Exhibit of the week: Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Through Jan. 9, 2011

The Ife kingdom, which ruled what is now Nigeria from roughly A.D. 800 to 1400, produced astonishing sculpture whose realism far outstripped that of European artists during the same period, said The Economist. Yet, because the Ife had no written history, knowledge of this art was completely lost until the objects began to be unearthed in the early 20th century. Even then, one early German explorer, when confronted by these “superbly modeled terra-cotta sculptures” and naturalistic bronzes, made the “shockingly bigoted” assumption that Africans could not have independently achieved such sophistication. Instead, he concluded they must be evidence of the lost civilization of Atlantis. In fact, as scholars have since established, nearly all the works in this revelatory exhibition at Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts were made in Africa well before the Italian Renaissance even began. Still, countless questions about the works remain unanswered, including precisely how and when the Ife developed such remarkable technical skills.

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In the case of several objects on display, the questions are even more basic—such as, “Is it a man or a woman?” said Roger Atwood in ArtNews. Though most of the bronze heads here appear to represent high-caste males, at least one “strikingly naturalistic copper head” seems ambiguously gendered. In this remarkable figure, “the facial sculpting is of astonishing quality” and incorporates many carefully rendered details that tell us much about Ife culture at the time. The vertical striations that cover the face may represent ritual scars, for instance, while “the fleshy creases in the elongated neck are popularly associated, even today in West Africa, with a good diet, prosperity, and status.”

But even if viewers know nothing about Ife culture, “our eyes can tell us a lot” about how technically sophisticated their artists were, said Douglas Britt in the Houston Chronicle. The mastery of anatomy and perspective are surely advanced for the time. Yet what amazes most is not simply the sculptures’ verisimilitude but their expressiveness. A group of copper-alloy heads, presumed to depict royalty, “rival ancient Roman sculpture for individuality”—as in the case of one stern ruler whose aquiline face “sports a contemptuous sneer.” These objects, the precious remnants of a lost civilization, very rarely leave their home country. This unique chance to see them “leaves no room for doubt that these treasures aren’t just Nigeria’s but the world’s.”