*Africa art*

I leant about African art history and how it affects art in the present. During the lecture I learnt some interesting information that I didn’t know before the lecture.

On your right picture, the head is an orange brown colour. It was very close to reality and based on wood masks from Congo.

The mask stood by itself and Picasso just picked this one out. When I saw the pictures, I was very interested. The reason is because I have never thought about African Art. However, i knew that even Picasso was inspired from it. How amazingly true as even I found it inspiring After Picasso’s choice, European artists esteemed African art because it was ‘primitive’. African artists went on and then developed forms of art that were both African and Modern.

I visited the Sainsbury African Galleries in British museum. These galleries present the culture of African life, in the past and present. I could see African historical arts and contemporary arts. I picked one that drew my attention. This was a piece by El Anatsul’s. It was made of recycled metal foil bottle-neck wrappers and copper wire. It’s title was “Man’s Cloth”. However when I saw this i thought; is this a rug? Or art work? I was wondering how it was made like that and which technique he used. It looked like straw knitted together and this was particularly interesting to me as I had just learnt to knit and weave.