ABSTRACT
Traditional African art is modern and contemporary in feeling. Like the societies that nurtured it, our ethnic art is eclectic, innovative, creative and constantly absorbing new influences to evolve. Abstract art should thus necessarily have content, and this content is the expression of the inner states and tensions of artist, which is the only tangible reason for creation of a work of art. It is not the subject that counts but the genius of the person behind it. However, some contemporary practitioners of African art have totally turned their backs on the art of the past. They portend that the conditions which necessitated the birth of classical African art do not exist today, and for the contemporary African artist to turn to the past for inspiration smacks of falsity and pretension, as a romantic revisitation. In spite of all the outward changes of life and man’s scientific and technological advancements, there are incontrovertible parallels between conditions in the modern world.
