African art is having a moment; and the Metropolitan Museum in particular is giving it plenty of love.
Last year the Met’s small but impressive exhibit Warriors and Mothers: Epic Mbembe Art provided a rare examination of early maternity- and warrior-themed sculptures carved between the 17th and 19th centuries in south-eastern Nigeria (see the Criticks review here). Originally adorning either end of enormous communal drums used to celebrate spiritual and social life, the huge wooden sculptures in this show emphasized gender roles.
Showcasing the art of Central Africa, Kongo, a much larger exhibition (146 works from 50 collections), is a major presentation that also promises to influence how we interpret African art. Like the Mbembe exhibit, which she helped arrange, Kongo was organized by Alisa LaGamma, the Ceil and Michael E. Pulitzer Curator in Charge of the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. The catalogue that accompanies the exhibition, which includes original essays and new research by major scholars, is magnificent.
Focusing on the relationship between Africa and the West, the show spans some five hundred years, from the arrival of Europeans at the end of the fifteenth century. Brought from Portugal in 1483 by Diogo Cão, the first explorer to enter the Kongo (modern Angola, Congo, and the Congo Republic), a limestone pillar positioned at the entrance introduces the exhibition.
On behalf of the King of Portugal, Cão’s pivotal visit marks the initial European encounter with Kongo leaders, which inspired their interest in literacy and in Christianity. (One early letter on display from a Kongo sovereign requests prayer books and instruments for religious ceremonies.)
Entering in this discreet manner, Christianity would soon have widespread influence. Reinterpreted to reflect African culture, European religious images inspired Kongo Christian devotional artifacts like the brass figure of Christ (18th-19th century) with splayed hands and feet (replete with nail holes) and Kongolese features.
Kongo peoples; Kongo Kingdom, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, or Angola, 18th–19th century. Brass (open-back cast). H 43⁄8 in. (11.1 cm), W. 41⁄2 in. (11.4 cm), D. 7⁄8 in. (2.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Ernst Anspach, 1999. Photo: Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Early pre-colonial pieces on display include inscribed ivories and woven raffia fibre textiles. Items like elephant tusks are carved with the same precise and complex abstract geometrical patterns that decorate sixty intricately patterned luxury cloths. Signifying power and wealth, these beautiful textiles include many 17th– to 18th-century cushion covers. Those ornamented with pom-poms suggest European inspiration. Woven from raffia or pineapple fibre, prestige caps (some from the 17th to 18th century) feature intricate designs and leopard claws.
The relationship between Europe and Kongo may have started out agreeably enough; however, imperialism soon reared its ugly head. Reflective of European aggression and domination, the exhibit highlights many troubling developments. One particularly unsettling piece from the 1880s, a tusk decorated with small enchained slaves, documents atrocities from earlier times.
By the middle of the seventeenth century, the Kongo was exploited for slave labour and for natural resources such as ivory, rubber, and gold, acquired through forced labour. Portugal and Great Britain, joined by France, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, the United States, and the Netherlands, ruthlessly brutalized and oppressed the region in their quest to colonise Africa. (Think Heart of Darkness.)
The stunning final galleries, like the Mbembe exhibit, focus on mothers and warriors. Representing balance, nurture, and fertility, female power figures from the 19th to early 20th century hold in their laps not only children, but also small adult males, whom they nurse. (Don’t ask!)
The exhibit ends with nineteenth-century male power figures like the inspiration for this exhibit, the iconic male symbol of power and order acquired by the Met in 2008. Only twenty of these disturbing spike- and nail-studded wooden figures, which are almost life-size, survive. Fifteen are in the dramatic last gallery of the exhibit. The horror!
Kongo: Power and Majesty was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from 18th September 2015 to 3rd January 2016.