Fetish: Magic Figures in Central Africa

Journal of Art Historiography

关键词: ‘fetish’;    nkisi;    Kongo;    Kuba;    patination;    surface;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Originally published in Anthony Skelton (ed.), Fetishism: Visualising Power and Desire, London: The South Bank Centre in collaboration with Lund Humphries Publishers, 1995. This article was originally published as a catalogue essay accompanying an exhibition exploring the idea of ‘fetishism’ in western art and thought.It discusses a well-known African example, the nkisi and related objects of the Kongo peoples of west central Africa and examines its uses and significance.Expectations based on their encrusted surfaces and nailed appearance – and on the apparent disjunction between indigenous belief and practice and Christian mission – have led to the application of the term ‘fetish’; in reality their purposes move well beyond those of vague magical application.Their appearance is compared with that of the shiny, well-patinated dynastic sculpture of the Kuba further into the equatorial forests. If one is conventionally regarded as about magical agency the other is discussed as an adjunct to royal legitimacy. Yet their divergent appearances are, it is suggested, a product of a convergent idea that for an object to have an active role in human affairs it needs to be activated.

【 授权许可】

Unknown