Alexandre Pomar

O ICAC, 54 anos depois: Programa / Actas (Proceedings)

Há precisamente 54 anos (não é uma efeméride redonda) decorriam em Salisbúria / Salisbury as sessões do ICAC, 1º Congresso Internacional de Cultura Africana, acompanhado por uma grande exposição de arte tradicional e moderna, uma iniciativa também inédita, especialmente significativa na "África branca", onde nem a arte dita tribal era reconhecida como arte pela imprensa colonial rodesiana (ao contrário do que acontecia com a imprensa colonial de língua portuguesa).

Foi entre 1 e 11 de Agosto de 1962 e atraíu grandes especialistas convidados de todo o mundo, incluindo universitários e alguns dignatários africanos, nomeadamente da Nigéria já independente desde 1960.  Frank McEwen, fundador do Museu de Arte da Rodésia do Sul, por iniciativa de Londres, foi o organizador do ICAC, e estiveram presentes William Fagg, Robert Penrose, Alfred Barr, Hugh Tracey,  Tristan Tzara, Amâncio/Pancho Guedes, Vincent Kofi - e também o Chefe Zandamela dos Marimbeiros de Zavala (L. Marques) - que usaram da palavra  na sessão inaugural, a 1 de Agosto. E igualmente, entre outros, Jean Laude e  Udo Kultermann, especialistas da "arte negra" e da arquitectura africana, respectivamente

O ICAC foi financiado pelo Congresso para Liberdade da Cultura, que depois foi denunciado como sendo pago pela CIA, e a denúncia pode ter partido da própria extrema-direita americana, para desarticular uma organização de carácter progressivo. A declaração unilateral de independência de Ian Smith terá sido uma segunda razão para que as Actas nunca tivessem sido editadas, embora existam as provas tipográficas em meia dúzia de bibliotecas.

O catálogo de "African Remix" faz-lhe referência, mas é um tema em geral ignorado, esquecido e silenciado. Não é de interesse para a "teoria pós-colonial", e não é "politicamente correcto", recordar o mais importante fórum internacional sobre a cultura africana, realizado no contexto das independências africanas e das oposições ao apartheid.

Fica a seguir um sumário (não publicado) das principais palestras incluídas nas Actas, que foram em geral seguidas de debates entre os assistentes.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF AFRICAN CULTURE
1-11 August 1962
Held at The National Gallery, Salisbury, Rhodesia

Foreword 1959, Frank McEwen,

Opening Ceremony, 1 August,
McEwen, S.O. Biobaku (Ife, Nigeria)
Tristan Tzara, Vincent Kofi, William Fagg, Roland Penrose, Alfred Barr, Amâncio d’Alpoim [Pancho] Guedes , Hugh Tracey, Chief Zandamela (Lourenço Marques, Moçambique)

August 2
Lecture 1 - Janheinz Jahn, African thinking as a background to African Art,
(comments by Barr, Guedes, McEwen)
2. Jean Laude, Aesthetics and Ethnology,
3. A.M. Dauer (Frankfurt) , The influence of African Music on Western Culture, old and new,
4. S. Okeke (Lagos), The Artist in an Ibo Community,

August 3
1. B. E. Reynolds (Northern Rhodesia), The African Craft Village, Livingstone,
2. Pierre Guerre (Marseille), African Aesthetics and Western Aesthetics,
3. Hugh Tracey, Problems facing African Music and Musicians in the Immediate Future,
(comments Mrs. Guedes)
4. James A. Porter (Washington), The influence of African art and Culture in the New World,
5 . William Bascon (Berkeley), Creativity and Style in African Art,
(comments Fagg, Porter, Guedes)

August 6
1. Percy Borde (dancer, Caribbe), African influence in the Caribbean, p
2. Helmut Gunther (Stuttgart), The influence of Africa on Modern European and American Dancing,
3. [Pancho Guedes] / Amâncio D'Alpoim Guedes (Lourenço Marques, Moçambique), "Things are not what they seem to be - the auto-biofarsical hour",  (intro Tristan Tzara)

August 7
1. H. Christoffels (Fribourg), African Art and African Spiritualy,
William Fagg (London), African Art and Life Force,
2. B. Holas (Abidjan), Untitled (about Ethnology and Aesthetics),
3. Willard Rhodes (Nee York), African survivals in American Negro Music,
4. Selby Mvusi (artist, Ghana), Towards a Contemporary Art in Africa,
5. Roland Penrose (London), African influences on Picasso and Contemporary Art (intro McEwen)
6. Udo Kultermann (Leverkussen), Traditional African Architecture and Modern Architecture,

August 9
1. Roger Summers (Bulaweyo, South Rhodesia), Architecture and Other Art at Zimbabwe (110-1820),
2. Pearl Primus (dancer, USA), The inner being of African Dance,
3. Pierre Roumeguere & Jacqueline Roumeguere-Eberhardt (Bouar, Central African Republic), Human Clay Figurines and Fertility Dolls,
4. J. Newton Hill (Lagos), Towards an Aesthetic in African Sculpture,
5. Vincent Kofi (artist, Ghana) - intro by Alfred Barr,
6. Robert A. Kauffman (Southern Rhodesia), Continuitity and Change in the African Music of Southern Rhodesia,

August 11
1 - Frank McEwen, Art in Contemporay Africa,
F. McEwen, Influence of Africa,

Summing Up, Introdutory Remarks, / Non-National aspects of the Congress / Aspects of African Culture covered by Congress / Problem of adversing Congress / Difficulty of communicating with general public / Problem of Language / Proceedings of Congress
Indepence of Congress from Government Status / Second ICAC Congress / Subject of next Congress

not-paged
«Bill» Fagg, Four Yoruba Masters..., (Lecture 5, August 2)
William Fagg, The ancient history of Art in Nigeria
Andrew Tracey, Music of Southern Rhodesia
Frank McEwen, Foreword to the Congress Exibitions

List of Delegates’ Adresses
Sheet musics and photos

 

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O catálogo da exposição paralela ainda se encontra à venda. Grande parte das obras da representação de Moçambique fez parte da colecção de Pancho Guedes e pude expô-la em 2010 no Mercado de Santa Clara.

Pancho conseguira o apoio do Turismo de Lourenço Marques para fazer viajar as obras e o grande agrupamento dos Marimbeiros de Zavala, que fez escândalo ao tocar o hino nacional, como fazia em todas as actuações. Tristan Tzara ficou tão entusiasmado com o "dadaísmo" e a obra de Pancho Guedes que fez alterar o bilhete de regresso a Paris e foi até L.M. Infelizmente morreu no ano seguinte e o seu interesse ficou sem consequências.

P.G. já fizera em 1961 representar Moçambique como país - com a sua própria obra arquitectónica ( o Leão que Ri, etc) - na IV Bienal de São Paulo usando credenciais obtidas de um amigo do Turismo de L.M., e pensara então mudar-se para o Brasil. Nesse ano organizou também a 1ª exp. de Malangatana, no edifício das Actividades Económicas, e recebeu a visita de Eduardo Mondlane em L.M. Como muitos visitantes internacionais e muitas estadias no estrangeiro, a PIDE tinha mais razões para não o largar... A certa altura supunham-no chefe da Frelimo...

Abaixo, capa do catálogo da exposição e 1ªas páginas dos "Proceedings". Depois os Marimbeiros de Zavala actuando no 1º ICAC de 1962 , em Salisbúria, diante dos congressistas e do público. A foto é certamente de Pancho Guedes, e é pelo menos do seu espólio).

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actuando no 1º ICAC de 1962 , em Salisbúria, diante dos congressistas e do público. A foto é certamente de Pancho Guedes, e é pelo menos do seu espólio)

 

 

 

 

 

Malangatana first years

Malangatana
(1958-1968 first years: Pancho Guedes, Julian Beinart, Ulli Beier, from L.M. to Ibadan, London, Bombay)

(tradução a rever)

Malangatana (1936-2011) had a studio at his disposal at Pancho Guedes’ house since January 1960 and it was Pancho who organized with the Núcleo de Arte (an artists association founded in 1936) his first individual show of paintings, in April 1961, on the very official headquarters of the “Economic Entities” (Actividades Económicas) inaugurated in the presence of military and civil authorities.

Inauguration April 1961 (Photo archive Guedes)

On 1961 also, the Ibadan flyer (Ulli Beier, 1961) mentions a collective exhibition at Cape Town, organized by students (certainly via Julian Beinart) at the local university, including Susanne Wenger — “but apart from that his work has not been seen outside Lourenço Marques.” Furthermore, the upcoming publication of an article on Malangatana by Julian Beinart in Black Orpheus magazine is mentioned (issue nº 10, 1962, which also includes two poems translated by Dorothy Guedes).

Pancho wrote in the catalogue (April 1961), as A. d’Alpoim Guedes:

“The complete painter

These paintings are the result of little more than a year and a half’s work by an ex-waiter.
Malangatana is a natural and complete painter. With him, composition and the harmony of colour is not an intellectual game; they occur to him as naturally as stories and visions do.
He knows without knowing.
His vision has odd parallels with the European tradition. Certain paintings are close to the primitive Catalonians; some are like the macabre apparitions of the Dutch visionaries, while others suggest an involuntary, direct and magical surrealism.
He seems to come from that tradition without ever having had access to it or any form of training.
He is visited by spirits; certain paintings are hallucinations, fragments of a hell that once belonged to Bosch.
Malangatana has a thorough understanding of man’s subterraneous reasons, which, combined with his extraordinary formal vision, produces painting of such a rare totality that, despite being a beginner, he is already one of Africa’s major painters. “ (translated from the Portuguese)

In the 1961 flyer Ulli Beier introduces the beginning of Malagatana’s painting, patronized by Guedes, as follows:

“(...) his artistic potentialities were recognised by Amâncio Guedes, the brilliant architect, who met Malangatana when he was working as ball boy in the Lourenço Marques club. Through the friendship with Guedes, Malangatana blossomed forth as a painter. It is not so much that he was taught things in a conventional sense. But for the first time in his life Malangatana found that his work was taken seriously. He had an audience and encouragement. He lived in surrounding where art mattered and was practiced. More over there was an affinity of spirits. Guedes – when he is not designing buildings -– is a surrealist painter. Malangatana’s work does not show the slightest influence of Guedes work – nor of anybody else’s work. But seeing it may have confirmed Malangatana in his aspirations.”

Malangatana by Ulli Beier, 1962, with a self-portrait (flyer/invitation - photo Archive Guedes)

In fact, Malangatana was already attending the Núcleo de Arte, since 1958, as an occasional student with João Ayres (a modern master), protected by Augusto Cabral and José Júlio, when, at the end of 1959, Pancho Guedes visited him with Frank McEwen and offered to buy a painting a month from him. A while later he invited Malangatana to occupy a studio in his house at Nevala Street (The Smiling Lion), making him get out from under the influence of the Núcleo artists.

To this version of the story, often told by the painter, Pancho adds an earlier episode:

“And then Malangatana came, adopting a kind of ironic, humorous attitude. Feigning that he was a bit mad (within accepted limits) permitted him to behave in an extraordinary manner towards white people. He came into the office and asked me to design a house for him, speaking in a quite distorted but flowery Portuguese. Then he said that he was going to become a painter and that I should come to look at his work.” (U.B.’s interview, 2009. See also Pancho Guedes, 1998)

Inauguration 2009, Malangatana at Pancho Guedes retrospective show, Lisbon . With portrait of Dorothy Guedes and the Saipal Bakery (Photo A.P.)

The two men will be friends until the end: it was Malangatana who spoke (and sang and danced) at the opening of Guedes’s big retrospective show in Lisbon (2009) – and it would not be wrong to see Malangatana and Tito Zungo, a outsider artist from South Africa, to some extent, as Pancho’s alter-egos.

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As soon as 1962 (June) Malangatana has a solo exhibition at the Mbari Ibadan (“Exhibition of Paintings by Malangatana”), repeated at the gallery at the Mbari Mbayo club, which opened in Oshogbo in the first half of 1962 (U.B. remembers it in the aforementioned interview, 2009).

Beier writes in the flyer/invitation (“Valente Malangatana”, signed U.B.), but the text (like the 1961 notes) is not referenced in the extensive bibliography published under the title The Hunter Thinks the Monkey Is not NOT Wise, a Bibliography of Writings by Ulli Beier (Obotunde Ijimere & Co).

Catalogue, with a drawing by Ibrahim el-Salahi, 1963

Malangatana’s paintings then travel to London to be shown at Roland Penrose’s Institute for Contemporary Art, along with works by Ibrahim El-Salahi (b. 1930, Sudan). The 4-page catalogue of “2 Painters from Africa. Salahi & Malangatana. ICA. Dover St.” includes a poem by Malangatana and autobiographical extracts from both painters, out of Black Orpheus nº 10. Malangatana’s work had been shown in Salisbury, at the International Congress of African Culture (ICAC’62), a show Penrose attended, but not El-Salahi’s work.

This groundbreaking London show is not mentioned in the catalogue of El-Salahi’s retrospective at the Tate Modern in 2013, precisely 50 years later, although it made for an absolutely revealing juxtaposition of the questions which where then posed to the new African art of the 1960’s – to “Neo-African art” (a designation proposed by Janheinz Jahn, in 1958), or to the “renaissance of African art” or “modern art in Africa”, as Beier writes in the preface and conclusion of his 1968 book: “Nor does it matter how we label them” (Contemporary Art in Africa, p. 169).

In his seminal book of 1960, Art in Nigeria, Beier said that those that are called  then “modern african artists were European trained and were merely copying Europe”. But “the African new art forms have been evolved independently of European teaching and influence” (p. 4, Introduction). He writes:

“Art teaching suffers from the same failing from witch the whole of Nigerian education suffers: it is foreign-orientated. If independence means anything at all, it will mean the Nigerianisation of education” (p. 24 Conclusion).

Malangatana came from the “jungle” and Pancho Guedes’s studio; he was an attentive and supported self-taught artist. El-Salahi had graduated from Slade School and was a scholarly painter, although he had already altered the “modern style” he learned in London, as a consequence of an unsuccessful return to Sudan and the contact with Ulli Beier’s Mbari Club, reacquainting himself with local influences, in search of a possible synthesis.
In a recent interview published in The Guardian, El-Salahi recalls a visit to Nigeria in 1961, when he “met the writers Chinua Achebe and Soyinka Wolke, and became aware of a renaissance under way across the continent, with writers and artists in areas from all over taking from traditional art to create new forms for a new era” (naming Uche Okeke, Demas Nwoko and Malangatana).
“It was Africa's great modernist moment, and Salahi’s work fitted the bill”, Mark Hudson writes in “Ibrahim el-Salahi: from Sudanese prison to Tate Modern show”, The Guardian). However, “modernism” is an ambiguous word, which should be scrutinized and avoided – is not the same as modern art (as African modern art or Modern art in Africa).

The approach chosen by the commissioner, Salah M. Hassan (Tate Modern), was to integrate El-Salahi in a generic ”modernist movement in African visual arts", aimed at “interrogating and repositioning African modernism in the context of modernity as a universal idea” – and in a near nominal reference includes Malangatana among the pioneer African modernists (p. 11). This is about the existence and valuing of a mainstream international modernism that African modernism would fit into, especially when it is based on academic training, and when “in form, style, and aesthetic sensibility, their art reflects the strict adherence to the Western academic schooling they receive in Europe” (p. 14) But this kind of analyzes that claim to be post-colonial and anti-ethnocentric ignore the tensions and ruptures that exist in the dominant panorama of institutionalized modernism of the Cold War’s 50’s (ignoring the Cobra artists and Dubuffet, in particular) .

In the same catalogue, the Chika Okeke-Agulu’s text identifies in right terms, I think, the Beir’s complex attitude between the promotion of artists trained in workshops and the interested approval of those formally trained as contemporary artists - but he doesn’t talk about Malangatana.

Later, 1963 and 64, with the addition of Uche Okeke (Nigeria), there are three painters in an exhibition that travels to India and Pakistan, organized by the Committee for Cultural Freedom. A small 8-page catalogue with a text by Ulli Beier is referenced at worldcat.org: “Exhibition of African Art: Salahi * Malangatana * Okeke”, Exhibition held at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay 1964. Ulli Beier always mentions the Committee and the Congress’ grants for the publication of Black Orpheus and the activity of the Mbari Club; the exiled South African writer Ezekiel Mphahlele represented it in Nigeria in the 60s. In 1967 that support would be terminated for relying on funding from the CIA.

Ulli Beier’s 1968 book Contemporary art in Africa features Malangatana at length, and Chapter 4, “Finding the short cut”, is almost completely devoted to him (pp. 62-72):

“Malangatana may have been the first African artist to find the short cut – to become a sophisticated artist while bypassing education.” (p. 72).

On El-Salahi he writes (Chapter 2: “Without a tradition...”):

“No artist could create a more perfect synthesis of the cultural elements that make up the modern Sudan, the Islamic tradition and the wider all-African orientation of today. Yet Salahi is not a self-consciously ‘African’ artist, he is no preacher of Négritude, he is no preacher of anything; he is a dreamer”. (pp. 30-31)

Malangatana does not travel in those years, even though that has been printed. At the end of 1964 he is imprisoned (for 18 months), accused of being a member of Frelimo, but it should be noted that in the same year he won the first prize at the Lourenço Marques City Exhibition and that he painted mural panels for the headquarters of the very official Banco Nacional Ultramarino.
Only in 1971 will he receive a grant from the Gulbenkian Foundation to come to Lisbon to study ceramics and printmaking (he holds his first exhibition in Lisbon in 1972), travelling through Europe then.



Bibliography
Ulli Beier, 1960, Art in Nigeria 1960, Cambridge, at the Universitary Press, in collaboration with the Information Division, Ministry of Home Affairs, Ibadan, Nigeria. (24 pages + 77 plates)

Pancho Guedes (A. d’Alpoim Guedes), 1961, “O pintor completo” (The complete painter). In catalogue “Malangatanha Goenha Valente”, Lourenço Marques, Exposição organizada pelo Núcleo de Arte”. April. (Archive Guedes - photo)

Ulli Beier (unsigned), 1961, “Seen in South Africa”. In Flyer/invitation published by the Department of Extra Mural Studies, at the “Opening of an Exhibition of Photographs documenting Art and Architecture in Mozambique and the Union of South Africa”, at the Mbari, Ibadan (September 22nd to 7th October). (Archive Guedes - photo)

Julian Beinart,1962, “Malangatana”, Black Orpheus, issue nº. 10 ( includes two poems translated by Dorothy Guedes)

Ulli Beier (U.B.), 1962, “Valente Malangatana”. In 4-pages Flyer/invitation “Exhibition of Paintings by Malangatana”, June 25t, Mbari Ibadan. (2 photos) (Archive Guedes - photo)

National Gallery Salisbury, 1962, Exhibions to be held on the occasion of the First International Congress of African Culture, August 1 - September 30. Catalogue.

Institute for Contemporary Art, 1963, “2 Painters from Africa. Salahi & Malangatana. ICA. Dover St.”. 4-page catalogue, Ibrahim El-Salahi  and Malangatana (poem and autobiographical extract).

Ulli Beyer 1964, “Exhibition of African Art: Salahi * Malangatana * Okeke”, Exhibition held at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay, February 24-29. Catalogue. ( http://www.worldcat.org/title/exhibition-of-african-art-salahi-okeke-malangatana/oclc/40393513&referer=brief_results ) (unknown)

Ulli Beier, 1968, Contemporary Art in Africa, Pall Mall Press London.

Ulli Beier, 1996 (1975), The Hunter Thinks the Monkey Is not NOT Wise, a Bibliography of Writings by Ulli Beier, Ed. Obotunde Ijimere & Co. Third edition. ( http://www.thorolf-lipp.de/publications/documents/TheHunterthinksthemonkeyisnotwise.pdf )

Pancho Guedes (Amâncio d’Alpoim Guedes), 1998, “Lembrança do pintor Malangatana Valente Ngwenya quando ainda joven”, in Júlio Navarro org., Malangatana, Lisboa, Caminho (exists English edition).

Ulli Beier (and Pancho Guedes), 2009, “Interview, Joannesburg, September 19th 1980, in Pancho Guedes, Vitruvius Mozambicanos, Ed. Pedro Guedes, Museu Colecção Berardo, Lisbon. Catalogue.

Graça Gonçalves Pereira (org.), 1912, Malangatana, Painéis e Murais, ed. Consulado Geral de Portugal, Maputo. Catalogue.

Salah M. Hassan, 2013, “Ibrahim El-Salahi and the Making of African and Transnational Modernism”, in Ibrahim El-Salahi A visionary Modernist, Edited by Salah M. Hassan, Tate Publishing in association with the Museum for African Art. Tate Modern, London (July- September). Catalogue.

Chika Okeke-Agulu, 2013, “Ibrahim El-Salahi and Postcolonial Modernism in the Independence Decade”, idem.

Mark Hudson, 2013, “Ibrahim el-Salahi: from Sudanese prison to Tate Modern show”, The Guardian, July 3rd.  ( http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jul/03/ibrahim-el-salahi-tate-modern )

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“Suddenly I understood what colonialism meant: arrogance based on ignorance, sniggering condescension towards people one had come to 'help', an arrogance which reduced whole cultures to the level of curios.” Ulli Beier

Antologia: 1962: Frank McEwen, A influência de África

INFLUENCE OF AFRICA
 

Frank McEwen

apresentaçao do catálogo de

Exhitions to be held on the occasion of the FIRST CONGRESS OF AFRICAN CULTURE

National Gallery Salisbury / August 1 —  September 30, 1962

 

INFLUENCE OF AFRICA

THERE HAVE BEEN MANY, lN RECENT YEARS ALMOST TOO MANY, GREAT EXHIBITIONS OF AFRICAN ART lN EUROPE AND lN AMERICA.  BEGINNING lN THE 1910'S AND EARLY 20'S, THEY HAVE NOW BECOME FREQUENT NECESSITIES, ESPECIALLY lN AMERICA.

IT IS THEREFORE HIGH TIME THAT AFRICAN ART WERE SHOWN MORE OFTEN lN AFRICA, AND RECLAIMED CULTURALLY BY ITS CREATORS.

WE HAVE BEEN ASKED WHY WE HOLD A FESTIVAL OF AFRICAN ART lN RHODESIA, WHERE IT IS LlTTLE KNOWN —BUT SURELY THIS IS WHERE IT IS MOST NEEDED.

SOME WORTHIES WILL SAY "AFRICAN ART WAS NOT MADE AS 'ART' ". FOR THAT MATTER, NEITHER WERE ROMANESQUE CHURCHES NOR GOTHIC CATHEDRALS.  LlKE AFRICAN ART THEY WERE CREATED WITH MAGICAL, MYSTICAL KNOWLEDGE AND ASPIRATION.  WHEN THAT MYSTICISM WAS OVERWHELMED BY NEWER, LESSER THINGS THE REMAINING EFFIGIES BECAME 'ART' — ART FOR URGING, EXCITING, PROVOKING, EXPRESSING, INSPIRING .....

WE ARE TOLD THAT DR. LlVINGSTONE 'DISCOVERED' THE VICTORIA FALLS AND THAT SOMEBODY ELSE, A THOUSAND YEARS AFTER PTOLOMEY CHARTERED THEM, 'DISCOVERED' THE SOURCES OF THE NILE.  BUT WHO 'DISCOVERED' THAT AFRICAN ART WAS 'ART'?  BEFORE THE EXPRESSIONISTS, BEFORE THE PICASSO GROUP, AND LONG BEFORE THE MOVEMENTS OF INDEPENDENCE, A VERTIGINOUS FASCINATION FOR IT SPREAD OVER EUROPE.  IT WAS LlKE PATTERING RAIN, ANNOUNCING A VIOLENT SQUALL.  THE SQUALL BLEW UP AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY WHILE AFRICA WAS STILL lN THE GREAT SLEEP AND SPANISH, FRENCH AND GERMAN ARTISTS —EXPLORERS lN AESTHETtCS  — WERE BLOWN BEFORE ITS BLAST LlKE FULL-RIGGED SHIPS UNDER BARE POLES.

NOT YET QUITE SPENT, lN 60 YEARS, THE SQUALL HAS CHANGED THE FACE OF WESTERN ART.  VITAL, UNWRITTEN MUSIC IS ALSO BEING RE-DISCOVERED BY THE OCCIDENT AND THE IMPELLlNG FORCE OF JOY lN DANCE.  GONE ARE THE NAUSEATING NUDES A LA MANIERE DE BOUGUEREAU, GOING IS THE SICKLY MUSIC. THIS ESCAPE TO NEW REALlTIES WAS ONLY HERALDED BY THE FANTASTIC CEZANNE.  THEN INTO THE ROBOT-MINDED WORLD BLEW A HALF-ROBOT, HALF-MAGICAL ART CONSCIOUS OF AFRICA.  BUT AS THE STORM ABATES WESTERN ART ITSELF IS PETERING OUT.  QUANTITY DESTROYS QUALlTY lN AN ODIOUS GAME OF MONEY AND RIGGED ART FAIRS.

THE HARD AFRICAN SKY IS WHERE THE STORM CAME FROM.  ITS BLAST STRUCK SUGARY AESTHETICS AND, AT THE SAME TIME, ANOTHER VISION OF VIRILE CREATIONS IS CLOSE AT HAND — A NEW, NON-TRADITIONAL, AFRICAN ART.  AGAIN, IT MAY LACK lN LATIN SOFTNESS.  IT IS NOW CONCERNED WITH THE REALlTIES OF LlFE AND DEATH — WITH THE DRUM BEAT OF A VAST HEART WHERE WARM BLOOD FLOWS AND WISER SPIRITS BECOME INCARNATE.

AFRICA IS THAT WELCOME OTHER EXTREME TO OUR UNRELAXED INQUIETUDE AND THE ROBOT 'WELFARE' STATE.  SHE EXISTS FOR RHYTHM AND IMAGINATION, EXPRESSION, ECSTASY AND TRANCE.  SHE EXISTS FOR THE KNOWLEDGE THAT DE-HUMANISING EDUCATION HAS EFFACED lN US AND WHICH MECHANISATION_ MAY TEMPORARILY OBSCURE lN AFRICA.  AFRICA IS THE WIDE EXCHANGING GROUND WHERE OUR VAUNTED ADVANTAGES MIX WITH CONCEPTIONS OF ART, RELlGION AND LlFE WHICH ARE, TO US, UNBELlEVABLY VARIED AND OBSCURE.  BUT lN THIS VIGOROUS ENCOUNTER WHICH, LlKE ALL OTHER HUMAN DEVELOPMENTS, WAS PRECEDED BY MOVEMENTS lN ART A WORLD OF HASTE COMES TO LEARN FROM ANCIENT AFRICA, THINGS IT FORGOT!

WITH INCREDIBLE VARIATIONS lN STYLE AND MEANING TO AN EXTENT UNKNOWN ELSEWHERE lN HISTORY, AFRICAN ART IS MAINLY EXPRESSIONISTIC.  HERE EXPRESSIONISM AND SURREALlSM SERVE HALLUCINATORY INTENSITIES OF SHOCK AND FEELlNG. BUT ALL STYLES WERE ACTIVE lN AFRICA FROM THE LINEAR PURISM OF THE PORPIANONG OR THE OGBOM HEAD-DRESS TO THE SPIRITUALLY ILLUMINATED REALlSM OF IFE.  WHEN CONFRONTED WITH THIS 14TH CENTURY IFE WORK, SO WELL INFUSED WITH LlFE, THE UNFAMILlAR EUROPEAN, HIDEBOUND BY GRECO-VICTORIAN ACADEMISM IS FORCED TO 'SEE' SOME 'GOOD' lN AFRICAN ART!  BUT MANY SOPHISTICATED MODERN AFRICANS, DIVORCED FROM THEIR DYNAMIC PAST, MISUNDERSTAND EQUALLY WELL; CHOCOLATE-BOX AND AIRPORT ART SENTIMENTALlTY ABOUNDS WHILE THEY EVEN INDULGE lN ROCK AN' ROLL! SOME NEWLY INDEPENDENT AFRICAN NATIONS, BURSTING WITH MUSICAL LlFE OF THEIR OWN, HAVE GONE SO FAR AFIELD AS TO HAVE THEIR NATIONAL ANTHEMS COMPOSED lN EUROPE!

AS TIME ADVANCES RAPIDLY, SIGNIFICANT FACTS OF THE CONTROVERSIAL AFRICAN AFFAIR WILL BECOME APPARENT.  IT WILL BE SEEN THAT, lN THE 20TH CENTURY, AFRICA WAS THE FIRST TO MAKE HER CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE WESTERN HUMANITIES - TO ART, FAITH, MUSIC, ENTHUSIASM.  HER DONATIONS TO THE WEST WERE, HOWEVER, DISCREETLY, EVEN UNCONSCIOUSLY MADE.  THEY WERE NOT PATERNALlSTICALLY PROCLAIMED BY MISSIONARlES, FREEDOM-RIDERS OR PEACE CORPS!  THERE WAS NO CASHING lN, HURRIEDLY, ON ALL THAT WAS BEING DONE FOR THE 'BACKWARD', 'UNDER-DEVELOPED', CONTINENTS OF EUROPE AND AMERICA!

THESE GIFTS FROM AFRICA CAME BEFORE THOSE OBVIOUS ONES - GIFTS MADE BY US lN RETURN FOR VALUABLE MEDICINES AND MACHINERY OR SUCH SOUL-DESTROYING INTRUSIONS AS SPUTNIKS, PORTABLE RADIOS, JET TRAVEL TO NOWHERE, NOT TO MENTION THE ABUSIVE USE OF MOVIES AND TELEVISION!

AND NOW TO SUM UP, AS THE PENDULUM OF OPINION SWINGS, THIS GROUP OF EXHIBITIONS OF AFRICAN, NEO-AFRICAN AND NEW AFRICAN ART IS MADE TO PROVE TO ALL PEOPLES ALlKE, FOR JOY AND FOR MEDITATION, SOME LESSER KNOWN FACTS.

BUT THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF 'GIVE' AND 'TAKE' HAS SEVERAL FACETS.  ONE IS OUR PRESENT CONCERN - TO SHOW WHAT EUROPEAN GENIUS OWES TO THE ANCIENT GENIUS OF AFRICA.


FRANK McEWEN.

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(2010) "A exposição paralela ao congresso foi uma muito vasta mostra de arte africana, a maior de sempre até à data, segundo a Time Magazine (28-09-1962). Iniciava-se com as culturas que precederam a chegada da influência europeia e continuava até à “arte africana não tradicional dos anos 60” (The London Times, 12-08-1962). À época, enquanto “para muitos colonos brancos a arte africana era vista como uma treta (“a mumbo-jumbo sort of thing”), prova da ausência de instintos culturais nos nativos africanos”, o Rhodesia Herald dizia que nada mais se via que “crueldade, primitivismo e selvajaria”. McEwen pretendia mostrar que “todo o movimento moderno na arte ocidental tem uma dívida para com a África primitiva”, já que são “muito poucos os artistas de estilo contemporâneo que não possuem alguma influência de África, bem digerida mas evidente” (Time Magazine N6). Barr comprou então as primeiras obras africanas modernas para o MoMA. P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; }A:link { }

6 Citado em Adele Aldridge, “Frank McEwen: Rhodes National Gallery in Salisbury, Rhodesia”, 2007, http://www.adeleart.com/McEwen/Articles.html

Frank McEwen showing Queen Elizabeth the opening for The Rhodes National Gallery in Salisbury, Rhodesia, 1956

 

"Malangatana é referido na cronologia do Met e em outras fontes como um dos artistas africanos participantes no Congresso (ao lado de Vincent Kofi, do Gana, e do nigeriano Ben Enwonwu). Trata-se de um equívoco, já que apenas as suas obras estiveram presentes na representação de Moçambique enviada por Pancho Guedes, ao lado de Abdias Muhlanga / no cat. Abdias Júlio Muchanga / – era uma revelação recente, cujo itinerário posterior foi muito atribulado – e do esquecido Metine Macie, mas também de Augusto Naftal e Alberto Mati, dois artistas muito jovens sem qualquer aprendizagem formal a quem Pancho comprava regularmente desenhos. É agora a primeira vez que se pode rever parte significativa dessa representação." (Cat. 2010)

Pancho Guedes, statements (1962)

1.

"I feel that this business of stressing the difference of African culture is something like cultural apartheid. I feel that creators are always magicians, whether they are in Europe, in Africa or in America. I feel that we should concern ourselves with the universality of art, with the forces that make people do things, and not try to look for the very slight differences. I think that an African carver finds the same pleasure in the work as a European sculptor or a Chinese water-colour painter. There is something in all men which looks forward to the joys that come from this magic thing; this making of things." Pancho Guedes, 1962 (aliás,  "Amancie", sic - por Amâncio - d'Alpoim Guedes*)

 Statement at the First International Congress of African Culture, August 2, Lecture 1. Rhodes National Gallery, Salisbury / Harare, Southern Rhodesia / Zimbabwe. Proceedings..., p.  20)

“Acho que o interesse de sublinhar a diferença da cultura africana é uma espécie de apartheid cultural. Acho que os criadores são sempre mágicos, onde quer que se encontrem, na Europa, em África ou na América. Acho que nos deviamos interessar pela universalidade da arte, pelas forças que levam as pessoas a fazer coisas, em vez de tentar descobrir diferenças sem importância. Penso que um entalhador africano obtém o mesmo prazer no trabalho que um escultor europeu ou um aguarelista chinês. Há algo em todos os homens que anseia pelas alegrias que resultam desta coisa mágica, a criação de coisas.” Pancho Guedes, 1962 (Intervenção improvisada no 1º Congresso Internacional da Cultura Africana, 2 de Agosto, Conferência 1. Rhodes National Gallery, Salisbúria / Harare, Rodésia do Sul / Zimbábue. Proceedings..., p.  20)

2

"Mr. McEwen and Mr. Barr have told us about a brilliant and immensely rich past, wich influencied most of modern art. I believe that now, there is a second wave of something coming. Here (in Salisbury), in Nigeria, in Ibadan, in Khartoum, in Lourenço Marques, and in Johannesburg, something is happening, which I believe is going to bring a change to art, a change to painting, to sculpture, and even to architecture. This is something new. It has something to do with direct communication. It is something which comes originally from Europe and that Africa is now giving back to Europe and to America. So far, it is mostly painting by amateurs, painting without patrons, painting without dealers. It is the painting of necessity. It is painting done by waiters, by people who never learnt to paint, by people who work somewhere else and after hours do their painting and do their sculpture. It is very simple, very direct, it is accessible to all, and I think this will be very fruitful to the rest of modern art - to all the rest of contemporary artists everywhere." Pancho Guedes, 1962 (Statement at the Opening Ceremony of the First International Congress of African Culture, August 1. Proceedings..., p. 16.)

“Frank McEwen e Alfred Barr falaram-nos do brilhante e imensamente rico passado, que influenciou muita arte moderna. Eu acredito que agora há uma segunda vaga de alguma coisa que está a chegar. Aqui (em Salisbúria), na Nigéria, em Ibadan, em Cartum, em Lourenço Marques,  e em  Joanesburgo, alguma coisa está a acontecer, algo que eu acredito que vai trazer uma mudança na arte, mudar a pintura, a escultura, e até a arquitectura. Isto é algo de novo e é algo que tem a ver com comunicação directa. É alguma coisa que vem originalmente da Europa e que a África está agora a devolver para a Europa e a América. Até ver, é essencialmente pintura de amadores, pintura sem patronos, pintura sem comerciantes. É a pintura da necessidade. Pintura feita por criados, por gente que nunca aprendeu a pintar, por gente que trabalha noutras coisas e que faz a sua pintura e a sua escultura fora de horas. É muito simples, muito directa, é acessível a todos, e penso que será de grande proveito para o resto da arte moderna - para os outros artistas contemporâneos de todo o mundo.” Pancho Guedes, 1962 (Intervenção improvisada na sessão de abertura do 1º Congresso Internacional da Cultura Africana, 1 de Agosto. Proceedings..., p. 16 )

3

“I have had no time to talk to Frank (McEwen) about what I am doing here, and I really do not know whether I should start telling you. I got a letter from him saying that I should come and lecture, and I do not know what he wants me to speak about, but I have got quite a number of things to talk about. One of them is on my things, and that will be called "Things are not what they seem to be." The second one could be on "Another Architecture - an Architecture of Less Windows and More Feeling." The third could be something on the Mapoggas. The fourth could be about some African painters from Lourenco Marques and perhaps some poetry reading of Malangatana's poems which I have brought along already translated for Englishmen. A fifth could be on Gaudi, and I suppose there could be some more.
I did not know about it before, but I am terribly glad that we have a Dadaist here tonight, and that we will have a Dadaist at the Congresso I want to congratulate Frank McEwen on having got this meeting off the ground. It is something that I have known him to worry about, to fuss about and to write about for the past four years. I have watched part of it becoming and I feel that today it is "Happy Birthday, Frank McEwen."  (Pancho Guedes, 1962 (Statement at the Opening Ceremony of the First International Congress of African Culture, August 1. Proceedings..., p. 16.)

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TRISTAN TZARA, Monsieur Tzara, Introduction to Guedes' Lecture

"One has indeed to come to the end of the world, and for me at least to Africa, to find the most ancient, the most archaic things and also - surprising though it may seem - the most up-to-date, the most extraordinary things - things which were dreamt of 30 ar 40 years ago and are now becoming reality on this soil of Africa. Mr. Guedes, apart from being a sculptor, considers that painting and sculpture are not solely arts of pleasure, but should be applied to housing, to social life, to spiritual life, to the life of the imagination and above all of the architect. He has built some extraordinary houses at Lourenço Marques, in Mozambique, which you are going to see presently. A whole architecture of the imagination, which, of course, links Guedes with the Dadaist and Surrealist schools, and I am very happy to have met him here and to be able to say in Paris that certain realisations, which they can not have seen in the West, are coming to fruitlon in this new world, which is in a state of ferment - Africa - which is clearly going to be the world of the future." Tristan Tzara (August 6, Lecture 3. Proceedings... p.84)

Introdução à Palestra de Pancho Guedes
Realmente é preciso vir ao fim do mundo e para mim pelo menos a África, para descobrir as coisas mais antigas, mais arcaicas e também - por estranho que pareça - as coisas mais actuais, mais extraordinárias - coisas que foram sonhadas há 30 ou 40 anos e que agora se estão a tornar realidade neste solo africano. Guedes, para além de ser um escultor, acredita que a pintura e a escultura não são apenas artes de prazer, mas que deveriam ser aplicadas ao lar, à vida social, à vida espiritual, à vida da imaginação e acima de tudo à arquitectura. Construiu algumas casas extraordinárias em Lourenço Marques, em Moçambique, que terão a oportunidade de ver agora. Toda uma arquitectura de imaginação, que, obviamente, liga Guedes às escolas Dadaísta  e Surrealista, e estou muito feliz por o ter conhecido aqui e por poder afirmar, em Paris, que certas obras, que não podem ter visto no Ocidente, estão a dar frutos neste novo mundo, que está em estado de ebulição - África - que irá certamente ser o mundo do futuro.

* Amâncio ("Amancie", sic) d'Alpoim Guedes, List of Delegates to Congress, Proceedings p. 8. "Architect and Promoter of contemporary African Art. Lourenço Marques, Portuguese East Africa".

FOTO 1: Atelier da Rua de Nevala, nº 61 A, véspera da partida  para a viagem à Europa em 1960. "Para a foto, o Pedro pulou para a prateleira e está sentado, a Llonka está de pé e ao lado temos o jovem Malangatana, que já se instalou na garagem; por trás fica o mural quadriculado. A Dori está à extrema-esquerda, antes da Bibila Navarro; depois estou eu, também empuleirado numa das gavetas arquivo; segue-se o Filipe, o entalhador; o António Fernandes, grande amigo e colaborador; o André "tira cópias" e o Diogo Gonçalves, pedreiro e meu grande ajudante nos murais e relevos. Mais alto está o Mateus Mabote, desenhador e chefe do atelier; mais à direita um outro, (de) que me esqueci do nome, por trás o Inhamuce, carpinteiro; em baixo está o Fernando Samuel, o bordador. Julgo que foi o Rodrigues que tirou a fotografia. Apontamos uns para os outros sorridentemente. Vamos estar fora uns quatro ou cinco meses."" Pancho Guedes, "O ANNUS Mirabilis MCMLX", in Miguel Santiago, Pancho Guedes, Metamorfoses Espaciais, ed. Caleidoscópio, 2007 (pág. 6)

FOTO 2. 1961 Janeiro, Escola de Verão / Summer school, Lourenço Marques, Infantário Piramidal (ainda em construção)

FOTO 3. Anos 1980, Joanesburgo, (?) Universidade de Witwatersrand. Em cima e à direita, esculturas de Pancho Guedes; ao centro, desenho de Tito Zungu com moldura de P.G.

FOTO 4. Com Tristan Tzara, Lourenço Marques, 1962. (Terminado o Congresso - ICAC'62 - , Tzara alterou o seu plano de viagem para  visitar PG em L.M. antes de regressar a Paris. Morreu no ano seguinte.)

Pancho Guedes e Roland Penrose, Malangatana e Ulli Beier

The Queen of Sheba's Ship, escultura de Amâncio Guedes (Pancho), datada de 1963, ao lado de um  xilofone Chopi (marimba) certamente de Moçambique (na legenda, from South Africa).

A foto é da casa de Roland Penrose e os retratos são do pai (James Doyle Penrose, retratista de sucesso) e da mãe de Roland Penrose  e do próprio Roland em criança, c. 1907.

É uma fotografia de The Home of the Surrealists: Lee Miller, Roland Penrose and Their Circle at Farley Farm, da autoria de Antony Penrose (filho) e Alen Macweeney, fotografias
Frances Lincoln ltd, 2008 - 144 páginas.

(Written by Anthony Penrose, son of American photographer and feminist icon Lee Miller and British artist Roland Penrose, this work provides a personal insight into their life together at Farley Farm, Sussex where they played host to some of the greatest 20th-century artists.)

Guedes e Penrose participaram ambos no 1º Congresso Internacional de Cultura Africana (1962, Salisbury). Pancho levou consigo os Marimbeiros de Zavala e uma exp. de artistas moçambicanos em que se destacava Malangatana.

 

Penrose era director do Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London, onde em 1963 expôs Malangata com Ibrain-el-Salahi, pintor sudanês de longa carreira, depoid tb professor e político, a quem a Tate Modern vai dedicar uma grande retrospectiva, organised by the Museum for African Art, New York:

Ibrahim El-Salahi: A Visionary Modernist

Tate Modern: Exhibition

3 July – 22 September 2013

tate salahi

Salahi, n. 1930, estudou na Slade School of Fine Art in London from 1954-57, e esteve depois associado ao Mbari Club de Ulli Beier na Nigéria (de onde parte então a circulação internacional de Malangatana).

Já ao lado do nigeriano Uche Okeke e sempre com Salahi, Malangatana é exposto em Bombaim e a mostra segue atá ao Paquistão em 1964. A digressão foi patrocinada pelo Congresso para a Liberdade da Cultura (Congress for Cultural Freedom) de que mais tarde (1967) se viria a saber que contava com financiamentos da CIA. Ulli Beier refere sempre os subsídios do Congresso à publicação de "Black Orpheus" e à actividade do Mbari Club. Martin Luther King fora o porta-voz da actividade do Congresso, numa sessão em Paris, e o escritor sul-africano exilado Ezekiel Mphahlele representava-o na Nigéria nos anos 60.

A junção de Malangatana com o sudanês Ibrahim El Salahi e o nigeriano Uche Okeke é particularmente significativa, desde logo pelo que as suas origens e carreiras representam (dois pintores com formação académica e um auto-didacta - "the short cut"), e pela importância que todos eles assumem na promoção da nova arte africana dos anos 60, ou do "renascimento" da arte africana, por Ulli Beier, na sua condição de crítico, editor e director de uma galeria de arte (prefácio de Contemporary Art in Africa).

Ulli Beier, Frank McEwen, Pancho Guedes and Julian Beinart

“There were a lot of people hovering around” (*1)

(Ulli Beier, Frank McEwen, Pancho Guedes and Julian Beinart - an informal network of mediators, patrons and benefactors, Africa 1950s/60s)

“1950s-1960s - Amâncio Guedes, a Portuguese architect residing in Maputo, Mozambique, organizes informal workshops for young artists. Among the participants is Malangatana Ngwenya (born 1936), whose paintings are later shown by the Mbari Artists and Writers Club in Ibadan, Nigeria”. Information from Heildbrunn Timeline of Art History, on the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art website, chapter “Southern Africa, 1900 A.D. – present”, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/?period=11&region=afo#/Key-Events).

Later, there is another, rather inaccurate reference to Malangatana; however, this is the only event of artistic importance in so-called Portuguese Africa. Angola and Mozambique appear on the timeline with the dates of the armed struggles (1961 and 1963, respectively – when it should be 1964), and then only much later in 1975 because of the countries’ independence. There is a void of information that separates them drastically from neighbouring areas; however, if there was a true lack of events, there was also a lack of knowledge. The reference to Amâncio Guedes illustrates a hazy recollection of the facts; firstly because of the inaccurate date given, which puts it before the other key events of the 1950s, such as the founding of Drum magazine in South Africa, in 1951 and the beginning of Frank McEwen’s intervention in Salisbury in 1954, for example.

Malangatana, "A mulher que chora", 1959 (A woman cries)

Malangatana, os títulos de 1961

O acesso ao catálogo da 1ª exp. de Malangatana, em 1961, permite conhecer os títulos originais de alguns quadros que foram sendo nomeados de outras formas em posteriores exposições e edições retrospectivas, nomeadamente em "As Áfricas de Pancho Guedes - Colecção Dori e Amâncio Guedes" (2010-11):

(notas) Beier, McEwen, Guedes, etc Metropolitan Museum - HEILBRUNN TIMELINE OF ART HISTORY

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/?period=11&region=afg#/Key-Events

Metropolitan Museum - HEILBRUNN TIMELINE OF ART HISTORY - Guinea Coast, Central Africa, Southern Africa... 1900 A.D.–present:

 

CRONOLOGIA ÁFRICAS (selecção)

1937  The Fine Arts School is founded at Makerere College in Kampala, Uganda, and Margaret Trowell is appointed its director. She develops a curriculum that cultivates and preserves indigenous African styles and aesthetic values while introducing new media and methods of art production such as silkscreen printing and easel painting. Promising students, such as Tanzanian painter Sam Ntiro (1923–1993), are sent to study at the Slade School of Fine Art and the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The work of her students is displayed at the Imperial Institute, London, in 1939.

1938     Walter Battiss (1906–1982), Alexis Preller (1911–1975), and other young South African artists coalesce as the New Group in response to the British-inspired academicism of current South African art. Having seen indigenous African artworks such as San rock paintings, the artists seek an alternative modern art rooted in the integration of African and European aesthetics, and organize exhibitions showing work of black South African artists such as painter Gerard Sekoto (1913–1993). The New Group, and South African artists in general, benefit from the immigration of European intellectuals fleeing the totalitarian regimes emerging in Europe at this time.

1948   Apartheid in South Africa commences as the Afrikaner National Party comes to power under the leadership of Daniel F. Malan and the all-white parliament.

1948  The Polly Street Centre is established in Johannesburg as a community center for black township youths. Cecil Skotnes (born 1926) becomes the director of the arts workshop in 1952, and encourages students to study West and Central African sculpture. Artists such as Durant Sihlali, Ephraim Ngatane, Sydney Kumalo, Ben Macala, Louis Maqhubela, Lucas Sithole, and Helen Sebidi receive their initial training there.

1948  South African artist Ernest Mancoba (1904–2002) participates in the HØST COBRA exhibition in Copenhagen.

1950s-60s   Amancio Guedes, a Portuguese architect residing in Maputo, Mozambique, organizes informal workshops for young artists. Among the participants is Malangatana Ngwenya (born 1936), whose paintings are later shown by the Mbari Artists and Writers Club in Ibadan, Nigeria. (a nota faz uma antedatação: será de facto 1960s)