How Western Art Styles Have Influenced African Art Styles

African styles have progressed throughout the ages, as African art has traveled all around the world as they have been seen by more and more overseas critics that have inspired new techniques in African artists to develop new ideas and techniques in carrying out their artistic style in a contemporary and modern way. In the work of the artists you can clearly see characteristics of the African style in their work, Like that of Lionel Smit; His use of color is very explosive and gestural which can relate to the Nigerian art style that also has the same characteristics and his use different shades of these primary colors to add more depth to the jarring vibrant colors to bring about a friendlier, and more pleasant mood to his paintings. As well Joseph Eze; He makes use of vivid and intense colors in the skin tones of his portraits. His work also consists of motifs that bring about a sense of graffiti but with a Nigerian taste and style, as the words sometimes contains words in the language of the artist and abstract images that can link back to the design on textiles manufactured locally in Nigeria.

And lastly Laolu Senbanjo, Laolu fuses modern style and Nigerian heritage. The art he has created has always been driven by hearing about Yoruba mythology of Orishas (Gods of the yoruba tribe). He feels that Nigerian art should not be a souvenir from a holiday bought at a thrift store or market. It should have a more reverential meaning. African art has been done with different mediums and portrayed through different ways but it has still kept it’s original stance in the the history of African people. Contemporary African artists make use of modern/contemporary methods of painting and design like the use of a chisel instead of Awobuigi for carving traditional sculpture as well as the use of ink instead of traditional paint to decorate the bodies of the people you paint. Our traditional ways of doing things are not the things that stayed within our character because of the amount of people less eager to try the oldest methods but incorporation of new newth. In conclusion, There is a lot of different styles intermingling between the two cultures, as in how we make use of western tools to further our tradition and our ways of artistic prevalence in the world. In the contemporary era of today, the influence of traditional African aesthetics and processes is so profoundly know in the artistic practice that it is not only rarely evoked. The increasing globalisation of the art world with many contemporary artists has shown that the divide between Western and non-Western art is been increasingly rendered obsolete and that view has been termed as primitive and has been relegated in the past.