism and colonialism brought Europeans in clos-
er contact with Africa and Oceania (the islands of the
South and Central Pacific, Map 31.1). Nineteenth-
century Africa and Oceania were essentially preindustrial
and preliterate. Their social organization was usually high-
ly stratified with clear distinctions between and among var-
ious classes: royalty, priests, and commoners held different
ranks. Their economies were agricultural, and their gods
and spirits were closely associated with nature and natural
forces that were the object of communal and individual
worship (see chapter 18). In some parts of Africa, kingdoms
with long-standing traditions of royal authority were
destroyed by colonial intrusion. But in other parts of Africa,
ancient ways of life persisted. The royal traditions of Benin,
Dahomey, Kongo, Yoruba, and other West African king-
doms (Map 31.2) continued to flourish well into the mod-
ern era. During the nineteenth century, the oral traditions
of African literature came to be recorded in written lan-
guages based on the Arabic and Western alphabets.
Africa and Oceania consisted of thousands of tightly
knit communities in which reverence for the gods and the
spirits of deceased ancestors was expressed by means of
elaborate systems of worship. Reliquaries, masks, and other
power objects were created by local artists to channel thespirits, celebrate rites of passage, and ensure the continuity
and well-being of the community. As vessels for powerful
spirits, they functioned to transmit supernatural energy.
While sharing with some Western styles (such as
Symbolism) a disregard for objective representation, the
arts of these indigenous peoples stood far apart from
nineteenth-century Western academic tradition. On the
other hand, they had their roots in long-established cultur-
al traditions—some extending back over thousands of
years. Much of the art created in these regions during the
nineteenth (and twentieth) century had its origins in
conventional forms handed down from generation to
generation. So, for example, masks produced in the nine-
teenth century by the Bambara people of Mali preserve the
techniques and styles practiced almost without interrup-
tion since the founding of Mali’s first empire in the
thirteenth century (see chapter 18, Figure 18.8).
Although productivity from region to region in Africa
and from island to island in Oceania varies dramatically,
parts of Africa and Oceania generated some of their finest
artwork during the nineteenth century. The classic period
in Kenya-Kayan art, from the island of Borneo, for instance,
dates from the mid nineteenth to the early twentieth cen-
tury. And among the Maori peoples of New Zealand, the art
of woodcarving, usually employed in the construction of
elaborate wooden meeting houses, flourished during theMap 31.1The Islands of the South and Central Pacific.