backUlli Beier
1963
Sculpture, African Art, Black ArtCambridge University Press
English



African Mud Sculpture







“Most books on African art have been written from the study of museum pieces, and therefore deal only with sculpture in wood and brass. This book adds a new dimension to our knowledge of African art. Mud sculptures are made for cult purposes: their creation is an important act for sculptor and worshippers, but once the object has been made there is no attempt to preserve it, and mud rapidly disintegrates. Various influences now militate against the creation of these sculptures and the art itself may die.

So this survey comes at a crucial moment. Mr Beier has a sympathy with and understanding of African art which few can equal. He writes from as near the inside as a European can get. His essay explains the attitudes behind this particular branch of art, as well as the functions and locations of the sculpture. The seventy-nine photographs give a striking glimpse of these objects, some strange, some majestic, some very gay and lively.”

(description source: interior book jacket) 


Author context



Notes

An Mbaari house is built whenever Ala sends a sign to her chief priest . . . Before the actual building begins there is a sacrifice to the goddess, then, after clearing a piece of ground in the forest, the space is fenced off and the builders henceforth live in the seclusion of this compound until the work is completed. Account to one priest of Ala, this takes at least seven months and several houses are said to have taken over a year to complete. During this time the builders are fed by the community. (Beier 20)


Mbari houses are square in plan and open-sided, with four distinct faces each stepping up towards a tall, narrow, central chamber. This chamber is used in building the house, and is afterwards sealed up, apparently empty. The corners of the house are supported by four massive square pillars, and a steep pitched roof covers the whole building. Nowadays the roof is always of zinc-often the only zinc roof in the village. This main structure is built entirely of large cubic mud blocks; the outer surface of each block is pitted with large round holes, and these holes are backed with glazed pottery of European type. They seem to have no other than a purely decorative function. This explanation seems credible enough, because European glazed pottery is widely used as architectural decoration in West Africa, for example by the Nupe and peoples of Northern Nigeria. (Beier 20)


An Mbari house looks like a shrine, yet no worship of Ala takes place there. After the initial sacrifice and a final ritual on completion of the building, no further ceremonies take place at the Mbari house. Usually some protective medicine is built into one of the pillars, but this serves to protect the craftsmen during the period of construction. Once the building is finished, it is abandoned to decay in the forest, and is seldom looked at, except by strangers. The regular worship of Ala centres round her shrine which has no mud sculpture at all, but sometimes features woodcarvings. (Beier 41)

Although the Mbari house is covered with a zinc roof, it is open and exposed to the rain on all four sides. As a result, the figures begin to crumble and collapse quickly. First the outstretched limbs break away, later the more daring constructions collapse. After two years, an Mbari house usually has some casualties. Many houses crumble within a period of five years, and none of the buildings I saw were older than twelve years. (Beier 41)

Ibo mud sculpture is probably the most short-lived art in the world. Once the building is completed, no attempt is made to repair or preserve it. But some years after it has disappeared Ala may call for a new building, and thus the art is kept alive. (Beier 41)



INDEX


Penguin Africa Series

Nigeria
Palestine  
Papua New Guinea

William Fagg (Beier 45)



REFS


Third Text, Africa

Modern Poetry from Africa

Traveling Editors, Little Magazines and Postcolonial Modernism: Ulli Beier, Black Orpheus and Kovave


1727 — Abomey was a kingdom that rather suddenly rose to power in the nineteenth century. The kings of Abomey had been importance since Agadja, conquered the seaport of Ouidah and thus came into contact with European traders and slave ships. (Beier 79)

1897 —Probably no other form of African art is as well known as the brass figures and plaques of Benin. The British punitive expeditions of 1897 carried away several thousand of these sculptures, most of which found their way into various European and American museums. Luschan in his book Die Altertumer von Benin lists about 2,400 pieces which were then known to be outside Nigeria. (Beier 45)

1911 — The bas-reliefs of the palaces of Abomey, the capital of the Dahomean kingdom, are the most widely known form of African mud sculpture. A detailed description of them by Waterlot by this date, who also made plaster copies of these reliefs, which can now be seen in the Musee de l’Homme in Paris. (Beier 79) (see 2021)

1957 — Founding of Black Orpheus
1961 — Founding of Mbari Writers and Artists Club
1981 — Founding of Iwalewa Hause

2021 — 26 royal treasures from Abomey were returned to Benin following a 2021 restitution (source)
  SITES, WORKS


Black Orpheus

Mbari house

Bas-reliefs of the palaces of Abomey