African Tribal Arts

Definition of arts; African Art culture and history

Intro: What are Arts?

If we look up in any type of dictionary the word Arts, we can find many definitions, and sometimes most of them with different types of view. A short sentence that could define this word might be “the use of a skill” or “and the use of the taste that concerns masterpieces”. The concept Arts is associated with the word masterpiece. Other dictionaries, less complex, would say that “Arts” is one of the means that the human beings have to express theirselves, that’s why they create, many times imitating, that reality that might be material or not, using sounds, image and sometimes, their body.

ancient humanoid sculpture carved from a piece of wood »

The Sahara villages of Africa

After defining Arts we must be aware that there are many types of arts around the world, but African arts is considered one of the most fascinating types of culture of the planet. African arts is just a group of artistic manifestations developed by Sahara villages in Africa. This continent is made by many types of cultures, each of them has characteristics like: their own language, traditions and artistic works. African arts will never be old fashioned, today we can find in the south of Sahara pieces of different types of arts: tribal, Islamic, European, this happens since the continent is constantly influenced by Europe and Asia. In this region we won’t only find different manifestation of African arts, in certain places, we can see buildings that were constructed centuries ago under the influence of the northen African culture.

The most characteristics objects related to the African arts are the necklaces: they are very popular due to their beauty, formed by a group of combined colours; but they are not only hand made jewelry, since every collar or necklace has a meaning and many times represent Gods as the traditional masks do. African arts is the mirror of wonderful stories, philosophies, societies and religions, this type of art also evoke all those people who were in charge of “building” this culture. African arts has also influenced thousands of international artists and movements all along Europe and America; the occidental artists of the XX century, have admired the importance of this class of arts. But many people wonder when the tribal arts started and how; the answer to this question remains in the year 6.000 B.C, by that time took place a very important discovery: many engravings made on stones by Tassili and Ennedi were found in the region of Sahara.

african figurines made from terra cotta called noks

We have hundreds of examples when we talk about African Arts, we find sculptures built in clay or terra cotta, made by artists of Nigeria called Noks. The firsts Nok sculptures were found between 500 B. C. and 200 A. C., there are also works made in bronze, the most famous ones belongs to the very popular artist named Igbo- Ukwu. These works are supposed to show the gift that Igbo had, many anthropologists believes that their works were inspired by the classic Greece. Although the most part of the artistic manifestations have their roots thousands of years ago, nowadays we can find more examples of new African arts mixed with the old culture.

There is also something very important when we talk about African arts, we mean with this, the tribals, the African tribals, as the celtic ones, are very popular among teenagers, why?; because they are used as tattoos by them.

The tribals are not only simple drawings on the skin, they exist since the African continent exists, the tribals is also considered a type of African art, they represented the sing of war and defense among the tribes, today, if we decide to travel to the African continent we still find tribes with different classes of tribals painted along their skin.

But as we said before, tribals are not only silly drawing, they are part of the African culture and each drawing has a meaning. Some of them are related to Gods, some others to animals, to religious rituals, etc.
But African arts are not only handmade jewelry or exotic paintings, nowadays there are many arts school in Africa that teach the new artist to work over new materials such us cement, ink, stone, aluminum and through different means of graphic arts; the designs and images created by the African arts reflects a wonderful fusion between Africa and Occident. If we have to name the popular artist of Africa who were related to this new school arts, we can’t forget of Twins Seven and Ashira Olatunde, both from Nigeria, and Nicholas Mukomberawa, from Zimbawe, these people, were the most fanatic followers of contemporary African Arts. Perhaps they are not familiar to us but they were the influence of many incredible artists around the world, and they contributed to maintain the legacy of the African culture.