More on nationalism and Nigerian art.

The argument between Ugiomoh and Gbadegesin about nationalism in modern Nigerian art highlights the unfortunate situation of an African art history carried out without directly engaging the primary texts that framed such discourses in specific historical contexts. The history and role of the Zaria art society (1958-1962) in modern Nigerian art is the subject of much overvaluation and it is in urgent need of revision. Uche Okeke's enunciation of this history undergirds Oguibe's analysis of nationalism in modern Nigerian art, upon which Ugiomoh based his criticism of Zarianist art. The problem is that neither Uche Okeke nor Olu Oguibe interpret modern Nigerian art with any attention to the historical record and their conclusions are now largely redundant: Okeke's positions are faulted by his investment in a history of modern Nigerian art centered around his own interventions while Oguibe's art criticism is completely interpretative and unsupported by analysis of actual historical data. Most analyses of nationalism in modern Nigerian art uncritically adopt positions enunciated by these authors and as such reach problematic conclusions.

The agitation for Nigerian nationalism did not emerge in the 1950s; it dates back to the beginning of the colonial period (c. 1900-1914) when British occupation rendered subservient an entrenched class of Nigerian urban elite based in Lagos. The first newspapers to make nationalist demands were already active by 1910 and in the history of Nigeria, the nationalist project does not date to the activities of the independence generation (1950-1960) but to Herbert Macaulay (1864-1946) who founded the first Nigerian political party in 1923 and was widely considered the founder of Nigerian nationalism. Similarly, the first exposition of nationalist ideals in modern Nigerian art does not date to the Zarianists but to Aina Onabolu and Ben Enwonwu. Between Macaulay and the Nigerian nationalism of the 1950s, many significant Nigerians expanded on Macaulay's ideals to frame the agitation for political independence within which the Zarianists situated their call for a nationalist postcolonial art. Enwonwu's practice was central to this historical context and his impact on the struggle (both in political and cultural terms) is quite misunderstood but fortunately by now well documented.

It is important to see the Zarianist project in historical terms in order to understand what was unique about their work. Their militant adherence to Nigerianess was quite a cliche by 1958 and already enunciated to perfection by Mbonu Ojike. Their appropriation of indigenous Nigerian culture was also predated by Ben Enwonwu's art. The synthesis concept itself derives not from Zarianism but from K.C. Murray and was first put into cultural practice by Enwonwu. The canard that Uche Okeke's formulation of Natural Synthesis was a unique nationalist response to the emergent context of Nigerian postcolonial art has been critically engaged and clearly refuted (see Ogbechie 1999, 2003, 2007, 2008, among others). The Zarianists's main achievement was that they directly engaged the need to define an intellectual framework for the postcolonial context of modern and contemporary Nigerian art but even this issue had a long pedigree that predates the Zarianists. Gbadegesin correctly states that the cultural translations of nationalism in Zarianist art is valid since nationalist ideologies evolve over time but Ugiomoh is equally correct in claiming that Zarianist art, rather than engendering a real nationalist response, actually produced an insular interpretation of postcolonial culture that was responsible for the blossoming of provincial propaganda, sectional ideologies, and militant ethnicity in modern and contemporary Nigerian art. In particular, the marginalization of Enwonwu's art with regard to Nigerian nationalism is quite problematic, since Enwonwu was actually the person who framed modern Nigerian art in nationalist terms, an achievement now ascribed to the Zarianists. In this regard, it is important to correct Gbadegesin's misunderstanding of the Nigerian nationalism as being "locally engaged." The nationalist struggle in Africa was an international struggle against European imperialism that applied locale-specific solutions to the needs of individual African countries. It couldn't be otherwise, given the transnational armature of colonization that these struggles were constituted against.

Obviously the viewpoint enunciated above diverges from those of Ugiomoh and Gbadegesin. Divergent viewpoints are not problematic as long as scholarship proceeds from examination of actual historical data. For too long, interpretations of modern Nigerian art uncritically adopted theoretical frameworks and analysis whose primary claims remain problematic. Instead of arguing about the relevance of individual actors, perhaps it is more useful to examine the development of specific discourses as a way of historicizing their achievements. This might allow us to see exactly how the nationalism of the Zarianists fit into the larger history of nationalism in modern Nigerian art, an understanding that is so far lacking.

References cited

Ogbechie, Sylvester Okwunodu. 2008. Ben Enwonwu: The Making of an African Modernist. Rochester NY: University of Rochester Press.

--. 2007. "Comrades at Arms: The African Avant-Garde at the First World Festival of Negro Arts (Dakar 1966)." In One Million and Forty-Four Years (and Sixty-Three Days), ed. Kathryn Smith, pp. 88-103. Stellenbosch SA: SMAC.

--. 2003. "Ben Enwonwu, Zarianist Aesthetics, and the Post-Colonial Criticism of Modern Nigerian Art." In The Triumph of a Vision: An Anthology on Uche Okeke and Modern Art in Nigeria, ed. C. Krydz Ikwuemesi, pp. 175-93. Lagos: Pendulum Art Gallery.

--. 1999. "Revolution and Evolution in Modern Nigerian Art: Myths and Realities." In Contemporary Textures: Multidimensionality in Nigerian Art, ed. Nkiru Nzegwu, pp. 121-38. Binghamton NY: ISSA.

SYLVESTER OKWUNDU OGBECHIE is an associate professor of art history at UC Santa Barbara, founder and editor of the journal Critical Interventions, and the author of Ben Enwonwu: The Making of an African Modernist (2008). [e-mail]