Bruly Bouabre's Alphabet (review)

BRU LY BO U ABRE' S AL P H ABET A film by Nur it h Avi v st Run / Icarus Films, 2005 From t he very begi nni ng of Bruly Bouabre's Alphabet , one i s st ruck by t he way i t was put t oget her. It i s Like a game of domi noes in whi ch each domi no cont ribut es t o f orm a Landscape t hat seems compl et e. But what i s Left i s a mere f ragment , as if it were an art obj ect housed in a di spl ay case, i sol at ed f rom t he rest of t he world t hanks t o a precise narrat ive l ogic t hat cont i nues t o present Af rican art ist ic expressions w i t hout a hist ory, in a compar t ment al i zed and f r agment ar y way. Thus by t he end of t he f ilm we f i nd oursel ves conf r ont ed by t he paradox t hat what has been left out i s precisely what t he i nt ent i on was t o show us: t he st ory of t he Ivor y Coast art ist Frederic Bruly Bouabre. Act ually, a good way t o have begun t he f ilm woul d have been wit h it s endi ng, which st at es brief ly t hat "onl y a few i ni t i at es use Bruly Bouabr e's writ i ng, but his dr awings can be f ound in museums all over t he w or l d. " This i s t he vit al heart of t he mat t er, as t he art ist revealed in an int erview during t he '90s: "A part ir de la, j e sui s devenu art ist e, j e suis devenue 'magi ci en de la Terre'. . . Voil a, c'est comme ca que j e sui s venu a la lumiere, si non j e rest ais dans la nuit des t e m p s. "1 ("From t hi s moment on I became an art ist ; I became 't he magician of t he ear t h'. . . So, t hi s i s how I saw t he l ight , ot herwise I woul d have remained in t he darkness of t i m e") . It was back i n 1948 t hat Bouabre f irst had a series of pr emoni t i ons and dr eams, 2 evidence of a celest ial power l eading him t o int erpret t he world around hi m. Sear chi ng in t hese years for a way t o preserve and t r ansmi t t he knowl edge of bot h t he Bet e peopl e and t he ent ire worl d, he i nvent ed an al phabet of more t han f our hundred monosyllabic pict ograms t o represent phonet ic syl l abl es and t o help people in t he Bet e communi t y learn t o read more qui ckl y. 3 Bouabr e's al phabet ref lect s t he essence of his idea: t o achieve uni versal it y and t o unit e manki nd. In 1958, Theodore Monod wrot e an art icle about Bouabr e's wr i t i ng ent it l ed Un nouvel alphabet ouest -africain: le bet e.'* In t he 1970s, Bouabr e began t ransf erring t hought s t o hundreds of feuilles volages, smal l dr aw i ngs i n post card f ormat , usi ng a bal l poi nt pen and color crayons. As can clearly be seen in t he vi deo, his works f ollow precise rules bot h in t erms of mat erials and f ormat , di spl ayi ng a cent ral f igure sur r ounded by a colored f...