Art of Ethiopia. C. Griffith Mann. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005. 128 pp.
Reviewed by Leah Niederstadt
Art of Ethiopia
was published in conjunction with a 2005 exhibition of the same name
held at Pace Primitive, a department of the Pace Wildenstein Gallery,
in New York City. Organized by London-based dealer Sam Fogg, the
exhibition presented examples of Ethiopian liturgical art from the
twelfth through nineteenth centuries and followed a similar Fogg
endeavor mounted in London in 2001.
It is important to be clear about the intent behind Art of Ethiopia.
It is a sales catalogue, created to accompany what was billed as “the
first-ever selling exhibition of Ethiopian art” held in the United
States. As a publication intended to sell art, the book serves its
purpose well. It is a beautiful catalogue with images of each cross,
icon, and manuscript reproduced in full color, often with supplementary
images of visual details. The catalogue text specifies the materials
and techniques used to create each object and it describes the
individuals and narratives depicted. The condition and any repairs to
the objects are duly noted. The text also highlights stylistic
elements, and whenever possible, links the objects to particular
periods of liturgical art production in Ethiopia. Yet, although the
catalogue text includes exhibition and publication history, provenance
is lacking for all but three objects, all of which are manuscripts.
This is a notable omission, especially given recent concerns in
Ethiopia, not to mention worldwide, with the illicit trade in
antiquities and cultural patrimony. Even the inclusion of the most
recent provenance—for example, how Mr. Fogg acquired the objects—would
have been useful to collectors and scholars alike.
Art of Ethiopia
opens with an introduction by C. Griffith Mann, Co-Director of
Curatorial Affairs and Associate Curator of Medieval Art at the Walters
Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. Mann provides a concise yet thorough
overview of the history of artistic production within the Ethiopian
Orthodox church. In doing so, he mentions the dynamism that
characterized the relationship between indigenous beliefs and practices
and foreign artistic influences. This dynamism resulted from Ethiopia’s
geographic location in the Horn of Africa and its place in the popular
imagination as a Christian nation, home of the Queen of Sheba and land
of Prester John, which long attracted diplomats, explorers, and
missionaries and continues to appeal to present-day tourists. Mann then
turns to a discussion of processional and hand crosses, illuminated
manuscripts, and painted icons, explaining how changes in the economic,
religious, and socio-political realms impacted the production and
consumption of religious art in the 800 years covered by the scope of
the exhibition. A rather curious oversight of the editor, the map on
page 13 fails to demarcate the border of Eritrea, formerly an Ethiopian
province and now an independent nation-state. Furthermore, in the
interest of providing a truly comprehensive overview of the artistic
traditions of the Ethiopian Orthodox church, Mann should have made it
fully clear that crosses, icons, and manuscripts continue to be
produced and used in contemporary Ethiopia, particularly post-1991 when
the Socialist government was overthrown. Over the past sixteen years,
the production and consumption of Ethiopian Orthodox art and ritual
practices have significantly increased, and artists are creating works
not only for new churches but also for long established ones, many of
which are being refurbished. Mann’s introduction does, however, allow
even those unfamiliar with Ethiopian history and culture to gain a
basic understanding of the context in which the objects in the
exhibition were produced and, to a lesser extent, how they were used.
A
catalogue of objects follows Mann’s introductory comments. It is
divided into three sections: crosses, icons, and manuscripts. Eleven
crosses—nine of metal and three of wood—are featured in the first
section. Notable among these are an extraordinary anthropomorphic
wooden hand cross from the nineteenth century (catalogue object 11) and
a fifteenth-century iron hand cross (cat. 3), much like the wooden ones
carried today by priests for blessing the laity. Section two of the
catalogue describes twenty-one icons ranging in size from small icons
(cat. 12-15, 25) that would have been worn or displayed for personal
devotions to large diptychs and triptychs created for display in
churches and palaces and for public processions on holy days. Several
of the icons (cat. 17, 28, 31) are signed, rendering them exceptional
as church-trained painters did not typically sign their work until the
late nineteenth century, which makes attribution difficult if not
impossible. The final section of the catalogue provides detailed
descriptions of sixteen manuscripts, only one of which can be
attributed to a particular scribe (cat. 37). Among the manuscripts are
several rare folding books (cat. 38, 42) and a manuscript (cat. 43)
once in the collections of emperors Täklä Haymanot I, Dawit III and
Tewodros II and later owned by William Randolph Hearst. This manuscript
is one of the few objects for which provenance is provided.
Art of Ethiopia
is the most recent in a series of well-illustrated and detailed
catalogues produced by Fogg. The fact that the catalogue was created
for a commercial gallery exhibition does not preclude its contribution
to the study of Ethiopian visual culture, although a more accurate
title, especially given Ethiopia’s myriad other expressive traditions
and strong contemporary art community, might have been “Art of the
Ethiopian Orthodox Church.” The clear, full-color images enable close
study of the narratives and portraits represented and the materials and
techniques employed in creating the crosses, icons, and manuscripts,
while the accompanying texts provide insight into objects—and more
broadly, artistic traditions—that have remained relatively unstudied
until fairly recently. Although quite a few of the objects had
previously been exhibited and a number had been published or at least
referenced in other publications, the catalogue is the first time that
many of the crosses, icons, and manuscripts have been so thoroughly
documented. Given that many of the objects will have ended up in
private collections as a result of this exhibition, the catalogue will
serve for years to come as a resource for those interested in Ethiopian
liturgical art.
Social
anthropologist Leah Niederstadt is Assistant Professor of Museum
Studies and Art History, as well as Curator of the Permanent
Collection, at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. Trained at
Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar, she is a
specialist in the art and ethnography of Ethiopia. Among her works are
(with Raymond A. Silverman and Neal Sobania) Painting Ethiopia: The Life and Work of Qes Adamu Tesfaw (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005).