The artistic interactions between the various races of the Niger Delta and their Igbo neighbors who dominate Southeastern Nigeria to the north and east are not difficult to demonstrate.

The artistic interactions between the various races of the Niger Delta and their Igbo neighbors who dominate Southeastern Nigeria to the north and east are not difficult to demonstrate. Art butt; goals including textiles, bronze shrine chisel and masks, have been traded between these regions for generations. More than targets alone, numerous masking and figurative traditions have gibbeted ethnic and regional boundaries and are practiced in the one and the other areas. The existence of shared artistic traditions contrariwises a persistent notion in the close attention of African art--that of the continent as a series of discrete ethnic units, each in its hermetically sealed artistic world. Although these assertions have lengthy been recognized as problematic (Frank 1987) their broad implications have not been entirely examined. A discussion of the dynamic exchanges between the southern Igbo and Niger Delta races is essential for a fuller understanding of art in this part of Nigeria. It also moves an opportunity to examine the nature of interregional artistic interactions against a historical background.

The Niger Delta and Southeastern Nigeria are ecologically and culturally diverse, and as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but places display distinctive characteristics that account for the nature of the interactions between them. The reconciliations of the Delta have exploited fishing and other aquatic resources typical of a region dominated on waterways. Peoples living in the freshwater areas many times combine fishing with farming. encloseed by water, Delta communities rely forward boats and canoes for transportation. staff on such resources has accrueed in the emergence of web beliefs in which water spirits play an important part The Delta location facilitated early contact with other coastal communities and, since the fifteenth centenary with foreign traders and, subsequently colonial powers.

North of this coastal area occupied by dint of Delta, Ogoni, and Ibibio the bulk of mankinds is the hinterland dominated on the Igbo. Largely farming land where yam, cassava, and palm tree are grown it is bourned by the Cross River to the east and stretch outs past the Niger River to the west. From southward to north, the region gradually shifts from the lush palm-belt to parched savanna. Despite the extensive use of waterways in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as the Niger, Cross, and the lower part of the Imo and the Enyong travel frequently required traversing long distances onward foot. Until the early twentieth hundred coastal and Delta communities formed an effective barrier against direct contact between the hinterland and seaward sexual Examining the role of these communities as intermediaries in the export trade is important to understanding their relationships with their Igbo neighbors (Floyd 1969:19-54)

Neither region was at any time politically or culturally unified, and the one and the other exhibit diverse modes of social, political, and religious organization. Scholars frequently use the term clan to describe the largest unit of social cohesion in the Delta, while in Igboland it is the village arrange consisting of from three to thirty villages. Beyond village clumps there are often clans that trace their origin to a putative ancestor, if it be not that these are not effective or cohesive social units. This fragmented sociopolitical situation brought about a corresponding station of artistic diversity: masks or figures in single in kind village group often look substantially different from those of a neighboring cluster The picture is further complicated by dint of the independent movement of view types, names used to describe them, and the institutions that use them (Nicklin & Salmons 1982)

The diversity of artistic forms and the complexity of their distribution have been a source of frustration for those attempting to studious mood the visual arts of these pair regions. As early as 1935 Carl Kjersmeier observ "The stalwart productive reciprocity among the different tribes of southeastern Nigeria [is] so much so that it is impossible to discern from an artistic point of view who is a creator and who is an imitator" (1935 vol 2:28; my translation). In 1969 William Bascom remarked that Igbo art is "a striking example for the existence of multiple sub-tribal mode of speechs ... that it is almost meaningless to speak of an Ibo [Igbo] manner in wood carving, and almost impossible to abstract any stylistic features for the use of all even to a single form, in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as a mask" (1969:103). This variety complicateed William Fagg, who maintained that "[a]rt provides undivided of the principal criteria for the identification and delimitation of tribes" (1965:11) Igbo artists, according to Fagg, "seem to have establish little need for integrative influences in art above the horizontal of the village and the district" (Elisofon & Fagg 1983:13)

Fagg's approach to the close attention of African art is based forward two factors. The first is a bias toward a centralized manner of political organization over the apparent chaos of decentralized societies--a typical colonialist position that characterized the British attitude toward Southeastern Nigeria (Afigbo 1972; 1975) In this regard the decentralized Igbo were the polar opposite of the British laurel The other reason is that, as pioneers in the meditation of African art, Fagg and his contemporaries were striving to establish a comprehensible visible form [i]or[/i] frame of knowledge marked by tidy classifications of agricultures and artifacts. This approach was similar to the focus forward the distribution of cultural traits that was then present in British and American anthropology, and is still held by dint of some collectors and museum curators looking for easy labels to attach to their realitys Fagg's notion that each African "tribe" is its allow stylistic world has become known as the "One Tribe, single Style" approach (Kasfir 1984).