Circuits of African Art/ Paths of Wood: Exploring an Anthropological Trail By Paul Stoller

This chapter starts with a depiction of The New York International Tribal Antiques Show at the Seventh Regent Armory on Park Avenue. Stoller continues on to prove how the economic and social forces of globalization have changed art worlds. African art has been shaped and brought into the Western world by The Museum of Primitive Art, which later became a wing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)’s 1984 exhibition called “Primitivism” made tribal art even more acceptable by demonstrating how primitive art has inspired great artists like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.
African statues and masks, referred to as “wood”, are also sold and traded at The Warehouse near the Hudson River in Chelsea. Stoller analyzes the factors that influence and drive these traders to come to America. He sites Islam as being closely linked with merchant capital. “Muhammad, whose wife Fatima was herself a prosperous merchant, deemed trade an honorable profession (pg.95).” In the West African kinship system, age, gender, and generation are all very important. The head of the household, or great trader, sends out his “children” to distant markets to sell and trade. “Looking to move ‘wood’ and ‘mud,’ African mobile merchants travel from city to city, festival to festival…until they have depleted their inventories (pg.99).”
Stoller sites El Hadj Ousmane of Niger saying that the two main reasons for the increase of African art in North America is 1). The hype surrounding MOMA’s primitivism exhibit which increased the value of tribal art and attracted new collectors, and 2). the increasing appeal of Afrocentrism, which has increased much interest in Africa.
Transnational crossroads are created where West African art is sold to Westerners. It becomes a place of complex dynamics where two completely different social worlds collide. Sometimes, as Stoller says, these crossroads can lead to a greater understanding of different cultures by both sides. However, sometimes they can lead to misunderstandings and anger.
From reading this article, I became more aware of the hurdles and issues between buyers and traders. Also, I learned of the journey of African art. From kinship villages to fast-paced contemporary worlds, traders have to adjust to the different flows.