“How have Black artists incorporated African art forms in their work?”Visitors make amazing discover

“How have Black artists incorporated African art forms in their work?”Visitors make amazing discoveries when exploring the museum’s galleries and often use ASK to express their curiosity about specific works on view. They are often interested in details, techniques used, and information about the artist to help them delve further into the work. The ASK team also helps make connections between images the visitor has sent using the app with other works displayed. So when a visitor asked about Beauford Delaney’s painting, Untitled (Fang, Crow, and Fruit), I jumped at the chance to tell them more about the composition and the influence of traditional African sculptural form in his work.Delaney makes a direct reference to a Fang reliquary guardian figure, a type of sculpture made by the Fang people of Central Africa. The focus of the painting is an offering of fruit to the guardian figure and a bird (perhaps an ancestral spirit) hovering over a bowl of fruit. Theses figures are often embellished with elaborate coiffures, facial scarification, and jewelry. The guardian figure in Delaney’s painting is covered in red, black, and green, which may represent these emblems. The painting is primarily a series of basic shapes (cylinders and circles), which also echo traditional African sculpture.After our discussion surrounding the painting I encouraged the visitor to view an actual Fang reliquary guardian figure in our African art gallery to see details of the type of sculpture that was lost in Delaney’s two-dimensional painting. These figures were placed on top of bark containers to guard ancestral remains. When seeing the sculpture in the round one can better observe the elongated muscular limbs and stylized facial features Delaney loosely expressed. The abstraction of the human form by greatly exaggerating the proportions of the figure was intended to reinforce and communicate the reliquary’s intense power and strength.Delaney’s painting demonstrate the dialogue between Black artists and their engagement with African traditions and aesthetics- a practice inspired by Harlem Renaissance philosopher Alain Locke’s writings. Locke implored Black visual artists to enrich their expression with African ancestral heritage. It’s incredible that through the app visitors can learn about the various ways artists of African descent incorporated African art forms in their work.Posted by Stephanie Cunningham -- source link

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