[New-Poetry] AESTHETHIC OF RECREATIONAL ART=review of omode meta -children at play by gbemi tijani mst

[gbemi tijani-mst]

Mail to: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
  From Gbemi tijani mst
  Subject: CHILDREN AT PLAY-A LINO CUT REVIEW by GBEMI TIJANI MST
  


  Keywords:   
  ·        Viable artistic permission, 
   
  ·        Traditional recreational paraphernalia
   
  ·        Challenge to be –or becoming worthy,
   
  ·        Value reconstructs vs the rat race
  ·        Healthy Communal gusto,
  ·        Trends in fabric rebirth
  ·        Painting as social communication
   
   
   
   
   
  THE VITAL TENSION in his paintings and perhaps the truth of his visual metaphor hinges on his creative energy and peculiar choice of anatomic abstractions. For instance, in the CHILDREN AT PLAY (lino cut, 1988) the figures are compatible with their age range.  The cubic dimensions especially the torso; the appendages and the head are ordinarily shocking. But one could feel that their artificial creator in this case the artist must have purportedly chipped them out as chubby youngsters.
  
What sort of Mr. and Mrs. would they become? This is still a hidden reality.  As Dr. Tai Solarin? –a renowned, down-to -earth educationist and  well-known human rights activist in Nigeria-very likely to be a rarity.  Fewer still might come out of age as a godly atheist!  Or a Wole Soyinka - a consummate writer of a garlicky, gargantuan intellectual property built with hydrofoil resource - far before the Nobel Award in 1986! No doubt- a few will rival the Nobel Laureates like Roger Sperry –that initially started his career with a degree in English before training in zoology and later became inured with biomedical research in brain physiology. Or the dramatic poet monger –harmlessly notorious for several arrests, radio station seizure in the 60s and noted for his ubiquitous laptop, anthology of copious, artistically rich, potent plays and poetry that can catalyse social conditions –where good governance is still at stake!  Some may become superstars in Jazz music or soccer,
 or find tender nesting in web designing like Grace Chinyere-the professionally confident, pro-practical Supratek’s alumnus or just an I.T. expert –locally productive, globally resourceful and welcomed after dogged training. However some indolent ones –pathologically lazy or ethically bankrupt - will sell out their conscience and consequently throw out the baby with the bath water

They are the blind Human Rights Defenders, Auctioneers and fodder for settlement politics.  Or they could be daily activists pretentiously upbraiding tyranny whereas they ought to be part of potent struggle by virtue of their learned careers. Some innocently roll in dusts as if they ‘re reproduced in the ash-covered city of Japan
  . 
  Their posterity?  Are they flagships for human development?  They possibly could have been patriotic wards of the supposedly 'wasted generation' - springing surprise in all areas of human endeavour had it been they grow up in a just and egalitarian milieu much touted as great and dynamic since 1914's amalgamation of the South and the Northern Nigeria.
  
In such a World, dubious eyebrow-raisers cast as in Fagunwa's wondrous characters abound as ' misleaders (miseaters, misdrinkers), nincompoops.  Whereas one could not become saints by mere transport of ecstasies nor annulment of temptations, the world is far from nirvana and of course, full of sufferers partly due to lack of freedom, right thinking, right view, right speech, right actions and selfish craving of establishment or consumerisms. As modern day believers –vulnerable to inordinate trappings of lust-and opulence yet aspiring for another heaven --will they be humble or humane enough- to repent their sins or check their excesses or show compassion rooted in genuine love, as they will desire from others too anywhere they’re blown to be resident or serve in this global village?
  
OMODE META is therefore a real watchdog.  A manifest of contemporary polity.  Indeed - OMODE META is a checklist of characters - a cast of (nonentities and) possibilities. 
  A mapping of genes for resplendent generation.  One may not outguess their civic possibilities as a Confab Rep, a 'mobile ruler', a fanatical diarchist or a popular statesman, a pragmatic pastor, a civilian –military politician with or without perennial ambition to annul corrupt practices at the head, torso and the lower anatomy of Nigerians and their foreign cohorts if this is not Herculean for a pure bred civilian. The kids (visually depicted by the artist) surely look less robust, dense but lively like his World Bank hangings. They are in a dilemma -traveling to a bright landscape of adulthood and are not even sure whether there is enough fuel to reach their destination - productive adulthood. 
   
   Or again - will there be enough reserve –already planned for their future – psycho-environmental peace inclusive. Another virulent aspect of political hustling-  -will there be curfew - free - days to permit hard work and out door recreation-if they loathe creativity like the odour of the carrion? Will political aspirants’ assassinations stop with the passage of Funso Williams –a gubernatorial hopeful in Lagos state,Dr Daramola  from Ekiti state,ex-Attorney-general Bola Ige ,Rilman and numerous political personalities –whose lives have been violently truncated-Just Like That- as one of the late Fela Anikulapo’s –afro beat empirically  satirical musical composition years back lamented for all.
  This reviewer isn’t abashed at all -at the interesting anatomy he carves for the boys at play. He himself grew up in the locale-ILE-IFE (where Oduduwa-founder of Yoruba race settled, from far away Old Egypt) where inequity is prominently established not just by politics but also by tradition. Hence the play toys are actually stratified –much more ossified than others. There are mini lorries creatively built in JEEP format-but the superstructure varies –mostly wooden for poor folks and partially metallic for mre economically endowed siblings. This dichotomy still exists till this internet –century in Africa.
  Any hope then for these future guys to improve on their modest but not really unwealthy 
  Environment? For instance the creator himself owed almost all his artistic education to indigenous spiritual arts, carvings, rituals, superior artistic heritage of the Oshogbo school and perennial training at the Adeyemi arts studio coupled with the zeal to travel.
  
Though obviously they all look agile, psychologically buoyant and biologically potent; they are a quintessence of a healthy subset of village youth - complacent or possessive of everything in their immediate terrain of recreation. Indeed –even adults of old times can be engrossed in traditional games like AYO or OKOTO-made from snail shells of the gastropod class and rebuff their meals or forfeit their precious esteem –if they lost to a supposedly inferior playmate. 
  As for the kids-they probably have 'stolen the time' with or without their parents' approval or conditional release.  Usually in patrilineal societies of Black Africa - the father could be in charge of leisure - time - budgeting for children after the day’s commercial assistance - domestic duties inclusive. Thank God for contemporary campaign against child labour in this democratic dispensation and free universal basic education that resurrected in the Obasanjo Administration. 
  
Child labour in Nigeria as well as Africa after 'the colonial transition’ could be farm work, cattle rearing (up - North), fruit - selling and fishing in the riverside areas.  Normally, matrilineal Nigeria - the social mores predispose the mother to be watchful of interactive dangers and, of course, amity, profile or safety of the likely peer group.  How decent or trustful and perhaps how morally dependable are intriguing questions most parents endeavour to ensure before allowing peering or playmates altogether.  Some grand parents too, would want to see if such a recreative ground is ecologically conducive.  Is the terrain free from stinging insects, poisonous snakes or wood - bearing-nails that could cause injuries during their trivial proposal?
  
Should the mother - and not infrequently too, the father, release her kids to the extent they become vulnerable to mishap like falling into a pit latrine, a bore hole, vehicle accident or falling from the staircase, sustaining injury from any of the home appliances or the kitchen knife. If the  risks inherent in any of these settings are not well insured- it might bring psychological warfare between the couple.  Sometime in the evening of Monday April 17, 1989, a 5-year old child was brought to the surgery department of Adeoyo Ring Road State Hospital with a 4 - hour history of amputation of three (3) fingers on the right hand
He was innocently playing around his mother's pepper grinding machine.

. So we could see that CHILDREN AT PLAY, (linocut, 88) depict many episodes which are not flashed by the motifs represented or impossible to be told on a carving medium or taken for granted as additional metaphoric interpretation by the audience to which that rare or regale opportunity is an indigenous experience. Good enough - as a folksong for the moonlight play time (amongst Yoruba children).
  
The essential message is optimism nurtured by self-estimate-enabling factors in accomplishment of goals. The vernacular rationale in Tunde's lino print (OMODE META) vividly depicts children's boundless exuberance and their rights to play and to choose what to play with.
   It should be noted that three' is a metaphor. The children playing could be ten. The aesthetics of this print is functionally appealing because the reflection is evidently measurable within time and space. For instance, the gait of the boys and their attempt to tone their young bodies without any knowledge of aerobic is intuitive. And again whether this repeated physical affordable useful wastes’ make experiment possible.
  
The fact that they don't even know this enthralling engagement would help achieve physical fitness and increased circulation and deep breathing altogether is healthful. This spontaneous permission for viable physical culture now, as then one could guess, makes this outdoor spotless tedious and I must add less utilitarian too
 Psychologically, we could predict such children would choose something physically active for recreation no matter how busy they are in life. This is also an opportunity for socialization and healthy communal gusto. It would be a lubricant for social programmes too. 
This game is an ideal. It is also a physics of fun considering the calculated jumps and rope manipulation
 Believed export! It is ubiquitous so to say. The Ibos called it U-gah game. After the 1984 OLYMPIC games the America Cultural Centre (Ibadan) showed some Young African-American teenagers  enthralled with another fashion of the game
 ONE! TWO!! THREE!!! And the jumps followed in rhythmic cadence and precision. Perhaps it's not yet presumptuous to regard CHILDREN AT PLAY, (Lino cut 88) as one of the time-resistant, flash down art works of Tunde Odunlade who was then Captain of speedball Resort' at OROGUN near Ibadan. He’s now absorbed in international campaign for cultural awareness and promotion of the arts, visual artists. He’s immensely involved in the planning and celebration of the 60th birthday of KING SUNNY ADE –aka KSA –the well-known , ageless JUJU musician that has toured virtually all the continents to entertain afro-juju fans tagged synchro system in the
 70s..  He’s exhibited in more than 30 states of the USA SINCE THE LATES 80S.He’s currently working on synthetic variants of traditional yardages with appliqué aesthetics without distorting the antiquity of motifs in the new creation.
  
OMODE META is a near perfect mimic of a time activity within the umbrella effect of nature. Convinced - as Goethe put it, she is the sole artist of her rare workshop, that surrealist tendency of welding the past and the present with the same leisure choice forms a continuum with the future through the visual metaphor of fibre art medium. The artist through his own media could theorize this subliminal painting as a choice of value ‘teachable’. 'Teachable' is hardly the best word but something thinkable, encourage able and practicable within what is teachable by the teacher as an art instructor, a science lecturer or a demonstrator in a medical school. Bartlett Giamatti correctly states. 'No good teacher ever wants to control the contour of another's mind.'
That would be a form of terrorism rather than teaching. Again the physical environment where CHILDREN AT PLAY are carved compare positively to any teaching or recreating milieu where there's a choice. TEACHERS' HEAVEN, a Philadelphia Summer Resort for vacationing teachers who put useful wastes and tools to creative use (as teaching aids) is a case in point of what a liberal education can offer variety. This is within the psychological need of adults too. This linocut could at first be interpreted as a slice of 'art for art's sake!  However, in reality, for children of this age bracket, nothing else could be considered more precious than this recreational paraphenalia and its propensities. That is, if there is no entropy from the milieu. This does not erode its inherent depth of meaningful elegance - especially, the hidden energies for sport and interactive values. A fervent window on the future World Cup players or fans or referees maybe
  
The basic question is time availability. Truly every good thing must have its endplay time inclusive. Then, is there a time grant? Or again, is this elastic enough to warm up hope of its routine peering or group comrade? These are psychosocial urgencies for the growing children. If there's permission, this is part of the non-digestive matter they need for normal psycho-physical development - apart although the hormonal coordination will be put to task-even by this exterior freedom, which the children seize with enthusiasm.
  
Upon granting the freedom to play with different things - are they physically potent or psychologically renewed with this homely 'inorganic catalyst? Yes!  This is a big deal in our own days too. Its hilarious to be so free from grandpa’s assignment and be blessed to go out to play football or ping-pong all day long! There are no ready-made answers to these posers but the artist's conception could've been inevitably coupled on a flash of refection or a regale 'harvest' of a scene possibly as a disturbance or welcome distraction through his studio window. So, an event or imaginative reconstruction of the scene that he stabilised in lino occurred as real and consequently a painting is possible. The energy necessary and conditions permitted by their cues will determine the life span of this recreational pursuit.
  
There are many possibilities to visualize this artwork. For instance, if a three-dimensional photography of this print is produced by the laser beam -a reality will be marvelously perceived. Even then, it couldn't have taken ‘the shape nature never saw, a shape art supplies to the stuff the world provides’’. The aesthetic and limitations of play-time-freedom against this simple culture milieu are nonetheless logical. Noting that Visual Art is a tool for social communication Tunde Odunlade's studio might be teaching the public or pupils indigenous outdoor game of a forgotten era predominant with the Junior Secondary School age. This creative method of using abstractive medium is artistic politics with a civil sense. Giamatti, in the book-The University and Public Interest states that no human activity can proceed without making choices-critical acts of the mind-and teaching which embrace any subject or discipline. A real instance is not far-fetched from Toki Memorial Art
 Centre. 
If the art centre could direct the creative energy and powers of imagery for artistic expression of the human condition under a pliable and inspiring teacher then the edifice of belief is shared and perpetuated. This choice is the essential thing. It is nothing short of this as an enabling factor. Teaching is self-perpetuation. Painting, too, is perpetuation to the printmaking connoisseur and his community. It is perpetuation not of blood or even of similarity but a detached perpetuation, a giving to others the gift of how to share their desires. 
At its best-painting is beyond aesthetics. It is glowing and powerful for an artwork to transcend and communicate different era beyond its author's life span. Then it is also a spirit of continuity.
   
  Comment by GBEMI TIJANI MST
  
p.s. nb OMODE META== CHILDREN AT PLAY

 		
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