My gratitude goes to our men and women, most of whom have lost their lives in saying the truth. Truth must prevail; I have realized danger of the silence conspiracy to erase anything African in the face of the earth. The fact that civilization of man started in African has disappeared from the pages of history books, even pyramids of Egypt to some people were built by aliens, It is too good to be African; if given a chance to recreate the map of Africa, Egypt and some part of South African will definitely be carved out of the map to serve their purpose.
There have been conflicting records of when Europeans came in contact with African Art. With due respect to our art historians who have made references to 1905 as the year of European first contact with African Art as widely documented. I beg to disagree. We should not forget the looting of Benin Art treasures. The Punitive Expedition of 1897 was a military excursion by a British force of 1,200 under Admiral Sir Harry Rawson that captured, burned, and looted the city of Benin, incidentally bringing to an end the highly sophisticated West African Kingdom of Benin.
Secondly, the Scramble for Africa (or the Rat Race for Africa) was the proliferation of conflicting European claims to African territory during the New Imperialism period, between the 1880s and the start of World War I. This era was more of art and treasures than territories. You are free to disagree. You can as well tell me of any other continent; that has suffered massive global extortion and exploitation of arts and culture. A visit to museums around the world will shade more light on this.
The earliest documented entry of a piece of African art into a European collection occurred around 1470, with a work that a Portuguese collector acquired from the kingdom of Kongo.
Please permit me to introduce the so called founder of cubism and modern art, Picasso and his rivalry and partner in plagiarism Matisse, who were first European avant-garde artist collectors of African Art. His full name was Pablo (or Pablito) Diego Jose Santiago Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Crispin Crispiniano de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisima Trinidad Ruiz Blasco y Picasso Lopez. We know him today as simply Picasso.
Pablo was born to father, who was also an artist, known as José Ruiz y Blasco; his mother was Maria Picasso y Lopez. His earliest paintings were signed Pablo Ruiz after his father, but around 1901 he started using his mother's name, Picasso. He studied graphics in Spain and graduated in 1900.
Pablo was among the long list of bored minds, whose art of imitation and copying couldn’t sustain. He found himself in a nasty dance of poverty and isolation because no artist would want to risk their creations with a copy artist like Picasso. Shortly after graduation He moved to France 1901 where he quickly laid his hands on African art works. In his words I do not seek. I find. You can imagine the innocent creations of African masters in the hands of a man who had copied art most of youthful age. Pablo believed that Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.
Modern art is simply a conspiracy child of racism and imperialism. The so-called founder had these to say. Today, as you know, I am famous and very rich. But when completely alone with myself, I haven't the nerve to consider myself an artist in the great and ancient sense of the word. There have been great painters like Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt and Goya. I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time. What was his time? It was said the confession is good for the soul.
In the part 1 of this article I mentioned the conspiracy of European avant-garde artists, art collectors, art critics, art historians and imperialist to create away out of their creative drought using African Art as escape goat. The artistic elite was mainly concerned with the rejection of academic tradition. African art became a source of inspiration for these artists who were searching for systems of representation other than naturalism and illusionism. The critic front-runner of this group was the French art critic Louis Vauxcelles who coined the term Cubism after seeing the landscapes Braque had painted in 1908 at L'Estaque in emulation of Cézanne. Vauxcelles called the geometric forms in the highly abstracted works "cubes."
Louis Vauxcelles (1870-?) was an influential French art critic. To him are attributed the terms Fauvism (1905), and cubism. Vauxcelles coined the phrase 'les fauves' (translated as 'wild beasts') to describe a circle of painters associated with Matisse as well as the audiences who criticised them (he couldn't decide which were more arrogant).But an artist can demonstrate zero proof of his artistic ability in the context of established representative visual art, yet he could end up as a master of modern art? Tell me you smell something funny about this too.
The Cubist painters rejected their inherited concept that art should copy nature, or that they should adopt the traditional techniques of perspective, modeling, and foreshortening. They wanted instead to emphasize the two-dimensionality of the canvas. So they reduced and fractured objects into geometric forms, and then realigned these within a shallow, reliefs like space. They also used multiple or contrasting vantage points. Louis Vauxcelles and his group were not interested in professionalism but escapism and name calling for the propagation of their supremacy vision. Pablo had them all fooled; the agony is that many are still fooled till date. I guest because of their common denominator of hate and racist drive, none really cared about the long time effect of their deceit.
In the words of Pablo the founder of your modern art; an artist must know how to convince others of the truth of his lies. The people who make art their business are mostly imposters. There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality. How naïve can you be, the man who had over 100 African art in his collection, copied and made money of them do not believe in abstraction.
Lets look into more facts in the part 3 coming soon.
