Background
The Yoruba of South Western Africa (including the areas known today as Benin Republic, Nigeria, Togo, and parts of Ghana, Cameroon, and Sierra Leone) have a very rich and vibrant artisan community, creating both traditional and contemporary art. The custom of art and artisans among the Yoruba is deeply rooted in the Ifá literary corpus, indicating the orishas (or dieties) Ogun, Obatala, Oshun, and Obalufon as central to creation mythology, including artistry.
The traditional art forms among the Yoruba include beading, braiding, tattooing, clay molding and ceramic work, bronze casting, weaving and dyeing (such as the traditional adire indigo-dyed cloth), sculpting, and many other forms. There is also a vibrant form of customary theater known as Alarinjo, which has its roots in the medieval period and has given much to the contemporary Nigerian film industry. Over the years, many Yoruba artists have come to merge foreign ideas of artistry and contemporary art with the traditional art forms found in West Africa.
Yoruba Art
Europeans in Africa; wood, paint; Yoruba people, West Nigeria; 1st half of 20th century.
The TransAfrican Style in Yoruba art
The transAfrican style of art was manifest in the work of Jeff Donaldson, an African American visual artist whose work helped define the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. In the midst of the racial and cultural turmoil of the 1960s, a group of African-American artists endeavored to relate its artwork to the black masses. Aiming to use art for social impact, artists such as Jeff Donaldson strived to create an "art for the people": an art form that was recognizable by and directed toward everyday people, rather than a group of well-educated elite. Within his works and collaborative efforts, Donaldson essentially became the founder of the new, uniting aesthetic known as transAfricanism. TransAfrican art is characterized by rhythmic use of lines, vibrant colors, bold patterns, motion, and often an emotional intensity. Much work made within the transAfrican style borrows heavily from Yoruba traditions.
One of his key works, Victory in the Valley of Eshu (1970), depicts an elderly black couple holding what appears to be an eye-shaped pinwheel. The work is filled with Yoruba and traditional African references, including the Yoruba Sango dance wand in the right hand of the man, references to deified ancestors (a Yoruba belief), the name Esu (the Yoruba god of fate), and others. The newly prominent element of shine, an aesthetic effect mimicking or displaying physical shine in order to reflect the bright, star-like quality of ordinary African Americans, is also visible in this piece. This effect achieves the celebration aspect of black art: an art that, as stated by Donaldson, defines, glorifies, and directs black people—an art for the people's sake.
The notion of shine is conveyed through the collection of small dots of color in the figures' hair and surrounding their bodies. Additionally, the hair of the couple seem to mimic halos. These elements, in combination with the couple's bright white clothing, complete the celebration of the ordinary in this African diasporic work. The little splotches and dots of color seem to emanate from the bodies and to dance their way around the edges of the portrait, conveying that notion of a rhythmic motion, which was integral in transAfrican work.