Abstract

Art is for the artist his speech his way of communication and the image the recognizable shape the meaningful symbol is the basic unit of his language Line shape and colours though they may be beautiful and expensive are by no means images For us the image is a figured shape or symbol fashioned by the artist for his perceptions and imaginative experience It is born of past experience and it communicates It communicates because it has the capacity to refer to experiences that artist shares with his audience Art is willed no matter how much the artist may draw upon the instructive and unconscious level of his experiences a work of art remain a purposive act a humanization of nature The artists purpose achieves vitality and power in his images Take the great Blackbull of axcurx for example and old beast and a powerful one who has watched over the birth of many arts and many mythologies He is endowed with vitality which is an emblem of life itself Destroy the living power of the image and you have humbled and humiliated the artist the artist have made him a blind and powerless Samson fit only to guide the town of Palestine And of the various branches of arts and crafts perhaps by far the greatest and nearest to the African heart is sculpture This is so because as Luise Jefferson puts it in his Decorative Arts of Africa African Sculptures saved deeply rooted needs for the African These deep-seated needs we shall try to explore later in this paper