At OYASAF lecture, Nigerian art auctions on the spot

Participants shortly after the event

Stakeholders from the Nigerian visual arts gathered at the first OYASAF lecture of the year, held few hours ago, to brainstorm on the challenges of the rapid growing secondary art market as the guest lecturer Ozioma Onuzulike highlights the positive and grey areas of the local art auction scene.

Art Auctions in Nigeria: Ladders of Progress or Shots in the Artists’ Feet?

 

Ozioma Onuzulike

Department of Fine and Applied Arts,

University of Nigeria

Nsukka

 

In this lecture, I rely on a review of reports and debates on the history, structures and operations of art auctions in Nigeria to join the dialogue around their current impacts in the development of contemporary art in the country. I examine the current euphoria surrounding the generally held point of view that Nigerian art auctions have provided ladders of professional and economic progress in the country’s visual art sector by raising the level of art appreciation/awareness in the country and energising the local and international art markets in a phenomenal manner.

I, however, transcend the prevailing notions of progress by directly and indirectly examining a number of issues related to the following questions:  What structures are in place to create and sustain credible art auctions as against what can be described as ‘elitist sale-spots’ in Nigeria? What are the implications of the lack of rarity in much of the lots on offer? What is the place of art history and art criticism in the evaluation or appraisal of modern and contemporary art in Nigeria? Do we have a viable art historical and critical culture in Nigeria necessary for providing information to all players in both the primary and secondary art markets in the country? What is the future of our art auctions in the present absence of influential art historical and critical platforms?

My goal is to provoke healthy debates and productive dialogues around the presence or absence of credible and sustainable art auctioneering structures in the country in a manner that helps us to critically review their low and high points. It is hoped that my descriptions and analysis of key issues will provide ample basis for suggesting ways by which art auctions can truly become ladders of professional progress for Nigerian artists instead of constituting weapons with which they unwittingly shoot themselves in the foot.

II

I tend to think that there are no strange terms or variables in the title of this lecture. An auction is widely known to be “a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder”¹. An art auction will then mean the process of selling art objects to the highest bidder, especially in an auction house².

An auction house traditionally operates a secondary art market, as different from the primary art market. The “primary market represents first-time sales of a work of art [such as at exhibitions and galleries]; the secondary market represents resale [such as at art fares and auction houses]”³. Kyle Chayka has observed that “auction houses exist to help circulate the secondary market”⁴. In fact, “with the exception of Damien Hirst’s massive blow-out Beautiful Inside My Head Forever sale at Sotheby’s in September 2008, work on the block at auction houses doesn’t come straight out of artists’ studios”; it rather comes “from collections, from collectors and patrons who want to pass on their purchases, or maybe flip them for a little more cash”⁵.

I will thus be discussing issues relating to the structures and mechanisms of the secondary art market in Nigeria, with a focus on how art works are collected, valuated and sold by Nigerian auction houses. And because, through the invitational approach of Nigerian auction houses, many artists have been taking their works directly to them and are now increasingly relying on the promotional and valuation structures of the auction houses, I am interested in examining the circumstances in which such marketing and promotional channels advance the artists’ professional careers (in that case, metaphorically becoming ladders of progress) or disadvantage, inhibit or even kill their careers. The latter circumstance leads to what I refer to as the artists being shot, or rather shooting themselves, in the foot.

The subject of art auctions invariably draws our attention to the investment value of works of art. In other words, we are essentially dealing with art as commodity. I subscribe to the theoretical framework upon which Prince Chukwuka Samuel based his earlier study of the Lagos art market⁶. He fittingly relied on two key theoretical texts – Karl Max’s The Capital, which theorises the work of art as commodity, and Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Reproduction, which is a further commentary on The Capital. Based on the Marxist interpretation of a commodity as “in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human want of some sort or another”⁷, Samuel argues that since “the work of art is a product of human thought and labour made real in an objectified form” it could then be acceptable to say that “art is a commodity because it is a creation of the artist and meant for the aesthetic enjoyment of the art public”⁸. 

Some other commentators have enunciated the Marxist definition of art as commodity. One of them is Louis Proyect who wrote the influential text The Unrepentant Marxist: Art as Commodity in which he examines the beginning of the emergence of art as commodity. Proyect points to the mid-19^th century as a period when “artists began to be freed from their feudal ties”⁹ and when the advent of “the bourgeois established an equal footing between artists and patrons”, ushering in “a transmutation … in the art market system”¹⁰.

An art market system, in the form of art auction, invariably endorses the Marxist view of art as commodity. While the history of art auctions in the West is a long one (dating back to the late 17^th century), the history of its adaptation in Nigeria is barely a decade and a half old.

III

The young history of art auctions in Nigeria reveals its steady growth and appreciable impact in the visual art sector, locally and internationally. The Nimbus Art Gallery, run by Chike Nwagbogu, takes the pride of place as the organiser of the first art auction in Nigeria. Entitled “Before the Hammer Falls” and held in 1999, at the turn of the millennium, the auction was historically timed and the result was revolutionary in the history of art and art market in Nigeria. With the record sale of Bruce Onobrakpeya’s Palm Wine Women for N2 million, the auction brought art to the front pages of the newspapers.¹¹ A total of N22 million was realised at the auction, a sum that was very significant in the Nigerian economic context at that time and brought art to the front pages of newspapers. 

Prince Yemisi Shyllon

Reflecting on the Nimbus pioneering auction, Christopher Vourlias writes that its success “was a clear indication that a local market for contemporary Nigerian art existed”¹². In other words, Nimbus’ successful experiment opened up a revelation that apparently called attention to the field of art auctioneering in the Nigerian art market. Held at the MUSON Centre, which was about one of the most prestigious event centres at that time in Lagos, and attracting an array of dignitaries, the auction of 1999 truly set the pace in educating the Nigerian public on the investment value of the country’s modern and contemporary art and for the recognition of the artists’ professional worth.

For almost a decade later, the Nimbus auction initiative was not followed up until Kavita Chellaram introduced, in mid-2007, what has been described as the “premier art auction house in Nigeria today”¹³ called the Arthouse Contemporary Limited. Located in Lagos, the company, as it announces in its website, “is conceived as an international auction house with its greatest level of expertise resting in the Art of West Africa and its greatest effort focused on the parity of international recognition towards the talented artists who are from or are based there”. Arthouse holds that the “success of auctions focused on works from a specific region, as in the art of South Asia, China or Southeast Asia, is [its] benchmark” and that its goal is to key into such models, which “help [to] create awareness of the scope of that regionalized art, passionate interest in individual artists, and serve as a working database to be used for fair, market oriented valuations”. The company organised its first auction in April 2008.

In collaboration with the Terra Kulture Gallery, Nimbus Gallery was to come back again on the auction scene in December 2008 when the works exhibited to mark the Nigeria-hosted CHOGM conference were put on auction in Lagos. The Terra Kulture/Nimbus Gallery collaboration yielded another auction in Lagos in April 2010. It was entitled Golden Jubilee Art Auction: Celebrating 2000 Years of Afrika¹⁴. In May 2011, the Terra Kulture initiated the “Lagos Art Auction” (held in Lagos) and then in November 2011 the “Abuja Art Auction” (held in Abuja). The November 2011 “Abuja Art Auction” was the first art auction to be so organised in Nigeria’s political capital city and the beginning of a collaboration with Mydrim Gallery in what has become known as the “Terra Kulture/Mydrim Gallery Auction House”). By April 2012 and April 2013, the Terra Kulture/Mydrim Gallery Auction House held the annual “Lagos Art Auction”. Earlier in December 2009, the Tribes Art Gallery had organised its own auction¹⁵. This was followed in April 2010 with another by Nike Art Gallery¹⁶. Operating as both art galleries and auction houses, Terra Kulture, Mydrim, Tribes and Nike art galleries apparently followed in the 1999 step of the Nimbus Art Gallery. With another auction also coming from Didi Museum in 2013, it would appear that a proliferation of auctions in Nigeria is well underway.

I will rely mainly on the Arthouse auction results (and also on the auction results of the collaborations between Terra Kulture/Nimbus and Terra Kulture/Mydrim) for a close examination of price performances and for other analyses important to the subject of this lecture. This is because they appear to be the most prominent auction platforms. Data have also been made very easy to access through Arthouse Contemporary’s standard virtual presence which offers an impressive archive.

First, Arthouse Contemporary’s auction of April 2008 inaugurated the first of its series of auctions that, according to Christopher Vourlias, “quickly became de rigueur” events for a small but dedicated band of serious collectors”¹⁷ It saw Bruce Onobrakpeya’s Greater Nigeria (2007) selling for an impressive N10.120 Million. It also raked in a total of N74.845 Million (representing the hammer price plus premium). The Arthouse has organised eleven successful auctions so far between April 2008 and November 2013. Table 1 below shows what has been hailed within the Nigerian art world as Arthouse’s impressive outings.

 

Table 1: Arthouse Contemporary Auction Results Summary

	Auction Date	Total Hammer Price Plus  Premium	No. of Lots Sold	Highest Priced Artists
1	7 April 2008	N74,845,000.00	89	Bruce Onobrakpeya [N10,120,000.00]
2	19 Nov. 2008	N85,182,000.00	84	Yusuf Grillo [N8,800,000.00]
3	6 April 2009	N66,737,000.00	69	Ben Enwonwu [N4,500,000.00]
4	1 March 2010	N67,320,500.00	82	Simon Okeke [N4,200,000.00]
5	22 Nov. 2010	N83,541,000.00	93	Demas Nwoko [N9,900,000.00]
6	9 May 2011	N79,109,000.00	82	Ben Enwonwu [8,800,000.00]
7	21 Nov. 2011	N114,447,000.00	86	Ben Enwonwu [N30,800,000.00]
8	7 May 2012	N98,563,500.00	95	Demas Nwoko [7,700,000.00]
9	26 Nov. 2012	N90,963,500.00	81	El Anatsui [N12,540,000.00]
10	13 May 2013	N126,818,500.00	102	El Anatsui [13,200,000.00]
11	18 Nov. 2013	N112,769,000.00	76	Ben Enwonwu [N17,050,000.00]

   Source: Arthouse Contemporary Limited, Lagos

 

Table2: Terra Kulture/Nimbus Gallery and Terra Kulture/Mydrim Auction Results Summary

	Auction Date	Total Hammer Price Without  Premium	No. of Lots Sold	Highest Priced Artists
1	Dec. 2008	N10,230,000.00	50	Ben Osawe [N2,000,000.00]
2	April 2010	N29,000,000.00	72	El Anatsui [3,800,000.00]
3	May 2011	N51,700,000.00	56	Ben Enwonwu [N13,500,000.00]
4	Nov. 2011	N27,605,000.00	51	Bruce Onobrakpeya [4,000,000.00]
5	April 2012	N38,125,000.00	59	Ben Enwonwu [4,600,000.00]
6	April 2013	N47,400,000.00	60	Kolade Oshinowo [3,900,000.00]

        Source: TerraKulture Gallery, Lagos

 

 Analysis drawn from the data in Tables 1 and 2 above shows that Ben Enwonwu’s works are the highest priced so far. His works are apparently in very high demand and are, thereby, the most expensive.  At the Arthouse auctions, Enwonwu’s works have sold highest for four times, and twice at the Terra Kulture/Mydrim auctions. For example, at the November 2011 auction, his 1956 bronze sculpture Anyanwu sold for N30.8 Million and at the May 2011 Terra Kulture Gallery auction his untitled ink on paper piece was sold for N13.5 Million. Data available in the auction catalogues show that Enwonwu’s works have been featured in all the eleven Arthouse auctions and twice in six collaborative auctions by Terra Kulture. His works have sold above the N2 million mark twenty-six times in the Arthouse auctions. Similarly, as shown in both tables above, El Anatsui occupies an important place in the Lagos art market, selling thrice highest in April 2010, November 2012 and May 2013.

Also from available data, the works of Demas Nwoko, Yusuf Grillo, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Ben Osawe, Simon Okeke and Kolade Oshinowo have become very important in the secondary art market. At the 2008 Arthouse auction, Onobrakpeya’s Greater Nigeria sold for N9.2 million.  There have also been regular artists in almost all the auctions, especially Erabhor Emokpae and Kolade Oshinowo. Arthouse results between 2008 and 2013 show that while Oshinowo has recorded four works selling above N2 Million, Emokpae has recorded five.

From about N22 million generated in the first art auction of 1999 to over N110 million in the most recent auction of November 2013, there has been exponential financial progress in the Nigerian secondary art market. At the Arthouse Contemporary, its eleven auctions under review have recorded a total of eighty-five works selling above N2 million. Although this is still a far cry from auction results recording in the West, it is an evidence of significant growth in the Nigerian context as a developing economy.

According to the accounts by Tobenna  Okwuosa, Prince Chukwuka Samuel and a number of other writers and commentators, there is a general excitement among many artists, art collectors, dealers and other stakeholders in the Nigerian visual art sector that art auctions have greatly activated the level of awareness among Nigerians regarding the commercial and investment value of art. According to Okwuosa “the general assessment by the players in the art industry is that the contemporary art market has never had it so good”. He writes that:

            Generally, the art auctions have given artworks more value, particularly those of younger generation of artists whose works have done well in the auctions such as Rom Isichei (Nigeria), Abiodun Olaku (Nigeria), Fidelis Odogwu (Nigeria), Diseye Tantua (Nigeria), Chidi Kwubiri (Germany), Duke Asidere (Nigeria), Ben Osaghae (Nigeria), Sam Ovraiti (Nigeria) and Nnenna Okore (USA)¹⁸.

Indeed, the younger generation of contemporary Nigerian artists have been favoured by the latest improvement in the price of works at the auctions. An examination of the results available at the Arthouse website shows that a number of them have moved up to the N2 Million mark and beyond. For example, Peju Alatise (born 1975) and Nnenna Okore (also born 1975) have had their works sold beyond N2 Million three times between 2009 and 2013. In May 2012, Alatise’s 2011 work in mixed media titled Ascension was sold at N4.4 Million, recording her work as the best priced among emerging artists. Following Alatise has been Nnenna Okore whose mixed media ceramic piece Egwu Ukwu sold for N3 Million at the April 2009 Arthouse auction.

Apart from the exciting prices being recorded at the auctions, Okwuosa has quoted Kavita Chellaram¹⁹ as informing us that new collectors have been built up in the country’s art market. Chellaram has also observed that the auctions “have brought greater interest and attention to Nigerian contemporary art locally and internationally which in turn led to the organisation of African art auctions in New York in 2010 by Bonhams and Phillips auction houses”.²⁰

Responding to Sylvester Ogbechie’s observation that “without formal auctions of this sort, it is impossible to determine the value of modern and contemporary art in the global marketplace when artists involved are not those contemporary African artists who live and work in the West whose work is often used to represent Africa in the global market”²¹, Prince Chukwuka Samuel writes that the Nigerian art auctions are “a clever way of bringing our modern and contemporary art into the global market…”²². In other words, the auctions have “boosted the Nigerian art market”²³.

Nigerian art auctions have made salient impacts in other ways, including the provision of regular exhibition platforms and better professional visibility for the works of both old masters and emerging artists. Before series of auctions came underway, artists had complained of the exorbitant fees charged by galleries to show their works in their spaces. With the proliferation of auctions, many artists now enjoy free exhibition platforms and even higher returns above and over gallery exhibitions. Those who still find the need to work with galleries have gained more confidence in themselves. It has been suggested that their auction results, or those of their peers, are bound to embolden them to ask for an upward review of their deals with the gallery owners and art dealers²⁴, although Nnenna Okore thinks that, “with the Nigerian economy in mind”, the prospects of the artists’ success in making galleries “rethink and give more value to work… is still a steep expectation”²⁵.

Through the auctions, many artists are happy to reap from their studio toils. A number of them are of the opinion that the auction prices have helped to put official bench marks on their works. They are also happy that the auction catalogues have provided the much needed reference materials documenting or “gazetting” the value of their works. In other words, the catalogues have become formidable market tools for them and those who represent them, having become veritable endorsements on their practice.

 In a country without viable art historical and critical publishing, the auction catalogues, in spite of their lack of careful documentation²⁶, have also doubtlessly provided invaluable records of modern and contemporary Nigerian works of art. Its numerous images of artists’ works are of standard print quality and are of important archival value. Occasional artists’ statements and the brief texts usually provided on selected artists and their works by artists, gallery directors, writers and art historians also raise the art historical and critical worth of the catalogues²⁷.

Nigerian auctions have also provided alternative exhibitionary models. Before now, there had been heated debates on the politics of representation in terms of how “home-based players” are “benched” by our “coaches” or “technical advisers” in preference to the “professionals” or the Diaspora “players”. It has been argued that curators, including Nigerian international curators, have often relied on artists in the Diaspora to speak for or represent Nigerian contemporary art. When “local” artists are chosen, it has been observed, they are not drawn from the majority who service the taste and preferences of the local art collectors that are at the steering wheel of contemporary art “destinations” in Nigeria. Rather, they are the minority who dare to speak the international artistic language or those that have been accused of pandering to Western artistic currents. There has been a consistent yearning in Nigeria for the promotion of works which “truly” reflect what is on ground in the country, not presentations of false pictures of the state of Nigeria’s contemporary art to Western audiences. It would then appear that the auctions are now coming to the “rescue” by presenting “the way we are” to both local and global audiences. With Arthouse’ strong virtual presence, the works of many contemporary Nigerian artists are becoming more visible “as they are” and many artists are generally content with what they are doing in spite of criticism that much of the art is repetitive and stagnant, showing no real signs of progress.

IV

I now turn to an examination of the key critical debates and dialogues surrounding the problematic sides of the Nigerian art market in general and the art auctions in particular. Although there have been concerns raised on the lack of proper documentation of their works by Nigerian artists as well as lack of enabling laws in Nigeria that ensures that artists reap from their works when resold in the secondary market²⁸, I begin with Jacob Jari’s OYASAF lecture on “The Price of Art and its implication on Art Practice in Nigeria”, which tends to summarise the larger concerns raised on the subject of art pricing or valuation in Nigeria.

Jari argues that “there appears to be no logic in why a certain artist’s work attracts a huge price against another artist’s work which sells for almost nothing”²⁹. To illustrate his point, he uses the example of the sale, at an auction house in 2012, of the paintings by two reputable modern Nigerian artists of the same training and similar professional background - Jimo Akolo’s Untiled and Demas Nwoko’s Praise Singer. While Akolo’s painting sold for only N700 Thousand , Nwoko’s sold for a staggering N7 Million. “By the way both artists are still alive”, argues Jari. “So, what parameters were used?” he asks.

Narrating his own personal experience as an artist, Jari writes:

Arthouse has also auctioned a few of my works but I have never made it to any significant figure with the auction house. In comparison, I have seen much younger artists with shorter and, excuse the immodesty, less impressive CVs than I raking in twice, thrice and quadruple my figures. Some of the works I have sold recently include, Brighton at the Mojo Gallery in Dubai in 2011 for $10,000 and Untitled, a very small piece at the Bonham auction in London in 2012 for £3,000. Compare these to The Hunt auctioned at the Arthouse in 2012 for N800,000 and another Untitled at another Arthouse auction earlier this year for N500,000³⁰.

Jacob Jari’s concerns regarding the valuation of his works at the Arthouse (as against the works of other less accomplished artists) revolves around the same key question: “So, what parameters were used?” – Professional background and experience? Age of artist? Length of successful practice? Quality of work? Comparative sales record? From my personal assessment of Jari and the valuation of his worth overseas, he measures up to/with these parameters. So, what parameters were used by Arthouse?

I think it is very important to examine some of the factors (for there are, indeed, a lot of other variables) that may have been responsible for the very significant disparity between the valuation of Jacob Jari’s works at home in Nigeria and those of other artists below his career level. By submitting his works to Nigerian auction houses, might an artist like Jari be shooting himself in the foot, considering the fact that the valuation of his works in Nigeria might jeopardise the valuation of his works internationally. This example illustrates the second part of my subtitle for this lecture.

During my research for this paper, I found that the issue of the pedigree of valuers or art appraisers who work for the Nigerian auction houses have remained a troubling question on the lips of many artists and art administrators. Many do not think that the valuations are transparent and credible. There are concerns raised over favouritism for certain artists “well connected” to powerful collectors who are influential players within the auction circles, and perhaps strong valuers for some auction houses.

There is also the question of lack of rarity in much of the works being put on auction. Many emerging artists have become too regular at the auctions, almost turning the auction arena into a primary market. 

Tajudeen Sowole has reported on the dialogues that surrounded the valuation and consignment of “un-rare” works at the Nigerian auctions. Commenting on the November 2008 auction of the Arthouse Contemporary, Peter Areh (the late Director of Pendulum Gallery, Lekki, Lagos) held the following critical view that is important to our further discussion. According to Areh:

The results are not the true reflection of what the artists actually worth. How can you explain that El Anatsui is worth less than Rom Isichei, for example? Anatsui's last sale abroad was worth about N70 million. I think the bidders who bought works at the [Arthouse] auction were not informed about what to buy. The way I understand auction is that, artists that are not common command higher prices than those you can get easily at galleries. In future, collectors would rather go to galleries shortly before an auction to get some artists and pay far less than coming to an auction³¹.

Sowole has observed that “traditionally, the norms, over the ages would have works go through the galleries to gain popularity and energy to attract collection at auctions” but that tradition has been broken especially by Damien Hirst’s historic auction sale of very recent works³². Sowole further observes that “aside the fact that art auction is just taking off in Nigeria, artists in this part of the world and their counterparts overseas appeared (sic) to be asking for more of the art booties from dealers and galleries alike. So, the commonality here is the new face, which art auction is likely to take in the West and Africa, as demonstrated by Hirst's adventure in London and Chellaram-led Arthouse Contemporary in Lagos”³³. Sowole even attempts to suggest Puju Alatise, whose fresh works command very high prices in the Nigerian auctions, as an aspiring Damien Hirst of Nigeria. But I tend to think that contemporary artists like Hirst are already well established and deeply entrenched in the mainstream Euro-American art markets through not just mere media hypes or the desperate props of art dealers and collectors but through the tools and channels of art criticism and art history, which are still underdeveloped in Nigeria.

Offering her thoughts on the subject of the participation of young Nigerian artists in the auctions, Nnenna Okore thinks that “while Nigerian auctions offer many Nigerian artists, especially upcoming [ones], a great platform to be seen, heard and collected … they also put these same artists at an economic disadvantage given that their pricing may be too exorbitant for the average Nigerian collector or gallery, or [also disadvantage them] when their works … fail to sell repeatedly at the auctions”. She also makes the important point that:

what the auctions end up doing is raise the value of artworks, giving emerging artists a false sense of accomplishment, such that they can only thrive among auction dealers or wealthy collectors. Many galleries would struggle to sell the same highly priced auction pieces to the average Nigerian buyer. Moreover, unseasoned artists who participate in auctions may find it very difficult to sell works at upscale galleries who don't believe their works … command as much conceptual or technical depth³⁴.

Okore’s concerns relate to the fears I express about the artists disadvantaging themselves by allowing the auctions to frame their sense of professional accomplishments. With  the  measure of artists’ worth currently dictated only by the collectors’ purse, the auction results can be deceptive in the sense that it can make or mar the careers of emerging artists who may be tempted to weigh their successes or failures on that false scale.

Perhaps the other very important critical point to discuss is that of forgeries. In an earlier public presentation, Jacob Jari had again brought the issue of forgery to the front burners. Speaking on “Art, an Entrepreneurial Enterprise: Lessons from Three Encounters” at the Society of Nigerian Artists conference in Calabar (December 2012), Jari told a detailed story of the circumstances surrounding the repeated forgeries and consignments of the paintings of late Nigerian experimental painter Gani Odutokun at the Arthouse. One of the works in question was Gani Odutokun’s Dialogue with Mona Lisa, which has been noted as “probably the most iconic painting Gani ever created”³⁵. The picture that emerges from Jari’s detailed description and analysis of the incidents, especially regarding the forgery, alleged authentication and consignment of Odutokun’s Dialogue with Mona Lisa at the Arthouse³⁶ is in three basic folds. First, there was armchair research on the part of the auction house that attributed the work’s provenance to the late artist’s estate, a provenance that was very easy to ascertain or verify. Secondly, the auction house acted unprofessionally by accepting an authentication certificate from a certain artist and art administrator based in Lagos who should not have been the most reliable “expert”, considering the existence of important Zaria-based art historians and critics who had worked closely with Odutokun in his life time and who are involved in the management of the late artist’s estate. Thirdly, a prominent gallerist and President of the Art Galleries Association of Nigeria (AGAN), who is reported to have consigned the painting to the auction house, simply exploited the professional loopholes evident in the structures of the auction house in question by turning in a blemished authentication certificate for a work valued at N2.5 million – N3 million³⁷.

V

What do the issues so far raised reveal to us about the structure of art auctions and auction houses in Nigeria? What kinds of professional or unprofessional inputs have built the kind of structures that have so far shaped art auctioneering in the country? What are the implications of such structures to the future development of Nigerian art in a competitive global space? I attempt to examine these questions in the light professional standards and global best practices.

To begin with, my research findings show that the working structures at the major auction houses in Nigeria are similar. At Arthouse and Terra Kulture/Mydrim, for example, a team of selectors decide the works to be put on offer for each edition of the auction. When consignments are received, the jury examines them and vote, where necessary, for those that meet the jury’s criteria. Asked about what their criteria are, an Arthouse “specialist” listed “aesthetics”, “quality and age of work”, “artist’s profile” and “quality of materials used”; a major operator at Terra Kulture/Mydrim listed “how special or rare”, “style”, “colour (aesthetics)” and “theme”.³⁸

While the Terra Kulture/ Mydrim Gallery Auction House explicitly lists rarity as a criterion, I observe that their judges are limited to choosing from works already consigned to the auction house by artists, galleries and art collectors. As such, it can be argued that they have no way of discerning how “rare” or “how special” consigned works are in relation to the artists’ entire body of work. So, I find no significant difference or any difference at all, to my mind, in the operational procedures for work-selection and valuation in both auction houses.

It is apparent that both auction houses do not devote time and resources to scouting for rare works by living artists who are still in active production and, especially, those by emerging talents. The artists’ rare pieces can be more easily discerned through a deep knowledge of their entire body of works, a knowledge that comes from field researches as against invitational consignment of works at the door steps of the auction houses. This is especially the case where many of the works have neither “lived” long enough  to pass through the scrutiny of art criticism nor been weighed in the balance of art history, so as to find their level in the stream of modern and contemporary Nigerian art development.

 I have also found that at the auction houses, the identities of those who select works for their auctions are a closely guarded secret. This raises question around the lack of confidence on the part of the auction houses on the professional specialization and pedigree, as well as interests, of those who decide the fate of artists there. The identities of the valuers who work with or for the auction houses are also not published but shielded from public knowledge. This lack of transparency falls short of standard practice.

At this juncture, one is bound to ask: What credentials should persons working as specialists for the art departments of auction houses posses? Should the identities of specialists and valuers be hidden? These questions are questions that can become questions only in a country like Nigeria. At Bonhams, Sotheby’s, Christie’s and other established auction houses, including new entrants such as the Auction Room, for example, the identities (including photographs, e-mail addresses, telephone contacts and bio-data) of their specialists and valuers are posted on their websites for public information. Details of the professional qualifications and work experience of these specialists are advertised in a manner that builds public confidence on the operations of the auction houses. In fact, at the Bonhams and Auction Room websites, for example, schedules are available for face-to-face valuation of the works of artists, art dealers, or collectors. Knowing the valuers and their qualifications help to build confidence and sustainability and to dispense doubts in auction business.  A few examples of the professional credentials and pedigree of specialists across major and minor auction houses in Europe and America, from where we have imported the art auction idea, might prove quite insightful.

Cheyenne Westphal, Sotheby’s’ specialist for Contemporary Art (Sotheby’s Europe) is a First Class Bachelor’s degree graduate of Art History from St Andrews in Scotland and also has a Master’s degree in Contemporary Art from the University of California at Berkeley, USA. Anthony Grant, Cheynee’s colleague at Sotheby’s, in the Contemporary art Department (New York) holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Painting and Art History of the Rhode Island School of Design and had previously worked for many years as a gallery Director for PaceWildenstein gallery and later of his own gallery, the Anthony Grant Inc.

At the Christie’s, Rene Lahn (a specialist in Post-War and Contemporary Art Department) is a graduate of History of Art and Business Management and also holds a Masters in Fine Art Management and Creative Curating from Goldsmiths College. Lahn had previously worked at several art galleries as director.

At the Auction Room, the specialist for Contemporary and Modern African Art is Ed Cross who has a degree in History of Art from Cambridge University and has been a gallery director and curator for many years with a specialty in contemporary African art. Ed’s profile at the Auction Room website indicates that he spent “over twenty years in East Africa working in Fine Art and publishing including eight years working as a sculptor in Kenya, before returning to the U.K. in 2009”.

Simon Cooper is advertised as the valuer for Auction Room London³⁹. His educational and professional qualifications are openly advertised in the Auction Room website. Like many other specialist valuers, Cooper holds a degree in Fine Art, belongs to a professional association of valuers and has had a long working experience in the field. Auction Room also encourages its clients to attend their scheduled valuation days.

At Bonhams, the specialist for South African Art and for African Art, Hannah O’Leary, has an MA degree in the History of art from the University of Glasgow. She has also worked for many years at auction houses in Ireland and Australia. She later specialised in South African art.

From the foregoing survey, one finds that there is a balance between studio and theory in the credentials of those who work as specialists in standard auction houses. In other words, art historical expertise and studio knowledge are basic qualifications, added to field experience in the primary and secondary art markets. My research, however, shows that Nigerian auction houses do not have in-house specialists in the professional sense of “specialists”⁴⁰. Rather, I find that gallery owners, Chief Executive Officers of auction houses and prominent art collectors are the major gate-keepers of the selection and evaluation of works for the auctions, and none of them holds the kind of standard qualifications that distinguishes art specialists in comparable auction houses outside Nigeria. While they are unarguably experienced in the field, considering long years of collecting and selling art works, such experience still does not turn them into specialists in line with standard practice. This may have contributed to Jacob Jari’s predicament!

The picture that emerges from the foregoing analysis is that operators of our art auction houses are gamblers. Artists who submit to them may be lucky to find the auctions becoming ladders of career progress; others may be unlucky to find the auctions becoming veiled weapons with which they unwittingly shoot themselves in the foot. 

VI

I now finally turn to the imperatives of art criticism and art history in the development of the Nigerian art market and to examine the current situation in the art auction sphere where there is an apparent lack of critical information and art historical data (as evident in the auction catalogues) on many emerging artists and even on most established ones.

Art history and art criticism definitely play an important role in the art market. Terry Barrett⁴¹  has told the story of how when John Coplans was editing the influential Artforum in the 1970s “he was told that when he put an artwork on the cover of the magazine, the gallery representing the artist would get a stream of phone calls inquiring about purchasing the piece”. This is because the specialist judgement of influential art critics and historians often shape the taste of collectors and build their confidence in taking the risk to invest in such artists. According to Barrett, and it is true, “art critics play a role in the art market by increasing attention about certain art and increasing the value of that art”⁴². But this is possible only where there is a respectable, and credible, critical culture.

In the 1950s, America had only a few journals devoted to art criticism but they are many today at both regional, national and international levels. These include New Art Examiner; Artweek; Art Paper; Dialogue, Artnews, Art Magazine, Art in America, Artforum and Parachute. There are also Flash Art, The International Review of African American Art and Art International⁴³. American academic journals include Art Journal and Exposure: The Journal of the Society for Photography Education. Those devoted to definite art forms include High Performance, which publishes materials on performance art, and Afterimage, which focuses on film, photography and video⁴⁴. It has been equally observed that while “many academic journals publish criticism of art and reviews of books about art”, art criticism is also “included regularly in daily newspapers in big and small cities and in magazines with national circulations such as Vanity Fair and Connoisseur, as well as Time and Newsweek”⁴⁵.

Considering the above revelation, how does Nigeria fare? In the 1950s to the 1970s, the Nigeria Magazine and even Black Orpheus provided influential platforms for critical reviews and essays on Nigerian modern and contemporary art. A dominant voice before the late 1960s was Ulli Beier. By the late 1960s, Nigeria Magazine had specifically created a review section where comments and reviews on art exhibitions were published, especially by some fellow artists who laid the groundwork for the phenomenon of artists-as-art-critics (or what Yemisi Shyllon describes as the “writer-critic pattern”⁴⁶) in Nigeria. The critical tone was authoritative, sure and very influential.

At Peter Areh lecture series, Yemisi Shyllon challenges govt on protection, promotion of art

Special thanks to:

Chief Rasheed Gbadamosi, Chris Krydz Ikwuemesi, Alhaji Abdulaziz Chivuzo Udeh, Chief Ugochukwu Okeke, Ifeanyi Egwim, Chibuzo   , Iyke Onenibe, Ejike Ekwenibe, Olisa Mokelu, Prof Jerry Buhari, Iyabo Aboaba

Problems of Art Development in Nigeria

Dr. Yemisi Shyllon

Preamble

Art in Nigeria has come a long way. However we must unabashedly acknowledge that our modern and contemporary art has mostly been driven by the private sector. In so doing, the private sector is contributing to proving Lord Frederic John Lugard (1926) wrong when he stated among others that:

“In character and temperament, the typical African of this race-type is ........  His mind is far nearer to the animal world than that of the European or Asiatic, and exhibits something of the animals’ placidity and want of desire to rise beyond the state he has reached. Through the ages the African appears to have evolved no organized religious creed, and though some tribes appear to believe in a deity, the religious sense seldom rises above pantheistic animalism and seems more often to take the form of a vague dread of the supernatural”.¹¹

Starting from the earliest times to the present, art and artists in Nigeria have moved from one level of experience to another. As Nigerian politics and economy develops, so has the art. Art does not exist in a vacuum. Since it is a product of people and society, it reflects the yearnings and aspirations of its age and clime. Such reflection can provide an index on which the development of art tradition can be based. If by development, we mean the progressive improvement or amelioration of a condition or situation, art development, then, would refer to the dynamics of the sociology of art and how it is evidenced positively or negatively on the art ecology. The development of a given art ecology naturally depends on a number of factors. These factors include the consecrative agencies such as galleries, museums, historiography, art criticism, and the socio-psychology of the environment. In discussing the problems of art development in Nigeria, one should therefore critically assess some of these factors, the role of government and our public institutions.

Government, Public Institutions and Art Development

The report on “Saving Africa’s Art” contained in the Time magazine of June 18, 2001 portrays the problem of art development in Nigeria and the possible role of government and public institutions. The magazine reports that in 1999, the Louvre Museum in Paris purchased from a Belgian dealer a collection of 2,000-year-old Nok terracotta sculptures for about $400,000.00. As Simon Robinson and Aisha Labi reported:

They are among the centrepieces of an exhibition that was inaugurated by President Jacques Chirac over a year ago, and the reverence with which they are displayed demonstrates the Western art establishment’s growing appreciation of African art. But the exhibition, which came about through Chirac’s own instruction that the Louvre devote gallery space to ethnic art, is clouded by allegations surrounding the Nok’s acquisition. Nok terra-cottas are on the International Council of Museums’ Red List of objects ‘banned from export, (that) may under no circumstances be put on sales’ and Nigerian law prohibits their export. President Chirac is reported to have personally sought approval for the purchase of the Noks from Nigeria’s then military ruler, General Abdulsalami Abubakar. The request was rebuffed on the advice of the N.C.M.M., which warned that the works had been ‘illegally exported from Nigeria and therefore remained the legal cultural property of Nigeria.

According to Time, with the return to civilian rule in May of 1999, the French government requested for approval again and Nigeria approved the transaction. Then in February 2000 during Nigerian President’s state visit to France, just two months before the Louvre display opened, the Nigerian Culture Minister and Branley Museum Director signed a formal agreement authorizing the inclusion and display of this collection of Nok sculptures. In the spirit of tokenism, as the Time report concludes:

The French agreed to provide Nigerian museums with technical support – including the exchange of publications, the organization of conferences and researcher exchanges – and in return the Noks were symbolically handed over by President (of Nigeria).

The above scenario gives us an insight into the Nigerian government’s attitude to art and creativity. The fact that the approval sought by Jacques Chirac was not given by the previous head of the administration of the Federal government of Nigeria does not exonerate that regime from the perennial anti-art attitude of successive governments in Nigeria. Nor does the latter President’s granting of the request make his regime the worst in that respect. The regime, as far as the patronage and promotion of Nigerian art is concerned, only exploited an old pattern. But the logical question that must follow is, if previous governments have brazenly neglected art and artists (of course, to the detriment of society), must others follow the example? Must government continue to nurture an exemplar of a bohemian society where art and artists are confined to the fringe? One is a-times very sad to observe the attitude of different government of Nigeria which tends to confirm the past prejudices expressed about our people in times past by some philosophers such as Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) who stated that:

‘’ The black people are unable to think in any reflexive manner. Their engagement in arts is, therefore, a thoughtless activity which is the ant-thesis of the intellect’’.¹¹

The problem of art development in Nigeria derives from the ineptitude in the administration of art and indirectly from the ephemeral interest of government. Since the culture sector is poorly funded, it is easy to lay all the blame for the sorry state of affairs in the sector at the door of government. But a critical look at the issue will also question the effectiveness of those in art administration in terms of proffering and execution of ideas in a way that can engender creative and imaginative system of generation of funds. From the public museums and galleries down to art councils, there is need for improvement.  Most people do not even know where our public museums and galleries are, their importance and what they represent. With a system of education that does not effectively promote heritage studies, Nigerian museums, including the newly-built ones, remain dead ends. They smell of neglect and despair and give little or no courage to anyone to regard our past and heritage with much enthusiasm. As (Aisha Labi) a Nigerian artist put it:

The discussant at the 2013 Peter Areh Lecture, Prof Jerry Buhari (right), Guest Lecturer Prince Yemisi Shyllon (centre) and Chairman of the occasion, Chief Rasheed Gbadamosi.

The fact that the museums in these parts do not encourage much visitorship simultaneously underscores our society’s loss of its past and logically its loss of its future. For in reality, there is only the past and the future. The present is but a fleeting realm that can be claimed by no one. If the Nigerian society continues to regard art and culture as luxurious entertainment, we will remain an uprooted people, with neither memory nor desire. If the culture sector in Nigeria is poorly funded, the onus lies on those who accept to be appointed art-culture administrators to try to make the best of a bad situation, while also exploring various possible means to make our lethargic governments more responsive to the needs of art and its role as a socializing agent. ¹

The point being made is that there is need to improve the art ambience with a view to attracting more visitors to our public museums and art galleries and empower them to constructively reach out to the people as mediators of our common heritage rather than arbiters of a dead and forgotten consciousness. I join other commentators in decrying the situation where some of the museum spaces in Nigeria are used for weddings and other non-culture events.² Such “museum abuse” does not translate to visitor increase in the real sense. It only foregrounds our proclivity to the abnormal. It is doubtful if any museum in Nigeria records up to 300,000 visitors in a given year. Yet a museum should thrive on the number of annual visitors it receives.

This situation calls for serious concern, as it inscribes the museums as a waste pipe, especially in a country where the appreciation of art and heritage needs to be significantly improved. When well developed, positioned and harnessed the museum can be an agency for cultural democracy, social cohesion, and economic development as it is all over the developed world. This can also be achieved with art in Nigeria.

Art and artists in this country are not adequately enabled to fulfil their roles through the mediating institutions and agencies, (museums, galleries, art councils, the public, among others). For as has been argued, “art is art, not just for its own sake, but for the consecrative infusions it receives from the relevant institutions, the society and humanity.”³ We have not explored art enough to enable it to fully play its due role in the quest for development. We can trace the bulk of this problem to the system of education, the attitude of government and religious fundamentalism in Nigeria. It is to the issue of education that I turn in the next section.

Education and Art Development

First we need to find out what education means. Education has been defined by Jonathan Sacks [in his book, the Politics of Hope] “as the pursuit and attainment of experience, excellence and mental, moral, and physical development through informal, formal or organized processes or systems of instruction, association and learning.”⁴ Put differently, people get educated to enable them come to terms with the challenges of existence and to gain the ability to adapt creatively to the demands of society. Education is not magic but it helps to add meaning to existence. In this his book The Politics of Hope, Jonathan Sacks highlights the goals of education as a social commitment:

…A civilisation is like an ancient but still magnificent building. Different ages have added new wings here, an altered façade there, rooms have been redecorated, old furniture restored. Over the generations paintings have been acquired, some hanging, others – currently out of fashion – stored away. We inherited the house from our parents, and we want to leave it in good order to our children. We know that they will adopt it to their needs, indeed we want them to. Nor can we say in advance how they will do so or what the house will look like in the future. But as its temporary guardians, we know that we must teach our children its history, why it was built and how it was changed. We must do our best to ensure that, in time, they will come to love it as we do, so that when they come to change it, as they will, they will do so harmoniously, not destructively, according to their best understanding of what it represents to them and those who came before them. That is the goal of education as articulate autonomy.⁵

In other words, the goal of education should be to encourage recipients to appreciate their history and heritage as well as equip them mentally and otherwise for the preservation of that heritage. Peoples and cultures survive when they attach the highest importance to schools and teachers, and when they see the role of education to include the perpetuation of the language of their heritage. It is not certain whether one can say this about Nigeria’s education industry, especially since the 1980s. There may be more schools today, but whether that fact translates to quality education is another matter altogether. This situation, of course, derives from the simple logic of the mould analogy, as advanced by anthropologist Peter Ezeh.⁶ A bad mould cannot yield a good cast. If there has been general inversion married with a dogged pursuit of ignorance, education as a central factor in society cannot escape the resultant decadence.

The general decline in the quality of education in Nigeria is one of the greatest misfortunes of post-independence Nigeria. It can be attributed to many factors, including poor funding, poor quality teachers, bad attitude and lack of commitment of some teachers, non-improvement in the educational curriculum, misconceived educational policies and religious fundamentalism. These factors have contributed to the degeneracy in the educational system, a situation which has transformed education itself into “magic”, in the sense that it is geared only towards the attainment of personal needs, especially those bordering on bread and butter, as against the advancement of knowledge, the improvement of the human condition and the perpetuation of mankind.⁷ In Collinwood’s [1938:57-77] definition of the word, In relation to art, this situation has contributed to the emergence of highly subsistence and unprofessional artists. It has adversely affected the dissemination of art, which invariably includes art training and historiography. And in this regard, art history and art education appear to be worse-off. Although many art historians and art educators have graduated from art institutions in Nigeria over the years, their impact on the Nigerian art debate has been minimal and lack-lustre.

There are also curricula problems in the art departments of our universities and polytechnics. Between the universities and the polytechnics, the curricula oscillate between two extremes, producing highly academic artists in some cases and glorified artisans in others. Some artists cannot verbalise their activities. Others are lost in the morass of bamboozling theory. Most of them in the institutions are under pressure by an ill-advised government policy to acquire cosmetic PhDs before they can become professors. There is no doubt that we have lost some of the otherwise finest artists to this policy. The art industry suffers if a large number of artists have to spend several years focussing on bagging irrelevant degrees that have little or no bearing on the making of good art. It is even worse when the degrees cannot transform them into practising art historians. I am afraid that in the next few years – unless something urgent is done – the entire visual arts faculty in our universities and polytechnics will become reluctant art historians, yet teaching one aspect of studio or the other. The result, in terms of art practice and scholarship, will indeed be unthinkable. 

For education in Nigeria to effectively conduce to art development, it has to be positioned to recognise the peculiar needs of the industry so that it can contribute to the amelioration of those needs. Such education must be imbued with the capacity to enable social development in general and art development in particular. It must be a system of education that is able to broker understanding and dialogue between the artist and the society. In other words, I do not advocate a system which insulates the artists from the rest in the ecology of education. Yet this is actually what is in place, that is, an education system that does not allow much conversation between disciplines for the overall benefit of society. Since the Nigerian concept of development is largely predicated on science and politics, art seems to be downgraded in the nation’s educational system. From about the 1980s, it appears that art is no longer given its pride of place in Nigeria, as it is not adequately taught in many primary and post-primary schools. Although art is usually in the curriculum, art teachers are either too few or they are often diverted to teach other courses because our educational policy makers believe that art is not very relevant to human and social development. This has not only succeeded in destroying a vital aspect of education for our young people, but has also truncated the creative ability, vision and aspiration of generations of Nigerians who have passed through the Nigerian educational system in the past thirty years without art as an effective part of their curriculum. The creative instinct that art imbues at the formative stage of people goes a long way in fertilising their developmental potentials in any field of human endeavour they find themselves in later years.

In view of the above, how can we reposition art education in Nigeria to transcend its overbearing concern with art pedagogy and assume a more practical role in social development and economic reconstruction? Indeed, there is need to invigorate art education curriculum to produce scholars and art educators that can respond to the demands of their time and environment. Art education should be empowered to help in relocating art to the centre, away from the periphery, so that it can become a major instrument in our politics of development, and thus be able to propel its own (art’s) development for the benefit of the creative industry and our society. In doing this, we will be proving wrong, some philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes [1588- 1679] in his assertion that:

’Africa is a timeless place in which there are no art, letters or social organisation”.¹¹

The Problem of Historiography

Historiography is as important as the creative process. Along with art criticism, it is a factor that links one art epoch to another through, the instrumentality of the narrative. In any environment where art is engaged as a real humanizing enterprise and as a driving force of culture and civilization, the importance of art history to the rooting and perpetuation of the resulting heritage cannot be denied. It has been described as one of the consecrative agencies in the art ecology.⁸ From colonial times until very recently, Western anthropologists and art historians bestrode Africa’s socio-cultural terrain, and told the story of the continent’s history, culture and development as if the story belonged to them. Even in the aftermath of colonialism and in the postcolonial mélange, the study of African art is still unfortunately led by Western scholars and West-based African scholars. Although many Africans have trained in various aspects of the humanities and social sciences, not very many have carried out globally insightful and meaningful research on aspects of African studies, including art, its sociology and history. In Nigeria some of the major exhibitions and publications on the evolution of art in the country have been undertaken by so-called “intimate outsiders.” Where this is not the case, we have seen a level of role-reversal with studio artists taking on added responsibilities as theorists, critics and historians. Although this not an absurdity, it raises some questions about the effectiveness of the art historian in Nigeria vis à vis the large number of people who now hold degrees in that discipline in the country.

From 1960 to the present, most of the major exhibitions of modern Nigerian art have been organized or curated by studio artists or galleries and a few Euro-American scholars. For example, the 1960 independence exhibition was organized by some of the Zaria Rebels, so also was the visual arts aspects of FESTAC’77.⁹ (Nwoko, 2005). In the 1980s and 1990s, most of  the major developments in the art scene were due to the exertions of studio artists. In the south of Nigeria, for instance, five art groups were founded in aid of art propagation; they include Aka circle of Exhibiting Artists, the Visual Orchestra, Omenka Group of Artists, Ona and the Pan-Africa Circle of Artists (PACA) whose membership spread is beyond Nigeria. All these were founded by studio artists and their activities were also sustained by studio artists. Even where the groups had art historians in their fold, as is the case of  Ona, Aka or PACA, planning and strategy still depended on the vision of visual artists.

Aka is a success in several respects, but its demise is sad. There are many other groups which have waxed and waned in the last two or three decades. The exploits of Otu Ewena, the Best of Ife, Aftershave Workshops, Harmattan and OYASAF Workshops, and other similar art groupings and activities have not rested squarely on the shoulders of critics and historians. Thus, the general picture that can be painted is not one of a situation in which the art historians have taken a lead. This is worrisome for an art ecology which counts many arts historians in its folds. But, must the art historian or critic initiate and lead art projects for him/her to be worth the name? Not exactly; but he must be abreast with happenings and nurture the ability to tell the (hi)story of art with all the vigour and commitment it deserves.  Achebe (1987:124) reaffirms the importance of the story as the survivor of action:

The sounding of the battle-drum is important, the waging of the war itself is important; and the telling of the story afterwards…The same reason I think that our people will give the name Nkolika to their daughters – Recalling-Is-Greatest. Why? Because it is only the story that can continue beyond the war and the warrior (sic). It is the story that outlives the sound of war-drums and the exploits of brave fighters. It is the story…that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence. The story is our escort; without it, we are blind…⁸

In other words, history and art perpetuate the memory of events and peoples and thus mediate the conversation between generations. The role of history and art, therefore, is to reconstruct the past and re-present it as data for appreciating the past, present and facing up to the future. Thus, an art historian need not necessarily be a hydra-headed animal. Where he/she is not able to raise proposals to initiate actions and activities in the art scene, he/she can watch from the centre or the sides and become an arbiter of taste, trends and paradigmatic shifts. By keeping a tab on the happenings in the art field, the art historian inscribes the art historical enterprise as the continuation of the creative process and reaffirms its role as one of the important factors in the consecration of art. This has not been the case with many of our art historians. Most are comfortable with teaching positions in tertiary institutions and would do little or nothing outside their routine. Others simply lack the will, imagination and intellectual stamina to initiate actions. The overall effect on the art scene is obvious. Without historians imbued with the gift of (hi)story-telling, the art tribe lacks the necessary escort and runs the risk of blindness, to borrow from our late great Achebe.

The Relevance of Art Criticism

Art criticism deals with the hermeneutics of art. It is not fault-finding. Rather, it the creative and insightful appreciation of a work of art for the purposes of analysis and interpretation. According to C. Krydz Ikwuemesi,  

Criticism could be broadly divided into five parts: constructive criticism, destructive criticism, detective criticism, sympathetic criticism, and totalitarian criticism. These are not water-tight compartments, nor do they encode hard and fast principles which the critic must adhere to. In practical terms, criticism is merely an open market to which everyone can bring his/her wares, but the wares and their prices ought to have a human face…^{10 art expo cat}

In modern times, criticism has become as sophisticated and complicated as art itself. Although its continuance depends on the existence of art, it also relies on the availability of some extra-artistic determinants in its role as art’s purveyor. In this regard, newspapers, magazines and journals are very useful platforms for art criticism. In recent times, the internet has changed the face and heart of the modern world and the critic faces more challenges as he or she struggles for relevance in the hustle and bustle of the art world. And the challenges are daunting, given the socio-economic reality in these parts which have not allowed any real development to take place in most spheres of human endeavour, excepting, perhaps, the economics of politics. In other words, criticism of Nigerian art is either as developed or under-developed as the country itself. it is another consecrative agency in the art world and is a contributing factor to the situation of art in Nigeria today.

Criticism in turn depends on the prevailing realities for it to succeed. It does not exist in a vacuum. It relates with other consecrating agencies and institutions, such as museums, galleries, and cultural centres in the pursuit of its goals. Purveyors of discourse such as the print and electronic media, publishing houses with interest in art, and organised discursive forums (e.g. conferences and symposia) where art could be critically discussed should also be in place.  These are the factors on which trained and untrained critics in a given art landscape would depend to be able to animate the fields of practice and critical theory and thus lead the crucial debates that propel the history of art.   In Nigeria, all these factors abound in varying degrees, but they seem to be lacking in effectiveness.  Relative to some other African countries, the Nigerian art scene appears to be more vibrant, but is the vibrancy adequately sustained? Studio practice in Nigeria may be well developed, but we cannot say the same about art criticism and other aspects of theorisation as they are yet to be fully explored.

Again we can trace this situation to the art training curricula in most of our universities and polytechnics which tend to glorify studio art over theory. Most of these schools offer specialization option in art history in addition to the core studio areas in Fine and Applied Arts, but never art criticism, except perhaps as a minor theory course at the undergraduate level. 

However, Nigeria remains relatively fortunate in its tradition of art criticism. There are some good number of artists in the history of Nigerian art who have been able to combine practice with theorisation. Although the visual-verbal tradition goes back to Aina Onabolu, Akinola Lashekan and Ben Enwonwu, but it was with the emergence of the radicals of Zaria Art Society in the 1950s that the artist-critic-historian tradition began to emerge in bold relief. The phenomenon later crystallised with the activities and writings of Uche Okeke and other artists beginning from the 1970s. Thus, the artist-writer phenomenon is a common feature in the Nigerian art scene.¹⁰ Although the artist-critic pattern is one that Nigerian artists continue to exploit, only few artists actually make a success of such combination. But criticism of Nigerian art, at best, remains a drop in the ocean when compared with the number of activities in the field. What kind of condition do they operate in and what other complimentary factors, including art journals and newspapers, have aided their work?

As for journals, the greatest problem in the history of journal publishing in Nigeria is the issue of longevity. Most journals published in Nigeria have not lasted long enough to influence the art criticism tradition. Poor funding, lack of professionalism, and bureaucracy (in the case of public-institution-based journals) have been some of the greatest misfortunes of art journals in Nigeria. The situation has contributed to the usually short life span of most publications and the epileptic issuance of others. Moreover, the dissemination of art, including publishing of art literature, can be a very expensive and demanding enterprise. It is even more difficult in these parts, considering that there are usually little or no funds for such ventures. Thus some of our major journals may depend on Western handouts for their existence. Those published by government institutions often depend on epileptic government subventions and thus do not live up to professional expectations. Lack of funding also quickly kills private initiatives. Thus the publishing opportunity for Nigerian critics remains very narrow.

But newspapers and news magazines have always come to our rescue. Not only have they put their art pages at the disposal of professional art critics, they have also published materials and critiques on art written by their own reporters. These reporters are usually not trained in the technicalities of critical theory. Some of them are visual artists who happen to have the ability to write. In other cases, they are graduates of the English language, theatre, or mass communication. Experience all over the world shows that this class of critics, though not academic, should be taken seriously, as they are able to reach a wider range of audience due to the populist nature of their medium. However, media-based criticism can become a cash-and-carry affair, as opinion can be easily influenced or sponsored. This notwithstanding, the role played by media-based critics in the development of art in Nigeria since the birth of modernism in Nigeria cannot be overemphasised. We must acknowledge that from its very humble beginnings in the time of colonization, art journalism in Nigeria has come a long way. The importance of media-based critics in the art ecology cannot be over-emphasised. In a well developed setting, they are the live wire of the art circuit, as they mediate between the art community and the larger society. But in the main, what are usually reported in the media are art exhibitions and the like. It is not the fault of these media based critics that are greatly dependent on galleries in Nigeria and which galleries on the other hand, are battling to survive, mainly through the sale of art works. Even though this is the traditional role played by galleries all over the world, this role should not be pushed beyond reasonable bounds.  Galleries should rather also initiate and engage in projects which aid critical theory, the professionalization of art as well as its dissemination. This will certainly foster greater engagement of the galleries by journalists.  

Art and art criticism complement each other. Art without a responsive critical tradition is like a masquerade without followers. Nigerian art tradition is very rich and eclectic. The critical tradition has evolved, but it leaves much to be desired, not because there are not enough critics, but because the enabling factors and conditions have not been too favourable. The inability of practitioners in the art field to effectively network their activities and fully complement one another is a major problem that needs to be addressed.

Society as a Factor

The perception of art in Nigeria is very poor, in spite of the progress made in art appreciation in the last few years. We must acknowledge that there are many art institutions in Nigeria today and that more galleries and art centres are springing up. Also many more activities and festivals have become part of the art calendar in Nigeria. But to a great extent, art and society in Nigeria are still divorced from each other. If art and aesthetics have no place in the general scheme of things, their appreciation will remain the exclusive preserve of a few elite. This situation is in contradistinction to what obtained in pre-colonial times when art belonged to almost every western educated elite. Today art is more of a luxury and not necessarily the conscience of society. This is why everything in these parts is so sterile. The sterility of the concept of society and development in these parts is, in part, the child of the severance of art from society. One could see the effects in our highly dehumanized roads, in our austere homes, the highly-utilitarian public buildings, the recklessly defaced public monuments, and the macabre politics that is common in Nigeria. Not even science and technology are allowed to be complemented by art’s salve. Of course, the problem is not entirely a Nigerian one. But if there is any place where the separation of art from society has taken a great toll, that place is Nigeria. Yet, there is art in everything, including politics. When science and politics terrorise the human psyche with their products of destruction, art can come to the rescue. The Nigerian society, with its usual crop of bread-and-butter leaders, does not appreciate this fact and as a result, art in Nigeria is trapped in the darkling corridors of underdevelopment. Furthermore, with the prevalent triumph of materialism and the suffocating religious revivalism that have encircled Nigeria in recent years, much of the liberal spirit that art needs to propel itself is largely absent. In a subtle way, there is a connection between this problem and the problem of our education system.

Some people would readily point at hunger as the bane of our situation. Hunger may be part of it. But what of the ineptitude of the leadership of the culture sector? What of the anti-art attitude of government? For too long, government and society’s conception of art and culture is circumscribed by raffia-wearing dancers and pedestrian local crafts. There are very few credible sustainable art festival organized by government; no national art exhibit where the state of art in our country can be measured, enjoyed, visited, and celebrated. There are very few institutions or systems through which excellence in the arts can be duly rewarded. Public art institutions and organizations are caught in the web of bureaucracy. The Nigerian artist thus becomes an endangered species of sorts, with little or no encouragement from a society whose understanding of art remains strait-jacketed and interpreted from the myopic lens of imported religions. When the problem of nescience is added to the situation, we are faced with a state of anomie which impacts most negatively on art.  A good number of our artists have been lost to religious fanaticism and art as a whole is being impeded by much fanaticism in terms of the dwindling perspicacity of its vision and subject matters. As we know, overbearing religiousness presupposes orthodoxy, which is one of the greatest enemies of art. One is therefore pained to see how religion is being used to destroy the psyche of Nigerians to art. In this wise, I am left with no other option than to display here, some few slides of the interplays and cohabitation between religion and art from times long in some widely acknowledged religious spaces of the more developed world.

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In the height of the afore displayed slides, I join others in condemning the unwarranted mutilation of the master piece mural by Demas Nwoko titled “The gift of talents (1962)” in Teddar hall, University of Ibadan by misinformed religious jingoists. Indeed this exhibition of religious overzealousness by fundamentalists is not an isolated case in Nigeria and therefore we must cry loud against those perpetuating their ignorance in this sense.

Conclusion

All told, the problem with art in Nigeria is not an isolated case. It has been the same in much of Africa. It is only a by-product of the prevailing social situation where in the African continent development is defined along the lines of politics and science…

Notes and References

1. Simon Robinson and Aisha Labi, “Saving Africa’s Art.”Time, June 18, 2001.

2. Ibid.

3. C.Krydz Ikwuemesi, “Soliloquies.” in C.Krydz Ikwuemesi (ed.),

Overcoming Maps 3 Report. (Enugu: Citadel Publishing, 2004) pp.23 -27

4. Jonathan Sacks, The Politics of Hope (London: Vintage,2000) p. 184.

5. For a discussion on the connotative essence of magic in relation to art, see R.G.

Collingwood, The principles of Art. (London: Oxford University Press), pp. 57-

69

6. Art does not exist in isolation but in relation to para-artistic forces, such as art

history, which contribute to its essence.

7. Demas Nwoko, Creativty and Self Reliance (Enugu: The Pan-African Circle of

Artists, 2005)

8 Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah (London: Heinemann, 1987), p.124.

9. See Okey Nwafor, “The Search for Visual-Verbal Metaphor,” in C. Krydz

10. Ikwuemesi (ed.) The Triumph of a Vision. (Lagos: Pendulum Art Gallery), pp.

155-174.

11. Sophie, B. Oluwole (ed.), 2011. Katanfuru, who are (they/ we) Africans? Some memorable quotes.

Sources

Crossing Boundaries and Frontiers. Enugu: The Pan-African Circle of Artists.

Ezeh, Peter 2004. “Art, Africa Progress: An Anthropological Viewpoint.” C. Krydz Ikwuemesi (ed.) op cit, pp. 116 – 118

Ikwuemesi, C. Krydz 2004. “Soliloquies.” In C. Krydz Ikwuemesi (ed.), Overcoming Maps 3 Report. Enugu: Citadel Publishing, pp23 -27

….…………………, 2003. A Critical Travelogue. Enugu: Citadel Publishing in association with the Art Republic.

Kawaguchi, Yukiya and Yoshida, Kenji (eds.), 2005. Senri Ethnological Reports, no 54 (journal of the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka)

Sacks, Jonathan 2000. The Politics of Hope, London: Vintage, pp.150 and 262.

Spiesse, Emmanuelle (ed.), 2001. Echoes, Cities and Artists in Nigeria. Ibadan: Museum of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan.

In Oyo town, 'Sango festival' revives tradition, culture

By Oguntimehin Ariyo

The Alaafin of Oyo Oba Lamidi Adeyemi admiring an egungun (masquerade) during the festival. Photograph by Oguntimehin Ariyo

It was a frenzy moment of jubilation in Oyo town, Oyo State, southwest Nigeria as  the people moved in mammoth crowd to the palace of  the Alaafin of Oyo Oba Lamidi Adeyemi otherwise known as 'omo ekun' (the son of a tiger).

  The occasion was the 2013 Sango Festival, in honour of Sango, an ancient hero from whom the Oba of Oyo derives his name 'omo ekun'. The Oba is regarded as a representative of the spirit world; 'alase ekeji orisa' (the one with authority, second only to the creator).

To celebrate  the great festival, the sango devotees were adorned in red alongside some Ifa priests who were in white regalia .The drummers, masquerades, traditional dancers were not left behind, all dancing to various musical  entertainments.

The Yoruba are a highly researched ethnic group in Africa, due to their rich cultural heritage, manifested in sociology and spirituality.

Arewa Omoba Folashade Adeyemi and Ayaba Alhaja [chief ] Ramat Adedayo Adeyemi gave an insight  into the history of Sango, by tracing the history of the Yoruba communities to Oduduwa in Ile-Ife. Oral history have it that after the death of Oduduwa, his seven grandchildren (Ogun Onire, Ogiso, Alaketu, Onisabe, Onipopo, Olowu and Oranyan), dispersed from Ile-Ife, finding different Yoruba kingdoms in the geographical area known today as Western Nigeria. The eldest grandchild was the mother of the Owus, the second was the mother of the Alaketu, progenitor of Ketu, the third became the king of Benin, the fourth Orangun, king of Ila, the fifth was the king of the Sabes, the sixth was the king of the Popos and the seventh was Oranyan.

                                           

Oranyan was the youngest prince, who inherited the land, being the first Alaafin, progenitor of the Oyos, who transferred the political power to Oyo Ile. Sango, the second son of Oranyan, became the strongest African king, with much power and influence. Sango strengthened to a point of historical dominance, building with glory, vitality and expansion the most formidable empire in Africa at the time , dominating all other Yoruba kingdoms including, Ife, Ekiti, Ijesa, Egba, Ijebu, Ondo, Sabe and Owu

His power stretched beyond Ilorin and Offa into Igbomina in the North; Egbado in the South-west; River Ogun in the South; Osun and Dahomey in the East. Under Sango’s influence, Oyo culture spread far and wide within the Oyo Empire and beyond.

Nowadays, this cultural influence can be found all over Yoruba land and beyond as by the contraction word, Kabiesi originates from the word, KABI KOSI, which was the form of greeting Sango those days, which is being used till today for all Yoruba traditional rulers.

Sango Obakoso plucking out his eye at sango festival 2013. Photograph by Oguntimehin Ariyo

There has been a spread of ancient art and craft, which was originated from Oyo such as the Dundun, Sekere, Aro, Bata, Adade, Ganku, Koso, Gangan, Gbedu and Igba Titi drumming, and the Etica, Esa, Lauku, Gbamo, Elesi,and Latikipa dancing. Today most of the principal traditional rulers of Yoruba trace their relationship to the Alaafin of Oyo, because most of the crowns in Yoruba land are a creation of Sango.

Oral history state that Sango was born by Torosi from Tapa Kwara State, but procreated by an old woman named Yemonja. At birth, he was named Tella including other names such as Ayi Legbe Orun etc

Sango married five women namely, Osun, who turned in to water in Osogbo; Oya, who turned to Igala in Ile ra; Oba, who disappeared in Odo Oba, Awa and Gambiolu. Sango was a strong warrior who is regarded to have become a symbol of power and truth, serving as the supreme judge in the Oyo Empire and being the final court.

His OSE, representing two axes, is a symbol of justice. Being the king of Justice and not understood by his people, he decided to hang himself in a tree called Igba, even though his friend Aladekun discouraged him from doing so. By this act Sango became OBA KOSO, which means the king did not hang on the tree.

He is reputed on the other hand to have disappeared into the earth leaving behind his crown and one Edun Ara (Oni epon lara) taken from his body, which was given to Aladekun to call on him anytime the town was in need.

Sango in action

Aladekun became the support of Oyo anytime the town was in need, being called Oni le ogba, which originated the contracted word Mogba. Nowadays, Mogba is still in Koso in Oyo town with the power left from Sango known as OLUOBAKOSO. Mogba Koso till today is the High Chief, who crowns all the Alaafins and the custodian of the Alaafin’s crown.

Some notable celebrate with the Alafin at the Sango festival 2013 were Onjo of Okeho Hrm. Oba [Alh.] Rafiu Osuolale Adeniran 11, Onitede of Tede Hrm.  Oba [Alh.] Rauf Adebimpe Oladoyin.,Onisemi of lsemi ile Hrm. Oba Kazeem Oyebooanle Mustapha, Chiefe  Gani  Adam , Avery Animon [Ifaseun Aworeni] an Ifa devotee  of Trinidad  and Tobago and other  notable  dignitaries  in  Nigeria  and diaspora .

The climax of the event was when Oba Lamidi Adeyemi”omo ekun,” alase ekeji orisa”,   danced in appreciation the various masquerades while moving to his palace.

On the 25^th of November 2013, Ekpuk was a special guest speaker at the annual SAPDP lecture series 2013 at Yaba College of Technology in Lagos, where he shared the experiences of his artistic endeavors, particularly focusing on drawing as his medium of choice and encouraged the art students to also explore the possibilities of drawing as medium of expression.

 Victor Ekpuk speaking at the annual SAPDP lecture series 2013 at Yaba College of Technology in Lagos

After this residency at OYASAF, Ekpuk is hoping to visit Nigeria more often for artistic collaborations and exhibitions.