Why Is It So Difficult to Create an Accurate Timeline for African Art?

HISTORY OF AFRICAN ART
     Rival masterpieces
     African terra cotta figures
     Ife and Benin
     African wood etching
     Tribal art and cubism

Rival masterpieces: 5th century BC
By one of the foreign coincidences of history, the 5th century BC produces the first masterpieces in two incompatible styles of sculpture. Nearly 2500 years afterward, these styles become bitter rivals in the studios of our own time. One is the classical realism which will prevail from the Renaissance to the finish of the 19th century. The other is the sculpture of Africa, distorting human features and limbs in a dramatically expressive mode. African figures in this long and vibrant tradition inspire Picasso's experiments with Cubism, which launch the mainstream of mod art.
The characteristic sculpture of Africa, which forms the largest part of what is usually considered primitive fine art, can be seen as early on as 500 BC in the Nok culture - named from the village in Nigeria where pottery figures of this kind were first found. The Nok statuettes are mainly of human subjects. Fabricated of terracotta, they combine strong formal elements with a consummate disregard for precise anatomy. Their expressive quality places them unmistakably at the first of the African sculptural tradition.
African terracotta figures: from the 5th century BC
The longest surviving tradition of African sculpture is figures in terracotta. Bandage metal is the only other cloth to withstand the continent'south termites (fatal to the carved wood of most African sculpture). Just the superb metal sculptures of Nigeria, commencement in almost the 12th century, are of a much later period than the commencement terracottas. Due west Africa, and in particular modernistic Nigeria, provides the longest and richest sequence of terracotta figures. They date back 2 and a one-half millennia to the extraordinary Nok sculptures. By effectually the 1st centuryfigures of a wonderful severity are being modelled in the Sokoto region of northwest Nigeria.
Terracotta heads and figures have been found in Ife, dating from the 12th to 15th century - the same period as the first cast-metal sculptures of this region. At Jenne, further north in Mali, archaeologists (followed unfortunately by thieves) have recently unearthed superb terracottas of the same period. I extraordinary group of terracottas is the exception in this mainly west African story, in that they come from south Africa where they are the earliest known sculptures. They are seven heads, found at Lydenburg in the Transvaal. Modelled in a brutally chunky mode, they date from almost the 6th century AD.
Powerful terra cotta figures in traditional style go on to exist fabricated in Africa in the 19th and 20th century, gimmicky with the superb carved wooden figures which survive from those ii centuries. Unlike European painting or sculpture, mode does non greatly change over the years in African tribal art. So it is a safe assumption that the astonishing imaginative range of African carving familiar to us today was just as axiomatic many centuries ago, though the objects themselves take now crumbled to grit.
Ife and Benin: from the 12th century
An unusual tradition within African sculpture is the cast-metal work done from nigh the twelfth century in what is now southern Nigeria. Information technology reaches a meridian of perfection amidst the Yoruba people of Ife. Between the 12th and the 15th century life-size heads and masks, and smaller full-length figures - all of astonishing realism - are bandage in contumely and sometimes in pure copper (technically much more difficult). These figures have an extraordinary quiet intensity.
This craft, perfected by the Yoruba people, is continued from the 15th century in Republic of benin - still today a not bad centre of metallic casting. The Republic of benin heads, delightful but less powerful in their impact than those of Ife, are commonly known as Benin bronzes. In fact they are made of contumely, melted down from vessels and ornaments arriving on the merchandise routes (in 1505-7 alone, the Portuguese amanuensis delivers 12,750 brass bracelets to Republic of benin). The inflow of the Portuguese prompts the Benin sculptors to undertake a new mode of work - brass plaques with scenes in relief, in which the Portuguese themselves sometimes feature. These plaques are nailed as ornament to the wooden pillars of the royal palace.
African forest carving: 19th - 20th century
In Africa, south of the Sahara, forest is the natural fabric for carving. In the 20th century sculpture in wood is still very much a living tradition. Examples from the 19th century have been preserved in reasonable number, largely by the efforts of collectors. But earlier work has crumbled irretrievably, eaten by ants or rotted by damp. Nonetheless, the trunk of art surviving to usa in this tradition is immensely rich. It powerfully suggests how much has been lost.
It is difficult to imagine how African tribal sculptors have viewed their own work, merely they have certainly not seen it as art in the self-conscious western way of contempo centuries. Tribal carving is done for a clear and applied purpose. A effigy may represent an antecedent, destined to stand in a shrine. A mask may exist intended for use by a shaman but once a year in a special dance. A post may exist designed to prop up a principal's verandah or to form role of a palisade round his house. An elaborate chair is likely to be for the main himself to sit on. All of them will be improve if carved in a dramatic or propitious way.
Tribal art and cubism: 20th century
Whatever the reason for the range of tribal art, the issue is an unrivalled display of the ability of the imagination. The basic field of study, as in western sculpture, is the human body. But the tribal sculptor is liberated from the straitjacket of realism. His ingredients may be limited to the parts of the torso, but he constantly reassembles them in new dimensions and relationships. From a central axis of eyes, nose, mouth, navel and genital organs, to the peripheral cast list of hair, ears, arms, breasts, legs and buttocks, there is no predicting which of these elements volition take the starring roles in whatsoever one production. Startling imbalance is restored to rest by the force of stiff pattern.
It is hard to know whether a particular image may be intended to seem sad or terrifying (or neither, or even nothing), for this is a subjective affair on which an outsider may often exist mistaken. But in these carvings there is no mistaking the energy and playfulness with which the human body is turned, past confident distortion, into such a gallery of wonderful creatures. It is not surprising that Picasso, the almost playful genius of the 20th century, is inspired by these fragmentations of tedious reality to find a new direction of his own in cubism.

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Source: http://historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=aa39