Zambezia (1993), XX (H).THE MYTH OF 'SHONA SCULPTURE'CAROLE PEARCEAbstract'Shona sculpture' has always relied heavily for its commercial success on its supposedauthenticity and autonomy. However, the genre is neither rooted in the spontaneousexpression of traditional Black spirituality, nor is it an autonomous contemporaryBlack art form. The sculpture is easily explained as a deliberate product of themodernist tastes of White expatriates during the 1950s and 1960s and, in particular,those of the first Director of the National Gallery.THIS ARTICLE ARISES from reflections on the way in which, over time, viewsoriginally thought to be daringly radical and avant-garde becomeincorporated into the general stream of thought. Here their brilliant lustrefades and they congeal into the solid rock of the commonplace. The mythof 'Shona sculpture' is an illustration of this process.Thirty years ago the notion of a serious, non-functional and non-ritualistic contemporary Black art would have been given little popularcredence. During that time, however, 'Shona sculpture' has earned itself asecure niche in the art galleries and markets of the developed world and iscollected on a large scale, exported by the tonne by galleries and privatedealers, exhibited in universities, museums, galleries and parks in theWest and is the subject of numerous journal articles and a few monographs.It has been the making of some reputations and a few fortunes.The extraordinary success of 'Shona sculpture' both as a commodityand as an aesthetic object derives in large part, although not entirely,from its supposed authenticity, its rooted connection with African modesof thought, and in its African aesthetic. Some commentators, for example,hint at a connection between 'Shona sculpture' and the stone birds ofGreat Zimbabwe1 produced some four centuries ago. Most writers point tothe spontaneous flowering, ex nihilo, of stone carving skills of Shonaartists: it is the spontaneity of this renaissance which is the source ofwonder. Many critics emphasize the artists' lack of training and models todrive home the message of natural, untutored, authentic skill. Those whoadmit that labels like 'Shona' are inaccurate2 and that the sculpture doesnot represent specifically Shona culture are still determined to affirm that1 Arnold, for example, devotes the first two chapters of her thesis on Zimbabwean stonesculpture to a discussion of the soapstone birds of Great Zimbabwe as 'the only extantexamples of large-scale, early Shona sculpture'; see M. Arnold, Zimbabwean Stone Sculpture(Bulawayo, Books of Zimbabwe, 1981), 1.2 Many of the artists are not Shona speakers. Some are Ndebele; others are migrantlabourers from neighbouring countries, especially Malawi and Mozambique.8586 THE MYTH OF SHONA SCULPTUREit expresses Black culture and, in terms of content and technique, istherefore authentically indigenous.But it is my contention that 'Shona sculpture' owes its origin, formand content to the then avant-garde aesthetic sensibilities of an Englishman:it was and is a wholly European, modernist art form taken over and usedby Black artists for their own ends. This article attempts to show how thetenacious myth of authenticity became established as a commonplacetruth, and to expose the reality lying beneath it.SHONA SCULPTUREThe force behind the generation of 'Shona sculpture' was Frank McEwen,the charismatic, iconoclastic Director of the Rhodesia National Galleryfrom 1957 to 1973. McEwen had trained in Paris in the 1930s. His parentswere art collectors and dealers and had introduced him, at an early age, toWest African art. As a young man he numbered leading artists and sculptorsof the Ecole de Paris3 among his friends. His early exposure to art wasradical: a classical art history background combined with personalacquaintance with some of the great, revolutionary modernists, in a citywhich was the virtual birthplace of modernism. He shared with othermodernists an appreciation of African art, together with some of theirmisconceptions4 regarding this genre.His education in art naturally inclined him towards the avant-garde,early modernism and, in the context of Rhodesia, African art. McEwen'sgoal was to promote a completely new African art form, thereby disdainingthe work produced by Black craftsmen for tourists, which McEwenscornfully labelled 'airport art', and the small but extant 'petty bourgeois'White art. This naturally set him at odds with the ruling class: lightlyeducated White fanners, industrialists and civil servants. The Gallerymilieu, the glamorous, upper-middle class, mainly English group ofconnoisseurs, shared his aesthetic, and his political opposition to thelower-middle and working-class government of Ian Smith.Nevertheless, both White groups shared fundamental assumptionsabout African tradition and culture. These Included the idea that Africanswere somehow more authentic and closer to nature than Whites. Theyalso believed that the less educated and less urban were Africans, themore they were in harmony with nature and primeval forces; the deeperand more compelling their religious beliefs and the more binding their3 O. Sultan, Life in Stone (Harare, Baobab Books, [1992]), 2.4 For the misconceptions, see Robblns on Kandlnsky's notions of 'spiritual affinity' In W.Robblns and N. Nooter, African Art in American Collections: Survey 1989 (Washington DCSmithsonian Institution Press, 1989), 38.CAROLE PEARCE 87social structure.5 But if crass White Rhodesians thought that Africanswere primitive and therefore ignorant, McEwen thought they wereprimitive6 and, therefore, closer to the well-springs of creativity thantrained artists. The Director of the National Gallery was well placed to killtwo conservative birds with one stone: in promoting a Black gallery art hecould expect aesthetic reward7 while at the same time subjecting Whitepolitical and cultural backwardness to indirect, although painful, critique.According to Sultan, McEwen began his curatorship by 'travellingthroughout the country getting to know what he could about its folkloreand traditions'.8 This ethnographic adventure might seem surprising in anart director. It was, nevertheless, completely in harmony with thefoundational components of the 'Shona sculpture' myth. McEwen supportedJungian theories of the relationship between 'primitive minds' and art.9These assumed the existence of a 'collective unconscious'. 'Primitiveman', left to his own unschooled talents, is able to grasp and communicateuniversal themes through the medium of art. Universal themes expressedby untutored minds emerge from traditional folk-tales, spiritual andreligious beliefs; that is to say, from the realm of the sacred rather thanthe secular.McEwen's quest was, therefore, typical of avant-garde of the time,seeking in 'primitive' art documentary evidence for cognitive andethnographic concerns.10 It was based as much on a popular theory ofhuman nature and the human mind as on aesthetic considerations. In anearly description of the Workshop School art (now called 'Shona sculpture1)McEwen says:One of the strangest inexplicable features occurs in the early stages of develop-ment through which many of the artists pass, when they appear to reflect concep-tually and even symbolically, but not stylistically, the art of ancient civilizations,mainly pre-Colombian. We refer to it as their 'Mexican period' which evolves finallyinto a highly individualistic style.115 For example, Paterson 'felt the rural African's life "more complete" than ours' (i.e. thanurban Whites); D. Walker, Paterson ofCyrene (Harare, Mambo Press, 1985), 55.6 Although McEwen avoids the term 'primitive', he Is happy to describe the work as 'adultchild art', R. Guthrie (ed.), Prominent Sculptors of Zimbabwe: Nicholas Mukomberanwa (Harare,Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1989), 6.7 Beier reports that McEwen was determined to try 'to create new artists in the culturaldesert of Rhodesia', quoted in F. Willett, African Art (London and New York, Thames andHudson, 1971), 256.8 Sultan, Life in Stone, 5.9 See, for example, Sultan, ibid., 3.10 Considering that McEwen was of necessity working with contemporary people, oneimplication of this thesis is that contemporary Africans possess 'primitive' minds.11 F. McEwen, 77K African Workshop School (Rhodesia National Gallery, Salisbury, [1968]), 1.88 THE MYTH OF SHONA SCULPTUREThese founding ideas have struck deep roots and many flourishingshoots have sprung from them. These ideas can be traced in the choice ofartists, the type of training they received, the content and the form of theart works they produced. They can be found in all kinds of developmentsfor which McEwen was not directly responsible, but for which they provedthe groundwork: the Tengenenge school,12 the romantic religiosity imputedto the work, the development of a mass export market in 'Shona sculpture',its use as a symbol of Black creativity, its symbolic political force, and itseconomic success. Here I shall deal only with the first four aspects.SELECTIONThe artists were initially all men and were drawn from the rural oruneducated urban working class.13 It is still the case that most BlackZimbabwean artists, unlike their counterparts in the West, are men fromrural or semi-rural backgrounds14 with little formal education. The first tobe handed paints and paper were Gallery attendants.15 They were followedby friends or relatives of the initial group, that is, either relatives or peoplefrom the same area, such as the Nyanga craftsmen known to Jorum Mariga.They were thus partly self-selected and partly chosen at random from aparticular socio-economic group.The class position of these men, together with their relative lack offormal education and exposure to external influences, made themparticularly vulnerable to the values and tastes, either expressed or implied,of their educated, cosmopolitan White liberal patrons. In a hostile world ofdisintegrating rural society and violent urban township life on the onehand, and a brutal racist regime on the other, a powerful and enduringform of dependence evolved between the art patrons and the new artists,and this dependence was transmitted to succeeding patrons and artists.12 Established in 1966 on Tengenenge (a former tobacco farm) by the naive visionaryfarmer, Tom Blomefield. At Tengenenge a flourishing art business has developed. Many of theimportant sculptors of the region started working here; for example, Henry Munyaradzl,Brighton Sango and Silvester Mubayi.13 This is in contrast with novelists who come from the urban middle class and aresignificantly better educated than their peers. See F. Veit-Wild, Teachers, Preachers, Non-Believers; A Social History of Zimbabwean Literature (Harare, Baobab, 1993), xil, 353.14 For example, Tobayl Dube was a potter's assistant, Jorum Mariga and Bernard Takawlrawere rural agricultural demonstrators, Nicholas Mukomberanwa was a policeman, and ThomasMukarobgwa and Paul Gwlchiri were gallery attendants. Some sculptors (at Tengenenge) werefarm labourers, others drifted in and out of employment.15 Rowena Burrell, personal communication, 1990.CAROLE PEARCE 89TRAININGThis dependence was accentuated by the fact that McEwen was opposed,in principle, to art education and provided no formal training for theworkshop artists. Recently he remarked:In our workshop I had to expel young ex-art school students who had beendeformed in London, New York or elsewhere. In their misunderstanding, theseyoungsters tried to 'teach' our artists Š had they succeeded in arresting individu-ality there would have been no Shona Art today Š but only a copy of a copy16 ofWestern productions. What is instinctive must be nurtured to come forth, notnipped in the bud.17Models and examples were consistently withheld. McEwen still believesthat education creates a barrier between the unconscious mind and itsself-expression. To show artists art picture books is, therefore, to encouragethem to emulate second-hand subjects: particularly dangerous if the artistictradition is not your own. Naive artists must come to plastic expressionwith uncluttered minds so as to solve artistic problems afresh, without abackground of stale tricks to help them through. '(T)his sculpture', McEwenobserves, at some time during 1968, 'without art schools is like thisarchitecture without architects Š born directly, locally, from naturalelements in the virgin ground'.18The celebration of the unschooled and 'spontaneous' nature of 'Shonasculpture' continues today and forms part of every hagiography. In 1989McEwen writes:Zimbabwe artists at no time borrowed from abroad. They relate exclusively totheir own mystical folk traditions and to early African styles and they are instinc-tively aware of the millennial foundations of their ancient culture.19And in an exhibition pamphlet dated some time in 1991 he observes:In their sculpture, the artists of Zimbabwe have given us, carved directly in roughhard stone, symbols of this spiritual hunger, with superb untutored craftsmanship.Such is their skill they rarely make a mistake in execution or depart from theirinner vision.2016 It is part of the aim of this article to show that what was produced was, in fact, a 'copyof a copy'.17 F. McEwen quoted in R. Guthrle (ed.), Prominent Sculptors of Zimbabwe: Bernard Takawira(Harare, The Gallery Shona Sculpture, [1990]), 4.18 F. McEwen, catalogue of The African Workshop School.19 F. McEwen in Guthrie (ed.), Prominent Sculptors of Zimbabwe: N. Mukomberanwa.20 F. McEwen, introduction of a catalogue for an exhibition of Shona Sculpture, (London,[1991]). See also Guthrie (ed.), Prominent Sculptors of Zimbabwe: B. Takawira, 14-15 .90 THE MYTH OF SHONA SCULPTUREBecause it is held to be unusually free and original the sculpture istherefore believed to be true, both to the 'inner vision' and to the heart ofAfrican culture. It is to the absence of formal training that promoters ofthis genre ceaselessly point when defending its authenticity and itsspecifically African nature.21But these claims are, as I shall show, the result of wishful thinking.'Shona sculpture' displays its stylistic and iconographic limitations in anycollection of the works that can be assembled. From interesting and livelybeginnings quickly unfolded a pedestrian homogeneity which has scarcelyaltered significantly over the last 30 years. This lack of originality showsits source to be, not primarily in African life, but in the influence of animported, early modernist aesthetic and anthropology, which is itshallmark.The sculpture has a formulaic quality which is evident in any study ofthe work. The stone is treated as a pure and solid block, isolated in space,something to be incised, carved or hollowed, usually as a semi-naturalisticfigurative object. The techniques used to finish the surface of the stonehave been standardized. Sculptors deal with a narrow range of subjects,materials and tools.22 Variations exist within this range but they arevariations on a defined theme from which they do not stray. The exceptionis the work of Tapfuma Gudza, which I exclude from this discussion sincemost of this analysis does not apply to him.23MCEWEN'S INFLUENCEThe artists have, despite the myth to the contrary, all been trained.Informally, they have trained each other.24 Many have attended some kind21 This dichotomy creates difficulties. McEwen thinks he recognizes the universalunconscious in the sculpture and he refers to its similarities with the art of Mesopotamia,ancient Egypt, Easter Island and New Guinea. He claims both that the symbols are purelyAfrican and that they are universal; unlearned and spontaneous, yet reflections of forms foundelsewhere.22 See [R. Guthrie (ed.)], The Magic of Henry, (Harare, Jongwe Press, [1987]), 60, ProminentSculptors of Zimbabwe: N. Mukomberanwa, 160, Prominent Sculptors of Zimbabwe: B. Takawira,79. Guthrie uses the same Illustration to show the limited range of tools used by Munyaradzi,Mukomberanwa and Takawira.23 Gudza trained abroad. He produces beautiful drawings and experiments with a widerange of materials and techniques, combining stone, metal and wood by carving, welding andtying objects together. His subjects include humorous and political topics. Gudza is consciousof sculpture as a process of working with material objects. He has, for instance, produced aseries of surrealistic 'musical instruments' including mandolins and 'bells' made of stone andleather. In his best work Gudza neither represents nor imitates reality: his art has no narrativecharacter. The contrary Is the case in most 'Shona sculpture'.24 In the catalogue 1989 Zimbabwe Heritage Exhibition, (Harare, Creative Publications,1989); 6 sculptors were described as being students of Thomas Mukarobgwa, 4 as students ofMariga, 9 as having studied at Mzillkazi Art School in Bulawayo, 18 as having studied at theBAT workshop in Harare, 28 as having trained at Tengenenge, 10 as having trained at theNational Gallery, and 94 were self-taught.CAROLE PEARCE 91of art school. Most have learned the lessons of the market. In the beginningthe artists were powerfully influenced by the modernist taste of McEwenand his fellows, for the good reason that the Gallery provided the onlymarket-place for their work. And, although picture books were withheld, asignificant collection of masks, textiles and other artefacts from Zaire andWest Africa, collected by McEwen, were permanently on display in theGallery, thus providing a model for the 'spontaneous' development of agenuine African style.25McEwen influenced sculptors partly through his monopoly of themarket via his gatekeeper role of selecting artists and pieces for promotion,partly by denying the artists access to models other than his collections ofAfrican art, partly by opposing formal art education, and partly bypromoting 'high', rather than popular art. Zimbabwean sculptors soonformed a prestigious and economically successful group which was ableto turn its back on 'township art' and 'folk' art. As a result of their contactwith the Gallery, they have clung to financially rewarding, non-realisticforms of expression and are, therefore, unlikely to find a market amongstthe local Black population. This population has, in any case, little interestin the fine and plastic arts26 as genres; music and, to a lesser extent, thevernacular novel, being exceptions to this rule.27There were also two influential art schools where some of theoriginators of 'Shona sculpture' were trained. The first of these schoolswas at Cyrene, outside Bulawayo, started in 1940 by Canon Paterson. Theother was at Serima, started by Fr. Groeber.THE IMPORTANCE OF CYRENEPaterson trained at the Central School of Art in London from 1920-1923.28Unlike McEwen, he was a dedicated teacher. His taste was formed from anodd amalgam of influences; ancient Chinese29, Vorticist30 and the Arts andCrafts Movement, a peculiarly British response to Victorian aestheticswhich developed in the mid-19th century. His students were encouraged25 Another model was the prestigious first International Congress of African CultureExhibition held in Salisbury, at the Rhodesia National Gallery in 1962.26 Visual education is as limited for Black Zimbabweans as it is for their middle andworking class White contemporaries, whose tastes they often share.27 The fundamental difference between musicians and plastic artists in Zimbabwe is thatmusic has living roots in the daily life of the people, whereas sculpture has none. Ignoringthese differences, McEwen notes, 'Music (in Africa), like art, is not taught: it is inbred andnatural.' (McEwen, The African Workshop School). McEwen is wrong on both counts. Africans,like other people, do have to learn to play musical instruments, to sing and to dance.28 Walker, Paterson of Cyrene, 9-12, and B. Wall, in the article 'Canon Paterson of Cyrene',Arts Zimbabwe, No 2, (Harare, National Arts Foundation, 1981/2), 27-38.29 Walker, Paterson of Cyrene, 9.30 Ibid., 12.92 THE MYTH OF SHONA SCULPTUREto draw from observation and from their daily experience. Nevertheless, itis clear that he provided substantial guidance, imposing his own aestheticsensibilities and providing models from which his students could work.The five main paintings around the altar at Cyrene are his own work: thealter-piece was painted before Cyrene School was opened.31 He alsocensored students' work.32Paterson promoted a highly decorative style, withholding the teachingof perspective but encouraging bright, clear colours laid flat, the use ofblack paint to outline forms and the use of patterning techniquesreminiscent of Rousseau and the early Matisse, on the one hand, andmedieval iconography on the other. The students' paintings which have,on the whole, great charm and vitality, show a variety of individualresponses to the rather dull work produced by Paterson himself. Some ofthe paintings at Cyrene, for instance the St. Christopher, are executedwith a classical naturalism, others like the St. John the Baptist, verge onthe expressive. The majority are fauvist in style.This aesthetic formed the basis for many of the best early paintings ofthe Workshop School, examples of which can be found in the work ofThomas Mukarobgwa and Kingsley Sambo. This is not surprising. In 1953Paterson moved to Salisbury and established an art school, Nyarutseso.Here he influenced more artists, including the two painters just mentioned.33It was also here that 'he discovered soapstone as a new medium forsculpture. The stone . . . proved easier to carve, being softer than theWonderstone and Portland stone'.34Paterson was not a purist like McEwen. His aim was as much toencourage the development of skilled craftsmen35 as to promote art forart's sake, and his students were encouraged to deal with everyday subjectssuch as political disturbances.36GROEBER AND SERIMAThe other influence on African art was the Catholic Serima Mission atDriefontein. The modernist architect/priest in charge of Serima, Fr Groeber,who trained in Switzerland before the Second World War, taught thedrawing and carving of masks, 'guided ... with illustrations of Congolese31 Ibid., 31-2.32 The current Visitors' Guide to Cyrene, [1990], 7, quotes Paterson asking artist JamesRatumu to replace a 'most potent-seeming ram' with an Innocuous lamb In painting theparable of The Good Shepherd'.33 Walker, Paterson of Cyrene, 68.34 Wall, Arts Zimbabwe, 36.35 Walker, Paterson of Cyrene, 38.36 Ibid., 63.CAROLE PEARCE 93and West African masks'.37 This teaching resulted in the production ofdidactic and narrative sculptures which now adorn the church. Followingthe avant-garde view that Christianity in Africa must express itself in apurely African iconography, the pillars, statues and bass-reliefs at Serimacontain all the elements supposed typical of indigenous art; that is, theyare formalistic, geometric, immobile and non-naturalistic.The stylistic uniformity which developed under Groeber appears tohave been imposed by his notions of what an African iconography shouldcontain and his selective use of models, together with the formalrequirements for a consistent aesthetic for the church interior. There wasa set routine for the teaching of drawing which focused the students'attention on the geometry of three-dimensional forms. When students hadgrasped this they were allowed to draw their forms on to the wood to becarved. The act of cutting with a chisel was the last stage in the process ofartistic creation.38RESULTS OF 'WITHHOLDING TRAINING'Far from withholding influence, it is clear that galleries and missionariesdeeply influenced their students. Although the art produced at all threecentres has distinctive characteristics39 it is unvaryingly modernist inidiom, with an overlay of 'African' styles originating from McEwen'scollection and Groeber's West African and Zairian models. The continuitiesbetween their work are thus as explicable in the light of mutual influencesbetween the artists, the demands of the market and the modernist tastesand training of McEwen, Paterson and Groeber as by any presumed culturalsimilarity or mystical artistic ability. Using Occam's razor, Robbins drilyremarks, '. . . in those many instances where there is, in fact, abundantevidence of direct derivation, it is not necessary to resort to the "collectiveunconscious" as an explanation for similarities'.40Nevertheless, artists were not trained in the history of art or in criticalappreciation of their own and others' work. This meant that producerswere able to appreciate their work only in terms of being pleasing ordispleasing to their patron. The promoters of naive, modernist Black artwere unaware that the very act of selection, or of censorship, constitutesa powerful form of aesthetic criticism. Their methods thus imprisoned the37 A. Plangger and M. Diethelm (eds.), Serima. On African Christian art in Rhodesia (Harare,Mambo Press, 1974), 15.38 Conversation with Cornelio Manguma, at Driefontein, some time in 1984.39 In her review of Kuhn's 'The Art of the Shona in Zimbabwe', Zambezia (1979), VII (i),111Š4, Jean Danks wonders why the Serima carvings are 'so different in concept from theShona stone carvings when they are both of Shona source'.40 Robbins, in Robbins and Nooter, African Art in American Collections: Survey 1989, 26.94 THE MYTH OF SHONA SCULPTUREartists in a terrible blindness:41 they knew that criteria were being appliedto their work, but not what these criteria were, so they could not applythem themselves. When they were asked to produce 'traditional' or'religious' subjects, that was what they did: in the required modernistidiom.Much can be explained by this fatal lack of awareness on the part ofart promoters. Untrained artists are less adventurous and less innovativethan those who have been exposed to a wide range of art. They are likelyto cling to tried and trusted forms which they know will sell, and less likelyto explore interesting themes falling outside the parameters laid down bydealers and promoters.42 They are also less able to apply cognitive as wellas aesthetic criteria to their own work and the work of others.Untrained artists are vulnerable to the limitations placed on theircreativity such as this advice given early on: '(McEwen) advised them toabandon realism and to express Shona myths or the "images they bore intheir souls" in their carving.'43 Such people must work as craftsmen ratherthan autonomous agents. Instead of being able to explore the rich range ofpossibilities of contemporary and classical art, they are restricted toreproducing the artistic taste of someone else.This vulnerability has facilitated the bow'dlerization of modernismwhich has developed throughout the country, for artists who do not knowthe significance of the modern movement cannot be expected to grasp it.In a small and insular society such as exists in Zimbabwe, the aestheticsensibility of the patron dominates. The sensibilities of first McEwen, thenBlomefield, the farmer-founder of the Tengenenge art movement,44 haveconsolidated into overriding criteria to which the works are still referred.The establishment of conventions has restricted the development of 'Shonasculpture'. Since there is no formal difference between working for thetastes of a patron like McEwen and working for the equally unknown andmysterious world of (mainly) American art dealers, the spiral intocommercialization and homogeneity45 has been inescapable.41 Although artists speak through interviews, the interviewers and commentators areinvariably White. Black Zimbabweans have yet to produce an independent aesthetic critiqueof Shona sculpture.42 One such dealer is Ponter, a Zimbabwean-turned-American businessman, who is currentlyengaged in large-scale export of 'Shona sculpture' and is described as one of the 'charlatanswho are re-writing history and creating their own myths' in Sultan, Life in Stone, 1 and 16 note3; c. f. R. E. S. Cook, 'Donations should not be used to mask artistic realities', in The SundayMail Magazine, [Harare], 10 Oct., 1993.43 Sultan, Life in Stone, 9.44 A number of dealers and art promoters, private and public, including Guthrle and Cook,owners of sculpture galleries in Harare and tireless promoters of this genre, still encouragethese sentiments.45 Willett early notices this homogeneity as he observes; 'different carvers have producedvery similar works' Willett, African Art, 254.CAROLE PEARCE 95AUTHENTICITY AND APPROPRIATIONThe claims of authenticity have an air of desperation, rather than of truthto them. In African Arts 1976, Willett provides a 9-point scale to measurethe authenticity of traditional African art. The second most inauthentictype of traditional art is that made by an African in a non-traditional stylefor sale to an expatriate.46 This is the type of art to which 'Shona sculpture'belongs, in my view. 'Shona sculpture' does not derive from any kind ofindigenous tradition: it is an appropriated style working in a doubly-borrowed idiom: firstly, from early modernism, and secondly, from WestAfrican traditional art via European modernism. The fact that the earliestappropriation was from an African source does not make the twice-borrowed idiom any more genuine. And, while appropriation is a perfectlylegitimate method of developing an art form, we may not pretend thatborrowing and 'quotation' are not taking place. In addition to this, aestheticjudgements about 'Shona sculpture' should not rest on the precariousfoundation of authenticity.There is good reason to suppose that the Zairian and West Africanmodels thrust in front of the sculptors may have been alien to Zimbabweanswho had had a minimal living tradition of ritualistic or decorative art-works. Cultural continuity across huge stretches of Africa which havebecome isolated from each other over generations and through disparatehistorical and political developments cannot lightly be assumed. It isunlikely that significant connections will be found to justify such anassumption. The Zairian and West African traditions of material cultureare spectacularly different from anything which can be found south andeast of Zambia.We have no idea what a spontaneous Zimbabwean art would havelooked like without the modernist influence of McEwen, Groeber, Patersonand others. 'Township art' and other types of folk art, that is, art producedfor and bought by local people, scarcely exists in Zimbabwe.47 It is mainlyused for signposts, home-made advertisements and murals in bars andBlack restaurants. Unlike contemporary and traditional music and literaturein the vernacular, (encouraged by the African Literature Bureau since46 Quoted in Robbins and Nooter, African Art in American Collections: Survey 1989, 14.47 Since Independence, art and craft training co-operatives have been set up throughoutZimbabwe. These attempt to engage people, particularly rural women, in income-generatingactivities for a mainly overseas market. They have resulted in movements as charming andcontrived, though not as successful or long-lived, as Shona sculpture. Having been developedby creative outsiders, they lack their own inner dynamic to sustain themselves once theinitiators are withdrawn from the projects. See, for example, I. Noy, The Art of the WeyaWomen (Harare, Baobab Books, 1992). Noy, a German volunteer, worked with a cooperativeat Weya from 1984 to 1991, teaching women different forms of painting and embroidery. Theirartistic products were an instant commercial success but the project has stagnated sinceNoy's departure.96 THE MYTH OF SHONA SCULPTURE1953)48 which have a genuine popular indigenous following, plastic artistshave always produced for a non-vernacular, predominantly overseas,market. This, combined with the refusal of curators to educate the artists,has had unfortunate results, the worst of which is that artists producingfor Western tastes must turn their back on indigenous patronage. This ispartly a matter of cost: the sculpture fetches world-market prices out ofthe reach of most local buyers, White or Black. Lack of local patronagealso results from the fact that the sculpture is not much liked by indigenouspeople.49 The artists are therefore compelled by market forces to remainwithin the known tastes of overseas buyers and are constrained to produce'high' art with noble but mysterious themes.CONTENT : ART AS ETHNOGRAPHYA precedent for the rational aesthetic discussion of African art was set atleast 30 years ago by Fagg and Plass. Their aim was to examine:some African sculptures in relation to some of these European concepts of art andto see how far ... they are applicable ... (This) attempt... may help us to freeourselves from the preoccupations which we unconsciously harbour about theexotic arts.50There is no reason why terms of aesthetic criticism, developed withina fully articulated tradition of appraisal such as that of Western art history,should not be applied respectfully and accurately to any art emergingfrom any culture, whether tied to tradition or not.Critics of 'Shona sculpture' seem unaware of this possibility.Commentators try to elucidate the genre as if it were a cultural artefactrooted in daily practice, even when they know it is not.51 This approach isguided by the idea that African art works are comprehensible only as part4* Veit-Wild, Teachers, Preachers, Non-Believers; 72.w Plangger alludes to this distaste vis-a-vis the works at Serima in the following remark:'The response by many "educated" Africans is far from enthusiastic. They speak of a "stepback into tribalism". Others simply ask, "Are we Africans so ugly?" These are understandablereactions of people who need to rediscover their own cultural heritage'. Here Plangger takesa stand against educated Black people and their considered, justified judgements, in favour ofuneducated rural folk and a mythological 'African tradition'; see Plangger and Diethelm,(eds.), Serima. On African Christian art in Rhodesia, 21.80 W. Fagg and M. Plass, African Sculpture: An Anthology (London, Studio Vista Ltd., 1964), 5.51 In any case, the demarcation of disciplinary boundaries creates problems. Art historiansaf e seldom equipped with the analytic anthropological tools for tracing connections betweencontemporary and traditional artifacts. Anthropologists are rarely art historians anJ thusunlikely to be able to make informed aesthetic judgements. The failed attempt of Winter-Irving, to relate traditional material culture to the current practices of living Zimbabweanartists points to the problem inherent in the task; see C. Winter-Irving. Stone Sculpture inZimbabwe (Harare, Roblaw Publishers. 1991), 29-39.CAROLE PEARCE 97of a larger whole; and that whole is the traditional context. But thisapproach confuses two quite separate methodological traditions: theethnographic approach to exotic genres, and the aesthetic and historicalapproach to contemporary arts.52 More seriously in relation to the latterapproach, art which addresses genuinely contemporary issues appears tobe considered inauthentic by promoters and buyers alike.Sculptors were encouraged to deal with Shona religious53 and folkbeliefs and domestic subjects; with metamorphosis, trance, spirit formsand folk-tales.54 The content of Shona art was thus denned in advance byexternal agents, particularly McEwen, as originator and facilitator. It wasto be rural in topography, traditional (in the sense described above) andatavistic in scope. In expression it has turned out to be non-erotic, non-satirical, non-humorous and non-political at a time of major social andpolitical turmoil. It seems strange that no previous commentator hasremarked on the extraordinarily non-political and non-urban nature of thesculpture.55 The exceptions to the general formula were the paintingswhich poured out of the Workshop School in the early years and whichare now never exhibited and never discussed.For the Jungian, it is obvious that, just as an under-educated ruralclass are more likely than educated urban people to yearn for the past,their concerns are also more likely than those of city dwellers to be rootedin the collective unconscious. In a hierarchy of values, the more seriousthe subject-matter, the closer to the universal experience. Conventionally,thoughts about God and Life occupy a much higher plane than thoseabout politics, social conflict and humour. By choosing lightly educatedrural men to spearhead the new artistic movement, McEwen found fertileground for his advice that artists work from within the terms of theirtraditions. In this way their inspiration could not be contaminated by thevulgar taste.CONTENT ANALYSISThe earliest monograph on the sculpture, that of Arnold, stresses as doesMcEwen, the religious and spiritual content of the sculpture. This view is52 It is worth noting that the inner significance of much expressionist art is unavailable tothe viewer. It may, therefore, be pointless to insist on the meaning of any art, traditional ornot. A non-subjective vocabulary elucidating aesthetic appreciation may be universally required.See Robbins and Nooter, African Art in American Collections: Survey 1989, 8 note 2.53 Religious themes from Christian teaching were unacceptable although mostcontemporary Africans profess some form of Christianity.54 Arnold, Zimbabwean Stone Sculpture.55 This a-political, anti-urban stance contrasts with much vibrant and eclectic black SouthAfrican art which does not shrink from township/urban/political themes, the exploration ofconsciousness or even of African Christianity. See, for instance, R. Burnett (ed.) in thecatalogue to the exhibition Tributaries (Johannesburg, BMW Communications Department,1985).98 THE MYTH OF SHONA SCULPTUREside-stepped only by Sultan who provides a largely historical account ofthe development of 'Shona sculpture', claiming that there were two distinctperiods to the works: the 'Shona' or 'spiritual' period and the contemporaryperiod. It is hard, however, to place much weight on this claim since hementions, briefly, only three features: the development from an 'archaic'to a non-mythological subject-matter, for which I have seen no evidence,from softer to harder stone, and certain stylistic developments. Predictablyenough, the supposed former 'period' coincides with McEwen's curatorshipof the Gallery.56 The Winter-Irving and Mor accounts, together with thebiographical works on Munyaradzi, Takawira and Mukomberanwa, dwellextensively on the supposed spirituality and traditional content of theworks.In order to test whether stone sculptors focus, spontaneously or not,upon religious and spiritual themes, I have undertaken a specimen contentanalysis.57 My method of classification is deliberately crude. I excludereference to the artist's intention, since it is not what the artist, but whatthe art says, which is important. If verbal descriptions are essential to theappreciation of an art work, this admits either to inadequacy of realizationon the part of the artist or the observer's lack of perspicacity. Any act ofinterpretation that insists on inserting itself between the art object andthe viewer displaces the three-dimensional object, rendering it superfluous.Description should not supersede execution.The corpus was selected from monographs and catalogues publishedin the last five years, with the exception of Arnold's selection, which waspublished in 1981. Table I indicates the proportion of works in each groupas a percentage of the total given in column A:56 Sultan, Life in Stone, 12.57 Figures are classed as spirits only If either the title specifies some magical or spiritualelement and/or something like transformation appears to be taking place. Other figures aresimilarly treated. 1 have included with Class 1 material belonging to Christian iconography, forexample the Good Samaritan. There are only about four of these. Figures count as female ifthey have female characteristics, and/or if the title specifies they are female. Included as'female' or 'male' are 'traditional' authority figures (e.g. the chief, the ambuya, the tete) andalso, so long as they are executed in a semi-figurative style, titles such as 'Thinking' or'Patience', which would otherwise place them in Class 5.All human groups, except mother and child groups and the occasional father and child,are placed In Class 4. In some cases it has been difficult to classify a work, for example todetermine whether a mother and child Is a religious or a domestic piece.In Class 5 are found the Increasing number of works of political and social comment, asIn the catalogues of the two Heritage exhibitions; see catalogues of the 1989 ZimbabweHeritage Exhibition, (National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, 1989) and 1992 Zimbabwe HeritageExhibition, (National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, 1992). Titles within this classificationinclude such works as 'Destitutes', 'Orphan Beggar". I omit all deeply ambivalent works,although there are not many of these. I have, as explained above, at all times omittedreference to the work of Tapfuma Gudza.The virtue of this system of classification is that, although crude, it Is consistent. Thedata has been extrapolated within a short period of time, according to uniform principles.More sophisticated analysis is unnecessary for current purposes.CAROLE PEARCE 99Table ICONTENT ANALYSIS AS PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL NUMBER OF WORKS INEACH COLLECTION: TOTAL NUMBER = 869 SCULPTURESReferenceArnoldWinterMorSultanHeritage '89Heritage '92MunyaradziMukomb'nwaTakawiraAverage as a jof total oeuvreANos. ofworks464196492591424613159percentage1spirit45,624,415,628,515,011,319,525,910,221,72female8,74,99,430,615,819,02,220,613,613,93male17,431,722,922,423,220,423,924,430,520,14group6,54,910,44,110,414,08,714,55,18,75abstractpolitical2,29,810,46,112,316,92,23,828,810,36animal19,624,431,28,123,218,343,510,711,921,21) The predominance of spiritual and religious materialIt can be seen from Table I that spiritual and religious themes are lessdominant than current mythology suggests. The proportion of worksdirectly 'spiritual' or 'religious' ranges from forty-five per cent of the totalcorpus (in Arnold's seminal book, widely quoted and shamelesslyplagiarized) to ten per cent in Takawira's work.2) The traditional and cultural nature of human subjectsA large proportion of female subjects portray classical themes: romanticlove, the virtues of a good woman, pregnancy, non-sexual physical beautyand mother and infant groups.58 Men are represented as lovers andhusbands, as workers, as thinkers and as authority figures. A number of allmale and female subjects centre on an idealized family, broadly conceivedas a nuclear, Western family and on domestic social relations (obedience,discipline, marital and parental love). Remaining non-religious authorityfigures such as chiefs form a small part of the total ceuvre, as do group58 A new development has been noticed In galleries in Lusaka and in the popular market ofMbare Musika In Harare. It is represented in the material under review by Kuvenguhwa's'Shona Woman' and Tahwa's 'Mother of the World', both of which won awards in the 1992Zimbabwe Heritage Exhibition, of which see catalogue, ibid. Their work is distinctlypornographic in approach.100 THE MYTH OF SHONA SCULPTUREsubjects: only Nicholas Mukomberanwa displays a sustained interest inthe latter. The groups are almost invariable human groups, executed in asemi-iiaturalistic style.It is pure mystification to insist that these male and female figures andgroups represent an unusually deep spiritual and cultural commitment.There is nothing more ordinary than portraying subjects of everyday life.What is extraordinary is that the everyday life depicted is universallyidyllic, rural and agricultural and excludes all reference to presentrealities.59 It is as if the sculptors have peeled every aspect of contemporarylife from their consciousness and rely on half-remembered visions, dreamsor primary school stories to reproduce the 'traditions'.The world of the sculptor is a purified and largely invented world.Zimbabwean stone sculpture depicts, for a market of jet-setting, bourgeois,foreign city-dwellers, a stable and harmonious rural life which hasstructured hierarchies of authority and innocent, respectful and humblewomen. It is this phenomenon, so far removed from the harsh realities oflife in the communal lands, characterized by poverty, dispersal,destabilization, crime, the destruction of family life, urbanization,modernization and the collapse of authority, which needs explanation.However, the romantic depiction of life is likely to be more in keeping withthe tastes of promoters, markets and sycophantic commentaries, than inthe real life experience of the sculptors.The only way to preserve our faith in the sculptors themselves is toconcur that they are forced into working with this kind of subject-matter.There is no other reason why a whole generation of crafts people wouldspontaneously engage in the falsification and romanticization of rural lifeand find in this meretricious activity an immediacy which their realexperiences lack.There is therefore, as apologists claim, 'cultural content' in this aeuvre.Nevertheless, it is an essentially idealized and conservative culture.60 Thesculptors' cultural awareness lacks social consciousness and a socialconscience. It is neither committed, critical nor reformist. With the59 Discussing the escapism and idealization of pre-contemporary society in the vernacularnovel Galdzanwa suggests that, in general, the Images 'reflect the values and norms of theimage-makers', rather than social reality Itself. See R. Gaidzanwa, Images of Women (Harare,College Press, 1985), 99. The same may be true in the case of sculpture.60 It is instructive to compare this genre with the Zimbabwean novel. According to Veit-Wild, Teachers, Preachers, Non-Believers; 152 and Chs. 8-14, early writers, who were thecontemporaries of the first sculptors, were concerned with the transition to modern life, ruralpoverty and the dislocation of urban dwellers from traditional values, together with reasonablyopen criticism of racism and White rule. Writers in English tend to articulate social andpolitical critique while the less-well educated vernacular writers, under the patronage of thepolitically-motivated Literature Bureau, produce sentimental tales of domestic love, domesticproblems and folk-tales. In terms of content, Shona sculptors use these resources even lesscritically than the vernacular writers.CAROLE PEARCE 101exception of 'political' art, representing perhaps five per cent of the total,there is nothing in it to attach it to the concerns of the modern world. Thisapproach is at odds both with the vitality of an African art produced forritualistic purposes which, whether stylized or not, possesses disturbingpower as well as formal excellence, and the modernist framework whichsets out to challenge convention and replace it with the fruitful, thepassionate and, especially, the true.3) Ambiguous animateAnimal subjects form as large a part of the total aeuvre as religious ones,representing twenty-one per cent of the total. If we include as animalsubjects those only ambiguously human, the number is larger.The most piquant aspect of the genre is the universal tendency ofsculptors to sculpt figures which are only ambiguously human; their facesand heads being either hominoid or drawn from those of stylized lesserprimates, especially baboons.61 The oeuvre includes a number of quitetender and romantic pieces with baboon faces (Mariga), lemur faces(Bernard Takawira and Henry Munyaradzi), Easter Island profiles (BoiraMteki) and gargoyle heads (Matemera). The tendency is exaggerated bythe hordes of lesser artists competing for public attention and financialreward.This vogue is more likely to originate in folk-tales told to children thanin seriously held spiritual or cultural beliefs. It is tempting to suggest thatthe focus on animals and ambiguous figures is the stylistic result of apractical joke played by craftsmen on infinitely gullible collectors, or toexplain this phenomenon with reference to the romantic founding beliefsof McEwen and succeeding commentators. However, the phenomenonprobably deserves more specific and detailed attention than it can get inthis article.SAYING AND SHOWINGWhat is clear from even this cursory content analysis is that artcommentators make different kinds of selections from the corpus. Arnold61 R. S. Roberts, in his review of Arnold's work, focuses on the difficulty of tracingrelationships between traditional spiritual beliefs and iconography. 'A baboon . . . may be amutupo and can give,rise to ashave spirit; its varying representation... (surely owes) more toWestern-derived models ... or to the stone medium', R. S. Roberts, 'Contrasting Views ofShona Sculpture', Zambezia, 1982, X(i), 49-53. In the same journal, Hodza comments, "Most ofthe Shona stone sculptures do not represent traditional spiritual beings or concepts . . .people, particularly foreigners, think anything carved by an African represents African spiritualbeliefs, an idea passed on to them by their pseudo-anthropologists . .. during their term ofoffice as District Commissioners ...' A. C. Hodza, ibid., 56-7.102 THE MYTH OF SHONA SCULPTUREhighlights mythical subjects; Winter-Irving, male figures; Mor, animals;and Sultan, female figures. The Munyaradzi book focuses on animals, theMukomberanwa contains a balance of male, female and spirit figures,while the Takawira concentrates on male and abstract figures.These selections purport to provide a basis for analyzing the wholecorpus. Because all sources, except that of Arnold, were published withina five-year period (1987-92), the variations cannot be explained in termsof important stylistic developments in the sculpture itself; no newdevelopments having been noted by any of the critics over that period.In spite of my observations, the texts themselves do not reflect thedifferences which appear in my content analysis: instead they unite inchorus around the themes of spontaneity, authenticity, and tradition; thevery themes of the Arnold book and the basis of McEwen's comments. Infact, the latter's comments have formed an unbroken and unaltered threadover the last 30 years, and have acquired a canonical stature aroundwhich later works must disport themselves. There is a tension betweenwhat the authors say and what they show in theii illustrations. Theirinability to recognize their own tastes in art makes much of the analysismisleading, regardless of the fact that the analysis itself strengthens themyth.FORMIn this section I address three matters: the materials used by the Shonasculptors, the demise of painting which, in the Workshop School, pre-dated stonework in favour of sculpture, and the question of style. I try toshow how the formal qualities of the sculpture follow from the ideas ofMcEwen rather than being the spontaneous result of a mysteriously 'African'style.Form and stone: the qualities of stone'Shona sculpture' started as modest and domestic, both in scale andcontent. The medium, a beautiful Celadon-green soapstone, was quiteeasily carved with simple tools and lent itself to soft, rounded shapes aswell as heavily incised forms. Some charming pieces of the early periodwere of domestic and non-domestic animals, naturalistically rendered.62As the movement grew, larger pieces with more or less mythical subjectsand works which were increasingly abstract, geometric and stylized wereadded to the corpus.62 See 'Head' by Amani In catalogue of F. McEwen. The African Workshop School, andphotographs of catalogue numbers 126, 129 and 143 In International Art Exhibition, (Lusaka.1964]. ^^CAROLE PEARCE 103The soft soapstone gave way to stone of increasing hardness anddensity. McEwen encouraged the use of stone because he thought itwould set the art works in a completely separate category from 'airportart'. In addition to this, he believed that the harder the stone, the moredifficult it would be to work and the more difficult to work, the less thepossibility of commercialization. This has proved to be a misconception.If stone sculptors can earn an income from sculpture, there is no end tothe numbers of unemployed people with a limitless amount of timeavailable, willing to try their hand at the task.63There are other advantages to stone: as a material it is completely'modern': it is lustrous and glossy, cold, hard, heavy, and 'masculine'.Zimbabwe possesses a wide variety of beautiful stones of varying coloursand degrees of opalescence, stones with veins and spots. Unlike wood,stone has a quality as noble as bronze. The material transforms theproduct of human labour from the commonplace into the special and isavailable relatively cheaply. Worked stone can be oiled and polished tothe liquid finish of bronze or steel, it can be sharply and lightly incised likemetal or it can be striated and chipped into chunky patterns to make useof the contrasting texture of weathered and heart stone. Stone is not easilydestroyed. It has no fibrous structure restricting its use, as is the case withwood. Stone can as readily accommodate itself to the living-room as thefoyer, the park or the garden.Sculpture and paintingIf we compare the skills required in painting, and those in sculpture, it iseasy to see why Black artists stopped painting and started sculpting.Apart from financial considerations (the sculpture has realized far higherprices than the painting), artists such as Thomas Mukarobgwa admit thatthey find painting more demanding than sculpture.64The painter must rely upon the skilful and intelligent application ofpaint (colour, texture and line) to a two-dimensional surface to bring it tolife, to organize themes, create depth of visual field, volume and dimension.To paint is to engage in an intellectual dialogue with relatively simplematerials: canvas and pigment. The business of creating, or commentingon illusion, lies at the very heart of painting, whether representational ornon-representational.The problem of illusion and representation bypasses the reductivesculptor: he works with physical objects which possess their own materialreality in time and space. Shaping stone along highly stylized lines is a63 These people are also encouraged to do so by successful sculptors such as JorumMariga, who see sculpture as providing large-scale informal Job creation possibilities.64 Thomas Mukarobgwa, personal communication some time in 1993.104 THE MYTH OF SHONA SCULPTUREcraft not very dissimilar to the highly worked and modelled craft articlessold to tourists. In this respect, therefore, sculpture is less difficult thanpainting. Given the form, or the idea of form and an appropriate crafttraining, the production of the sculptural object, compared with a painting,is a relatively mechanical process. This is why modern sculptors candepend on technicians to reproduce a maquette, to full size and in thedesired materials: the execution, as opposed to the conception, of a pieceof sculpture is regarded by some individuals as a craft rather than an art.A further advantage of working with stone is that the sculptor can relyupon mass and lighting to lend the work formal qualities which the sculptordid not necessarily intend. Munyaradzi's works, for example, look inphotographs as if a conical section has been cut into the stone fromeyebrow to eye. This mysterious quality is entirely a product of thestone's glossy finish under photographic lighting: in actual fact, the spacebetween eye and eyebrow is executed as a flat plane.65Form and 'Expressionism'Much has been made in the literature of the notion that the sculpture isnon-representational and 'expressionist'. In a much-quoted phrase, it is'conceptual, not perceptual'.66 This statement flies in the face of the facts.Most of the work, as 1 have shown above, has a clear representational,narrative intention.In order to develop a critique, terms must be denned. Unlikeimpressionism, expressionism is less concerned with a naturalisticrendition of external reality than with the emotional intensity of the artist'sexperience, which may result in distortions of line, shape and colour. Thedichotomy, however, between naturalistic and non-naturalistic work isuseful only as a preliminary step: it fails to recognize interesting gradationsand the fluidity of the system itself.Fagg and Plass have provided a fruitful, non-dualistic way of looking atthe formal properties of contemporary and classical African art whichmay help towards a more sophisticated appraisal of the works. Startingwith cubism, the two authors show examples of traditional African artencompassing a wide range of styles including abstract expressionismnaturalism, surrealism, assemblage, Gothic and baroque styles. Thatanalysis shows that traditional African art itself is neither primarily norsolely expressionist in character. When we turn to 'Shona sculpture' weobserve the same to be the case.65 Visiting professor Helena Nelkin of Fogg Museum. Harvard University, lecturing inHarare in 1989, enthused on the remarkable way In which the stone facilitates chiaroscuro Š_the rendition of form through the play of light and dark. 1 make a different point. ~~66 Arnold, Zimbabwean Sterne Sculpture, 41.CAROLE PEARCE 105MODERNIST ORIGINSStone sculpture in Zimbabwe, with its cold, sharply wrought planes, thetreatment of its surfaces, in the very material itself; its permanence, density,luminosity, polish, its coldness and hardness, its severity and purity,reveals nothing with more clarity than its own origins in modernistaesthetics. Far from expressing some kind of intense and private emotion,the sculpture has an explicit though coded narrative intention, as we havealready seen. In formal terms it is a sculpture of concealment.Sculptors have used, as a vehicle for this concealed narrative, suchtechniques as stylization, caricature, patterning devices, a cubist type offragmentation and minimalism. This process of abstraction has simplifiedand distorted the communicative capacity of the work: our response isaccordingly reduced. Few of these works display the taut power of aBapende fetish or a Dan or a Makishi mask.67 Traditional African sculpturederives its strength from a mannerism which results in the perfectrefinement of technique and image. 'Shona sculpture', with its reducedand borrowed vocabulary, is ill at ease when compared with eithertraditional or purely modern art forms.McEwen and others admire the frontality, the enlarged heads and theverticality of the sculptures. These features link them, according to McEwen,to traditional African expressionism. But the explanation may be evenmore simple than that. Stone sculptors in Africa do not necessarily addressthe specific qualities of their material: they simply import techniquesdeveloped from working in wood. Among these techniques is the use ofthe adze, facilitating strong planes and cubist shapes, and use of the grainof the wood itself, which encourages vertical and frontal works.68 There is,therefore, nothing particularly mysterious or African about these forms.My argument is that the 'Shona sculpture' reflects, not traditionalAfrican values or forms, but the aesthetic preferences of, firstly, McEwenand subsequently, the market which the Workshop School created. If thestone sculptors use techniques appropriate to wood, but less appropriateto the formal qualities of the medium with which they work, then theexplanation for the final product lies more in McEwen's open and often-expressed delight in these features than in any unconscious link with auniversal mind.In the same way, the strikingly architectural compositions of NicholasMukomberanwa are easily explained with reference to his early training atSerima, described in general terms above. Similarly, the neglect of 'back'67 See Fagg and Plass, African Sculpture, 52-7.68 Ibid., 23-6, and 33.106 THE MYTH OF SHONA SCULPTUREviews, either ignored and left unworked or botched by under-carvingshoulders or backs of heads can be understood as the result of an uncriticalcuratorship, which, encouraged by McEwen's remarks about 'frontality',has consistently overlooked this culpable formal error. If sculptors hadbeen properly exposed to criticism, they would have learned a fundamentalfact about sculpture: that it must express itself from every point in spaceand not merely from one favoured position.Apart from the surface treatment, the stone itself, as a mass in spaceand time, is subjected to the most perfunctory of approaches. In 1987Garlake writes of the sculpture exhibited at that year's Baringa/NedlawExhibition:The sculpture was disappointing. It was primarily pictorial, concerned with whatthe surface depicts, rather than with mass, and in most cases entirely lacked thatsense of form whose outer skin is expressive of a living core made visible. Sculp-ture that is alive elicits self-comparison ... It results from work which is conceivedthree-dimensionally, which posits an alternative form of existence ... For the mostpart the spirit here remained firmly earthbound, the sculpture pieces of stone,altered but untransformed.69CONCLUSIONI have tried to show how the myth of 'Shona sculpture' has taken hold.Contemporary notions about exotic cultures, especially Africa, originatedin the first two decades of this century when the great and radical promotersof African art were in their formative years. These seminal ideas, initiallyused as a framework for understanding and identifying traditional art,were employed by McEwen to promote a contemporary art form sufficientlyambiguous as to deceive himself and others as to its character, and thusadvance the interests of a group of underprivileged, rural men. Whatstarted as an essentially avant-garde enterprise has become a successfulcommercial industry. The vocabulary of dissent, like much of the liberalvocabulary of the sixties, has become incorporated into the heart oforthodoxy where it forms the central and unexamined core of chauvinistic,political rhetoric.I have then considered the dogma itself to discover how close it is tothe truth. I believe I have found that, in most respects, it is inaccurate.'Shona sculpture' is not authentically African, whether or not it is producedby Africans, and whether or not it encapsulates 'cultural' themes. Thepreponderance of the latter has been greatly exaggerated in the literature.69 M. Garlake, Zimbabwe Insight 87, Vol. I (Harare, The National Gallery of Zimbabwe1987).CAROLE PEARCE 107The works are not uniformly 'expressive': they form a continuum fromexpressionist to naturalistic, from abstract to figurative. The dominatingstyle is figurative and semi-naturalistic, expressing a limited, perhapseven impoverished, range of bland and secular themes.Stylistically, there is variation, but it is a timid variation within anarrow range. These formal limitations are explicable with reference toMcEwen's and others' sometimes inaccurate notion of the definingcharacteristics of an authentically African style, such as its primarily'conceptual' and expressive nature. These limitations can also be accountedfor by the economics of art production for an unknown external market,and by the lack of artistic training and exposure to other art forms. Theartists were trained Š but trained as craftsmen rather than as artists.Since decolonization began, many attempts have been made by liberalsor radicals to establish or re-establish canons of thought or expression inAfrica. 'Shona sculpture' is one such attempt. It seems clear after 30 years,however, that such 'traditions' have been misunderstood and have beeninappropriately conceived or applied. As a deliberately invented tradition,'Shona sculpture' lacks roots in a past and a future. Nevertheless, themyth continues to flourish.In the contemporary world, the market-place dictates what art is to beworth producing and, therefore, what art will be produced. The promotersof this art form have the complicated task of producing criteria to helpbuyers distinguish between good and bad, authentic and inauthentic works.It is too simple to cite this phenomenon as yet another instance of neo-imperialism, the domination of the peripheral Third World by the richcentre, for there are two differences. The first is that we can scarcelydescribe the sculptors as 'compradors' of capitalism, nor can we clearlydepict them as exploited, although there are aspects of both qualities intheir relationships with their countrymen and with their clients. It is hardnot to conclude that they are being exploited by the very market whichmakes their success possible.The second is that, unlike commodities such as sugar or coffee, whichsell despite their real origins, this particular commodity sells only becauseits imaginary origins lend it an aura bright enough to replace discernmentand common sense. It sells, therefore, to a particular section of the middle-class: the educated, liberal and romantic class which has lost its ruralroots and, for that reason, seeks to repossess what it falsely imagines areits universal, primeval origins: the genotype in what is solidly contemporary.