We underwent a series of preliminary conversations. But there was first of all 
this insistence on the part of the artist, Bruce Onabrakpeya, that we first write 
to formally request for an interview and that a catalogue of proposed 
questions be forwarded. Our original idea was to get an open-ended, freeflowing 
conversation recorded on Nigerian art thus far, and on emergent 
trends. The artist had been irked by an offensive 'letter to the editor' in our 
maiden edition which took a swipe at the older generations of Nigerian visual 
artists and demanded to know just how contemporary they would want to 
claim they were when even at the present time, the content and,styles of their 
works little differs from the themes and styles they had pursued since the 
1940s! What would have been a fluid, enthusiastic interview thus was almost 
dampened in its opening parts, before trailing on to wider issues relevant to 
the current conditions of the arts in Nigeria and in Africa. 
Dr. Bruce Onabrakpeya is of course one of the best known names in the world 
of African art. His uniquely styled etchings and prints are world-renowned 
but Onabrakpeya is also an intellectual who has written extensively on 
African art in addition to his public speeches and lectures. On the GR team's 
arrival in Onabrakpeya's three-storey home at Papa Ajao, Mushin, on the 
outskirts of Lagos, luck seemed to have completely run out on us, even as we 
found arriving at about the same time, a visitor to the Onahrakpeya's. This 
was no less a person than Onabrakpeya's long-time friend, former schoolmate 
at the Zaria School of Art and world-acclaimed uli master and academic, 
Professor Uche Okeke! Inevitably, we had to draw him into our 
discussions, but not before the host's family had treated the two comrades to 
a dish of traditional delicacies. 
And then, we set to work. 
Onabrakpeya fished out his copy of the GR and read the 'letter's' complaints 
audibly. 
Thereon, he sparked. But insightfully, Uche Okeke joining in in his characteristic 
reflective and philosophical tone! 
ONABRAKPEYA: These are the questions and Igavemycopy of Glendora Review to zman 
9u e r i e s - at Yaba Tech (Yaba College of Technology, 
the base of the Yaba school of art) called 
Before this interview, I thought, and asked Michael Omoige, a lecturer, who has read it 
the publisher to create aquestionnaire...Then 
and is responding, through an article. 
You see there is a problem in having to 
answer these questions. 
You see, this kind of whooping down! 
OKEKE: I would not even respond. 
ONABRAKPEYA: YOU see, there are otheryoung 
people who should answer for us, we do not 
have to defend our stand now. 
OKEKE: These issues are too basic and trivial 
and too fundamental, which is why the young 
man Omoige has decided to take it up. I 
remember the time at Enwonwu's memorial 
people asking these same questions, why do 
not people go and research and do their 
homework. For we have written extensively 
ourselves. 
ONABRAKPEYA : From this Glendora Review, 
it is clear that it is an Ife affair. 
GR: We are not connected to any school or 
movement... 
ONABRAKPEYA: I understand exactly what 
you are saying. But you see in the article in 
GR, it fails to answer nor see the relevance of 
those mentioned, and it even fails to mention 
Okeke, Demas Nwoko, etc. How relevantare 
they to the Nigerian art today? It even points 
out the theme of what you are saying. Because 
these artists are working and still working. 
The young people growing up however 
who should really study the works of these 
people before they die out. Ben Enwonwu 
died last year, they are just not doing their 
work. 
In the 60s and early 70s some white people in 
this country pitched the Osogbo artists against 
25
Bruce Onabrakpeya (left) and Uche Okeke 
the academically trained artists. What Ulli 
Beier did, especially with the fame that had 
attained between Twin Seven Seven and 
Jimoh Buraimoh etc. They said that people 
who were informally trained were better artists 
than those from the academies. That the 
academics were wrong. I had a friend from 
Canada, a big person in the government there 
now who said we should go ahead and write 
... we said no. When you see a stick that is 
bent, you do not go ahead describing how 
bent the stick is. You just take a straight one 
and put it beside it so everybody would see 
how bent it is. So, all we did was to keep 
quiet. We did not say anything. We just kept 
working. Now, time has passed and we leave 
you to judge whether academically trained 
artists are inferior to people who come from 
workshops or that these workshop artists are 
developing as opposed to the academically 
trained ones that 'are continuously bugged 
down with theories' and so on...such that they 
'cannot produce anything'. So, I am sorry, I 
feel there are people that can say something 
now to this effect. I am sorry I have got you 
to write these questions. This magazine as I 
see it is very important in developing contemporary 
African thought in the arts and I 
will contribute to it - though I am not a writer. 
Uche here is the writer. (We stayed in the 
same room in Zaria for two/three years.) 
Writing is feeling. So, you feel about something 
and put it down. So, we left. He left for 
Germany. I was not that fortunate but since 
then an idea comes, I put it down. So, I write 
and I do have ideas. I have just written for 
africa '95. I would not, however, want to 
answer directly... which is why I have put 
some others on this issue to write for you. 
The fear, you should know, is that we distance 
ourselves from mischief. And I must 
admit we saw mischief and provocation in 
the article of the GR. Trying for a kind of 
response to sell the journal. 
GR: But can this possibly be the... 
OKEKE : The important thing about a publication 
like this is not who publishes it or the 
person who writes because ultimately other 
people would have to react and in the process 
if the journal is open-minded, ah-ah, it will 
grow. If not, there will be problems. 
ONABRAKPEYA: YOU are not a temporary, you 
want to be contemporary...He ha ha!!! 
(Laughter) 
OKEKE: Just yesterday, I was talking about 
some problems, about painters who cannot 
draw, who cannot paint properly, who cannot 
even get their techniques for their work.. 
the grounds for their works to be properly 
done. So, we want to run a workshop to 
retrain them. Unlike Nka, for instance, who 
are talking about post-modernism, which to 
us Africans is total bull shit, especially for an 
African artist living in Nigeria. It is not our 
problem. Our problem is how do we get up. 
How does an artist eat here, live here and 
make it. How do we create our own audience 
in our own society. 
ONABRAKPEYA: Yes, this is what is relevant. 
Relevant to our people. 
OKEKE: If you produce a work such as a 
cassette and nobody buys, or if it does not 
have a meaning to the people, DO relevance to 
the people... this is what a magazine such as 
yours should address. In fact on the 21st of 
September, I would be in Britain to deliver a 
paper. Our main argument is on development. 
Africa and development with the artist 
as medium, at the London University. I have 
done a paper and for your information, I have 
gone through the schools not in Nigeria alone, 
but the whole of Africa. Also all the workshop 
centres from the early 30s upward. The 
development of the art institutions like Ife. 
Originally, the art school at Ife was part of the 
Education (faculty), I went there to study the 
scene and said to the authorities, the students 
at the time would not go far. I wrote a report 
and finally a department of the arts was given 
to them. Most of these art schools around, 
26
people of our own generation were instrumental 
to the creation of these schools. 
We do not go around claiming these things. 
At IMT [Institute of Management and Technology] 
Enugu, I had to write the first programme 
for that school. At Port Harcourt, the 
same. I graduated the first batch. The same 
thing for Rowland Abiodun; I assessed him 
for professorship. So, these are the things 
you must consider. 
They come to our institute, people from 
America and so on, and use our books there. 
So, when you go and meet someone from the 
Zaria Art society from 1958 to 1961, we had 
always been discussing these topics such as 
the development of art in Africa. At that time, 
you must note there was nothing like that in 
any part of Africa. There was no questioning 
of even the basic tenets of Nigerian art. We 
questioned it and made the first philosophy. 
'No. That is not the meaning of contemporary art. What we 
mean, or should I say my main argument in... the paper I am 
about to deliver is on modern African art. By modern African 
art, I mean art based on enlightenment, knowledge. So, we 
have to start something in this country. Or when we say 
Osogbo art, Osogbo art is contemporary.' 
We were students then! 
GR: What then went wrong? 
OKEKE: What went wrong is indeed what we 
are asking. Why is it that no man can draw 
properly, not to talk about filing his brush 
before painting. And why is it that I should 
pay so much for a painting that is basically 
badly produced. Nobody would do it in Europe 
or America. These are problems. 
So, when people here talk and write because 
they have pen and paper, some of us also 
have it, Huh! Huh! (Laughs) But we do not 
use it for destructive purposes. Because if we 
land on some of these topics, we know the 
history. So, we must be cautious and careful. 
You cannot write about people without knowing 
what they have tried to do or done. 
GR: In fact, they are seeming rather basic 
and fundamental, these issues. This is a real 
GR: Who was Frith? 
OKEKE: Frith was our professor at Zaria. He 
graduated us. A white man. He looked at the 
top of the dining hall with so many vultures 
and he painted them. We then asked: 'Why 
are you so interested in these vultures?' He 
said because they are contemporary. 
ONABRAKPEYA: That is, they are living. 
OKEKE: They are contemporary at that point. 
We were living at the same time. 
GR: I think the impression young people 
have of contemporary art is bugged down 
with the confusions they see and feel everyday. 
That is the vision they see on T. V. on art, 
of what is coming out of the West , the 
symbols they see. Or when they travel and 
see these Western works on canvass. It is 
like, man! this is heavy and so different from 
the vibes of Africa, that traditional old stuff. 
so... art in Congo called Poto-poto. In fact, 
there were schools that came before Potopoto. 
The Poto-poto, I am sure you have seen 
the style before - figures like match sticks on 
black velvet cloth etc. Now, you see that kind 
of development is almost parallel to what 
started happening from the 1930s when 
Margaret Trowell went to Uganda, the earliest 
art school in Africa in Uganda. The next 
one was in Kumasi. Margaret Trowell's 
daughter is married to our present UK High 
Commissioner to Nigeria here. Margaret was 
the first professor involved in the real training 
of artists at Makerere University. She 
started teaching them Poto-poto in her house 
and finally the university grew not just for art 
but other subjects. So, by the time we got to 
Ife, that is recent. Even at Zaria, the art school 
is recent. But the advantage Nigeria had was 
Aina Onabolu. 
GR: How? Because he did not come from 
any school? 
problem. 
ONABRAKPEVA: Please, let me say now, although 
the question was asked in the article 
that the people who did the art of the 30s and 
40s, if they could still be contemporary. He 
[the writer] gave us the Oxford dictionary... 
the Advanced Learners' Dictionary and 
which defines contemporary art as 'of the 
time' or 'period being referred to'. 
OKEKE: Maybe one thing you do not realise 
is that, (it is in my paper the one I have just 
written for London. In fact, I have just got my 
visa to go. There are two of us going) contemporary 
means everybody even donkeys 
that are living at this time, in the same period 
in history. Bruce, don't you remember Frith 
at Zaria with us looking at the vultures at the 
dining hall there, when we were students? He 
looked at them and did a series of paintings of 
vultures. 
OKEKE: NO. That is not the meaning of contemporary 
art. What we mean, or should I say 
my main argument in... the paper I am about 
to deliver is on modern African art. By modern 
African art, I mean art based on enlightenment, 
knowledge. So, we have to start 
something in this country. Or when we say 
Osogbo art, Osogbo art is contemporary. 
GR: People call it traditional. 
OKEKE: It is not modern. The modern art is 
based on scientific knowledge and scholarship, 
produced by someone educated. You 
have to use your knowledge. I do not think 
the same way as an Osogbo boy because 
these people were mostly drop-outs from 
schools. 
We have to be honest with ourselves. There 
are other schools, not just Osogbo. The earliest 
one started during the last century or 
27
OKEKE: He started in the 1900s. He went to 
secondary school in Lagos, was encouraged 
to read and take post secondary courses. And 
later by 1920, he went to Britain. He studied 
in London and Europe. He came back in 
1923 to develop a programme for teaching. 
So, from that time, Nigeria had an academic 
tradition in art. So, we have the earliest 
tradition in art. By the time most people came 
in the 30s, we had already changed students 
in the 20s. Thanks to Onabolu. So, that really 
is the difference between Nigeria's art tradition 
and some of the others. Those ones were 
produced by white people. Onabolu stayed 
here with his own. He went there and came 
back and continued here. Before eventually 
some white people came and started... Murray, 
and Murray' s students had no structured way 
of drawing. They were not like Onabolu's 
students because he had to do his stuff scientifically 
with perspective in mind. I remember 
the late Okolo, our classmate. He was 
complaining that why don't we want to go 
through this rigour of perspective, etc. for he 
was trained by Onabolu at Baptist Academy, 
Lagos. In fact, there were quite a number of 
them such that by the time we went into the 
business only five years, the tradition had 
been set. We were already seeing what they 
were doing, the forms. Remember, the man 
from Benin, Osagie from Edo College. So, 
we are not really pioneers as such; this tradition 
had been developed. 
GR: But you have extended the frontiers of 
this tradition and given it your own personality? 
OKEKE: NO, not really. What really happened 
was that Onabolu wanted to get this 
white man tradition to develop. But when the 
Zaria Art Society came up we said no. We 
have to of course learn how to do these things 
well, learn how to draw well and decide not 
to do it that way. Before rejecting... 
You see, a lot of people today do not know 
how to draw things properly. They will tell 
you they are abstract artists. If you want to 
say a thing is sweet, tell us whether it is sweet 
like sugar or sugarcane. Abstract means removing 
from what was there. What was there 
would be learning how to put things as they 
are in nature. If you change or remove aspects 
of this then you are moving towards 
abstraction. 
ONABRAKPEYA: YOU asked what was special 
to Zaria at that time. At the Zaria school, 
when we came up, independence was at the 
doorstep. Colonialism had been so successful 
that our people were thinking about the 
West, it had done its job so well that everybody 
was thinking about the west. All the 
values we had, that we acquired over the past 
millions of years were being washed away 
because of the technological bamboozlement 
from the West. The Zaria Art Society students 
studied very well in the classroom, 
studied all that was to be learnt and done. But 
went to their cubicles, we were seven. 
OKEKE: NO, we were eleven 
(They argue for a minute or two) 
ONABRAKPEYA: We went to our cubicles and 
discussed how relevant is this art we are 
learning to our living. That was where the 
philosophy of synthesis came in. So, if you 
look from that time, 1958, to the present, you 
are looking at the development of the consciousness 
of our people, the identity of our 
people. The use of their own art to promote 
the life, the thinking and the personality of 
the people. When you judge the result of all 
these things, therefore, you judge it from 
how art is taken in the universities, how art 
has gone from being a useless subject in the 
mind of the people to something that is now 
useful. How in the time parents used to refuse 
to sponsor a child to train in art. David Dale 
of St. Gregory's College was going to run 
away from his home when his sister who 
refused to sponsor him to Zaria called him a 
silly thing for wanting to paint the sky. But all 
that has been changed because of the philosophy 
a few people had adopted and followed 
up and have worked all their lives. 
Rejecting all material gains apart from art, so 
as to create a personality for the artist and to 
educate people to create awareness that art is 
not just about creating something beautiful. 
Art is something to explain your life, to 
explain the personality of your people, your 
thoughts and create a basis for economic, 
cultural, political and industrial development 
The moment you look at art for art's sake, or 
as a picture that is hung on the wall, then you 
miss the idea, you miss it all. Which is why 
we are honoured continuously at the Univer- 
28
sity of Ibadan and other universities in the 
country for projecting and promoting the, 
consciousness of the people and contributing 
to learning. 
So, when people talk about contemporary art 
to an artist who has been into contemporary 
art in the 40s and still is on the contemporary 
scene now, you have to know we know what 
we are talking about. If you guys follow up 
well and even look at the works well, you will 
see that art has improved, it has grown, it is 
developing. For here you will see development 
in ideology, personality and how people 
in and oul of the country rate the artists. 
Or perhaps as in the article in the GR says, we 
artists do not deserve the respect which the 
art society give to us. But how can we take the 
millions of Nigerians for a ride? 
OKEKE: YOU sec, a critic is more or less a 
prostitute. He gives his opinion of a particular 
problem he thought he knew at a given 
time. It has this time limit which depends on 
the person who is passing the judgement. But 
a good critic would study, of course, study 
the history of the period, the evolution, study 
the reasons for the art. Because there must be 
reason for what an artist produces. There is 
no human being who makes art just for the 
sake of making it. 
GR: But is that not the Western idea? 
OKEKE: That is the real Western style. But it 
is not even a very good Western artist that 
would just create for art's sake. He must 
communicate his ideas at least. 
GR: But what is this post-modern stuff? 
OKEKE: The playing of words by critics! 
After post-modern where do we go? Maybe 
post-post-modern? How do you remove what 
is modern? I remember reading recently of 
Mali in West Africa in the Sixteenth Century, 
the city of Timbuktu and Djenne, how they 
produced books to sell to the whole world, 
that centre of that time was at its highest point 
and very modern. You see, as I have mentioned 
before, I do not talk about post-modernism; 
it is not an issue for us. The African 
critic, those ones in the diaspora are fighting 
their own battle, because they have a problem 
there, since they are not American artists 
or British. So, in essence, they are struggling 
to be heard. 
But inside Africa, we who are developing art 
here have other languages to use and the 
language is not that kind of flowery language 
of post-modernism. Our problem primarily 
is how we survive in this our given circumstance, 
how an artist can live here like a 
human being and make it. If you are a mechanic 
and cannot live by that job, the best 
thing is to move on and forget it. So, it is 
wrong for an artist to go around attacking 
another artist when he is going hungry. So, 
the issue is how we develop our society in 
such a way that the artist would live, etc. For 
I believe that someone that has been blessed 
with that creativity should be able to get 
more. For if an artist uses his gift well, he 
should live well and help develop his society. 
ONABRAKPEYA: Exactly, I will like to add a 
bit here. If you go back to the art of our 
ancestors, that is traditional art, when you 
examine the role of the art within that society, 
art was used for personal aggrandisement, 
the chiefs and obas used it as a personal 
embellishment. Art was used for ancestral 
worship, you develop a soul through the art. 
It was used in form of medicine. The abikus, 
ibejis, etc. were created in a way to ward off 
spirits. Art was, therefore used in religion, 
politics, was used in entertainment. All these 
things were done in the past. Now ask, what 
is modern art doing? Has modern art, that is 
the art we practice today, has contemporary 
art fallen short of these roles which the ancestral 
forms played in the past? Has the art of 
today gone beyond to tackle education, religion, 
politics, psychology, medicine. All these 
things are going on in the works of artists 
today. If you want me to enumerate, Yusuf 
Grillo, you mentioned in your article. Go into 
ten churches in Lagos. Grillo's artworks will 
be in seven of them. Presbyterian Church, 
Yaba; All Saints' Church, etc. In the newspapers, 
you cannot do without seeing an illustration 
here and there. Look at books, also in 
the government houses, go to Saint Paul's 
Church, Ebute-Meta or go to Onitsha. Also 
our art goes abroad thereby helping the image 
of our country through exhibitions. 
Therefore, if our art is doing all these things 
for the people and the people know it so, and 
they use it, could it be anything else other 
than contemporary? So, when you ask, you 
should be asking about good or bad art, 
which is a different ball game entirely, not 
the trivial use of whether art is contemporary 
or not. 
OKEKE: YOU see, art is devotion to life. It is 
not about just drawing. It is a whole package. 
When I leave here for home, I am helping 
with the town square. The town asked me to 
do it. There is a thinking, to help and elevate 
the soul of the human being. Art is a way of 
life. And we are practical and creative. 
ONABRAKPEYA: If you look at my piece, The 
Sahelian Masquerade there is a philosophy, 
a thinking expressed in the drawing and 
it comes out in all kinds of things to help and 
raise the spirit of the soul of the human being. 
The Sahelian Masquerade again, looked at 
the problem of the West African sub-region 
with desertification, the spoiling of the environment, 
the burning of bushes, et al. So the 
question of art being the makeup of a beautiful 
picture that you put in a parlour of a white 
man is not it. It is just not the case. This is 
something that talks about a people and helps 
to keep the soul. 
That is their identity, to create identity. You 
therefore do not look at art as only in style or 
in form or what people are buying. 
OKEKE: Because they could buy the wrong 
thing. I had an interview recently coming out 
on 9th or 10th of September done by BBC 
where I was looking at creativity. I believe to 
be creative is to be endowed with a gift. I 
asked them that if a Japanese has this gift, a 
Briton has the gift and a Nigerian,which 
person would you say is superior to the 
other?... for this is a thing given to an individual 
in any society and so what they make 
out of it will depend on all kinds of things. If 
you are very technologically advanced, then 
you can use technical processes to bring the 
art out. But that does not mean you are more 
creative. So, it is also the creative process, 
the way you produce what is there, what is in 
your mind that you then show. So, these are 
the problems, when you talk about identity, 
about culture and development. In fact, these 
things belong to every people. It is not particular 
to any. And if you say the white man 
talks about the post-modern, that is his palaver. 
He will decide to talk about postmodern, 
then pre-modern and post-colonial. 
It just goes on. By and large, it is the human 
being that is endowed that can help us develop 
our society. 
GR: Does the fact that at Nsukka, a lot of 
professors of your calibre are still out of the 
country teaching as well as exhibiting across 
the globe of any significance to the quality of 
graduates that leave that university? 
ONABRAKPEYA: Let me help answer that question. 
Recently, there was an Uli exhibition 
put up in New York. Uche is Mr. Uli. When 
he left Zaria, he went back to study the body 
painting of the Igbo people and the wall 
painting of the Igbo and evolved an art style. 
OKEKE: I did not leave Zaria! 
ONABRAKPEYA: I mean, he was still there, but 
during the holidays. He evolved the Uli style. 
29
Obiora Udechukwu took it up. Tayo 
Adenaike, a Yoruba, also took it up. And 
even a Ghanaian, El Anatsui also took it up. 
And so, today, Uli is a name in the art world. 
OKEKE: You see, Uli is a system of drawing. 
That is drawing in our tradition. Not a synthesis. 
Uli is drawing. The truth is that the 
thing they draw are things from the environment. 
Plant forms, animals. They are all 
stylised and because of our religious system, 
that is the African religion system, which is 
abstract. Because of this, instead of drawing 
from nature, as taught in art schools, they 
draw from abstract religious concepts. So, 
the idea are symbols. Because symbols could 
be of an ordinary thing or an abstract thing, it 
could be a line symbolising something, but 
these things are extracted from a natural 
form. Like there is a form we got from the 
kolanut, got from the end of a kolanut called 
Isi woji. If you take a kola that has four lobes, 
it has some form that have meaning in the 
cultural sense and significance of the people. 
Also, they are derived from nature. Whereas 
in the European sense, you go out and make 
drawing. It is the same thing conceptually. 
The Osogbo artists are not just as exposed. 
So what they do is, in fact... I went to Osogbo 
and bought one of the early Osogbo drawings. 
It was one of my drawings done in the 
50's, late 50's, The Orphan. This man 
Buraimoh copied it and made it in print. 
When I got there, I said it is my drawing. You 
see, that is how they started. They alsocopied 
Bruce, Demas and so on. I did not have any 
grudge. These are the ways we can grow. We 
know they are handicapped and have to learn 
and try all things. They started from us. We 
were experimenting and they also saw that it 
was possible and then they borrowed from 
tradition and therefore cannot accuse them of 
stealing from our own experimentation. But 
however, this is what the search for a new 
synthesis is all about. 
ONABRAKPEYA: If I may add, you see what 
the white people do is this, they come round 
see your artwork whether contemporary or 
traditional. They take it away, manipulate it 
and bring it back to you as a new thing. They 
take an idea form as a drawing, copy it, use it 
there. By the time it comes back to you, you 
look at it as a new form. But we are saying 
instead of borrowing from you, treated, and 
all that, instead of borrowing that idea, go 
straight to your own source, get your idea, 
polish it and use it. Like go back to the 
Yoruba culture for eating and polish up your 
food and eat it. It would be as good as any 
food elsewhere. 
But we are saying instead 
of borrowing from 
This is exactly what Picasso did. What Picasso 
did was he came down, he saw our 
forms, went to Mexico, etc., removed what 
he could remove and produced. And people 
say, Ah! Ah! but they only touched the suryou, 
treated, and all that, 
instead of borrowing 
face. We are the priests and the priestesses of 
our own culture. We go beyond the surface to 
the inside. And so, the Oyinbos (Whites) 
would expect us to continue from where 
Picasso stopped. No, we said no. What we 
have to do is go back into our own and bring 
that idea, go straight to 
your own source, get 
out because there are so many that we can 
still bring out, Picasso only touched the surface. 
And we bring these things out. Our 
people here, some do not even understand. 
Worse still, our academically trained artists 
don' t understand. Now, I have taken a collection 
of artworks to London. These articles are 
not paintings nor drawings but a collection of 
objects which simulate the shrine as it is 
originally conceived by the Nigerian. This is 
my presentation at africa '95. 
your idea, polish it and 
use it 
a drawing of kola or plants or human being or 
form, etc. The motivation in Uli is therefore 
more spiritual than temporal or ordinary. 
GR: What is the difference in the Uli forms 
and that of the forms from Osogbo aside from 
the academic differences? 
OKEKE: Good. The Osogbo artists are doing 
Uli too except they are using or operating in 
the Yoruba system or cosmology as style of 
There is another artist, Debeb is his name. 
His real name is Bebetiedor. He shortened 
his name to Debeb in America. He came and 
said to me that we should look forward, take 
30
ideas from outside and forget these primitive 
things we are doing. So, I told Debeb: 'What 
is wrong with your skin? Why are you revolting 
against your skin? Are you going to be 
able to change your skin because you stay in 
America?' Now, he does what is labelled 
'Pointilism' - the use of dots to produce a 
picture. There is a French group of artists, 
one of them Seurat, is a French exponent of 
this style. He became very famous. So, I told 
him Pointilism originated from here in Africa. 
Look at the nature doctor or a young girl 
or a woman undergoing rites. They will use 
white chalk all over the body. They use dot 
forms on walls of traditional homes as well as 
shrines, etc. This is pointilism. So, please, 
don't look at Suerat because he borrowed 
from us. Come back home. Go to the roots 
and develop what is there and your work will 
definitely be better off than that of Seurat. So, 
this call to —roots, people like to look at it as 
primitive, as retrogressive. You have to go 
A wonderful, 
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Mobolaji Adenobi, Wole's mother 
describes the anguish, the anxiety 
and the deep love she has for Wole. 
The story touches everybody's heart. 
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'Splendid', I was deeply touched." 
Soyinba also wrote the foreword to the boob. 
SPLENDID, no doubt is the most admirable 
beautiful boob published for a long time. 
A story straight from a mother's heart. 
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back and bring back the values that we have 
left behind. I mean Africa had been growing 
for millions of years. Our values must have 
been right — to have survived. For all those 
values to be thrown away because of fifty 
years of contact with whites is wrong. Which 
is what we are saying. This is our case. 
OKEKE: YOU see, all these things are defined 
in my work when you see them. I do not even 
need to talk. When I was in Germany during 
the civil war (Nigerian civil war, 1967-1970), 
there were sculptors we had in an exhibition 
and they looked at my work and exclaimed 
'Ganz modern', meaning very modern. I 
asked what do you mean by my work being 
very modern because that was the kind of 
thing they had been pinching before with all 
these Picasso types. So, if I decide to get my 
source from home, they then accuse me of 
being very modern. The European does not 
have any problems with our works. It is just 
these critics who pretend they are clever, and 
always fall into trouble. But if they are objective, 
they tend to understand these and what 
you are doing. Most, however, are not objective. 
They are prejudiced. 
ONABRAKPEYA: Let me tell you, it is politics. 
An American told me that it is very difficult 
for an American to accept Nigerian art or art 
from Africa as equal to art from the West 
because once they accept it they are accepting 
the quality and your mental capabilities. 
It is a sickness. 
OKEKE: I tell my friends that Picasso's works, 
my people here, if they see his work would 
think it is nonsense because their own form 
of communication does not suit ours. They 
are communicating with their own people 
out there while we are doing our own here. 
My people would think Picasso does not 
know anything, how come they draw human 
beings this way, which is the same way they 
appreciate our own art the way they do there. 
It is only a person with a liberal mind that can 
tolerate your own. The cultures are different, 
and they cannot be blamed for feeling my 
work is 'very modern' but I blame them for 
thinking we Africans are not up to it for 
having that prejudice. 
ONABRAKPEYA: This does not mean that we 
are closed to what is going on in the West. We 
are open to modern techniques, ideas and 
scientific development for these things are 
universal and are open to the world, which is 
knowledge in itself. After all, knowledge and 
scientific development began from somewhere 
along the Nile valley, Egypt and went 
up on. So, they got something from us, that is 
the West, and so, the knowledge they have is 
a world property. If we get it, we should use 
it, mix it up etc. If you look at our institutions 
here, you find almost everyday we get something 
new from the traditional part and from 
outsiders. So, we are very much in touch with 
the outside world. AH we are saying is how 
we should be inward looking, get out what is 
inside you, give it a focus, get other things 
and add to it, get this fertilised effect. The 
result would be very strong. If you do not like 
your work, you cannot have respect for what 
other people are doing. 
OKEKE: YOU see, one great thing about African 
culture is tolerance. When the whites 
came originally, especially in the south (southern 
part of Nigeria), people sent their children 
to find out what they were doing 'Let us 
see what tricks they have', etc. This synthesis 
enables us to have more than the whites 
themselves. There is no monopoly of knowledge 
anyway. GR 
31