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</td><td align="left" VALIGN="top" width=350><font face="Arial" size="4" color="#f000000"><b>Art Talk:</b></font><br>

<font face="Arial" size="2"><b>Traditional Ethiopian Art & the International Art Market</b></font><br><font face="Arial" size="1">By: George Nelson Preston, Ph.D.<br><br>


<img src="artimage1.jpg"><br> A Rare Ethiopian Triptych Icon Circa 17th Century.<br><br>


What is the aesthetic prestige of traditional

Ethiopian art worldwide?

And what sort of investment status

does it enjoy? We know that we live

in a world of escalating values of art and

that African antiquities in general are

acknowledged as one

of the great contributions

to world culture.

What is the place of

the traditional art of

Ethiopia in the context

of a “world-class”

African art market?

<br><br>


I think we

can begin with deﬁning

traditional Ethiopian

art and traditional

African art in relation

to the multi-ethnicity

of Ethiopia. Although

Ethiopian art traditions

are historically

longstanding, going all

the way back beyond

pre-classic Greek antiquity,

it has not been

a signiﬁcant player in

the international art/antiquities arena until

the past two decades.

By traditional, we mean the art commissioned

by traditional patrons, for traditional

ceremonies in a traditional context

of the animist and Coptic religions

of Ethiopia. We may add to this some

Islamic arts and the secular arts of traditional

Ethiopian peoples. These include

the elaborate lattice-worked Christian

crosses for both personal and processional

use, devotional painting from “medieval”

times through the early to mid twentieth

century, and the sacred and profane arts of

the animist peoples: sculptural chairs and

stools, memorial statues, harps, neck rests

ritual panels and tablets, game boards.

<br><br>

ART HISTORICAL OVERVIEW<br><br>

Ethiopia is one of the very few

countries in the world whose national

boundaries closely resemble those of antiquity

or its historical past. When we say

national or nation we are speaking of the

state, be it formed by empire building,

ethnicity or one of the various processes

of political consolidation. State boundaries

and ethnic boundaries are rarely identical.

So be it the case of Ethiopia. Ethiopia

has often been synonymous with the

Amhara, denizens of the central plateau

of the country. It is the Amhara and Tigreans

who dominated the political history

of the country. Ethiopia and Armenia

are the ﬁrst countries to pronounce

Christianity as the state religion, c. 350.

This is why much of the traditional art of

Ethiopia is Christian art, in the same sense

that Romanesque and Gothic art were

synonymous with French art for several

centuries. But Ethiopia’s ethnic boundaries

are far more ﬂuid than the stability of

her state borders. In contradistinction to

the art of Christianity, Animist traditions

abound. These animist traditions within

Ethiopia, often pejoratively referred to by

Christians as “pagan,” represent the true

indigenous art of Africa and as such are

more closely related to the arts of other

African peoples than to the Christian art

of the politically dominant ethnic groups.

<br><br>

Although the art of animist black

Africa has been a major player in world

culture since its acceptance by the Cubists,

followed by the Museum of Modern

Art Exhibition of 1925, Ethiopia has only

recently been thought of in the context

of African art. To begin with, the focus

of Europe had been on West and Central

African art. Add to this the fact that

the dominant political groups of Ethiopia

were associated with a longstanding,

non-animist Christian art. Finally, within

the dynamic of Ethiopian ethnic interaction

the animist ethnicities, for example

the Oromo, Sidamo, Konso, were marginalized.

In the early sixties through the

seventies, Ethiopians began to express dissatisfaction

at their culture being excluded

from the pages of the principal African art

journal African Arts, and other art periodicals.

In the opinion of this writer, that

exclusion was to some extent a product

of the marginalization of animist groups

who made art generated by animist, not

Christian traditions. Th is situation began to be addressed when African Arts

published a feature article and thereafter,

Ethiopian Christian art began to appear

on the international art market in greater

frequency and numbers. Let us now take

a look at some “Ethiopian” art traditions.

<br><br>


THE KONSO AND SIDAMO PEOPLES<br><br>

Th e Konso and Sidamo people of

southern Ethiopia have traditionally made

mortuary statues upon the death of important

personages. These statues, called

waaga by the Konso were representations

of prominent members of the complex

Gada age-grade social structure. The style

of these monuments, is unrelated to the art

of Christianity. However these ﬁgures belong

to a monumental/megalithic/monolithic

style that starts in Bahr el Ghazl in

southern Sudan among the Bongo people

and is distributed in a southeasterly swath

through Ethiopia terminating at the Kenya

coast where it is found among the Giryama

(Giriamo) people. These statues are in

general, monoxylic (made of one piece of

wood), or monolithic (a single stone) and

are monumentally phallic. A stylized human

head is usually at the apex and the

arms are carved pressed to the torso. Th e

piece illustrated here (ﬁgure 2) is a good

example of the type. In addition to their

funerary/memorial functions these waaga

were set up in plazas or outside of the house

of members of Orshada, the fourth and

highest level of the Gada age grade system.

<br><br>

EAST AFRICAN PASTORALISTS<br><br>

Several related cultures of pastoralists,

nomads who herd grazing animals,

and settle seasonally at opportune

locations are scattered across northeastern

Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya. The region

is also peopled by sedentary neighbors.

Both have been classiﬁed as Cushitic and

East African Pastoralists and agriculturalists

speaking related Semitic and Hamitic

languages. We can mention a few groups

here: the Karamojong (Karamoja), Turkana,

Masai, Gurage, Oromo. Among

the forms shared by these peoples simultaneously

so similar and diverse are their

prestige/display hats. These hats are made

from a variety of natural materials as well

as the jetsam of industrial waste: ostrich

feathers, shell, glass beads, brass and copper

wire, natural adhesive pastes and pigments.

Human hair, is often glued to a

scull cap foundation so that the ensemble

resembles a human hair wig with the

natural and found objects attached to it.

<br><br>

CHRISTIAN AND TALISMAN, TALSAM PAINTING<br><br>

Christianity came to Ethiopia in

the mid-fourth century with the conversion

of the Axumite emperor Ezana. Many

Christians assume that ﬁgurative painting

may have started with the Christian era

but very few paintings can be dated for

sure beyond the last millennium. Most of

those in collections date from the nineteenth

century. The subject matter are

events and narratives of the Old and New

Testaments, the passions of Christ and

the lives of the saints. Another category of

painting, called magic scrolls or talisman

painting may be much older, going back at

least to Sabean and Axumite times. Talisman

paintings, in books or loose-leaf were

used as cures for the sick. In fact, the tradition

might be as old as the belief in the

power of words, signs and images to have

transcendent powers. This would make

it predate Christianity and likely be the

source of Christian painting. Strict Christian

orthodoxy allows only the reading

of the gospels and Psalms of David while

tending the sick, so talisman paintings go

against the grain of Christian belief. The

talisman paintings contain many images

that are found in Christian paintings such

as saints, angels and the devil and it is possible

for the untutored eye to confuse the

two since -stylistically- they are identical.

<br><br>

This has been an all too brief

discussion of some aspects of Ethiopian

art. It is intended to provide a summary

introduction to the contexts in

which some of these arts functioned. 


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<td VALIGN="top" width=5><img src="divider.jpg"><br><img src="divider.jpg"><br><img src="divider.jpg"><br><img src="divider.jpg"><br><img src="divider.jpg"><td VALIGN="top" width=250><br>

<img src="artimage2.jpg"><br><font face="Arial" size="1">A fine and rare konso figure. Selling price estimated between $15,000 - $20,000 in May 2005. </font><br> </tr></table>

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