‘Cultural encounters: Western scholarship and Fang statuary from Equatorial Africa’ [Inaugural address, delivered on the acceptance of an extraordinary professorship at Tilburg University, Netherlands, in 2011]

Abstract

In this inaugural address, delivered on the acceptance of an extraordinary professorship at Tilburg University, Netherlands, in 2011, Wilfried van Damme examines three approaches that have been characteristically applied within the Western anthropology of art during the last half century. Illustrating these approaches with reference to the study of Fang statuary from equatorial Africa, he discusses a stylistic approach, focusing on anatomical details and proportions of Fang anthropomorphic sculptures; a culturalist approach, highlighting the local meaning and values these sculptures express; and a postcolonial approach, dealing with the Western appropriation and commodification of Fang statues.

Keywords

• African sculpture
• Fang sculpture
• historiography of African art studies
• historiography of the anthropology of art