John E. Brown
Dr. Mohammad Borghel
Humanities: World Culture
June 4, 2012
African Art vs Western Art It is a misconception to understand African art as made by black artists, and Western art being made by whites. This summarizes the problem of seeing white artists in South African or not. One way to analyze this problem is to understand the different parameters of distinction between African and Western art, and fit a given work there, rather than by looking at the artist’s skin color. Because African art traditions are linked to cultural behavior, art without a good value in that context is meaningless. When the colonialists first became aware of African man-made objects, scholarship has not been sure on how best to categories it. Over the years, these problems have been debated in the field. Because there are so many distinctions between African art and its Western counterpart, and because contemporary African fine art exists in the same mindset as Western art, the field is very complex. In Africa, the community is highly respected. For this reason, the Western acknowledgment of the artist as individual genius is meaningless. Making art is a group reality, but in understanding this point, we must not forget how the West demoralized African identity by reconstructing it on their terms. Communal art making recalls not only print making, but also the collective studio environments in which it is popularly made in Africa. In Western art culture, the idea of the original art work is central to understanding the artist as a genius, but also for the market value of the work. The African continent promotes the idea of repetition and copying of images freely.
African Art vs Western Art Many African artists work with a single idiom, which they will use throughout their lives, changing it very slightly over the years. It is misleading to understand the West as only having had a direct and