Yoruba blacksmiths created some of the most
impressive bronze work in Africa. Their art is
intimately connected with essential aspects of
Yoruba life-- religion, cultural activities and
kingship, fused together by the fire of the
furnace and the artist's imagination. We see
revolving around this wonderful bracelet four
figures which probably represent ancestors or
deities. They stand frontally with their dramatic
faces clearly and expressively detailed. Their
arms and legs, however, merge into the abstract
design surrounding them, as if to show they are
part human and part mythical being with no
definite form. This otherworldly aspect may have
been intentional in order to show the wearer as
someone who possessed special powers, such as
a priest or priestess. The power of this bracelet
communicates something that is at once
explicable and indefinable; like the gods
themselves, within reach and yet inaccessible,
except through the medium of high art.
- (PF.4895)
|
