Intriguing Information about the Dogon

Coming into the class of Arts of Africa I didn’t know much about Africa in general, let alone about anything to do with Art in Africa.  During the first week of class we learned about a group of peoples called the Dogon.  With this being the first topic of discussion in class I quickly became captivated in the topic.  Information that stood out to me in the classroom lecture and the required reading for the week seemed to be based around three things­­– sculpture, architecture, and masks.

Sculpture:

The piece of sculpture that stood out to me the most was the Seated Couple that was made sometime between the 16^th and the 19^th century.  It was made of wood and metal.  The most obvious thing I noticed right away was clearly the two figures sitting beside each other, but after studying the image I noticed this sculpture had much more to it than that.  The two figures are almost identical to one other besides the fact of one being male and one being female.  The male is seated on the right side of the woman with his arm around the woman’s neck.  One thing I learned from the reading was the purpose of having the man’s hand placed on his privates is to connect the thoughts of procreative powers or fertility, while the woman has a child on her back to show her role as a nurturing mother.  The man also carries a quiver, which is a portable case for holding arrows to show his role as a hunter or a warrior.  Another noticeable feature of this sculpture is the geometric shapes carried throughout this piece the cylindrical neck, legs, arms, and body and elongated oval faces all connect together to make this artwork.  The stool the couple is sitting on went unnoticed until our lecture in class when I learned the importance of the stool.   The stool represents the “tree of life” and also refers to the support of the couple’s ancestors.

Architecture:

The Granary Door is the piece of architecture that I thought was the most mesmerizing, not that all Dogon architecture isn’t interesting but I thought that this work had much more details that told the story of the Dogon better than the others.  This is a matter of my opinion of course.  At first, I had no idea what a granary was until in class we discussed that the purpose of a granary was to store goods, money, food and other important objects in them.  Another thing I learned about the granaries is that they are separated into male and female granaries.  The male granaries are usually used to store grain, while the women granaries are used to store jewelry or cotton.  Artwork on the door include lizards, birds, human figures, breasts, and geometric motifs.  The reason the granary doors interested me was because each door is different; no two doors are the same.

Masks:

Out of the three main topics of the Dogan, masks are by far the most interesting to me.   There are many different masks such as; Awa “The Great Mask”, the Sirige, and the Kanaga just to name a few.  The mask that I thought was the most interesting was the Sirige.  All of these masks are used to preform dances to remember those who passed away in their families.  The Sirige is the visual representative of the Great Mask.  It is painted in grid-like motifs with crossroads, which is said to represent the crossroad between life and death.  The painted rectangles on the Sirige is said to represent the different generations of a family.  The mask is several meters in length, during the dance the dancers jump and make rotating movements with the head forwards, backwards, and sideways making it very difficult that require a physical strength that not all dancers possess.  One of the most interesting things I learned about the masks, besides the make-up of them and the background information on them is that in the present day they have two different performaces.  One is normally for the tourists, while the other is the actual symbolic dance preformed in private or secluded with the Dogon.

The three of these key factors tied in to show me a little bit more about the Dogon and gave me a little bit better of an understanding on a small part of African culture and African Art.  The textbook allowed me learn some basic knowledge on the Dogon and did a good job at explaining the key words, however I did look other background information on the Dogon beyond what the textbook described.