What is your favorite form of African art?

African art is bringing a thought or feeling to life through sculpture, painting, drawing, music, dance, carvings, clothing and textiles.

Each country has a distinct history and culture. Everyday affairs such as meal times, marriages, birth's,and religious ceremonies provided opportunity to teach others how to create artwork.

These skills have been passed down and shared with each generation. Each individual who produces artwork in any form is telling a story. The pages are stone, wood, bronze, textiles, and precious metals.

What 5 elements of African art are prized?

Elements of the African Aesthetic

Resemblance to a human being: African artists value a carved figure by commenting that it "looks like a human being." Artists seldom represent particular people, real animals, or the actual form of invisible spirits.

Instead, they aim to represent ideas about reality, spirituality or humanity, and present these ideas in animal or human form.
 
Luminosity: The smooth surface of most African figural sculpture, is often embellished with decorative scarification, which indicates stunning healthy skin. Figures with rough surfaces and deformities are intended to appear ugly and morally flawed.

Self-composure: A person with self-composure that has absolute self assurance, control, and is cool at all times.

Youthfulness: A youthful appearance shows being productive, fertile, and an ability to fight. Sickness and deformity are rarely depicted because they are signs of evil.

Clarity of form and detail, complexity of composition, balance and symmetry, smoothness of finish: African artists place a high value on mastery of the craft.