Art: Reminders of the Unknown

For almost half a century, African Negro sculpture has been much admired by connoisseurs. British Critic Roger Fry unhesitatingly called it “great sculpture—greater, I believe, than any we have made . . .” Photographs of 40 such primitive carvings, collected by Copenhagen’s Carl Kjersmeier and published in book form last week (Wittenborn; $5.50), gave laymen a chance to see what the shouting was about.

There was one profound and devout difference between the Africans and modern sculptors: the former believed implicitly in the ends of their art; they made their carvings for a definite purpose. Like the Navajo sand painters (TIME, Feb. 23), the African sculptors were magicians, who carved figures and masks of tribal gods for magic uses.

There was no need to show what the gods looked like, for no one knew, but every carving had to be at least a reminder of the unknown. In reaching for the supernatural, the Negro tribesmen lightened their load by tossing naturalism overboard. Their sculptures were subject to just one academic discipline: What can you do with a knife and a block of wood?

The combination of unquestioning faith and unquestioned freedom of expression resulted in sculpture so powerful that it makes such moderns as Henry Moore and Jacques Lipchitz look like sissies. The wholly abstract mask used in the circumcision ceremony of the secret Poro Society of the Ivory Coast Dan Tribe, slams at the eye like a fist. The Ashanti fertility fetish, carried on the backs of pregnant women to help make their children beautiful, has the simplicity of a lollipop but the elegance of a Donatello; the yellow & black Ibibio carving, used in secret female dances, sits its crescent moon with awesome assurance; and the Mpongwe stilt-dance “Mask of the Dead” is ennobled, not coarsened, by its cruel tattoos.