Word: artes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...latter-day art boom was fostered by Roman Catholic missionaries. Among them were Brother Marc-Stanislas Wallenda from Belgium, who founded Kinshasa's Academy of Fine Arts in 1943, and Father Kevin Carroll of Ireland, who in the same era came to work among Nigerian craftsmen. Most white missionary bishops back then, Carroll recalls, "thought we were wasting time." Political independence and the increase of black clergy accelerated the process that European Christians call adaptation or inculturation, meaning the incorporation of local culture into Christianity. Today Nigeria has Africa's largest corps of artists and artisans, and Zaire probably boasts...
Serious theological problems can arise when Africanization uses symbols and myths from the pre-Christian faiths. Fearing syncretism in a continent where communion with the spirits and ancestors remains a powerful belief, most Protestants are exceedingly cautious about all the visual arts. Zaire's indigenous Kimbanguist Church strictly forbids decoration except on preachers' and singers' robes. But many Anglicans, once hesitant, are enthusiasts for the new church art. Methodist theologian Dkalimbo Kajoba encourages art so long as it is for "decoration," not "adoration...
...sign of the cross over each painting he creates, sees profound value in tribal cultures. "The birth of a child, coming of age, marriage, death and the spirits of our ancestors -- all these needed to be illustrated and represented as supernatural manifestations. This is the basis of our art. We are still interlinked with nature." More radically, Cameroon's Father Mveng wants to fling the church doors wide open to fetishes and magic charms. In Africa's interreligious melange, Muslims are creating images for Christian churches that are not allowed in mosques. Animists are decorating Christian churches. Father Carroll...
Africans are anything but embarrassed about this cultural distinctiveness. Cecil Skotnes, one of the handful of creative white religious artists in South Africa, insists, "Urgency is the basis of all great art. This urgency is no longer apparent in European or U.S. art." That judgment may be too sweeping. Yet there is no question that African Christian art, serene and savage, florid and austere, stands virtually alone in the vigor and authenticity with which its practitioners seek to express the inexpressible...
...couldn't have imagined this would happen in my wildest fantasies," marveled artist Dread Scott Tyler. What astonished him was the mobs of outraged veterans and others who gathered daily at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to protest his controversial work featuring an American flag stretched on the floor. Until the exhibition closed last week, politicians, patriots and just plain folks joined in angrily condemning what they believed was desecration of Old Glory...