ART-BENIN: Some Like it Nude

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Michee Boko

COTONOU, Sep 29 1998 (IPS) - If you cross the bridge between the centre of Cotonou and the district of Akpakpa in this city, you probably will encounter a crowd staring in the window of an art gallery unlike any other in the capital of Benin.

One young student gazing at the art works on display admits to ogling because “whenever I pass over the old bridge, the paintings catch my eye…”

The reason? The paintings are all nudes. “Sometimes it’s a sleeping woman, completely naked. Sometimes it’s another one, seated. Also naked,” he says. “You see them in all positions, always without clothes.”

The paintings are the work of “Okyere,” a Ghanian artist who specialises in nudes. In Benin, his works are marketed by Michel Awunou at his gallery, ‘Le Louvres’, a name borrowed from the famous French museum.

Okyere’s works have a rare beauty. They grab your attention from the first glance, according to Awunou, who admits that he often puts them in his showcase so as to “lure passersby”.

“Okyere is really good at drawing African women,” adds Awunou. “When the clients come, they look at Okyere’s paintings right away. Those who dare admire them, buy them. Others, more shamefaced, choose canvasses that are much more discreet.”

What attracts clients to Okyere’s works is the fact that his nudes are never fully naked, but bare enough to catch the eye of the most absentminded passerby: an uncovered breast here; a round rump there; and elsewhere a body whose position serves the same function that garments would have.

Nudes are normal, part of the landscape, in Western art, but not in Africa. Still, most people who visit Cotonou’s ‘Le Louvres’ are not shocked by the paintings. “At the stage we’re at in Africa, I don’t think these simple paintings can shock us any more,” says Jean-Luc Deguenon, an accountant.

Marketing expert Amadou Bouraima also feels that Africa has now gotten over the taboos that surround sex and, by extension, nudity in art. “If there’s something we have to fight today in Africa, it’s famine and war, not sex,” he says.

But women tend to feel somewhat differently about such things, according to Awunou. “When a couple come to my gallery to buy a painting,” he says, “they are both attracted by Okyere’s nudes, but when it’s up to the woman to choose, she almost always opts for a canvas that’s a bit more moderate.”

For example, El Hadja Kitoyi Moulikath, a wealthy businesswoman here, bought about a dozen paintings from Awunou’s gallery to decorate her new house, but not one of them was a nude.

However, says Awunou, that does not mean that men are especially attracted by nudes. Affogbolo Idelphonse, director of a Parisian bank, agrees. He has bought two paintings by Glen Turner, another Ghanaian artist, to take back home to Paris. Turner tends to paint landscapes and scenes from everyday life.

Choices are hard to explain, Affogbolo says: “You can like a painting today and not like it tomorrow. We are guided by the emotion of the moment, that’s all. You can’t explain it … Today I look for an emotion and tomorrow another.”

Others are uncomfortable with the depiction of the unclothed human body. Says Servais Akpovo, a teacher: “I passed by this gallery and I saw the image of a naked woman with her back turned to the passersby. … It’s provocative.”

“Even if they don’t say it, some people can’t accept that so easily,” he adds. “Our society is a very modest society.”

Awunou says he started his gallery in 1991 because he has a passion for beauty. “If you have a beautiful house which, maybe, cost you tens of millions of (CFA) francs and you have nothing to decorate it with, then you feel there’s something missing,” he says. “That’s how I created my gallery.”

In addition to Okyere and Turner, he features works by Beninois painters Charly, Zossou, Kouas, Magou, Herman, Fernande, Kpobly and Gahou, Ada from Nigeria, and Ghanaians Glover and Decker. These are all artists, he says, who produce high-quality work and who have made a name for themselves in exhibitions the world over.

The gallery targets an up-market clientele, mostly expatriates, tourists and big business people, and anyone else willing to pay 100,000 to 800,000 francs (200 to 1,600 U.S. dollars) for a painting. Some canvasses from Le Louvres also grace the halls of state buildings here.

People with less money to spare opt for the Centre Artisanal de Cotonou, the main craft market, which has a wide variety of African artefacts: the prices are lower, but so is the quality.