Between 1962 and 1964, renowned African American Artist Jacob Lawrence spent months in Ibadan and Osogbo, hosted by the Mbari Artists and Writers Club. In Lawrence words, “I became so excited then by all the new visual forms I found in Nigeria—unusual color combinations, textures, shapes, and the dramatic effect of light—that I felt an overwhelming desire to come back as soon as possible to steep myself in Nigerian culture so that my paintings, if I’m fortunate, might show the influence of the great African artistic tradition.”

Will Rea’s essay, Street to Mbari: Jacob Lawrence and the Influence of the ‘International’ on Local Modernism, focuses on the portrayal of a Yoruba market in Lawrence’s work “Street to Mbari, 1964.” The author asks whether the African American modernist’s “view from outside the dynamics of Ibadan and Nigerian nationalism affords an escape from the structuring myths of Nigerian nationalism.” This inquiry is reminiscent of Sylvester Ogbechie’s position in Comrade at Arms: The African Avant-Garde at the First World Festival of Negro Arts, that the political instability of the post-independence era had caused artists to focus on quotidian realities, which in turn, resulted in the works of African artists in the West being used to “inscribe a notion of contemporary African avant-garde aesthetics.” 

Ben Enwonwu, whose most active period (1940s – 1960s) was just coming to an end at this time, is known as the father of African modernism and is well acclaimed for merging African tradition with European techniques. Can it be said then that Lawrence’s work was timely, perhaps allowing the Nigerian artists of the period to once again look beyond vernacularism/quotidian expressions that were replete in the wake of new independence realities? 

Beyond the style and aesthetics, however, Rhea seemed to suggest that Lawrence’s more ‘international’ perspective allowed him to escape the prevalent attempt by many Nigerian artists to portray scenes that would be resolutely “Nigerian” as the Zaria rebels sought to, thereby, in many ways, kowtowing to a nationalistic impulse. Rather, being a kind of outsider, Lawrence was more given to accurately depict a culture (Yoruba) within which he was immersed and engaged at the particular moment (Ibadan/Osogbo), even if he may not have been able to fully grasp the cultural and historical background and significance in his painting, such as the foregrounded àdìrę clothes or his representation of Mapo Hall. 

Incidentally, John Picton had, in another essay, Modernism and Modernity in African art, advocated for more local/regional representational forms of art than generic “African” representations. He suggested that Sokari Douglas Camp’s show, Play and Display in the Africa95 exhibitions, was the most successful because of “its limitation to the Kalabari region of the eastern Niger-Delta” as opposed to a conflation of multiplicities into a homogeneous category of identity representation. What does this mean, then, for contemporary Nigerian art and artists, and for their representation of identity?