[Introduction][Thursday Programme][Friday Programme]
Ibadan 1960 – Art, History and Literature
Ibadan dun (Ibadan is sweet)
John Picton Emeritus Professor of African Art in the University of London, Department of Art and Archaeology School of Oriental and African Studies
Abstract
Ibadan is a modern city: it always was; and 'Ibadan is Sweet' (ie is a happy place) is the title of a well-known starch-resist indigo-dyed cloth, made using a technique developed in Ibadan some time after its mid-19th-century foundation. This is, however, just one element in a consideration of the place of Ibadan in the inception and development of the unique local modernisms that characterise the developments in African visual practice since about 1850. It is of course inevitable, in the context of colonial government and missionary enterprise, that Europeans would also be entailed in this history; which is not to attribute these modernisms to Europe: that is a well-known misrepresentation. The key figure is the Lagos painter AIna Onabolu (1882-1963); and in Nigeria his initiatives were followed through by people such as Ben Enwonwu, Uche Okeke, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Yusuf Grillo and others. This narrative is well known, of course (though the early history of photography in Nigeria remains unknown, in contrast to what we now know, especially thanks to Revue Noire, of this medium in Sierra Leone, Senegal, Mali and Ghana); but what has not yet been fully recognised is the role of Ulli Beier in writing up this history, in promoting the work of Nigerian artists, and in bringing the work of Black and African artists to Nigeria, especially in the early 1960s. Much of this did not happen in Ibadan (Lagos, Zaria, Oshogbo, Nsukka, Ife, etc) but much of it did, particularly through the Mbari artists and writers club founded in Ibadan and in journals such as Odu and Black Orpheus published in Ibadan; and in any case Beier was employed by Ibadan university. Ibadan was, in addition, the (temporary) site both of Nigeria's first tertiary-level fine art department, which was moved to Zaria in the 1950s, and its first national museum, founded by Kenneth Murray (Onabolu's protege and Enwonwu's teacher), which opened in Lagos in 1957. Beier now lives in Australia; but Ibadan is also the burial place of Beier's great rival, Father Kevin Carroll, also responsible for the wide-ranging patronage of Nigerian artists.
Biography
John Picton, 1961-70 Department of Antiquities, Federal Government of Nigeria; 1970-79 Department of Ethnography, British Museum; 1979-2003 School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London, retiring as Emeritus Professor of African Art. His research and publications cover Yoruba and Edo (Benin) sculpture, masquerade and textile history in sub-Saharan Africa, and the transformations of African visual practice in the 19th and 20th centuries.
