African Traditional Sculpture and Aesthetic Realism

Abstract

Traditional African sculpture which is one of the essences of modern art movements in the world of art has not been attributed with that aesthetic identity. However, a close look at the traditional African sculpture reveals the artistic and aesthetic qualities. African traditional sculpture was regarded as mere objects or crafts. That possibly was due to the evaluation of traditional African sculptures with the standard of other cultures. This paper therefore, examines characterizations; identify the elements of aesthetics in relation to traditional African sculptures and the intellectual and creative ingenuity of the African traditional sculptor. The study applied the exploratory approach and it is hoped that the observations made on aesthetics on traditional sculpture will shed some light on the general concept of aesthetics. This is to provide a contributive account to the existing literature on African aesthetics.