CREATIVITY PROFESSIONALISM AND FUNCTIONALITY IN THE WORKS OF MUFU ONIFADE FROM 1992 – 2012

ABSTRACT

Artists evolve technicalities and styles in visual arts, which result not only in creative excellence but also in serious critical discussion. Such discussions evaluate the visual arts and artists in the context of aesthetic and artistic judgment. However, the critical discussion on artistic judgment and its documentation in Nigeria appears to favour only the pioneers of modern Nigerian art, thereby leaving out the budding artists, like Mufu Onifade, who  are equally creative and  versatile  in some areas of visual arts. Mufu Onifade has been charting and developing freely his own artistic direction and personal vision, leading to a highly creative, intellectual and professional identity. His art discourses epitomize the profundity of art history, research and ductility of language. To prove the creativity, intellectualism, professionality and versatility of Mufu Onifade, a painter who  invented Ara art style, therefore, this study focuses on his biographical background, the themes and styles of his Araism movement, the colour influence on his followers and the functions of his paintings and critical writings. The study also locates the  indigenous nature of his  motifs, his  contribution to art  criticism in Nigeria and presents the  factors that  make him versatile as an artist  and art  critic,  covering his selected early works, including drawings and animal skin paintings, but focusing on Ara art, which includes his paintings and those of his disciples from 1992 to 2012. Finally, the research acknowledges and documents Mufu Onifade’s great creative excellence and versatility in some areas of visual arts. In this regard, the research strives to bridge the gap  in  acknowledgement and  documentation between the  pioneer  artists of  modern Nigerian art and the budding ones, hoping to inspire further studies, particularly on Araism Movement, and thereby promote indigenous artistic language.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background Study

Over the years, artists have evolved technicalities and styles that lead to creative excellence in visual arts. Such styles have invariably been attracting much discussion, evaluation or critical reflection on the visual arts and artists in the context of aesthetic and artistic judgment. Humanity sees aesthetics from three major angles: As a branch of philosophy, which studies the nature of art, taste and beauty, including creation and appreciation of beauty1, and as science, which is the study of sensory values or as “judgments of sentiments and taste” and, as critical evaluation.2  In a more broad sense, academics perceive aesthetics as critical evaluation on art, culture and nature.3 On artistic judgment,  many art  movements have  divided  art  criticism  into  different  areas with different  criteria  for  their  judgment.  Common  in  the  division  of  art  criticism  are “historical criticism and evaluation and contemporary criticism of work by living artists, pursuing a rational basis for art appreciation”.

The third sense of aesthetics and the common divisions are pertinent to this study. From the above, therefore, critical judgments have reemphasized and reinvigorated the emergence of “stylistic homogeneity in art and has created communes or schools that naturally  tugged  loyalists  for,  at  times,  unexpected  diffusion”.5  Such  communes  or schools are products of either “convictions or principles that either silently or vigorously snubbed any form of creative coercion or compromise”.6 Historical criticism and evaluation and especially contemporary criticism of works of art  have established a rational basis for art appreciation in modern Nigerian art, thereby giving birth to schools,

movements and lately “isms”. In Nigeria, informal and formal schools and movements began with the triumvirate of Onabolu’s School, the Expatriates’ School and the Zaria School. The Onabolu’s School uses academic art of naturalism as a model of artistic standard. The Expatriates’ School finds culture an appropriate canvas on which the artist weave visual experience in academics. The Zaria School sees light in the position of Expatriates’ School and consolidated on the synthesis of culture in visual idiom.

Emanating from the schools above are other schools, movements or ‘isms’ such as Nsukka School, Abayomi Barber School, Osogbo School and Ona School or Onaism. Nsukka School originates from the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The art school is synonymous with Uche Okeke, who, by 1954, had developed a rich creative, artistic experience and flair for literature. This time, he was already collecting and documenting Igbo folklores and poetic stories, which were harnessed for artistic style that has both national and international recognition. Art critics, art historians and art teachers have greatly acknowledged, popularized and documented these schools/movements/isms and their proponents. An addition to the above schools, movements, or ‘isms’, is another art style called Ara.

Ara art is probably the latest with the technique that is comparatively making waive in the art industry. A budding artist of enviable technical and creative excellence, Mufu Onifade, is the proponent and exponent of this Ara art. The art style, according to Onifade, in his Araism Movement 7, is a “painting technique” or “wonder art”.7 Onifade experimented Ara for seven years before it acquired the status of Araism. Since then, Araism Movement, which lent credence to professional and intellectual activities within and  outside  Nigeria,  has  become  very  popular.  Mufu  Onifade’s  professional  and intellectual contributions to modern Nigerian art, through his Ara art and his art criticism experiences, cannot  be  ignored  in  contemporary art  historical  studies.  Fig.  1:  Mufu Onifade, artist and exponent of Ara art, captures the proponent of Ara art style whose creative and professional art experiences are an ideological weapon for a new social order.

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