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Bird watching in Senegal

THE SENEGALESE GLASS PAINTINGS

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These pictures come from the following books :
- Catherine Clément, "Afrique Esclave", Ed. Noésis - 1999
- Michel Renaudeau, "Sénégal", Ed. Richer-Hoaqui - 1995

 

An anthropologic glance through the Suwer painting.


HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION


We can trace the origin of glass painting in the most ancient cultures, since we have knowledge of its practice among the Romans, the Byzantine Empire, through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the whole west European modern history until the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries, including classic China. Nevertheless, it is its filiation of strong roots in the Islamic world, in the Mediterranean Sea, from Al-Andalus up to the Far East, what we are interested in, due to its wide diffusion as way of iconographic transmission.

It is at the end of the XIXth century, while this laborious and former way of image reproduction is being replaced by modern technologies of impression, such as chromo-lithography, when the glass painting copying of coranic votive images spreads over the Muslim world. It was also during those years, when in the territories south of the Senegal river (where Islamization had already taken big steps since the XIth century conversion to Islam of War Jabí, king of the Tékrour empire), the first religious brotherhoods of Sufi influence appear. Arriving from the Mahgreb, those religious leaders will leave behind the direct confrontation with the colony (Jihad) and would cooperate from then on with the French authorities in the overthrowing of the last local monarchies as well as in the development of the extensive cultivation facilities, achieving government by means of agreements and mutual religious respect.

In the mean time, the naval imports of coranic colour images from Mecca, Tunis and Morocco by those who sailed back from pilgrimage, mainly by those settled merchants in former capital St. Louis and in the recently founded city of Dakar, will directly confront the Christian interests of the French colonial authorities. Arriving at the situation that, worried by the negative influence that the above mentioned images might drive between the population during the years to come, while the fight for the prevailing religion is about to be decided, Governor William Ponty, contravening the liberty of speech guaranteed by the French Constitution in all francophone territories, banned, in 1908, any free Islamic propaganda.

In that context, the glass painting technique is being used whether to frame familiar photographic portraits on paper or those imported colour stamps from the Islamic iconography. Normally a stamp or daguerreotype adheres to the centre rear part of the glass and this adorned with floral motifs or exotic birds, turning out an attractive panel to hang on the wall, giving a certain prestige to whichever home wall. Facing the ban, this is a crucial moment for the development of “Suwer” painting. The best job for those who could paint would be glass painting. They were the artists who painted the first anonymous glasses found today hanging in world museums. Since colour reproduction on paper was known but too controlled, popular inventiveness discovered the endless possibilities of this old way of limitless copying, suitable for the spreading of their highly valued coranic images. From this moment on, due to the short supply of postcards, artists will relentlessly paint these colour images on glass copying from the very rare originals, answering the demand on iconographic repertoires susceptible to being read, understood and remembered by the illiterate local population. The conditions caused by censorship favoured and launched its later diffusion.

In Senegal they call it "fixé” painting, fixed to the crystal, or by “suwer" from the French expression "sous-verre" (under the glass), and it is not unusual for the artist to work from an order, establishing a direct relation between artist and client. This circumstance, along with its unmistakable urban character, and the fact that, at the crucial moment of its diffusion, it is a commodity produced by a subversive social movement, challenging and critical against the established power, also together with the fact that it addresses a popular audience who already knows the represented facts and can interpret them, throws up this particularly Senegalese plastic expression, a part of the African Popular Art current of the XX C, although it is certainly well advanced in time, and consequently being included in all studies and anthologies on the topic?.

The appearance of tourist Afro-kitch and the fact that these works on glass are simultaneously on sale in the street flea-market and in the private ateliers of the most prestigious artists, in great exhibitions and expensive antique dealers, can be contradictory and complex for certain critics, who usually ignore whole sectors of the Popular African artistic production, but can be explained if we consider how broad a contextual breach the western art market produces, including in the same bag whichever “artist” producing tourist commodities, well recognized masters, young promising artists taking part in the latest exhibitions, daring to consider “Naïf” a technique which might be used in different ways by any local artist working or not on his cultural heritage. On the other hand, would we dare to proceed in the same way with any canvas painting in general?

During the first half of XXth century, between a pleiad of anonymous painters, we can see the rising of a number of suwerists who would later be know as the masters: Saliou Sarr, Balla Ndiaye, Ndiaye Lô, Omar Moussé Gueye, Babacar Lô, Gora Mbengue, Moudou Fall, Ibrahima Sall and Mor Gueye. After the 50´s and until end of the 60´s, painted glasses would become less fashionable in town since African independence movements, endorsed by the philosophy of Négritude and developed by intellectuals of international relevance like Leopold Sedar Senghor or Aimèe Cesaire supports a modernization and renovation on the plastic arts that stands on new aesthetics. Senegalese society, living a recent and hopeful independence, is decided and ready to modernize itself. This new situation found its later balance after the 80´s, with the appearance of a new generation of suwerists who will leave behind the classic and conservative aesthetics of the old painters and will look for new forms of expression in the transparent crystal. By this time, the Suwer painting is already appreciated abroad. Ink outlines will be lost, scratching and cracking permitted, artists will enter in a new world of Comic and abstract thinking, and will experiment with influences from abroad. They are called the “Set-Setal” generation, artistic movement produced by the economic recession and feeling of disappointment prevailing in West Africa during the 70´s. Among them, we can mention Mbida, Mallos, Alexis Ngom, Azou Bade, Moussa Lô, Paco, Moussa Johnson and Serigne Ndiaye.


TECHNIQUE AND GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.


To begin with, the technique is always the same, simple for those who know it, but laborious and complex since no mistake is permitted once a colour is shaded with the next. The most common sizes for the plaques are 24 x 33 cm and 33 x 48 cm. The thickness of the glass is usually 2 mm although thicker glasses can be taken for bigger sizes. Once an image is chosen, a glass plate should be placed on top and with a thin pen and Indian ink, the designs outlined. Any signature, dating or forewords should be now written from right to left in a reverse mirror way. Afterwards it is time to begin filling the drawings beginning with the ones in first shot, the details in front, and finishing with the distant backgrounds, whether landscape or neutral. The glass has been painted on the reverse side from where we will see it. Turning it upside down, it should only be protected against breakage by placing a piece of salvaged card on the back painted side with a paper band frame. The glass has no transparency any more, but the image fixed on it has a newly translucent life of a charming effect. Its own fragility makes it even more precious.

Together with their undeniable narrative and iconographic nature, the general characteristic of these types of paintings are, since their origins, the outlining of drawings with Indian ink lines, the neutral backgrounds with an only flat colour, the hieratic and frontal characters, the absence of perspective and volumes, the deliberate disproportion depending on the importance of the character depicted, all together with a certain imperfection on the drawings. All these characteristic do not imply that the artist has not mastered the techniques of painting, however, they maintain tradition in their task of preserving and passing over generations some stories and cultural uses that should never be lost, repeating images just as a photographer would do. With time and new demands, from artists and clients, we shall see how pastel colours will surge, gradually volumes, colour degradations, perfect perspectives will appear and, forgetting about ink, direct painting with the colour on the plate will bring abstraction and innovative designs taken from the ambits of illustration and comics. All these innovations come to show us that the glass painting technique, far from an irremovable tradition turns into only one more support, as canvas could be, where any artist has the possibility of expressing his works.


THEMATIC


In the first studies and publication on this artistic expression, it was already obviously distinguishing between the religious sacred and profane genres. If we can also find devotional glasses in the Moslem world, for instance in Tunis, we should remark that the use of forewords or inscriptions explaining the images is purely Senegalese, and even more the using of profane topics, expression of the sahelian syncretism.

Let us leave aside the profane genres to focus, for a while, on the broad world of Senegalese devotional Islamic sacred topics, since it introduces some significant differences with the rest of the so-called Islamic countries. Firstly, we will be deeply shocked with the disinhibited use of figurative art with the human image, mostly saint, as the centre of the plate. Although banished in Moslem art in general this shows same peculiar characteristics of Islamic beliefs among western Africans, which, for example allows any job helping parents bringing up their families in a decent, laborious way. As we have previously said, some of the most prestigious Imam, here called the Marabouts, arrived from the Mahgreb adapting the Revealed Words of Koran to the local animistic beliefs, obtaining a smoother and faster success. The first brotherhoods were thus established, in the way of Christian confraternities, assembling groups of believers around each Sufi descent faith, the mystical Islam practice.

We will introduce first the Mouride brotherhood, founded by Cheikh Amadou Bamba (1850-1927), who was initially trained in the Quadirí mystic and finished his studies between Mauritanian teachers. He is very frequently represented while accomplishing the miracles that made him a saint throughout his very hazardous life. Always dressed in a white Caftan covering his face, from a unique photo taken around 1913, we see him at the moment of being arrested by the colonial troops, during his exile to Gabon praying on the waves, surrounded by Archangels, tempted by the devils (Djinn) or accompanied by his first disciple, Cheikh Ibra Fall, on the way to the sacred Mosque of Touba, his burial place, where Mourides meet annually on the celebration of the Great Magal. Very frequent are, as well, the images of the omnipresent Bay Fall, followers and renunciants, who, with their patch-work dresses, their pumpkin bowls, their maces and their entangled hair braids, compose one of the most genuinely Senegalese characters.

We should also mention the Tidyaan brotherhood founded by El Hadj Malick Sy (1855-1922) born in Algeria, he was also a student of the Quadirí mystic. The iconography normally presents him from a unique photo as well in which he is protected by his sunshade in front of the main mosque of the brotherhood in Tivaouane.

For their peculiar identity, we shall also quote the Layen brotherhood, founded by Limamu Laye (1845-1919), fisherman of the old Lebú ethnic group, original from Cape Verde, who in 1883 lived a mystical experience that forced him to spiritually guide his seafaring comrades. He decided to adapt the Islam to the local animistic customs, away from any external influence, and granting women with a greater participation in religious practices, as they traditionally had. Although he is counted for a long list of miracles, adventures and episodes, the glasses concerning this group are extremely sober colour portraits of the founder or their successors, including always a black and white bird, seemingly dove, which like a “celestial messenger”, matching caftan and turbans, turns out to be the symbol of this brotherhood. Mixing some Islamic rites with ancient pagan, such as prayers asking the sea for a better fishing season, their practices are often regarded as estrange from other Muslim points of view. Their main mosque is in Camberene, a site in the beaches of Yoff, coastline territory occupied by the Lebú people from the antiquity, fishermen whose members almost exclusively compose the brotherhood.

The less numerous and more orthodox Senegalese brotherhood is the mother of the two first mentioned above and lies directly on the original lessons of the Quadirí mystic. Founded on XII century by Iraqi Abd El Quadir El Jilani and spread as far as sahelian territories by the Mauritanian Sheikh Sidiyya El Kebir, but it does not have local representative. The Arab founders of this old Sufi path are represented frequently in glasses side by side with the Marabouts from the other brotherhoods.

Although at the beginning, coranic imagery was the subject of numerous reproductions (we have already seen how religious imported religious postcards stuck to a glass plate was in the origin of this technique), the images of Al Boraq, the Prophet’s winged feminine mount, the Battle of Badr in 624, the sword fight of the brave Alí against the ferocious Amr, and other images, soon gave way to the portraits and narratives of the Acts of the Marabouts from the senegalese Brotherhoods. This new group of images did nothing but build a new autochthonous collective imagery simply updating the iconography and episodes of miracles commonly attributed to the saints in all traditions. The annual pilgrimages to the holy places of Touba and Tivaouane, the Bay Fall in their police function on those events, with their traditional features, the respectful individual or group frontal portraits of the founders and their descendants, also on road trips in luxurious cars, the coranic schools with their young untidy students (taalibé) using their wooden writing boards, escape from realistic representations and reveal us a suggestive point of view of nothing but narrative and votive utility that fulfils the same role as modern Coptic Christian Ethiopian or European Medieval iconography.

We should also quote the existence of a traditional Christian based iconography from the beginning up to the present time. Since there was demand, the artists, whatever their beliefs, had no ideological conflict in scene depiction from other brotherhoods or even from Christian heritage, like Noah’s Arc (biblical episode accepted by the two traditions), Nativity or Crucifixion.


PROFANE THEMATIC


As we have just seen, although the practice of figurative with sacred images from the Muslim world has been usual in colour lithography and glass painting, in diverse moments and places of history, the development of a profane thematic is particular of the senegalese idiosyncrasy. This endless imagery embraces broad fields of daily life, history and myths from the Senegal.

With an unique freshness and a powerful sense of humour that easily catch our attention, the glass painter provides wall decoration not only from each family’s religious brotherhood, but also producing wall portraits and exemplary images to give a moralizing advice with a self-criticism that frequently borders on cynicism.

We consider an important group within the profane glasses corpus to be the ones narrating Histories, Legends and Myths. Among them we should mention the images depicting the heroes of the anti-colonial resistance, like Lat Dior, last Damel (sovereign) of Cayor, who opposed the construction of the railroad linking Dakar to St. Louis; and Kotya Barma, XVIIth century philosopher famous for his proverbs, both are always reproduced in the same way, on a powerful war horse and armed with scimitars. The glasses dedicated to relevant contemporary personages are also frequent, like the already mentioned president and poet Senghor. We must also include here the plaques related to old legends such as the world-wide well-known image of the spirit, half woman, half serpent, guardian of waters, Mammy Watta, or to the admired and mythical, famous old champions of the popular senegalese wrestling raised to the Olympus of the great sportsmen.

The Suwer of burlesque type would form a second big group. The painter, for the satisfaction of the client, draws scenes full of humour with an almost exclusively hilarious intention. Among them we can count those showing the haunted hunter, the wife who finds her husband in bed with someone else, the young girl who having a shower is secretly observed, the co-spouses involved in a fight while a goat takes advantage of the food, the Car Rapid, or public transportation, and other paintings.

Together with their burlesque character, Suwer paintings show us some of the local fables and exemplary proverbs. We must include here the stories such as the arrest of the thief, the tormented husband turned into a heavily laden donkey due to his bad behaviour, or the charming story of the women turned into baobab trees. All images that would permit people to judge inappropriate behaviour according to the Muslim morality in this region of Africa.

Maybe the most extensive group would be formed by the images simply dedicated to the illustration of daily life; an appreciation exercise valuing the customs and way of life in Western Africa. We must include here the idyllic landscapes from the Casamance, the postcards views, the bucolic scenes of shepherds, the Sabar dancers, the music bands, the couple ready for intimacy, the relaxing women sitting while playing Wouré (Mankala), the cross boarding of the Gambia river, on the way to the south, the market scenes, the family eating the Thieboudjen (rice with vegetables and fish), or those travelling all together on a bicycle. We should include here as well the original series that painter Mallos is lately doing on the characters and occupations of modern life in the city, with a clear didactic intention and highly humoristic result, they have had a very good acceptance. With their yellow flat backgrounds, they remind us of the comic stripe and have been very easily copied and sold on the street walls of Dakar.

There is also a very big group of Suwer that simply produce portraits of people or animals. Directly indebted to the origin of Suwer painting, we have already seen how the first photographic studios settled in the former capital of St. Louis, (whether the artist who run them was known or unknown), used to do the portraits of the significant ladies of town, alone or with their husbands, in a show of prosperity. These are the very same copies, which were adhered to the reverse side of the glasses, and then decorated around with flowers or birds. Then these portraits were endlessly reproduced on glass in a process in which the portrayed person looses importance and the images gradually turned into stereotypes of beauty, success or elegance of easy reading for the population. This is the case of the frontal portraits of women (Diriyànke) with their beautiful hairdos, jewels and suits, chosen in accordance with the social position and the ethnic group to which they belong. This includes the famous “Signares” from St. Louis and Gorée, women who having married the colonialist foreigners exercised their influence of power and wealth. In the same group, but with much more photographic studio’s pose, we have the couples with their expensive suits, salacots, portfolios and jewels, which stand as conjugal happiness stereotypes. The domestic and wild animals are also common. From the old hens and roosters painted by Gora Mbengue, through the big rams alluding to Abraham’s sacrifice and the yearly Muslim celebration of Tabaski, to the exotic birds, elephants and giraffes, ancient game, any painter will be pleased to grant a familiar order from photo portrait of the children, for instance. We should not ignore here Mbida´s series on famous female singers. Dressed with carefully painted clothes and playing a musical instrument, they stand as stereotypes of Beauty, in abstract, since uniting feminine beauty to the sound of an instrument, results a summary for the artist’s intentions. All of them show neutral black backgrounds, giving only importance to the meaning of the painting.

In a remarkable exception, we are remind here a series of glasses which deal with the sadly remembered story of slavery. And it is an exception, because we do not find that sense of humour and optimism that is so usual in all other themes reproduced in Suwer painting. Artists try to keep alive a history and a past that although cruel and painful, does not have to be forgotten.

We can see how this dramatic subject is seriously treated and through it, we are confronted with a brutal and crude reality. In such plates made by artists like Gora Mbengue and Mor Gueye, we can observe not only the European greediness in the lucrative transatlantic commerce but also the local social system reigning in the old kingdoms of the Sahel, which permitted any local chief in need of foreign goods to hunt, torture and sell their own people to the incoming boats. Cheikh Anta Diop´s anthropological studies have explained to us how these old social structures historically descend from the ancient African monarchies, like the empire of the Mali, and all of them as well from the great Egyptian civilization, and that in those regimes slaves were not despised, but they even had a political role in the monarchic government. But today’s African artists prefer to make an exercise of tolerance and either supported by the Islam or Christianity they profess, fight against these inadmissible practices which even today are difficult to erase.

The most common of all images dedicated to slavery is, perhaps, the reproduction of the front inner patio of the famous "Maison des Eclaves" (slave house) of Gorèe, with its double curved stairs and its two antagonistic floors or worlds, downstairs for prisoners, waiting for their trip to nowhere, upstairs for the traders and garrison, who could bear such children moaning and men and women suffering for years. There are also glasses reproducing other scenes such as torturing, chaining, caravanning and commercial exchange.


BEYOND THE SUWER


Up to this point, we have seen a broad panorama over the Suwer painting and from now on, we will attempt an optimistic forecast of the coming future and the survival of these techniques. In the first place, we must point out that we have consciously left aside those innovative works that resists tradition, such as those that seem to be searching for originality. Let us give the example of Fruit Woman by Moussa Johnson, Zulú Queen by Azou Bade or the floating Dolls by André Dolly, which could well be found in the pages of a western comic. Its poor narrative value is quickly balanced by the people’s free and spontaneous reading. For some artists, who have previously admitted the narrow relationship between Suwer painting and Comic illustration it is the answer to the new challenges of expression. We can see cases where the stereotypes on feminine beauty shown on frontal portraits, are no longer a representation of reality but a comic design, where the features can be exaggerated, as happens with the women’s faces by Azou Bade. There are other plates narrating different scenes within the same sequence, like episodes, in a single image. A very well known technique for designers.

In reference to comics and illustration, we should not silence here the demand for direct copies of the worldly famous Tintin that painters would reproduce for economic reasons. Same as all those football team’s gussets, postcards or views displayed on streets walls all over Dakar. This fact comes to show to what extent the artists are opened to foreign influences although mainly for commercial reasons. This direction in Suwer painting has very often been denied and criticised by large numbers of artists and critics who consider only Senegalese thematic appropriate for suwerist tradition and such practices an unacceptable concession against creative purity.

There are plenty of artists obtaining unexpected results painting directly onto the glass with wide brushes, giving the appearance of watercolour on paper, like Abdoulaye Diaoune. And what to say about artists like Moussa Sakho, sculptor for whom the painted glass, far from being the centre of his work, is only a true added value, something popular and of his own, just like his old grandmother’s photo. In his work a painted plate is always worth of framing and turned into “Sculpture with Suwer” because similar to the old photos that are no longer artist’s property but collective cultural property, his “fixé” are artistic tradition’s, are “a fixé” and “whatever fixé” at the same time. Still further, reach painters like Germaine Anta Gaye, Sea Diallo or Serigne Ndiaye with their abstractions, their new treatment on pictorial matter, and personal works certainly under western influences, but without resigning their African origins. How could we deny their right in doing so if we have always done the same?

Through different public exhibitions, we are truly aware of the reliance relationship between this painting tradition and photography. Its outstanding literary character seems a little forgotten by criticism. If there is something clear, it is only literature that brings up Suwer painting.

Semiologists of renown like Humberto Eco discussed literary values of the comic as a means of figurative narration or drawn literature gaining authenticity in academic status from a previous “second degree” art expression. In his hands, we should read the work of Senegalese Suwerists. Even more if we are curious enough to investigate in the literary traditions of western African peoples like Wolof, Serer, Peul, and Djola with no written support for literary pieces until the first structuralist studies were made on the syntaxes of their languages, once in the 20th Century.

The non-existence of writing is a fact but it does not question the existence of literary pieces or tradition. Whatever group of people should always guard their past and only ignorance can forget oral tradition’s importance in the transition of information. In many African cultures, tradition, stories and legends are still passed forward today through an oral text from everybody’s lips. Particularly in Griot´s lips. A respected elder, member of a very old inherited caste, during the evenings he sits around the fire with all dwellers in the small rural village and lights up their imagination with magic stories, fairy tales and nostalgic melodies, repeated thousand of times, guardians of an ancient literary tradition. Their role is to keep alive of all lawsuits, agreements or disputes from the past along with the memories of old relevant characters in the history of each ethnic group or village.

However, this purely rural tradition was missing in West African conurbations where the immigrant added to his homeland nostalgia, the lack of any roots or tradition that might link him to any familiar culture. Since written literature did not exist in Western Africa during the end of 19th Century, Suwer painting came in to fill out that urban space that the Griots could not take on concrete. This is the right time and place where the suwerist painter comes into scene. He perfectly fits in griot´s gloves. Painter and Griot are the ones in charge of maintaining a corpus of images, stories and narratives of extreme importance for the people. They are in charge of providing the necessary rhetorical figures, language and style for transmission. They are depositary of a codified lexicon of broad acceptance as a mean of communication and even more important, as a way of social cohesion.


All sources of inspiration in Suwer painting come by force from the oral tradition. Any objection from those who are not acquainted with this tradition when the continuous repetition of images is recorded in different ateliers and by different artists is easily suppressed when they comprehend that the Griot´s or Suwerist´s main business is neither innovation nor invention, but the true important transition of traditions and customs that otherwise would be unfortunately lost. And with them the underestimated wealth provided by diversity. We have been using so many words related to literature, such as tale, myth, legend, always pointing out the strong textual power and cultural basis of these paintings that we must find a new higher value for African cultures previously denied in Western Europe.

With solid origins coming from photographic studios and colour lithographies from the old Dakarasse bookstores, influences and language taken from comic designs and illustration, true literary transmitters of customs and popular legends, the Suwer painting is not an orphan in traditions among the plastic arts. It is, therefore, very unlikely that an artistic expression with an actual support, such as the fragile glass, with so ample a cultural and literary endorsement, with an evident dynamism and an increasing demand again, can fall into oblivion or lacks a promising future. The support has arrived from the academic world, with a number of critical studies. Magazines and books on African Contemporary Art always include them between their chapters. The organizers of the Dak´Art Biennale have been presenting exhibitions on Suwer for at least four editions, including those artistic expressions into Senegalese plastic arts movements and as artistic demonstration of the cultural legacy, sitting suwerists side by side with other artists whose practices are on canvas or sculptures in the Elysian temple of the fine arts.

During the last Biennale Dak´Art 2002, all efforts have been added to pay homage to the great Gora Mbengue with a magnificent and surprising exhibition, although a bigger retrospective and a full study and cataloguing of his works is yet to be done.

For all the above reasons, we recognise the value of Suwer painting as a perfect way of spreading culture of the greatest importance, able to capture the idiosyncrasy of a people with original and centennial customs, rewriting it all in an easily read way, not only for those addressed, but also to the western eyes. Clear enough to introduce us into a world of peculiar charms and vehicle that will let us measure a rich culture for those who would like their glance enhanced, their reality improved, with other artistic expressions also from our world.

Luis Temboury.
Málaga, July 2003.

 

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