Ben Enwonwu: Aesthetics and Artistic Identity in Modern Nigerian Art

i M W ON W U m AESTHETICS AND ARTISTIC IDENTITY IN MODERN NIGERIAN ART Sylvester 0. Ogbechie T he career o f Ben Enwonwu (1918-1994) enables analysis o f the constitution o f artistic identity by contemporary African artists w ho locate their practice in the spaces o f culture engendered by Africa's colonial encounter. This category o f cultural practice receives little attention from art history because it is misconceived as a distorted copy o f Euro-modernism, assumed to lack authenticity and also doubly indicted for having its genesis in the colonial period. The indictment o f modern African art on account o f its colonial heritage is lopsided since it focuses on only one aspect o f the different aesthetic traditions that engendered this context o f practice. We are relatively well informed about the European precedents that supposedly influenced the colonial and postcolonial practice o f modern African artists. We are less informed o f the equally great impact o f indigenous aesthetics on their art or the fact that African artists engendered new and distinctive modes o f visual representation within the systemic regime o f colonial culture. The following analysis o f Enwonwu's reconfiguration o f indigenous aesthetics (in this instance, a pan-Africanist amalgamation o f different Nigerian art traditions) and the complex visual language o f his art interrogates the liminal space between Africa's indigenous cultures and its contentious Anyanwu, b r o n z e , ( d e t a i l ) 1 9 5 4 - 5 5 Enwonwu the Bohemian, A r c h i v a l p i c t u r e o f B e n E n w o n w u a t w o r k i n his L o n d o n s t u d i o , p u b l i s h e d b y W e s t A f r i c a n R e v i e w in 1 9 4 6 Fall/ Winter 2002 modernity. It also provides an alternative exegesis that rescues the artist from art historical effacement. MAKING HI(S)T0RY Benedict Chukwukadibia Enwonwu was bo rn in Onitsha at the beginning o f the 2 0 ^ Century and his career encompassed the major aesthetic traditions that shaped the character o f mo d ern Nigerian art. These include the indigenous aesthetic traditions o f Nigeria (his father was an Igbo sculptor) and the European modes o f symbolic communication appropriated by Nigerian artists during the colonial period. Enwonwu and four other students (collectively know n as the Murray School) formed the first group o f Nigerian students trained in European techniques o f visual representation by the British colonial government . He completed his education at the Slade School o f Fine Art o f the University o f London and subsequently become the first African to achieve international acclaim as a contemporary artist. He was active until his death in 1994 and his career straddled the colonial and postcolonial periods o f 2 0 ^ Century Nigerian art. Enwonwu moved between Nigeria and London all his life but despite Nigeria's colonial culture and his access to the upper echelons o f British society (his patrons included Queen Elizabeth II) he maintained identification with his Onitsha-Igbo origins and asserted his identity as an African. In the colonial culture in which his career originated, and the postcolonial context in which it ended, his affirmation o f these identities inserted him into the fractious politics o f African nationalism. Enwonwu also invented a visual language whose formal structures and ideological assertions provided a conceptual framework against which many significant Nigerian artists defined themselves in the colonial and postcolonial periods. These achievements mark him out as a pivotal figure in 2 0 t n Century African culture. At the height o f his fame, Enwonwu was acclaimed as "Africa's greatest artist" and the British press attempted to co-opt his fame as an affirmation o f benevolent tutelage in colonial culture . In 1948, the London-based journal, West African Review published a picture o f...