Photo‐Logos and/or Narrative Semiotics
2004; Routledge; Volume: 18; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0952882032000182677
ISSN1475-5297
Autores Tópico(s)Visual Culture and Art Theory
ResumoAbstract An appreciation of the transience of things, and the concern to rescue them for eternity, is one of the strongest impulses of allegory. By this reckoning history‐writing is an allegorical art of the first order.Footnote1 Notes I wish to thank Professor S I Udoidem, Drs Femi O Shaka and Basil N Unegbe for reading through the various stages in the development of this paper and for their invaluable suggestions. Michael Ann Holly, 'Patterns in the Shadow', in Invisible‐culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Studies, issue 1, 1999, 30 May 2000 [⟨http://www.rochester.edu./invisible culture/toc/toc.htm/⟩]. This exhibition, curated by Tom Phillips, was first shown at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, from 4 October 1995 to 21 January 1996, followed by the Martin‐Gropius‐Bau, Berlin, from 1 March to 1 May 1996, and then at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, from 7 June to 29 September 1996. Christopher B Steiner, 'Discovering African Art Again?', African Arts, 29:4, 1996, pp 1, 4, 6, 8.. Steiner, ibid, p 8. Tom Phillips, ed, Africa: The Art of a Continent, Royal Academy of Arts, London, and Prestel Verlag, Munich and New York, 1995. E Elisofon and W B Fagg, The Sculpture of Africa, Praeger, New York, 1958. See Judith Periani and Fred T Smith, The Visual Arts of Africa, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1998. David Philips, 'Deconstruction and Photography', in The Subjects of Art History, eds Mark A Cheatham, Michael Ann Holly and Keith Moxey, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998, pp 155–79. See Wolfgang M Freitag, 'Early Uses of Photography in the History of Art', Art Journal, 39:2, 1979–80. Ibid, pp 117. Douglas Crimp, 'Getting the Warhol We Deserve: Cultural Studies and Queer Culture', Invisible Culture – An Electronic Journal for Visual Studies, issue 1, 1999, 30 May 2000 [⟨http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/issue1/crimp/crimp.html⟩] Phillips, Africa: The Art of a Continent, op cit. See Freitag, op cit, p 123. L R Rogers, Sculpture, Oxford University Press, London, 1969, pp 20–5. Frank Sibley, 'Aesthetic and Non‐Aesthetic', in Contemporary Aesthetics, ed M Lipman, Allyn & Bacon, Boston, 1973, p 434. Quoted in Freitag, 'Early Uses of Photography', op cit, p 118. Ibid, p 122. Beat Wyss, Hegel's Art History and the Critique of Modernity, trans Caroline D Saltzwedel, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999, p 140. The Hegelian dialectical circle ends in the thing in‐and‐for‐itself as a highlight of a process of actualisation in the unfolding process of knowledge. For art the stage of the thing‐in‐and‐for‐itself constitutes art's dematerialised realm that allows for aesthetic appreciation to be. Art would have gone through the other stages of the thing‐in‐itself, and the thing for itself before the final stage of the synthesis of the object being in‐and‐for‐itself. G W F Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind, trans with introduction and notes by J B Baillie, Harper Colophon Books, New York, 1967, p 794; and in Philosophy of Fine Art, 4 vols, trans P F B Osmaston, Hacker Art Books, New York, 1975, vol 1, p 77. Hegel says that art's function is to reveal truth under the mode of art's sensuous or material configuration to prove that it possesses its final aim in itself. Wyss, Hegel's Art History, op cit, p 139. E H Gombrich, The Story of Art, Phaidon Press, London, 1978. S P Blier, 'African Art Studies at the Crossroads: An American Perspective', in Symposium proceedings, African Art Studies the State of the Discipline, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1990, p 101. Phillips, op cit. Steiner, op cit, p 6. Roy Sieber, 'Preface' to Gillon, A Short History of African Art, Facts on File, New York, 1984, p 11. Dennis Dutton, 'Mythologies of Tribal Art', African Arts, 28:3, 1995, pp 32–43 and 90. C O Adepegba, 'The Question of Lineal Descent: Nok terracottas to Ife and the present', African Notes, 9:2, 1983, p 31. E Elisofon and W B Fagg, The Sculpture of Africa, op cit. Tom Phillips, Africa: The Art of a Continent, op cit, p 8. In the text it is interesting to read Peter Garlake, whose article reemphasises the difficulty of engaging in the writing of the history of African art. But commenting on the exhibition which Phillips curated and the euphoria of an aesthetic elevation amounts to nothing in accommodating the claim. It indeed confirms Steiner's concluding remarks that 'in some, "primitive no more" is a claim we will probably be hearing again and again – well into the next century'. Steiner, op cit. Wyss, Hegel's Art History, op cit, p 135. Holly, 'Patterns in the Shadow', op cit. Ibid. This proverb in Yekhee, an Edoid dialect (Etsako) reads 'Ono gwhe Iera nitsoi opuno'. See also Sylvenus Iniobong Udoidem's paper on 'The Epistemological Significance of Proverbs: An African Perspective', Presence Africaine, no 132, 1984, pp 126–36. The paper also goes to show the contingent meanings that proverbs harbour. As forms of knowledge they also are in constant revaluation. Wyss, Hegel's Art History, p 140: 'The turning away from sensualism and the beginning of a museum‐oriented, historical aesthetic are directly connected.' This observation of Hegel's Art History by Wyss is where modern art history begins. Steiner, op cit. H J Drewall, 'African Art Studies Today', in Symposium proceedings, Smithsonian Institution. African Art Studies the state of the Discipline, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1990, p 38. Mieke Bal, 'Seeing Signs: The Use of Semiotics for the Understanding of Visual Arts', in The Subjects of Art History, eds Mark A Cheatham et al, op cit, pp 24–93. George Kubler, The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1962, p 27. Clare O'Farrell, Michel Foucault: Historian or Philosopher?, Macmillan, London, 1989, p 38; and M Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, Routledge, London, 1997. J Daraccott, Art Criticism, Bellviews, London, 1991. Z S Strother, 'Invention and Reinvention in the Traditional Arts', African Arts, 28:2, 1995, pp 24–33, 90. O'Farrell, op cit, p 34. Strother, op cit. Ibid, p 28. Ibid, p 32. John Bialostocki, 'Iconography', in Dictionary of the History of Ideas, 4 vols, Charles Scribner & Sons, New York, 1973, vol 2, p 523. Phillips, op cit. Holly, 'Patterns in the Shadow', op cit, p 4 of 19. Phillips, op cit. Frank Agbiyoa O Ugiomoh, 'The Influence of Hegel in the Development of African Art History', MA Thesis (unpublished), University of Port Harcourt, Port Harcourt, 2000. Additional informationNotes on contributorsFrank A O Ugiomoh I wish to thank Professor S I Udoidem, Drs Femi O Shaka and Basil N Unegbe for reading through the various stages in the development of this paper and for their invaluable suggestions.
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