Give and Take
Object Lesson
The Head in Focus
Benin Art and Visual History
Spring 2017
Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi
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Gift of Miss Lucy T. Aldrich 39.054
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Benin art has held the imaginations of scholars and art
dealers spellbound since the turn of the twentieth century. It was the irst noted example of African art to truly
confound racist assumptions and ethnocentric prejudices
when it irst came to Western attention after the tragic
British punitive expedition of February 17, 1897, during
which the Benin kingdom was sacked by British colonial
forces, and the reigning king, Oba Ovonranwmen, was
captured and sent into exile. The old Benin kingdom’s
inluence was widespread in the area described as the
Lower Niger, located in present-day Nigeria, southwest
Nigeria, and across swaths of areas on the West African
coast. Whereas Benin art was greatly
FIG. 1
admired and treated reverentially by
Benin
Head of a King (Oba),
Western audiences upon its discovery,
probably 18th century
Bronze
as the cited commentary suggests, the
26.7 � 19.7 � 21.6 cm. (10 2 � 7 4 � 8 2 in.)
/
The discovery of these treasures resembles that
of a valuable manuscript. They are a new
“Codex Africanus,” not written on fragile papyrus,
but in ivory and imperishable brass.1
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Osanobua and his eldest son, Olokun; this energy guides the mortal individual throughout his or her lifetime on earth. Ultimately, the sculptured
head is a corporeal memento in honor of revered deceased individuals
such as ancestors. When it is covered with a coiffure, crown, or headdress,
such elaborate details are emphasized.
RISD’s head of a king holds added signiicance and prestige as an altar
object that honors a royal ancestor. For the Benin, commemorative heads
are idealized portraits commissioned by an incoming oba to honor his
departed predecessor as part of the extravagant coronation ceremony. The
portrait of King Osemwende (1816–1848) [Fig. 2], in the
collection of the Rietberg Museum, Zurich, is an example
FIG. 2
of a commemorative head that has been connected to a
Nigeria, Kingdom of Benin,
speciic oba. Other examples abound in Western musecourt workshop
Portrait of King Osemwende, ca. 1810
ums, such as the Museum of Ethnology in Berlin, which
Bronze
has one of the biggest repositories of Benin art.
The Rietberg Museum, Zurich
Issue— 8
kingdom and her artists were at the same time inscribed “within a
racialized discourse of degraded savagery.”2 (Today the Benin kingdom,
a shadow of its former glory, comprises mostly Benin City, the capital
of Edo State in southern Nigeria.)
The Benin kingdom’s corpus of palace art, as seen in the head of
a king in the RISD Museum collection [Fig. 1], highlights the technical
mastery and artistic accomplishment of Benin artists over the ages.
RISD’s head consists of a crown of intricately crosshatched beads, bold
jutting knots on two sides of the crown, four lowing threads of beads
with stops close to the base, and two strips of braided hair that dangle
at both sides of the face. Cast in bronze, the crown mirrors the coral-bead
headdress worn by the oba (king). The actual beaded crown consists of
tiny red beads stitched together with brown vegetable iber. The beads
carry the essence of the ofice of oba. A single cowrie shell sits on the
forehead, lanked by three scariication patterns called ikharo above each
ampliied eye. The tubular bead-collar covers the neck and chin, extending all the way to the lower lip. With its remarkably stylized features,
the crowned head is a portrait of elegant symmetry and digniied comportment. The absence of a lange at the base suggests that it is an
eighteenth-century-style commemorative head. The object is one of the
two Type 3 heads belonging to the Middle and Late periods in the classiication of Benin art, per the late anthropologist Philip Dark.3
In many African societies, the human head holds signiicant symbolism. It is explored at length in forms and performances arts (including
masking traditions). Although the human body is equally celebrated as
a reliquary that carries the soul in the mortal life and afterlife,4 the head
holds deeper ramiications. It determines the individual as marker of
personal identity and physical identiication, and ties the individual to
family, ancestors, extended family, and community. More importantly,
it determines a person’s destiny. Among the Yoruba in southwestern
Nigeria, the head is the wellspring of wisdom and seat of divine power
(àse). The head is divided into the external head (orí òde), emblem of
individuality, and the interior or spiritual head (orí inú), the life source
that controls the outer head. Ontologically, though all inner heads look
the same, they are essentially different when bestowed on individuals.5
If one is bestowed with good inner head, the person’s àse ensures success
in life. As such, the head is cast proportionally bigger that other parts of
the body in visual representations, whether it is rendered naturalistically,
stylized, or in abstract form.6 The three modes of representation have
different symbolic undertones. Similarly, the Benin considers the human
head as imbued with spiritual energy (ehi) placed by the creator-god
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ing of solidarity by his people, he is formally declared the oba, taking over
the throne of his fathers. At the recent coronation of Oba Ewuare II on
October 20, 2016, commemorative heads accompanied his inal installation ceremony in memory and honor of his departed father, Omo n’Oba
n’Edo Uku Akpolokpolo Erediauwa, and his royal forebears [Fig. 3]. The
objects were placed at the foot of his throne and around the palace room
where he welcomed visitors [Fig. 4].
Traditionally, the oba combines political and religious authority.
Before colonialism, he held sweeping powers over his subjects. He was
the nominal owner of Benin land and inal adjudicator of justice, and
controlled external trade, among other roles. Although his political power
has waned and is now largely ceremonial since the end of colonial rule
in Nigeria, he still commands the total respect of his subjects, owing to
his divine kingship. Perhaps more in the past than in the present, the
oba was the arbiter of taste, introducing aesthetic criteria and afirming
or critiquing styles and technical approaches and the resulting forms. As
the custodian of Benin culture, the oba aligned artistic production with
cultural values and communal idiosyncrasies. The most skilled members
of the casters’ and carvers’ guilds produced palace objects, interpreting
the royal perspectives and conveying the highest ideals of Benin aesthetics.
It is in this sense that the objects plundered during the British sack of
Benin were signiicant cultural achievements, perfected over many centuries and bearing the royal seal of approval.
Many innovations in Benin art are traced to the time of Oba Ewuare I
(circa 1440 to 1473), the irst warrior-king and empire builder. The introduction of commemorative heads and large metal sculptures and forms
into the Benin corpus is attributed to him. Though Benin metalsmiths
already worked in brass and bronze before his time, Oba Ewuare I reorganized the guild systems by family and rewarded them with important
titles based on technical competence and innovative ideas and techniques.
Legend holds that he commissioned the royal guilds of casters and carvers
to create his portrait. Whereas the casters portrayed an idealized image
of the king at the prime of life, the carvers accurately captured his old
age at the time of the commission. In his anger, Oba Ewuare I elevated
the casters’ guild (Iguneronmwon) above the carvers’ guild (Igbesanmwan).
Scholars have cited this piece of oral history as proof for the formal
introduction of the commemorative bronze heads, dating it to about the
ifteenth century.7
As oral traditions suggest, it was also during the reign of Oba Ewuare
I that the stately beaded dress worn by the oba and the council of chiefs
was introduced. He is also credited with introducing the coral-bead crown,
/
In accordance with longstanding traditions instituted during the reign of Oba Ewuare
I in the ifteenth century and which survived
the changes that came in the wake of the puniFIG. 4
tive expedition, a new king’s commission for
Bronze and brass heads at the foot
of Oba Ewuare II’s throne.
the production of a commemorative head is
Royal Palace, Benin City, October 20, 2016.
Photo courtesy Dr. Peju Layiwola, Nigeria
a physical act of ushering the most recent king
into the pantheon of ancestor-kings. The new
head is placed alongside others on the royal
ancestral altar in the palace of the oba. Except
in unusual cases, the deceased predecessor
is usually the father of the new oba. One
notable example from history was during the
tumultuous seventeenth century, when the
kingdom was embroiled in a civil war after the
death of the last warrior king, Oba Ehengbuda,
and following the short reign of his son, Ohuan.
Different factions of the royal family vied for
3
the titular kingship in the absence of a direct
line of descent. By venerating and memorializing their predecessors through corporeal
representation, successive obas enabled the
practice of visually inscribing Benin history.
Typically, the crown prince, or edaiken,
undergoes an elaborate and demanding ritual
process. He is escorted from the palace of the
heir-apparent in Uselu, where, upon the death
of the oba, he has repaired for ninety days,
and he slowly proceeds through various important sites in the kingdom, accompanied by
4
Uselu chiefs. His irst stop is at the sacred
palm tree, Udin Amamieson-aimiuwa, at the
outskirts of Benin City. He climbs the tree symbolically, a practice that
harks back to the ifteenth century, when Oba Ewuare I established it. The
crown prince then continues to Usama to complete several important rites,
including picking his dynastic name. Usama was where Oranmiyan, the
progenitor of the post-Ogisos dynasty, built the irst palace, and where succeeding obas lived until the palace was moved to the center of Benin City
by Oba Ewedo in late thirteenth century. Finally, when the heir-apparent
reaches the royal palace in a triumphant procession and great fanfare in
the company of palace chiefs, heralded by traditional songs and outpour-
FIG. 3
Oba Ewuare II,
installation ceremony.
Benin City, October 20, 2016.
Photo courtesy Dr. Peju Layiwola, Nigeria
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FIG. 5
Edo peoples
Altar Portrait of an Oba
18th century
Bronze
11 8 × 9 × 9 in. (29.5 × 22.9 × 22.9 cm.)
The Menil Collection, Houston
Photo: Paul Hester
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silhouette w/
shadow
5
Relatively speaking, RISD’s head is of a different style when compared to the Menil Collection’s altar portrait of an oba [Fig. 5], whose
provenance is traced directly to the Benin royal court, having once
belonged to a British colonel who participated in the infamous sack of
Benin. Unlike RISD’s bronze head, the Menil Collection’s example has a
lange encrusted with deied zoomorphic forms (such as the royal leopard), as well as mudish, crocodiles, and pythons associated with the
revered water goddess Olokun. The lange became an essential part of
commemorative heads in the nineteenth century, suggesting innovations
in Benin’s visual practice that were catalyzed by transfer or adoption of
new techniques, availability of new materials, and introduction of new
Issue— 8
which has become an important insignia of the monarchy. Though the
oba alone can be entirely bedecked in coral beads, from his crown to
his dress, as one of his praise names—“child of the beaded crown, child
of the beaded dress”—suggests, the oba relects a wider Benin sartorial
outlook. This is on full display during august occasions and ceremonial
events such as the coronation (Ugie Erha Oba), which celebrates and honors the royal lineage, and at the annual Igue, one of the most important
ritual ceremonies, devoted to safeguarding and enhancing the spiritual
power of the oba. During these ceremonies, the oba’s wives, the council
of chiefs, and high-ranking members of the Benin kingdom dress up
in ceremonial attire, bead necklaces, and headdresses, as was the case
during the inal installation ceremony of the new king Oba Ewuare II, the
thirty-ninth oba of Benin, on October 20, 2016. At the ceremony, people
turned out in large numbers in ceremonial wear and beads, showcasing
the elegant and fastidious attention the Benin pay to bodily appearance
and self-presentation.
Founded by Edo people, ancient Benin was one of the most powerful
of Africa’s historical kingdoms known to the European world. Benin’s
irst rulers, the Ogisos (sky kings)—who claimed direct descent from the
creator-god Osanobua through his youngest son, Idu—created a nascent
state by integrating autonomous settlements, according to Benin oral
traditions. An important economic power in an area described as the
Guinea Coast in old maps (comprising present-day West Africa), Benin
was already a thriving city-state and warrior kingdom when Portuguese
explorer Duarte Pacheco Pereira visited in the 1490s. Art in Benin
served multiple functions, ranging from commemoration, ancestral
deiication, and trade to historical documentation and literary purposes.
Benin people are profoundly proud of their past successes, which were
documented and advanced from the Benin court’s perspective.8
The commemorative heads provide a sense of a chronological outline of the Benin past. Together with other sculptural forms produced by
the guilds of royal casters and carvers, they chronicle political, militaristic, social, economic, and religious histories of the kingdom. Whether
the art in question is cast in brass, bronze, or any other form of metal or
carved in ivory or wood, contestations and debates remain in respect to
chronological sequencing tied either to dates or dynasties. Many scholars
recognize the excellent work done by the late anthropologist Philip Dark
in creating a typology of the Benin cast traditions to align with a chronology of Benin kings. Similarly, a lot of work has also been done by conservators in analyzing material compositions of Benin art, but outcomes vary
and remain inconclusive.9
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6
FIG. 6
Unidentiied Edo artist
Commemorative Head,
15th–18th century
Bronze, iron
7 11⁄16 × 7 8 × 6 8 in.
Saint Louis Art Museum,
Museum Purchase 12:1936
Quite often, notions of cultural authenticity
and artistic purity are ascribed to historical African
art, negating a long history of cultural exchange
and economic relationships between the African
continent and the rest of the world. Benin art is a good
example where the impact of external and internal
mercantile connections is strongly felt in visual
representations and artistic mediums. For example, the Benin’s irst
contact with Europe, according to known records, was with Portuguese
traders in the fourteenth century, and it had signiicant cultural
ramiications. Changes in representational styles in Benin sculptures
as typiied by the commemorative heads and in ivory carvings capture
some of the assimilation of outsider ideas and inluences.
Some of the excellent casting techniques and use of new materials
such as copper came with the Portuguese, whose image also became
part of the visual lexicon in Benin art, signaling militaristic might and
afluence. The intricately carved long ivory tusks that sit atop royal
portraits in the traditional altar settings (and are absent in museum
settings) are excellent indicators of the adoption of Portuguese carving
techniques, presenting hybrid representations of locals and foreigners
alike. Examples abound of the iconic image of Portuguese sailors inely
attired in period clothing, Portuguese coats of arms, and equestrian
igures. In addition to supplying Benin with irearms and mercenaries
to wage their wars, the Portuguese also supplied Benin with the highly
coveted coral beads in larger quantities, and with brass manilas that
were melted for casting.
Furthermore, studies have shown that although the practice of
placing the carved ivory tusks on commemorative heads and royal altars
started in the early seventeenth century, the practice of this display
increased signiicantly in the early eighteenth century with increased
ivory trade between the Benin kingdom and Dutch merchants.10 The
higher commercial value of ivory resulting from international trade
enhanced the material’s social and symbolic capital and was relected
in ritual and artistic practices. In a sense and in addition, cultural auras
and values of the Benin’s trading partners were organically assimilated,
as shown in the art. It can thus be argued that while the commemorative
heads illuminate the dynastic history of Benin, the ivory carvings—
including those created as souvenirs for the European market, which
clearly represent the prosperity that attended the glory years of empire—
visually narrate the economic history of the kingdom.
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aesthetic ideas. In addition, whereas RISD’s head appears tilted backward in its orientation, the Menil Collection’s portrait seems sturdier and
ramrod straight. The ears of the two heads are also different, which could
either signal an artistic or symbolic intervention. Both stylized heads are
remarkably different from the more naturalistic uncrowned head [Fig. 6]
in the Saint Louis Museum’s collection, although all three are altar pieces,
displayed in the palace’s shrine. The uncrowned heads, or trophy heads
as they are now called in scholarship, are considered the earliest examples
of Benin bronze heads. There is a consensus that they are also the irst
examples of Benin heads produced using cire perdue or lost-wax, a traditional method of metal casting that involves creating a wax model, covering it in clay to create a mold, heating to ease out the wax, adding liquid
metal to the vacant space, and then leaving it to irm. The heads produced
using the cire perdue technique vary from the smaller and thinly cast to
more sophisticated larger and thicker examples, which suggest improvement in casting techniques as time went by.
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The kingdom’s visual history unfolds with greater vigor each time
we engage RISD’s head. We are forced to ask critical questions about
its former life as an altarpiece that served important ritual function for
the Benin people, as compared to its status today, as a museum object
admired for its aesthetic qualities and as a vector of Benin’s cultural past.
The goal is not to point accusatory ingers, as Oba Erediauwa (1979–2016)
stated in his opening speech during the centenary event.15 Instead it is to
seek fresh pathways for the past to enlighten the present.
Depending on which side of the art-historical debates one inds
oneself, Benin art has either remained stuck in pre–punitive expedition
aesthetics and styles or has evolved in small increments since the
monarchy was reestablished in 1914. Art historian Joseph Nevadomsky
charges that “virtually all of the art historical work devoted to Benin
takes 1897 as its terminus ad quem,” with less regard for innovative
strategies that have continued to lourish in the twentieth and twenty-irst
centuries.16 Similarly, Charles Gore argues that that major innovations in
casting techniques and accompanying social practices in the twentiethcentury have not attracted suficient art historical attention. Yet, as he
equally suggests, present-day Benin art remains wedded to its precolonial
past. In part, this is the result of its success in the Western imagination,
boosted by the intellectual work of art historians and anthropologists and
the subsequent allure of commodiication.17 Or perhaps, and beyond the
demands of the market, the post-1914 royal court and guilds of casters
and carvers have been nostalgic for the precolonial glory days of the
kingdom, longing for an authentic Benin identity that only the visual past
can provide.
Yet as Benin’s visual history has shown, if we are to consider the
ingenious hybridism that attended the arts over the many centuries
preceding the punitive expedition, the royal palace and the various
artistic guilds have always responded to a changing world. The reliance
on stock imageries and forms which now constitute cultural heritage
might be understood as the way in which the oba and the Edo people
today reimagine and negotiate what it means to be Benin in postcolonial
Nigeria, against the backdrop of existential conditions and the force of
contemporary globalization.
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Although visual records show that the Portuguese had a tremendous
impact on Benin art through the introduction of brass and new carving
techniques, the earliest outside inluence on Benin art came from their
immediate neighbors, particularly the Yoruba. Oral traditions suggest
that Oba Oguola requested a master caster from the Oni of Ife, who
sent Iguegha to him. Iguegha introduced several styles and techniques,
including the lost-wax casting technique, and became deiied upon
his death, worshipped ever since by the guild of brass casters.11 The
naturalism achieved earlier on in Benin art, as seen in the uncrowned or
trophy head, is attributed to a virtuosity learned from Ife, the ancestral
heartland of the Yoruba.12 Naturalistically rendered and idealized terracotta commemorative heads are part of the corpora of both Benin and
Yoruba arts, although there are stylistic differences which are culturally
speciic. For instance, whereas the Benin terra-cotta heads are more
robust looking, with rounded cheeks and eyes, the Ife terra-cotta heads
have leaner features. Also, the scariication patterns run from top to
bottom on the Ife heads, while those on the Benin heads are often three
or four incisions above the eyes.
In addition, several cultures abutting the kingdom, such as the Igbo
(neighbors farther to the east) and the Igala (in central Nigeria), would
have inluenced Benin art, and vice versa. Trophy or uncrowned heads
(such as the Saint Louis Museum’s collection’s example) are decapitated
heads of defeated kings, a practice of headhunting attributed to the
Igbo.13 The heads were sent to guilds to be cast in bronze or brass to be
included in the Benin war altars memorializing the kingdom’s great
victories in major battles, such as those against the Igbo and Igala,14 and/
or to serve as a cautionary note to potential renegade vassal states.
The Benin’s artistic achievements, among the most revered and
celebrated in African art, continue to ire contemporary imagination.
Though the sovereignty and inluence of the present-day Benin kingdom
have been largely diminished, its rich ritual traditions continue to
thrive, having withstood the force of the colonial encounter. The year
1997 marked the centenary of the punitive expedition, the historic
event that changed the fate of the last holdout against British colonial
forces in Nigeria. A life in exile in Calabar for Oba Ovonramwen, the last
precolonial king, and his subsequent death in 1914 marked the end of
an era and the beginning of a new chapter for the kingdom as a part of
Nigeria. In 1914, the British colonial power restored the role of the oba,
allowing Oba Eweka II to ascend the throne of his father, Ovonramwen,
and amalgamating its southern and northern protectorates to create the
country of Nigeria.
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1 O. M. Dalton, “Booty from Benin,” English Illustrated Magazine, vol. XVIII
(1898), 419. Cited in Annie E. Coombes, Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material
Culture and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), 7.
2 Ibid.
3 Philip J. C. Dark, An Introduction to Benin Art and Technology (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1973).
4 Alisa LaGamma, “Eternal Ancestors: The Art of the Central African Reliquary,”
African Arts 40, no. 4 (Winter 2007): 32–43.
5 Babatunde Lawal, “Orí: The Signiicance of the Head in Yoruba Sculpture,”
Journal of Anthropological Research 41, no. 1 (Spring 1985): 91–103.
6 Rowland Abidoun, “Àse: Verbalizing and Visualizing Creative Power Through
Art,” Journal of Religion in Africa 24, fasc. 4 (November 1994): 309–22.
7 Paula Girshick Ben-Amos, The Art of Benin, rev. ed. (London: Trustees of the
British Museum; Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), 33.
8 Ben-Amos, The Art of Benin, rev. ed., 20.
9 See, for example, Frank Willett, Ben Torsney, and Mark Ritchie, “Composition
and Style: An Examination of the Benin ‘Bronze’ Heads,” African Arts 27, no. 3
(July 1994): 60–67.
10 Ben-Amos, The Art of Benin, rev. ed., 37.
11 Jacob Egharevba, A Short History of Benin, rev. ed., (Ibadan: University of
Ibadan, 1968, 12).
12 See, for example, Douglas Fraser, “The Fish-Legged Figure in Benin and
Yoruba Art, in African Art and Leadership, ed. Douglas Fraser and Herbert M.
Cole (Madison, Milwaukee, and London: The University of Wisconsin Press),
261–94.
13 Barbara Blackmun, “Altar Heads,” in African Art from the Menil Collection, ed.
Kristina Van Dyke (Houston: Menil Foundation, Inc., 2008), 128.
14 Charles Hercules Read and Ormonde Maddock Dalton, Antiquities from
the City of Benin and from Other Parts of West Africa in the British Museum
(London: British Museum; Longman and Co [irst ed.], 1899), 6; cited in Ben
Amos, The Art of Benin, rev. ed., 39.
15 Oba Erediauwa, “Opening Ceremony Address,” African Arts 30, no. 3
(Summer 1997): 30–33
16 Joseph Nevadomsky, Contemporary Art and Artists in Benin City,” African
Arts 30, no. 4 (Autumn 1997): 54–63.
17 Charles Gore, “Casting Identities in Contemporary Benin City,” African Arts
30, no. 3 (Summer 1997): 57.