The Reach of Art

The articles in ARTnews are often esoteric and a bit overwrought, but in the March issue they ran a series of brief "Looking at Art"articles that were right on target.

I was especially taken with their one-pager on a remarkable 14th century bronze portrait sculpture from what is now Nigeria. The full-page image on the facing page stopped me in my tracks, just like it did thirty years ago when I opened Janson's History of Art book at RIT. Among the centuries of images in that classic text, it stood apart.


It is one of the most elegant, subtle, and and nuanced portraits in art. And, as the article emphasizes, it "shook Western notions about the quality of metalworking and artistic production in precolonial Africa."
It is an instance when a piece of art might be more convincing to students of history than pages of explanation.

So I took it down to our Global Studies teacher. Might save him an entire period of lecturing.

P.S. As elegant as the Ife image that accompanies this post, it is not the iconic image that accompanies the ARTnews article and my memory. Seek it out. It will not disappoint.