A picture as the cliché goes is worth a thousand words but then that depends on the words spoken or pictures portrayed. In this edition we have present the chronicles of a master picture maker or Artist in the person of Joe Musa. Here he chronicles the evolution of the Nigerian Art of the 1980s with Lagos as the hub of the ferment. In language as variegated as the rich colours of his works, he highlights the nuances, forms and movements of the visual Arts across the various centres of pollination and emergence.
A colossus of the Art scene himself, Joe Musa was the erstwhile Director General of the National Gallery of Art between 2006 t0 2010. Apart from his impressive academic record, he has been an active participant in the Artist’s boom of the 1980s and 90s. In the late 1990s, he founded Joe Musa Gallery and has organised seminars seeking to bridge the gap between the inane world of bohemian artists and the real business sector. As a renowned curator himself, he has participated in the conception and documentation of public education programs in addition to having developed front line discourses on cultural identity in contemporary society. Here is an excerpt from his cerebral treatise:
Our conception of the Artists of the ’80s in the development of Nigeria art history is capacious, not least because a full history of their contributions cannot be properly constructed without attention to relations among the corpus of participants. But there are many other reasons why this is intellectually necessary: a proper understanding of the concept of schools, for example, must be comparative (and thus cross-pollinate); and we are bound to acknowledge the complex role of economic, religious, and intellectual linkages as well as their connections with influences from other African or local art schools and possibly with Europe. These general points can be illustrated by various iconic examples: El Anatsui, a Ghanian sculptor, is the founder of the now popular two-dimensional wood strewed works, with followings like Ndidi Dike, NdubuisiOnah and Barthosa Nkrumeh.
John Kasuzi Matovu a Uganda ceramist, internationally acclaimed for his sculptural ceramics that mixes rhythmic subtlety with brazen bravado; was then lecturing in Benue Polytechnic, Ugbokolo. He was shaped by his experiences that he enacted in his pyrography works that were popularized by several artists, like Gift Elanu, Best Ochigbo, Ameh Adeyi, OcheAgebe, Bruno Chibuzor Ajunam, etc in that order.
It is this comparative; cross-national-pollination approach we hope to rear our attention on. These intercultural and disciplinary approaches we hope will enable us to produce a richly contextualized analysis while retaining a principle focus within our locale of professional artistic activities. The core assures that those who have need of this work should have familiarity with the essential social, political, economic and cultural background, and a body of established questions central to the field.
Few names were already practically known preceding the 80’s. You constantly hear about them in the grapevine and if you are lucky you could meet most of them, like Yusuf Grillo, J.I. Akande, OkpuEze, Clary Nelson Cole, KoladeOshinowo, GaniOduntokun, Cornelius Adegbegba, ObioraUdechukwu, IsiakaOsunde, David Dale, Bruce Onobrakpeya, JossyAjiboye, Dele Jegede, Ben Enwonwu, IreinWangboje, Demas Nwoko, Abayomi Barber, JimohAkolo, El Anatsui, Solomon Akiga, Susanne Wenger and UcheOkeke all striding by and you had to, but revere, if not at their presence, at least at the stories of their artistic brilliance and conquest. These names virtually situated the 70’s History of Nigeria art as those who benefited from the FESTAC 77 artistic and financial boom.
Granted that from the pre and post-1960’s the pioneers made their recognizable contributions, but the 80’s was the acme that saw the high point of this development, a pointer to the coming of AGE OF PROFESSIONALISM in Nigerian Art. These were the crop of artists who were into full time studio practice. Most at this time were amateurs by its definition; since they were holding full time paid employment, but we have allowed for a mix since there cannot be a full and total delineation.
The 80’s boom became one of the busiest periods in the annals of Nigeria Art History. The set of artists that emerged at this period came with a mind-set of grit. There were few or no regular public commissions so they had to define their own strategy. This was a period when their contributions made art patronage attain a climax never before experienced in the art-scape of the nation.
In this explosive affluence, Visual Art became well esteemed and accorded a distinctive dignity never before extended. I happen to have been part of this wave. It was a period of great artistic rumble that took the art-scene by storm.
The ones directly responsible for the evolvement of the ’80s were a handful variegated bunch with legendary astuteness, narrative frenzy, and creative dexterity. They did not have any other jobs but lived off their works. A few artists were part of this artistic revolution. Those that became players in this period are at the center-of-attention of this manuscript. They are the ones that took the gauntlet and went head-on to reinventing the sector and encouraged private collections. This regular variegated bunch came to be regarded exceedingly high and socially established as a consequence of the daring faith they took. They are the bedrock for the present artistic potency that is now being enjoyed by the present crop of young contemporary artists.
The art went through this major phase from 1980’s – to late ’90s, a frenzy that engulfed the stakeholders: buyers, collectors, dealers, the artists themselves, new converts and even opportunists all meeting at the melting pot, in the exhibition halls and the artist studios.
Lagos was that melting pot.