On Ouidah asen.

In 1989 Suzanne Preston Blier published an article based on her close reading of the field materials compiled by Melville and Frances Herskovits during their 1931 sojourn in Dahomey. Received negatively by some of Herskovits's close scholarly descendants and admirers, the article nevertheless was a useful addition to scholarship on southern Benin, for it put valuable perspective on the field research methods used by one of the foundational scholars of Dahomean studies, widely hailed as the father of African studies. For those of us who had followed Herskovits into the Dahomean field and used his extensive writings on Dahomey as a guide, Blier's comments helped to clarify inconsistencies; it became apparent that Herskovits's shortcomings were the product of an extraordinarily brief but intense field experience.

Herskovits's work is but one of literally hundreds of extant sources on Dahomey, one of the most richly documented areas of Africa. The Dahomean literature is now enlarged by contributions that Blier and others, including myself, have added. Both Blier and I have carried out continuing archival and field research on the area of the former kingdom of Dahomey over roughly the same academic generation (Blier starting in 1984 and I in 1971). As scholars who have worked to sift through the massive corpus of Dahomean literature, we know the difficulties of contradictory sources and the perils of errors and misunderstandings made by earlier sources that have then been picked up and repeated with authority by later scholars. In my own case, despite care for comprehensiveness, I have been corrected in print and thus have experienced first-hand the painful reality that all of our scholarship in time will be revised and corrected. Given the importance of accuracy in scholarly work, I write to raise a Dahomey-related research question that could well benefit from more attention from a future generation of Africanist art scholars.

Both Blier and I have written about asen, the portable altars to the dead common in twentieth century southern Dahomey/Benin, which are beginning to draw closer attention from the scholarly and museum communities (Blier 1998:110, 2004:107, 2005:54; Bay 1985, 1987, forthcoming). Of particular recent interest have been the elaborate wrought-iron asen that I identified in 1985 as characteristic of a Ouidah style. Because Ouidah asen are increasingly visible in exhibitions, it would seem appropriate to clarifiy what we now know about them and what remains to be learned. Indeed, the exercise is timely since Holland Cotter, writing recently in the New York Times, incorrectly attributed a superb Ouidah asen to Yoruba culture (2005).

Cotter drew his mistaken attribution from the Museum for African Art's exhibition "Resonance from the Past: African Sculpture from the New Orleans Museum of Art." The asen photo's caption identifies the asen as "Fort/ Hweda/Yoruba peoples, town of Ouidah." While this appropriately designates the ethnic make-up of Ouidah town, it is less accurate as an indicator of the appropriate ethnic affiliation of the object type, which is Fon. The conical asen form is associated with the honoring of certain non-kin spirits among the Yoruba, Fort, and related peoples, but the creation and use of ancestral asen is an innovation of Fon culture and is not generally found among the Yoruba. In a publication forthcoming in Fall 2007, I trace the invention of ancestral asen to the mid-nineteenth century Fon court of Dahomey, from which ancestral asen use diffused in the colonial period to a broad expanse of peoples in southern Benin.

Blier's catalogue notes for the "Resonance from the Past" exhibition provide information on this excellent example of the Ouidah asen style (2005:54). She calls the smith/sculptor of the piece the "Master of the Long-Horned Ram" because of his handling of the twisted, inward-curving horns. Blier has commented in print on a similar asen that is now owned by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (1998:110, 2004:54). In fact, a third asen, formerly in the collection of William Arnett and now owned by the Carlos Museum of Emory University, includes a ram with the same distinctive horns (Fig. 1). All three are certainly by the same hand. Indeed, if ram horns are not enough evidence, my own field research has shown that asen in Ouidah, like those in Abomey, were at times characterized by a master smith's "signature" on the aflefle, the pendants that hang from the circular asen platform. All three asen have the same unique aflefle design, a horizontal "B" form topped with leaflike appendages that are likely representations of kponuhwan, spear-tips associated with the Fon/Yoruba divinity of iron, Gu/Ogun (Adande and Tornay n.d.). Future researchers in Ouidah may find that smiths there can recognize the asen maker by this signature, as comparable signatures dating to the 1930s were identified by smiths in Abomey during my own fieldwork.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Blier suggests that the Master of the Long-Horned Ram may in fact have been Akpele Kendo Akati, a smith who worked in Abomey in mid-nineteenth century and who is said by his family to have been the creator of the famous Gu figure owned by the Musee du quai Branly in Paris (2005:54). (1) Indeed, she asserts that the Boston MFA's asen by the same hand is "From the atelier of Akati Akpele Kendo" (2004:107). Akati was originally Yoruba, captured from Dassa in the nineteenth century wars and settled as a slave-artisan in the Yoruba quarter of Abomey. This would make Holland Cotter's attribution of the Ouidah asen as "Yoruba" technically correct, on grounds that it was created by a Yoruba smith. However, the attribution of these asen to Akati is unlikely for a number of reasons.

First, the style of the three Ouidah asen is distinctively different from that of asen made in Abomey, where Akati was based. (2) Each region of southern Dahomey/Benin has localized styles for making ancestral asen and one rarely if ever sees an asen typical of another center in a family's compound, even though, as Blier points out, branches of the same smithing families might reside in distant cities. Second, the artisans established by the monarchs in Abomey worked exclusively for the kings. How and why would a king's smith create an object for someone in Ouidah? Moreover, it is probable that prior to the French conquest in 1892-94 ancestral asen with elaborate figural tableaux were made only for the kings and queen mothers of Dahomey. The use of elaborate ancestral asen appears to have become common in Fon culture only in the twentieth century (Bay forthcoming). If so, these three Ouidah asen must be twentieth century and the suggested dating by Blier is too early. She dates the Boston MFA asen alternately to the mid nineteenth (1998:110) and mid to late nineteenth century (2004:107), and the New Orleans asen to dates of 1858-89 (2005:54).

We do not have a clear sense of the period of Akati's productive career. His only documented moment of fame came with the creation of the Gu figure, which by family tradition was made for the funeral ceremonies for King Gezo held in 1860 (Bay 1998:337 n. 57)- In The Royal Arts of Africa, Blier names Akati as an artist encouraged by King Agonglo, who died in 1797 (1998:108), though a few pages later she says that Akati arrived in Abomey only after the first military victory of King Glele, who reigned from 1858 to 1889 (1998:116). The association with Agonglo appears to be simply an error missed in proofing, but it is still unlikely, albeit physically possible--for he lived until about 1920--that Akati would have continued to be active forty to fifty years after the moment of his monumental accomplishment and making asen in the twentieth century. (3)

Finally, Blier mentions that the colors red, white, and blue are visible on the flags arranged in front of the central seated figure and suggests that they "reinforce the European connection" to the French colonizers. France became Dahomey's colonial master, but its control was by no means predictable even as late as 1889, when German, British, and Portuguese interests were still competing over claims to the area. The likelihood of a French flag being depicted on an asen prior to the conquest of 1892-94, when in fact the predominant European presence in Ouidah was Portuguese/Brazilian, is slim. Added together, this evidence strongly suggests that the Ouidah asen was made later than the period of active production of Akati and was probably made by a Ouidah smith.

Blier specifies that the New Orleans asen was housed "in the compound of the Yovogan" (2005:54). The Yovogan, as she points out, was the Dahomean official in charge of relations with foreigners in Ouidah. Where, then, was the compound of the Yovogan? While there was an official residence of the Yovogan in precolonial days, that structure was demolished in the first decade of the twentieth century to make way for the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Ouidah (Law 2004:278-9), and the context of Blier's attribution makes clear that she means a family residence, not an official dwelling. The name "Yovogan" is a bureaucratic title, not a family name or a hereditary position. It was a post held by numerous individuals appointed to the position by successive eighteenth and nineteenth century kings, who sometimes appointed and removed Yovogans in rather rapid succession. The various families of former Yovogans continue to claim the title for their ancestors, and the Yovogan title is passed along through the institution of perpetual kinship. The question thus becomes which Yovogan is meant, and the designation of the compound needs further identification.

Several observations about the Yovogan attribution may be relevant. First, there is no particular reason to suggest that the central figure on a Ouidah asen is a Yovogan. Indeed, in the vocabulary of asen representation, heads of lineages who were honored by representation atop asen tend to be depicted showing attributes of authority. In Abomey those attributes are stools and the toga-like attire of kings. In Ouidah they may include elaborate chairs, top hats, and umbrellas. Second, in my limited viewing of asen in situ in Ouidah (and it is difficult to gain access to the sacred dexo--prayer rooms--where asen are housed), I have seen elaborate asen much like the one in the New Orleans collection in families that were not descendants of Yovogans. Conversely, in the central compound of the most important Yovogan of the nineteenth century, I saw no asen in this particular style; rather, all appeared to be of more recent manufacture. Finally, as an official of the king of Dahomey, the Yovogan was required to abide by the dress requirements of the court of Abomey, where the wearing of European attire by African officials in the nineteenth century was considered to be an act of lese majeste. Frederick Forbes's description of an audience in Ouidah on October 5, 1849, is typical of reports of meetings with Yogovans: "He wore a large English cotton cloth round his loins, his only article of dress; round his neck were strings of coral and other beads, and on his wrists bracelets of iron" (Forbes 1966, 1:47). Yet all three Ouidah asen have central figures with top hats, wearing what appears to be European dress. The implication thus would be that the figures represented would more likely have been members of families involved in Dahomey's external trade, many of whom identified themselves as "Brazilians" or descendants of Africans who returned to the West African coast after regaining their freedom in Brazil. However, only further fieldwork can clarify this issue.

Meanwhile, the use of ancestral asen is disappearing in Ouidah, the result of a series of processes that include campaigns against ancestral "worship" by Roman Catholicism, evangelical Christianity, and congregations of new vodun (Bay forthcoming). Some families are said to be discarding their asen; other families complain about increased stealing of asen. (4) These factors combined may account for the arrival of more asen on the international art market in the past two decades or so. From my fieldwork in Ouidah, I suspect that asen similar to the three examples I have discussed here date to the high colonial period. More recent Ouidah asen seem to be smaller and less carefully worked. But better answers need to come from more field research in Ouidah, work that needs to be done soon. Blier's "Master of the Long-Horned Ram" deserves to be recognized by name for his remarkable artistry. Meanwhile, we as scholars owe it to our academic heirs to leave as accurate and complete a record of what we know, and do not know.

Am I being unreasonable in raising these details? Is this a historian's nit-picking in face of an art historian's right to make attributions on the basis of the evidence of the object itself? Are my concerns the product of a different methodology and hence irrelevant to the interests of understanding art? I think not, but I wish to invite dialogue on the question of art historians' methods, and especially the question of field methods. Fieldwork gives us all a cachet of authority, even though we may privately acknowledge that been-to status may mean little. For me, the authority of fieldwork of necessity must be balanced by a careful adherence to and evaluation of previous findings across the many disciplines required for excellence in African studies.

References cited

Adande, Joseph and Serge Tornay. n.d. "Gu: un Dieu en armes." www.mnhn.fr/mnhn/mdh/Mhom21.htm.

Bay, Edna G. 1985. Asen: Iron Altars of the Fon People of Benin. Atlanta: Carlos Museum.

--. 1987. "Metal Arts and Society in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Abomey." In Discovering the African Past: Essays in Honor of Daniel F. McCall, ed. Norman R. Bennett, pp. 7-31. Boston: Boston University African Studies Center.

--. 1998. Wives of the Leopard: Gender, Politics, and Culture in the Kingdom of Dahomey. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

--. Forthcoming. Asen, Ancestors, and Vodun: Tracing Change in African Art. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Blier, Suzanne Preston. 1989. "Field Days: Melville J. Herskovits in Dahomey." History in Africa 16:1-22.

--. 1998. The Royal Arts of Africa: The Majesty of Form. NY: Harry N. Abrams.

--. 2004. "Fon asen." Art of the Senses: African Masterpieces from the Teel Collection, ed. Suzanne Preston Blier, p. 107. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts.

--. 2005. "Memorial Staff: Asen? Resonance from the Past: African Sculpture from the New Orleans Museum of Art, ed. Frank Herreman, p. 54. NY: Museum for African Art.

Cotter, Holland. 2005. "African Creativity, More about the Momentary than the Monumental." New York Times, April 29.

Forbes, Frederick. 1966. Dahomey and the Dahomans. London: Frank Cass. Work originally published 1851.

Law, Robin. 2004. Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving "Port," 1727-1892. Athens: Ohio University Press.

Notes

(1) The smith's name is often recorded with the family name, Akati, first. Both Blier and I independently collected traditions about Akati from his descendants in Abomey in the mid-1980s.

(2) See my discussion of the stylistic differences of the Ouidah asen tradition in Bay 1985. My own research on asen was carried out mainly in Abomey, though I spent a period of several weeks researching asen in Ouidah in 1984 and made two brief returns there for further study in 1999 and 2001.

(3) Interview with Gounon Simon Akati, July 30, 1984.

(4) Personal interviews, 200l.

Edna G. Bay is associate professor at the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts at Emory University and is the editor of several books in African studies. Her research focuses on the cultural history of all areas of West Africa. ebay@ learnlink.emory.edu