Towards a Modernist Main Streaming-Oral Tradition: A Tool for Art Historical reconstruction

Abstract

The un availability of data and good historical sequence of all traditional art (South of the Sahara) have not only made it impossible to establish true origins of African art traditions but also militated against the emergence of a suitable art historical methodology which will establish a perfect historical sequence of all African art. The popular approach to the study of traditional art is anthropological (not art historical) with emphases on cultural extra-aesthetic functions of the objects. This approach places these African art objects lower than its Euro-American counterparts. This study therefore advocates for an indigenous art historical approach based on oral tradition in order to fill the existing gap in written evidence and chronology of these works of art. The work observes that the indigenization of African art was caused by the western powers viewing African Art through the prism of Euro-American methodology. The paper therefore challenges the African historians to evolve more art historical methodologies that can fill the existing gap mentioned above.