Title

The Typological Law of African Art

Description

[The Typological Law of African Art] shows that artistic creation in Black Africa goes through four phases:The objective moment, that of the realism of Nature.
The moment of abstraction, which disentangles from the object its essential lines.
The moment of themetisation, which, starting from the essential lines, creates a motif, a theme, a character of the alphabet proper to the language of our art.
The moment of synthesis or composition which, from the starting point of these characters, writes the work of art as a poem written.

If we represent these four moments by the tellers O.L.T.C. we have:O = The object (the objective moment) :
L = Its essential line (the moment of abstraction) ;
T = The theme (the moment of thematization) ;
C = the Composition (the moment of synthesis).

We can affirm that African artistic creation make the object passfrom O to L
from L to T
from T lo C.

This amply justifies the enunciation of this law by the formula:O — L — T — C.

But it would not be true to say that the creation of on art form always passes through these four stages. O may become T and pass to C without using L as intermediary. The law may therefore be shown as [in the figure].

Designer

Mveng, Engelbert

Date

1966

Source

The Function and Significance of Negro Art in the Life of the Peoples of Black Africa

Bibliographic Citation

Mveng, Engelbert. 1966. "The Function and Significance of Negro Art in the Life of the Peoples of Black Africa." In First World Festival of Negro Arts: Colloquium on Negro Art (1968). Society for African Culture (S.A.C.) and Editions Présence Africaine. Pages 16-17

has attribute

English Arrow

English Solid Line

depict things of type

English Sequence or Process

English Typological or Classification