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Unique Artistic Properties (2) Unlike African religious art, it does not play any part in spiritual observances. Nor does it have any ritualistic or ceremonial role, and artists are not ascribed any religious or spiritual powers by the societies they represent. However, among Shona artists, some feel that they are possessed by a shave, a wandering ancestral spirit which bestows a talent on a human host. The African quality of stone sculpture in Zimbabwe does not just lie in its vitalism and its preoccupation with mass at the expense of space. In common with more traditional African artists, the stone sculptors' reason for making art is not bound up with a sense of selfhood or an interest in expressing individuality in their work. Collectively the sculpture expresses the African belief in the cosmological link between the mortal world and the spiritual realm, between the living and the dead. In this expression the sculptors seem to have a sense of oneness which lies far deeper than the relationship of artists within a prescribed movement or tradition of art. The sculpture seems to spring from a shared memory on the part of the artists in a Jungian sense. As much as it presents the artists' societally based and culturally determined beliefs, it presents the collective unconscious of a culture, both specific and African. Some commonalities of iconography, the large head, the protruding eyes, the Janus head and the concept of metamorphosis are shared by the art of more than one African culture and by cultures outside of Africa. The African quality of the sculpture is pervasive, its essence does not have to be referred to or described and it is obvious where the sculpture is from. Yet located within the discourse of African art, the sculpture has little in common with African tribal art, for example, the art of the Congo, or the Niger Basin. Historically in Africa, the significance of the carved object has been the material or spiritual function it has had outside its objecthood, and its association with ritual, ceremony, or material culture. Often such objects were made out of wood, a durable material. Once the ritual or ceremony was over, the object had outlived its usefulness and there was no need to preserve it. The power of stone sculpture in Zimbabwe lies in its autonomous objecthood, it has never been regarded as an ethnographic specimen. As much as Shona sculpture is related to Shona ontology, it has no place in the few ceremonies held by the Shona to propitiate or venerate ancestral spirits. The sculpture of the Chewa and Yao of Malawi and of the Mbunda from Angola has a more specifically tribal origin and contains images : from the masks worn by dancers in secret societies which establish a relationship with the spiritual realm. Historically, what is now known as African tribal art was disenfranchised from its functional role but located within an ethnographic discourse by nineteeth century ethnographers. Once removed from their context, put in a glass case, and housed in an ethnographic museum, these objects were almost scientifically regarded as a cultural specimen which served as a departure point for a wider study of the cultures represented by their makers. These objects were often thought to define the meaning of African religious practice. In ritualistic terms, they often possessed a channelling function and influenced spiritual powers to act in the interests of the real world. Objects thus assisted the preservation of the relationship of the spiritual realm and the natural world and reinforced its links. Hence a mask might honour a spirit in a particular dance and encourage the assumption that the dancer had taken on the guise of the spirit. The fetish figures such as those found in the Congo contain ingredients which it is believed allow the fetish to operate as a benevolent or destructive force on the owner's behalf. It was the nineteenth century artists, Picasso, Derain, Matisse, Leger and others who began to see African carved objects as possessing artistic properties rather than merely being minders of tribal culture as they were to the ethnographers. Picasso in his well-known painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon incorporated the images of three African masks as the faces of his demoiselles. Similarly the Fauvists, Cubists, Dadaists and Surrealists employed African imagery in their paintings and African volumetric concerns into their sculpture. Prior to the First World War, art historians began to formalise what to look for and how to look at these objects within a fine arts discourse. Rather than ethnographic specimens, they were re-classified as tribal art. Without consideration of the purpose of the object, or even who the artist was, objects from different cultures were ascribed common properties with no distinction between their widely different functions and intentions, either on the part of the artist, or the society in which he lived. Fetishes, masks and statuary became collectively known as sculpture and inscriptions on bark became known as paintings. Slowly in European eyes, these carved objects acquired a power which resided in their autonomous objecthood rather than one related to their function outside that objecthood. Meaning became lodged in the appearance and presence of the work rather than its wider cultural application, and content appeared inherent in form rather than function. Hence began the taxonomic shift of objects from ethnographic museums to fine art museums. The generic term -tribal art- was given to these objects with a lack of regard for their place and role within the spiritual structure of the society represented by the artist. Within these museums, objects were categorised, often geographically, in accordance with their style and form rather than assigned their cultural significance. The terniinologies of ethnography, science and anthropology gave way to the terminology of art. Objects were removed from their glass cases, placed on bases and lit from above, below and occasionally inside, and their artistic properties were emphasised by their display and labelling. Rather than being valued for their content and meaning they were valued for their authenticity (if the artists could be established), their provenance, and their rarity. Their function became unimportant; their merit lay solely in their artistic merit which was ascribed to them by museum directors, curators and collectors from outside their culture. As a commodity, these African carved objects today have become part of our material culture but they are a little short on spirit. Rather than being recognised for their African quality, these objects are assigned properties and attributes which they ostensibly share with Western sculpture. Without any intention on the part of their makers to make art, these objects have become the means by which we discover art and sculpture. Hence the Western perception of African art as something that has become art rather than something that was created to be art. However today, thankfully, cultural and social anthropologists are trying to restore the original meanings of such objects and once more using them as a departure point for an investigation of their makers' cultures. Stone sculpture in Zimbabwe is acknowledged to have relevance to other aspects of cultural practice of the societies represented by the artists. What to look for in the sculpture and how to look at it includes these references. Although the sculpture is intended to be art, it tells us a great deal about the historic cultural practices of the societies represented by the artists. These artists are living artists; we know them as artists who are aware that they are artists, and we can establish from these artists the meaning of their work. We can learn as much from stone sculpture in Zimbabwe about the cultures represented by the artists' societies as we can about the cultural practices of those societies represented by the makers of what we now call African tribal art. Considerations of African tribal art cannot devalue the cultural association of stone sculpture in Zimbabwe.
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