Bámigbóyè

Identifying and celebrating the creativity and individuality of named African artists has been a challenge and a goal in the history of African art-historical studies since before mid-twentieth century. For Yorùba, to name persons is to bring them into existence as social beings and to help them shape and define their own destiny. As Yorùbá say, orukọ, nrọ̀ ni, “a person's name directs actions and behavior” (Drewal, Pemberton, and Abiodun 1989: 26). The German “art anthropologist” Hans Himmelheber (Fischer and Himmelhaber 1960; Himmelhaber 1976) was perhaps the first to take this effort seriously with his pioneering studies of specific master sculptors in Côte d'Ivoire and elsewhere in Africa from the 1930s. It was he who, as a visiting professor at Columbia University in 1968-69, encouraged me to write about my own apprenticeship with the Yorùbá artist Ṣanusi in a study that was eventually published (Drewal 1980). William B. Fagg (Fagg and Plass 1964) pursued this same work in the 1950s and 1960s with field studies of Yorùbá art and named artists. Ekpo Eyo and William Fagg gathered a group of scholars of Yorùbá art to document and classify individual masters and regional styles across Yorùbáland during a series of seminars in 1981, 1982, and 1988.1 Robert Farris Thompson (1969) wrote a seminal monograph, a detailed and insightful study of the master potter Àbàtàn, and William Bascom (1973) wrote about the sculptor Duga of Meko. John Picton, based on extensive fieldwork in northeastern Yorùbáland while working with Kenneth Murray at the Nigerian National Museum in its efforts to document Nigerian artists, wrote “The Sculptors of Ọ̀pìn” (1994) and Deborah Stokes Hammer and J.S. Hammer published on “The Master of the Owu Shango Shrine” (1986).The first exhibition to engage this challenge was Alisa LaGamma's Master Hand: Individuality and Creativity among Yoruba Sculptors (1997) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a pamphlet of extensive object and case labels for works attributed to numerous masters, and followed this with an article (LaGamma 1998).2 The second, accompanied by a scholarly catalogue by Roslyn A. Walker, focused on a single Yorùbá master—Ọlọwẹ̀ of Isẹ̀: A Yorùbá Sculptor to Kings (1998) at the National Museum of African Art-Smithsonian. Another, a lesser-known work by Craig D. Fashoro, Ère Yorùbá: Quintessential Art by Yorùbá Master Carvers (2013), looked at several masters. Now Moshood Olúṣọmọ Bámigbóyè joins this celebrated list of masters with an impressive, excellent exhibition and catalogue.The exhibition was sited in a “special exhibitions” gallery on the fourth floor, accessible from the central elevator of the Yale University Art Gallery. Exiting the elevator, you turned to the right and saw a black wall with the bold white text: Bámigbóyè-A Master Sculptor of the Yorùbá Tradition (Fig. 1). The curator, James Green, made effective use of a long, narrow space that felt like a corridor to provide a fine introduction to the exhibition. Following the introductory text, a small wall case at eye level held three of the master's carving knives with delicately carved figurative handles—a subtle yet effective way to introduce the master's creative process. On the same wall, a looped video featured presentations by Bámigbóyè family members, an interview with one of Bàmigbóyè’s sons, a stepson apprentice, and a partial recitation of his oríkì. The opposite wall displayed a large photo of the artist (Fig. 2), a detailed map of Yorùbáland, a timeline chart (1804-2022) of “historical events related to Bámigbóyè and his works,” an iron Ọsányin staff to evoke Bàmigbóyè’s reputation as a healer as well as artist, an appliquéed leather Ṣàngó bag (Fig. 3), and a finely decorated game board (ayò) he made while teaching art in a colonial school. All served to situate the master in time and space—as an artist, teacher, and healer—for the general audiences that would be learning about him for the first time.What was important and impressive was the inclusion of Bàmigbóyè’s personal and professional praise poem or oríkì—a summation of his attributes and accomplishments (and sometimes shortcomings) of a lifetime. The excerpt was recited in the video by a male family member who read it from a family publication about Bàmigbóyè’s life. In the past, such a recitation would have been sung or chanted, most likely by an elderly female member of the family with a powerful, lyrical voice—I wished that performance could have filled the space with the empowering sounds of the evocative oríkì. An oríkì, like other indigenous oral source materials, should be at the center of research and discussions in African art history about its artists, especially their individuality and creativity, for it is a deeply embedded, evocative firsthand perspective from those who knew the person intimately—his family and community. They also provide insights into indigenous aesthetic and philosophical concepts. In a Yorùbá context, the rich and varied verbal arts of oríkì, ògèdè, ijálá, òdu Ifá, and ẹwi are crucial to deeper understandings of Yorùbá expressive culture, history, the arts, and those gifted individuals who create them, advocated so convincingly by Rowland Abiodun (2014). At the center of this entrance space and brightly highlighted was one of Bàmigbóyè’s masterpieces—an altarpiece for the goddess Ọyá (Fig. 4). The refinement of forms, enhanced yet softened with blue and white pigment—healing, calming substances—was an excellent example to introduce the themes and elaborate compositions to follow in the next room, the large gallery proper.Having grounded us in his hometown Kájola community with his family, his tools, and some of the objects that he created and used as a sculptor and herbalist, the narrative structure of the exhibit next took us to the region of northeastern Yorùbáland and all of the communities that benefited from his artistic vision and productivity. The walls and margins of the gallery were filled with a variety of objects—fans, weapons, guns, horse trappings, drums, beaded sheaths, textiles and garments— represented in Bàmigbóyè’s art. Also treated were the works that came out of his teaching at a colonial school at Òmù, including works commissioned by his colonial employers and patrons—game boards, bookends, tables, colon figures, and Christian icons. All these objects were meant to enlighten visitors and prepare them for the exquisite array of incredibly complex, multitiered “mind-boggling” compositions of Epa headdresses in the center of the room— the ones that provoked Yorùbá admirerers to exclaim atófòjọwo?!—“one can look at it for days! (and still not tire!).” These massive headdress masterpieces are raised up and clustered like the image evoked in one of his praise poems—“a forest-full of epa” (p. 23). The visual impact of this central cluster was over-powering and “jaw-dropping” (in Yoruba, o yá mi l'ẹnu!) (Fig. 5).I was pleased (and at the same time disappointed) to see a video by Ayọdèjì Ayọọlá of a performance of an Oloko mask in an event that was “hosted by the Kájọlà community in honor of the present exhibition and was sponsored by the Yale University Art Gallery.” Epa headdresses were always meant to be experienced with sounds, smells, tastes, and especially motion—all the multisensorial elements of a festival and the crucial and momentous leap of the masquerader upon an earthen mound that could foretell the fortunes of the community (Thompson 1974: 191-98). The video, while useful, had none of this. The sound was muted and had to be accessed via a QR code. Art galleries should not be “sensory-deprivation environments”; they should be enlivened to activate our sense-abilities (Drewal 2012, 2020). While it was celebratory, the video was a staged affair, unable to convey the deeply felt somatic and spiritual dimensions of Epa festivals.A display of twin memorial figures (ère ìbejì) by named masters (Akíyọdé, Ayọọlá, Bámigbóyè, and Dàdaọlọmọ) from different parts of Yorùbáland (accompanied by a printed “object checklist” with perceptive captions discussing certain style features) was an effective way to highlight the creativity and individuality of other Yorùbá masters in relation to Bámigbóyè. A few architectural and altarpieces of equestrians in works by other masters demonstrated similar ideas and added to the welcome focus on artistic individuality and inventiveness in Yorùbá “tradition” (àṣà) that is based on choice, the agency of individuals.Bámigbóyè lived and worked during a period of momentous social and political change during the last decades of colonial rule in Nigeria. It was a time that included commissions from the rulers and leaders of various Yorùbá communities both local and regional, but also from British government officials. It is fascinating and revealing to see the impact of these cross-cultural transactions on Bàmigbóyè’s work. During the years he taught at a colonial school in Òmù (1934-1945) and after, he responded to these commissions with work that became more polished, both literally and figuratively (Fig. 6). To my body-mind-eye, they became less lively, less inspired. His individual figures seem to suffer from their isolation from other surrounding figures. They seemed to miss the density and energy—the aliveness—of Yorùbá urban life, of Yorùbá towns like those of northeastern Yorùbáland, both past or present that he captured so eloquently in his masterful Epa headdresses. At the same time, his surface patterns became more intricate and delicate (Fig. 7)—a turn to complex textures and surface embellishment (fifin), a microattention rather than the macrovision of lively tiered Epa headdresses.Despite these minor issues, the exhibition was a tour-de-force—a powerful tribute to the vision, life, and work of a true master now rightly known to the world—Moshood Olúṣọmọ Bámigbóyè.This very detailed, probing book, organized to follow and elaborate upon the exhibition itself, begins with the importance of naming in Yorùbá culture—first in a note by the curator James Green about Bàmigbóyè’s own name, later in his chapter entitled “A Praise Song for Bámigbóyè, Carver and Healer,” and then in the opening essay by Olúsèye Adésplá on “Bàmigbóyè’s Oriki”— the accumulative, expansive oral recitation of his attributes (both positive and negative) acquired over a long lifetime of achievement. Additionally, the “work oríkì,” chanted to encourage excellence while he sculpted, provides explicit indigenous aesthetic evaluations, like the specific reference to his exquisitely refined and detailed linear surface patterns called pàyísùkú that always fetched the highest prices for his work. The last was his hometown's oríkì ìlú, giving hints to the history of his birthplace of Kájọlà. All of these illustrate the importance of language and oral traditions in understanding concepts of Yorùbá personhood, familial inheritance, culture, history, and the arts.Green's essay—“A Praise Song for Bámigbóyè, Carver and Healer”—is an excellent synthesis of the vast literature on Yorùbá arts and culture, and the history and place of Bámigbóyè in that story. I especially appreciated Green's inclusion of the invaluable and detailed field notes of Kenneth Murray that are being digitized and made available for future generations of scholars in Nigeria and the planet. He also cites the extensive unpublished notes (in Yorùbá) of conversations Father Kevin Carroll had with Bámigbóyè. The curator and scholar has done his work.All of the contributed essays add to a thorough and insightful volume. Will Rea's “Bámigbóyè, Master of Epa: A Historical Context” critiques the lack of research scholarship about the specific historical conditions that surrounded, affected and shaped artists and their works, and offers an assessment to fill this gap. As I understand his position, his call is for an art history that emphasizes the history of art and artists: one that reveals the “historical moments” or circumstances of an era, in order to understand how and why artists create what they create. He acknowledges that John Picton did this for the sculptors of Ọpin (1994) in his analysis of specific late nineteenth century military campaigns in northeastern Yorubaland. Here, Rea provides a kind of medical history of influenza epidemics and famines to explain the prevalence of mother and child (Fig. 8) and Ọsányin healer imagery in Ẹpa-type headdresses.“The Life of the Olóko,” by Cathy Silverman and Anne Turner Gunnison, with contributions by James Green, offers a detailed account of three Olóko headdresses carved by Bámigbóyè, one a commission by John Danford, a British art collector who was with the British Council in Nigeria in 1952. Olóko embodies the strength and courage of the most feared warrior of the forest, the leopard (ẹkun). In Bàmigbóyè’s work, a leopard leaps upon an antelope, while a rooster rides above and holds a snake in its mouth—typical of the “pecking order” images of competing powers in the Yorùbá world seen in Gẹ̀lẹ̀dẹ́ masks (Drewal and Drewal 1983). The authors then describe its performance at Epa festivals and the leap upon the mound (òkiti) and give a detailed description of wood selection rituals, carving, painting, empowerment, and preservation procedures surrounding these sanctified Oloko headdresses. I especially enjoyed the closing advice from Bàmigbóyè’s family about how these works should be treated and cared for while in the possession of museums—in sum, with respect—a most timely message in this era of reparation, restitution, and collaboration.Efeoghene Igor's essay, “Portrait of an Artist: The Circulation of Bàmigbóyè’s Image,” explores another fascinating aspect of the artist's life: his agency as he “navigated the foreign art market and actively participated in the creation of his own artistic legacy using the medium of photography” (p. 200). As one can see from Bàmigbóyè’s work, he was a keen observer of òyìnbó—White folks/foreigners, mostly men, whether colonial officials, art patrons, or visiting photographers. His family and community remarked on this ability in his oríkì as well, and yet he was also wary of those same foreigners, refusing to fly to England because he feared he would not be permitted to return (p. 203), perhaps as a result of his memories of fearful stories about nineteenth century conflict, capture, and enslavement in his part of Yorùbáland?As Yoruba say, “it is more than seven that follows six.” I have very few questions or issues with the interpretations of works in the catalogue, but in the interest of continuing to learn and share, I note the following: I believe that no deities (òrìṣà) are depicted in Yorùbá sculpture (including Èṣu/Ẹlẹgba). Rather, it is the devotees, those who embody during trance their spiritual guardians (whether ancestors or òrìṣà), who are represented. These spiritual entities may be “present” but not “represented.” As my countless Yorùbá masters, teachers, and mentors insisted repeatedly, “one cannot know what they look like ... they are spirits from ọ̀run, the invisible otherworld.”The forehead ornaments that Bámigbóyè depicts on some of his central female figures (Figs. 4, 9) are representations of the Yorùbá artform of metal hairpins (ikoti). These take a variety of geometric forms (double-spiral, trident, or winged forms) that may or may not reference the double-bladed dancewands of Sango. Little has been written about this body art form that might offer new insights into Yorùbá arts and aesthetics.In conversation with me, James Green raised the question about the vast and varied presence of the triangular form in Yorùbá amulets, beaded patterns, textiles, crowns, and more. I hypothesized about this form in the introductory chapter of Yorùbá: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought (Drewal, Pemberton, and Abiodun 1989: 27-32). The triangle as a three-dimensional form is conical or pyramidal. Conical forms, and threeness, resonate in a variety of Yorùbá contexts: the cone of fertility in yam and cassava mounds; the mound that Epa performers must leap upon; the mound (osu) that marks the place where empowering medicines are inserted into the heads of the conical form of the most powerful, of the the conical form that an spiritual a of the with conical a form it the three that the as a for the of the world ... an image of in the in the on the Ṣàngó and also in the place of world and at the called of three that are a of his with on his and the sound of his to all is called a or yet the of these forms, meant to be and into the in a leap over a conical mound of The of images of the world of the both past and the invisible presence of spiritual entities such as and spirits of The that over the of the is more and In shape and this is a reference to the used to the most in the yam as well as the central altarpiece in a Ṣàngó the of that the in the and the mound of that the must in a form that is all about the and of community. The honor those and who are the of like those depicted in these are a of the goal of Epa and of believe depicts a colonial who holds a not a (Fig. He is in the of the before in his the Yorùbá about colonial to shape the of who the also the is always a For in one oríkì (p. has been as are no in in The reference is to a leopard or especially important because of the powerful presence of the warrior with the of the leopard on the Oloko mask a should be made a and the conical with and is an while the in are not Green has us an summation of Bàmigbóyè’s the altarpiece for that the work in the of and the artist's to and order his of in Yorùbá (p. I also his of on (p. On the at Bámigbóyè depicted one into the image of a master who captured not the past, and his but the future of Yorùbá in his powerful and perceptive or to and change and to the creativity and of Yorùbá at

Art · Art history · Linguistics · Yoruba · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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