Ife Terracotta Portreait (Classical)	Yoruba Ife Quartz Stool	Ife Bronze Portreait (Classical)	Ife Bronze Portreait (Classical)
Ife Terracotta Portreait (Classical)	Ife Bronze Portreait (Classical)	Ife Bronze Portreait (Classical)	Ife Terracotta Portreait (Classical)
Ife Bronze Portreait (Classical)	Ife Bronze Portreait (Classical)	Ife Terracotta Portreait (Classical)	Ife Terracotta Portreait
Ife Terracotta Portreait (Classical)	Ife Bronze Portreait (Classical)	Ife Bronze Portreait (Classical)	Ife Terracotta Portreait (Classical)
Ife Terracotta Portreait (Classical)	Ife Terracotta Portreait (Classical)	Ife Bronze Portreait (Classical)	Ife Terracotta Portreait (Classical)
Ife Bronze Portreait (Classical)	Ife Bronze Portreait (Classical)	Ife Terracotta Portreait (Classical)	Ife Bronze Portreaits (Classical)
Ife Terracotta Portreait (Classical)	Ife Bronze Portreait (Classical)	Ife Bronze Portreait (Classical)	Ife Bronze Portreait (Classical)
Ife Bronze Portreait (Classical)	Ife Bronze Figure (Classical)	Ife Bronze Bowl (Classical)	Ife Terracatta Portreait (Classical)
Ife Bronze Portreait (Classical)	Yoruba Deji of Akure (Classical)	Ife Terracatta Portreait (Classical)	Ife Terracatta Portreait (Classical)

       

Yoruba people live in South Western Nigeria, Republic of Benin (former Dahomey) and Togo. They originally came from the Nile valley; shortly after Muslim invasion of Egypt around 600 A.D. The Yoruba people have some of the most allusive realistic principles ever used to define human images by any civilization. It would not be until the late 19th and early 20th Century that such a feat would be mentioned and finally executed by European and Western artists. Bellow you will find the basic shapes and volume used in African pottery and sculptures. We produce variations of these shapes over and over again in our work. All nature is abstracted from our environment using these forms/tools you see below. That is correct we see these forms as our modeling and carving tools, which we carry in our heads rather than hands. We carry sticks knives and adzes in hand. So the geometric shapes you see below are our mind tools. We use them on all of our sculptural. You call it three-dimensional, which is not correct, but we won’t bother to explain why here.

DIFFERENT EGG SHAPES & SIZES	CONE SPHERE & CYLINDER THESE ARE BRAIN SCULPTURE TOOLS WE BRING WITH US	FIVE SHAPES USED IN DEPICTING NATURE & MAN MADE OBJECTS

"Cone sphere and cylinder" are principles of human culture abstracted from nature. These basic principles, used to produce animal images were not first introduced by the Yoruba-s. Between 500 - 200 B.C. the same principles were in use by Nok people living in south and central Nigeria.

In order to learn how to play any musical instrument in Africa we learn how to sing first. We memorize all notes in the 12-tone scale of Europe and 16-tone scale from Africa in our heads. If you can sing it is easy to tell if your instrument is in tune. You don’t need a pitchfork or piano to tune musical instruments, because the correct tone and octaves are in your head.

In practice, Africans have seldom attempted to copy nature. The work of creating life is the creator’s prerogative never human. Women create babies and after that human involvement the line is drawn. From that point on the only human creation is culture. With this culture tool we as Africans have been able to convince the rest of humanity that we crossed the line and that is farther from the truth; we have not. We produced a cultural reality that is not actually true to nature.

BRONZE HEAD MAY HAVE BEEN ATTACHED TO A WOODEN FRAME	THIS IS AN OBA'S CROWN IT IS MADE OF GLASS BEADS	A BRONZE AND WOODEN FRAME OF AN OBA WOULD HAVE BEEN PUT INSTATE LIKE THIS

The Greeks tried to produce real looking people using art, because they didn’t have access to DNA molecule building blocks and they though that they could produce appearances and reality better than Egyptians.

Ancient Egyptians of Kemet are Africans and as Africans there are certain culture principles we as Africans follow in common. Blaspheming nature is one of those rules. Coping nature using different art forms is strictly forbidden. Using art culture to fool and distort a person’s sense of reality is not forbidden. As you can see the artist in Ife have done a good job of fooling people cross-diverse cultural barriers including Western civilization. I am an artist. I can use the same principles used in Ife and fool you too.

When I went to the Oni’s museum Ife, 1976, I did see a few examples of realism and Naturalism, similar to what you would find in Greece or Rome, but the means used to getting there were always through the use or the cone sphere and cylinder. Ears and nose seem to break the sphere most often during the classical period. The neck often looks like it was thrown on a potters wheel and some have rings resembling the rings you see in pottery rather than the human neck.

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