Personal Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Olowe of Ise
Nigerian, Yoruba; 20th-century
St. Louis, MO: Saint Louis Art Museum
90%
Palace Door Panel. c1910. Wood, pigment
This door's visual character is defined by a tension between the thickness of its figures and the flatness of the surface they exist upon. It's as if half the object (the figural half, full of movement) is pulling itself apart from the rest of the door, which is impassive, static. Olowe's figures have that much more distinction and motility for the way they're forced to stagger into being against an ambivalent ground. This, though, is what sets up the greatness of this artwork, not what consummates it. The consummating factor is the carving's off-rhythms and asymmetries: in the top panel full of lateral bodies there's that one frontal figure at bottom right; in the stacked side panels all the paired figures are facing left except for one, who about-faces for a tussle with his frame-mate. Within a work of such precision and directionality — every figure, every panel, is moving towards some ineluctable cardinal point — these interruptions to the prevailing order exert a centripetal force. (2024)