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0RACLE- TRANSFORMING AFRICA a la PICASSO
Kofi Akosah-Sarpong, in Accra, argues that just as the French artist, Pablo
Picasso, used African art to transform modern art, African elites should
learn from the French man and use African values to transform the
continent's development process
"Picasso and Africa," an exhibition that showcase more than 80 paintings,
drawings and sculptures of the great French artist, Pablo Picasso, who never
went to Africa though he was immensely influenced by the continent's
artistic values, more than three decades after his death, is now opened in South Africa. Picasso stumbled upon African art in June 1907 at the African
and Oceanic collection at the Ethnographic Museum of the Trocadero in Paris.
Since then he was able to mix his innate French artistic values and, as the
London, UK-based The Economist quoted Marilyn Martin, one of the
exhibition's curators, as saying, with his "unique understanding of the
magical and ritualistic power of African art."
In a time when some enlightened African elites are talking seriously about
mixing African values with that of her colonial legacies in the continent's
development process so as the bring development closer to the people,
Picasso's genius at mixing his French artistic values with that of Africa's
could be a remarkable lesson in Africa's progress. If Picasso, who never
went to Africa, "absorbed Africa's abstract, expressive representations of
faces and bodies, and made them his own," and used this mixture to transform
modern art, why can't African elites do the same so as to transform Africa's
progress by mixing African values and her colonial legacies so as to come
out with something new to transform Africa's development process?
Picasso's exhibition comes at a time when the idea of mixing Africa's
cultural values with that of her colonial values in her process is
increasingly gaining continental and global attention. Internationally, from
the World Bank to the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the
idea of being culturally sensitive by respecting and appropriating local
African values and experiences in formulating policies in Africa's
development process is being touted. A World Bank study authored by the
Senegalese Mamadou Dia advises African states to reconcile their cultural
values with their colonial values in their development process. The study
says other ex-colonies such as Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Brazil have
done it and are doing.
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The need to mix African values with her colonial legacies, as Picasso
somehow did in some sort of different way in his artistic transformations,
is further heightened by Ghana's Dr. Y.K. Amoako, the former executive
secretary of the Addis Ababa, Ethiopia-based U.N Economic Commission of
Africa (ECA), observation that Africa's is the only region in the world
where her development process is dominated by foreign values. |
The implications here is that the values driving Africa's development process is
not holistic and is not her own. That's it is not driven by Africa's innate
values and, by accident, the colonial values she has come into contact with.
This missing link is partly responsible for some problems Africa faces
today. The challenge for African elites, if Picasso's way is anything to go
by, is how to transform Africa's development process by reconciling her
values with her colonial legacies ones so as to bring the right balances in
Africa's progress bid.
Thoughtful Africans from some traditional rulers to ordinary people to some
thinkers and some insightful journalists have been vigorously campaigning
for a new thinking in Africa's advancement by mixing her cultural values
with that of her colonial standards. From the King of Ghana's Asante ethnic
group, Otumfuo Osei Tutu 11, to Ghanaian social scientist, Dr. George
Ayittey, of the American University in Washington D.C, to the Kenya thinker,
Dr. Ali Mazrui, this idea is gaining grounds. Recently, at policy
development forum at Ghana's Northern Regional capital of Tamale, ordinary
people tasked policy makers to appropriate their values, history, and
experiences when formulating policies so as to make the policies realistic
and reflective of the people's struggles.
For long time, African elites inability to ground all their development
process values in their innate values first and their colonial values second
have made some African thinkers such as Mazrui suggest that African elites
are mediocre. Unlike other ex-colonies, such as Japan, which Mazrui used
liberally as an example to show how African elites failed to match their
Western education with their African values in both their intellectual
development and the continent's progress, the trouble with African elites
and the continent's development process is that the elites who conceptualize
ideas are not informed by Africa's innate, indigenous values or ideas but
are rather influenced by the Western ideas that they have had in formal
schools. Mazrui thinks that African elites inability to think holistically,
as Picasso did and as other ex-colonies elites have done in their progress,
stem from the fact that the capacity to be curious and fascinated by ideas
which normally starts early in the educational process, that is nourished
from primary school onwards, can die at the university level if mediocrity
prevails.
The mediocrity had prevailed because African elites ability to play with
ideas, as is expected of intellectuals, is not grounded in African values,
experiences and history but rather, more or less, in their colonial values.
This has created problems for Africa's intellectual growth not only at the
university level but also at the primary school level; where the values,
images and examples, which are heavily European-centred, are formed. So, if
the African primary education system is heavily Western
structured, it flows and grows to the high school level, and then later to the university level;
thus sowing a culture of mediocrity, in terms of African values not
predominantly dictating the intellectual and development life of the African
child early enough. Not only does this indicate that Africa's development
process is not culturally close to Africans, but also a revelation that
African elites are mediocre in both their intellectualizing and their
direction of the continent's progress. This has made the African elite
mediocre in their own environment and in their development process
struggles. The mediocrity has come about because Africa's elites do not
think deeply from within Africa's values first and the enabling aspects of
their colonial legacies second in the continent's progress.
In this sense, as African elites visit the Picasso exhibitions in
Johannesburg and Cape Town, they should reflect about how he used African
art to develop new global art form; how Picasso and his associate
avant-garde artists, in their search "for a new artistic language to break
the mould of conventional representation, were exposed" to African forms
"rich in symbols;" and how Picasso's encounter with African art "transformed
his artistic vision and with the direction of modern art." In Pablo Picasso,
African elites has much to learn in their development process.
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