Rewriting African Art: Viktor Leo Frobenius and his “Ologun”

Abstract

The seizure of Germany’s colonies in postwar-Weimar Republic by the allies created new interesting narratives from and about their former colonies or colonies in general. Among the groups influential in evoking German desires for the “exotic” in books and celluloid were archaeologists and ethnologists. One interesting figure was Viktor Leo Frobenius (1873-1938). This paper focuses on Frobenius and his “discovery” of the Ife Olokun in the early twentieth century to show how African art is rewritten as European in origin to perpetuate an interpretation that culminated in the romanticism and discourse of the nineteenth century.