A
proverb from Ghana declares that:
A woman is a flower in a garden; her husband is the fence around
it'."
African art has a long and surprisingly controversial history. Up
until recently, the designation "African" was usually
only bestowed on the arts of Black Africa, i.e., the cultures and
peoples living in sub-Saharan Africa. The non-black peoples of North,
the blacks of the Horn of Africa, as well as the art of Ancient
Egypt, generally were not included under the rubric of African art.
Recently, however, there has been a movement among African art historians
and other scholars to include the visual culture of these areas,
since all the cultures that produced them, in fact, are located
within the geographic boundaries of the African continent.
The notion is that by including all African cultures and their visual
culture in African art, laypersons will gain a greater understanding
of the continent's cultural diversity. Since there was often a confluence
of traditional African, Islamic and Mediterranean cultures, scholars
have found that drawing distinct divisions among Islam, ancient
Egypt, the Mediterranean, and traditional African societies makes
little sense.
Finally, the arts of the people of the African
diaspora, prevalent in Brazil, the Caribbean, and the southeastern
United States,
have also begun to be included in the study of African art as products
of the African diaspora.
