Aspects of Yoruba Aesthetics Publication: The Art Bulletin Author: Campbell, Bolaji Date published: June 1, 2013 DAVID T. DORIS Vigilant Things: On Thieves, Yoruba Anti-Aesthetics, and the Fates of Ordinary Objects in Nigeria Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011. 420 pp., 78 color ills., 12 b/w. $60.00 What began for David Doris as a graduate student in a darkened lecture hall in the autumn of 1995 has today culminated in one of the most rigorous and compelling studies on aale, that ubiquitous yet enigmatic object in the Yoruba visual and social landscape and the theoretical discourses that frame, define, and engage its critical articulation. Through this study, Doris has produced a very lucid and robust account, written in a refreshing first-person narrative. Succinctly put, Aale makes permeable the boundaries of easy dichotomies: display and power, the visible and the invisible (p. 16), and operates coverüy as allegorical emblems of what must not be done (p. 358). Aale are cautious reminders and warnings as well as signposts intended to alert people to the devastating consequences of transgression of societal and ethical norms and values. Aale is the proverbial elephant in the room we cannot ignore. To place aale on a piece of property, space, or object is to draw attention to its symbolic import as signification of ownership, on the one hand, and as a site for the deployment of power, on the other (p. 115). The book is divided into three parts. The first focuses on the processes of creating aale, the second on what the author categorizes as a call and response, underpinning the aesthetic notion of looking and remembering, the concept of the eye, and the meaning and symbolism of color. Part three presents aale as portraits and punishments and, by extension, as embodiment and paradigmatic representation of sufferings and uselessness, which are portrayed in combs and rags, tattered shoes and snail shells, corncobs and brooms, rusted iron and red peppers. In the conclusion, the author attempts to situate aale within an invented historical past that is mediated by grafting its meaning, use, and proliferation on the twelfth-century potsherd pavement from Ife, showing how these are of immediate relevance to modern military dictatorship and political adventurism during the draconian rule of the late General Sanni Abacha in the closing decades of twentieth-century Nigeria. Although Doris makes a compelling argument throughout the book for classifying aale as an image of artistic contemplation, or aworan, I will insist that aale does not qualify and cannot be regarded as awman. It is much more complex than that. Used generally with regard to two-dimensional images in drawing or photography, aworan can be broken into its constituent morphemes: a-wo, the act of looking, seeing, encountering, or simply to behold, with iran, a spectacle, an apparition, a vision that elicits some level or degree of admiration, puzzlement, amusement, and fantasy in the beholder. Simply put, a-wo-iran literally implies: wesaw-a-spectacle. In the nominalization process, the i in iran has been dropped, and the word ran means to send, to sew, to weave into, to spread or creep.1 This is why awo-iran is different from aworan. One would have preferred that Doris had used the term aworanti in defining aale. In that respect, the operational word would have implied weaving together memories and visions of the past. It should be stated right away that aworanti in essence is very different from aworan. What could be remembered may not necessarily stimulate instant delight or admiration. Because Yoruba is a tonal language, another inflection and modulation of the tones in the operational word aworan transforms it into an adjectival noun becoming the spectator, or one who is watching some spectacle.2 It is for this reason that aale are not aworan, although they could be construed as aworanti, which triggers memory. For practical purposes, aworan pertains only to two-dimensional images on paper, be it photography, line drawing, or any other form of artistic representation. In contrast, aale are basically three-dimensional impregnated sculptural constructs, which are never celebrated or regarded as aesthetically pleasing or worthy of theorizing about. The distinction between aworan and atvoranti is therefore crucial for our understanding of the cultural object and its significance in the discipline of Yoruba art history in particular and the field of African expressive cultures in general. There is no gainsaying the fact that aale might be regarded as a design, if we are ready to subject it to some Western aesthetic parameters as antiaesthetic, almost in the same mold as when Marcel Duchamp transformed a found object, for instance, a urinal into a fountain. In that regard, we could conceptually begin to relate to it as a form, an object, the product of artistic imagination, insofar as it may be seen and categorized as an artistic image or object. Perhaps, in that way, we could comfortably relate to it by regarding it as an assemblage, a sculptural construct, a piece of conceptual art, an exemplar of Fluxus or Arte Povera, created in the Dada tradition. Pushed a little further, the argument weakens and becomes convoluted if we impose that polysemous definition of artistic object in the Yoruba understanding of the term, as an ise ana, an art form or a design. But if for the sake of argument we are persuaded to regard or classify aale as an absurdist art, it might reside strictly at the level of the functional, that is, as a useful, seemingly useless thing having that important criterion of Yoruba aesthetic component: functional utility or effectiveness - uñando - an important aesthetic consciousness made popular by Babatunde Lawal for all artistic objects or creative enterprise.3 Yet aale is not an object or image for admiration; its denotative and connotative meanings cannot suddenly elevate or transform it into that realm of aesthetic appreciation of its formal qualities. It is an object that is greatly despised, usually feared, and constantly avoided. It neither attempts nor pretends to be pleasing, like an aworan. It does not and cannot elicit any level of aesthetic admiration and enjoyment in the creator or in the spectator - aworan - because, quite frankly, one never hears if an aale was beautiful or ugly. Aale is simply not an object to mess with. And in recognition of this bewildering analytic proposition Doris states that aale, after all, are not intended to delight their viewers (pp. 189-90). Of course, they could delight, but not to the extent of using it to decorate a dinner table or put on a wall in ones living room. A popular Yoruba proverb best exemplifies the scenario: The insane person may be pleasant to watch as a source of amusement, even though no one prays to have one as an offspring.4 This should not, however, automatically classify or make aale antiaesthetics in the Dada tradition. The pertinent questions to ask are: Do the users and makers of aale call their work antiaesthetics? Where does this stem from? What is die equivalent of antiaesthetics in the Yoruba language? In my continuous study of Yoruba art and culture in the last three decades, I have not encountered any Yoruba equivalent for the term antiaesthetics. There is a strong feeling here that the author might have unwittingly attempted to impose a Western theoretical paradigm on aale within the annals of Yoruba visual culture study. Fully mindful of this perplexing dilemma, Doris acknowledges right from the onset that he might have inadvertently misjudged the object by transforming it into something it was not (p. 12), which pardy explains some of the incredulous and jeering responses he encountered in southwestern Nigeria whenever it became known that he was investigating the subject of aale, such as oyinbo, omo a so okun dere (white man,5 descendant of those who transform the ordinary ocean into spectacular sculptural construct for contemplation). The average Yoruba cannot fully understand or appreciate such dogged intellectual pursuits seeking to translate ordinary mundane cultural signifiers into fetishized objects of art historical discourse. Indeed, some of these perplexing scenarios were never truly addressed nor adequately resolved throughout the course of the investigation. If anything, Doriss understanding and use of the Yoruba language, which sometimes allowed him to take certain liberties with interpretations that might otherwise be deemed too risky and a little ambiguous to a native speaker, further complicates the matter. A case in point is his explication of the origin and meaning of the word ojubo, which was incorrectly defined as the face of sacrifice or the eyes of sacrifice (p. 131). He assumed that the word might have originated from a contraction of two root words: oju (eyes) and ebo (sacrifice). In fact, ojubo appropriately derives from oju (eye, face, presence, or site) and ibo (the act of worship or devotional sacrifice). Ojubo can imply only a place or site of worship, an altar, face, or location where sacrifices may be offered. It is both a seat and a site; a repository and nexus of power where devotees might encounter the transcendental power and authority of the orisa, which initiates the much needed dialogue or communicatíon between die worshipers and the worshiped.*1 Based on the foregoing, ojubo is neither the face nor the eyes of sacrifice. Clearly, there are limitations to too much reliance on textbook translation of foreign languages into English, with its concomitant problem of intertextual and intercultural miscommunication; something is usually lost or obfuscated in the process. The rules of grammar in the English language might not necessarily be applicable with regard to a complex language such as Yoruba. Setting aside some of these issues, I find that the principal strength of die book resides in its ability to synthesize some of the leading theoretical discourses from academe in order to buttress, explicate, and engage the salient issues, including a very detailed and rigorous analysis and interpretation of a variety of aale objects. While building on the writings of Robert Farris Thompson,7 Babatunde Lawal,8 Rowland Abiodun,9 Olabiyi Yai,10 and Barry Hallen on Yoruba aesthetics, Doris weaves a compelling model of interpretation structured on critical observation and analysis of the entire artistic process of creating and using aale based on interviews with a variety of informants on this enigmatic object of power. While the theoretical concerns framing the brilliant analysis in the book are drawn mostly from a variety of interdisciplinary backgrounds, including visual culture studies, semiotics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, art history, moral and aesthetic philosophy, and cultural studies, Doris concluded that he was not particularly faithful to any one of them (p. 32), privileging instead the sacred knowledge of Ifa provided by a coterie of diviners, medicine men, and casual observers who, with the right amount of beer and schnapps and plenty of naira in hand (p. 261), presented themselves as leading authorities and dependable informants capable of theorizing on and articulating the nuances and meaning of the enigmatic cultural object. Perhaps the singular exception was Babalawo Kolawole Oshitola, a reputable Yoruba diviner, first made famous by Margaret Drewal in her seminal work on Yoruba ritual performance.12 Paradoxically, one of the most apparent strengths of the book could all too easily be construed as perhaps its most problematic: the tendency to rely too much on a questionable pool of informants for much of the analysis, without any attempt to sift the grain from the chaff, as it were. Such a perplexing situation was inevitably highlighted in the most worrisome classification of the world-renowned potsherd pavement from Ife as aale. The author never attempted to justify this very troubling hypothesis, except by attributing his new theory to information gleaned from one Olosanyin Ganiyu Awotunde, a casual resident of Ife who had migrated there from Ekitiland (pp. 353-56). The perplexing argument came at the end of the book, thereby undermining the strength of an otherwise engaging and beautifully written account. In an attempt to historicize and fit aale into that time-honored convention of Yoruba visual culture, Doris was presented with a very seductive proposition he could not refuse, a baffling trap that, all too frequently, many researchers have easily fallen into. Virtually every informant encountered by the author was capable of articulating on some intellectual level on aale. And quite a few others could even produce the curious object for his documentation and analysis. Unfortunately, this leaves the critical reader to wonder, given the ubiquitous nature and commonality of the object, whether the researcher was not being overüy manipulated or simply taken advantage of, or perhaps if one was not observing a well-orchestrated play. On a peripheral level, the average Yoruba on the university campuses or in the urban centers where much of the research was conducted might have been sufficiently alienated from the significant import, use, and meaning of the cultural object today in a postmodern globalized society. Yet the picture that emerges contradicts that. Most of the illustrations in the book appear rather contrived. Some of the objects in the illustrations are somehow unaffected by the vagaries of tropical weather conditions, thereby making the objects appear too sleek, too well put together, and, therefore, suspicious. Having spent the greater part of my formative years in Yorubaland, and given my experiences and familiarity with the cultural object as a scholar, I am persuaded that much of what is illustrated in this book cannot by any stretch of the imagination be regarded as authentic aale capable of fending off theft and transgression in modern Yoruba society. Doris could have pursued the prospects of new modes of making and using aale with new materials, such as the noose and die spent shotgun cartridges he analyzed on page 238. Quite possibly, the new materials may potentially be emblematic of the new direcüon in the transformation of the intriguing cultural object in the global environment of the twenty-first century. Additionally, his analysis of the oral literature, particularly Ifa orature, has not sufficienüy dwelled on or integrated other verbalized components of aale into the study. Regrettably, his attention was rather focused more on the museum-bound objects, which a few of his informants were all too willing to re-create, especially some of those conventional üme-honored constructs - like tattered shoes and spoons, brooms and corncobs, rags and combs, as well as red peppers and fresh palm fronds, among others - generally, the old-type aale that very few people know about today. Aale must be activated with die efficacious power of the spoken word, while these modern-day constructs are rather suspect. Unfortunately, Doris never documented the very important element of the verbal, like ofo, ogede, ayajo, odu, esa, gbetu-gbetu, and epe, which activates tiiem, thereby transforming them into powerful objects that make things happen. But how then can one honestly make sense of this rather perplexing and fascinating book; which analytical model could one apply in engaging it? Aale recognizes discord, disjunctions, and disorder as integral elements of tradition, change, and innovation. While we privilege asa titun, an integral element of newness and modernity, asa atijo, traditions of the past, alert us to the futility and dangers inherent in disjunctions. Aale, with its own aesthetics - not an antiaesthetic - introduces us to a curious blend of disparate elements like the harlequin robe, full of variegated disjunctions, multiplex hues and colors, scintillating shapes and patterns - an inordinate intermingling that sometimes creates confusion, difference, and departures but invariably inflicts curses. Vigilant Things is essentially a close iconographie reading of the material elements in aale, as viable metaphor and proverb of seeing, bringing to the fore the complexity of commingling these elements, the sacred and the secular, the formal and the interpretative, the performative and the inaudibly passive, the broken and the discarded, the aggressive and the confrontational, the fearful and the terrifying, and the critical means of engaging diem in the complicated field of Yoruba cultural study. In spite of some of its shortcomings, however, Vigilant Things: On Thieves, Yoruba AntiAesthetics, and the Fates of Ordinary Objects in Nigeria is highly recommended. Doris must be commended for this brilliant work. It is unrivaled in its scope, ambitious in its analysis and interpretations, a must-read for students, scholars, and casual observers interested in deepening their knowledge in the field of African art history. Notes 1. For more on the notion of tran and iranti as concepts of selective remembering, see Bolaji Campbell, Painting for the Cods: Art and Aesthetics of Yoruba Religious Murals (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2008), 18. 2. For further elaboration on the concepì of aworan, see Babatunde Lawal, Aworan: Representing the Self and Its Metaphysical Other in Yoruba Art, Art Bulletin 83, no. 3 (2001): 498-526. 3. See Babatunde Lawal, Divinity, Creativity and Humanity in Yoruba Aesthetics, in Before Pangea: New Essays in Transcultural Aesthetics, ed. Eugenio Benitez (Sydney: Sydney Society of Literature and Aesthetics, 2005), 161-74. 4. Rowland Abiodun, The Future of African Art Studies: The African Perspective, in African Art Studies: The State of the Discipline; Papers Presented at a Symposium Organized by the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, September 16, i987 (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of African Art, 1990), 70: Were dun un wo, sugbon ko se e bi lomo. 5. European, colonialist Other, or, more broadly, Oyinbo are terms used for Westerners or for the condition of being too overtly Westernized in orientation and attitude. 6. For further explication on the concept of ojubo as site of spiritual power, see Campbell, Painting for the Gods, 37. 7. Robert Farris Thompson, Yoruba Artistic Criteria, in Traditional Artist in African Societies, ed. Warren dAzevedo (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973). 8. Babatunde Lawal, Some Aspects of Yoruba Aesthetics, British journal of Aesthetics 14, no. 3 (1974): 15. 9. Rowland Abiodun, Understanding Yoruba Art and Aesthetics: The Concept of Ase, African Arts 27, no. 3 (1994): 68-78. 102-3. 10. See Olabiyi Yai, Tradition and the Yoruba Artist, African Arts 32, no. 1 (1999): 32-35: and idem, In Praise of Metonymy: The Concept of Tradition and Creativity in die Transmission of Yoruba Artistry over Time and Space, in The Yoruba Artist: Neiv Theoretical Perspectives on African Arts, ed. Rowland Abiodun, Henry Drewal, and John Pemberton III (Washington, D.C.: Smidisonian Institution Press, 1994), 107-15. 11. Barry Hallen, The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Discourse about Values in Yoruba Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000). 12. Margaret Drewal, Yoruba Ritual: Performance, Play, Agency (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992); and idem, Embodied Practice/ Embodied History: Mastery of Metaphor in the Performances of Diviner Kolawole Ositola, in Abiodun, Drewal, and Pemberton, The Yoruba Artist, 170-90. Henry Drewal has also published materials on Oshilola and Yoruba ritual performance in general. Author affiliation: BOLAj] Campbell is associate professor of African and African diaspora art history at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence [Department of History of Art and Visual Culture, Rhode Island School of Design, 2 College Street, Providence, R.I. 02903].
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