Free Essay On African Art

African Art: An African Perspective is a video directed by Aminatta forna in 1995 in which she offers Africans a place to show to the westerners the art and traditions they embrace and cherish. It explains that African art is created by African people and includes mainly masks and figures. The African art is used world wide for decorations and other purposes. The video explains the nature and perspective of African art. Aminatta creates a platform whereby the nature and context of African art is explained to the outside world. In addition, Aminatta includes interviews of African artists in the video and asks them what they think of African art and to express their opinions on African art. The video explains the artists views and they clearly state that artists derive all their work from their own cultural and traditions and most European and American artists have emulated the African artistic styles and traditions. The artists state that great diversity of art is being produced from Africa and African art history has taken a very important role in influencing the history and culture of the world.
The video implies that, the cultural, social and artistic African art has highly impacted the western world. Most artists from the western world emulate the culture and the artistic style of African art to create their arts. The African artists produce different types of arts ranging from masks, sculptures, pottery, and basketry just to mention but a few and this are the arts mostly used for decoration in the western world. Most masks and sculptures used in the cinemas and museums in the western world all come from African arts. In this narrative, Aminatta explains how the western world emulated the African culture and traditions. The western world is highly influenced by the African culture since Africa has become a home of great and booming modern fine art and traditional culture which is being embraced by the western world. African art is considered as a cultural heritage that leads Africa to a historical and geographical journey to success.