Project Abstract

<p> </p><p>Obiora Udechukwu’s name is synonymous with the Nsukka Art School. He is also<br>known nationally and internationally. His art career has been eventful and<br>aesthetically rewarding. He works in diverse media such as oil, acrylic, watercolour,<br>pen and ink, lithographs, linocut, aquatint, graphite and pastel, and he is best known<br>for his highly linear style which draws extensively from the traditional uli art and<br>other linear art forms like nsibidi and Chinese Li art. In 1995, he left for the United<br>States of America, where his professionalization in art has continued to make him<br>produce enduring visual statements. Numerous scholarly works have been written on<br>Udechukwu, but a comprehensive research, which articulates his art career in Nigeria<br>and in the United States of America, is yet to be carried out. This study, therefore,<br>attempts to fill this vacuum. Employing historical and analytical processes, it provides<br>an update on Udechukwu’s art career, using art professionalism, shifting identities<br>and creative correspondences as critical frameworks. Obiora Udechukwu’s art career<br>in Nigeria and in the United States of America is marked with experimentation.<br>Noticeable changes seen in his works in the Diaspora are the development of more<br>organic and multi-linear compositions, as well as the increased use of text in pictorial<br>configuration. The Nigerian civil war, his Igbo roots, indigenous art forms, as well as<br>socio-political issues are dominant themes in his art. He has contributed to the<br>development of modern Nigerian art through numerous national and international<br>exhibitions, workshops and conferences. His art career has brought international<br>attention to the Nsukka Art School, and he has trained, as well as influenced many<br>modern Nigerian artists.</p><p><strong>&nbsp;</strong></p> <br><p></p>

Project Overview

<p> INTRODUCTION<br>Background to the Study<br>Art, as a means of self expression, generally espouses creativity, fertile<br>imagination, ingenuity, as well as perceptive and conceptual abilities. A successful<br>and enduring art practice according to Ola Oloidi is necessarily usually built around a<br>well sustained culture of professionalism which embodies the love of, or interest in,<br>achieving or attaining standard or professional proficiency.1 Meaningful art<br>production also requires the acquisition of specific skills, knowledge and a clear<br>understanding of what constitutes good art. These fundamental requirements are often<br>acquired through genuine interest, training and the willingness to experiment with<br>ideas and materials.<br>The appraisal of world art history shows that many artists, have, at different<br>art epochs, distinguished themselves in various creative endeavours. These artists,<br>often acclaimed as ‘masters’, performed tremendous feats in the different aspects of<br>the visual arts. The artists of the I5th, 16th and 17th centuries like Donatello, Leonardo<br>da Vinci, Michelangelo, Leon Battista Alberti, Titian, El Greco, Diego Velasquez,<br>Peter Paul Rubens, Caravaggio and Rembrandt van Rijn, among others, had<br>distinguished art careers that have continued to attract admiration till date. In his<br>analysis of the Renaissance period, Fred Kleiner notes that “the High Renaissance<br>produced a cluster of extraordinary geniuses and found in divine inspiration the<br>rationale for the exaltation of the artist-genuis.”2 Some examples of masterpieces<br>produced during this era include the enigmatic Monalisa painted by Leonardo da<br>Vinci, Last Judgement, painted on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel by<br>Michelangelo Buonarroti and Raphael Sanzio’s School of Athens, among numerous<br>others.<br>xiv<br>Other art movements in Europe such as Impressionism, Romanticism,<br>Realism, Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism, Fauvism, Cubism and Surrealism<br>just to mention a few, also highlight the artistic ingenuity of the artists associated with<br>these art periods. Artists like Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Francisco Goya,<br>William Blake, Eugene Delacroix, Salvador Dali, Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock,<br>Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henry Moore, Paul Klee, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le<br>Corbusier, just to mention a few, are worthy examples. To attain the status of a<br>master, an artist must have attained a certain degree of professionality in his art<br>practice. The attainment of this status initiates a different kind of critical assessment<br>and also confers on the work of the artist, value and didactic posturing. Ola Oloidi<br>notes:<br>A master is a professional whose art is already liberated from, or<br>no more professionally affected by, certain forms of conventional<br>criticism or whose art can no more be made captive of negative<br>criticism. The professional strength of a master does not lie<br>anymore in critics’ convictions but in the artist’s innate abilities<br>and pure sensibilities.3<br>Also, the attainment of such status arises from what Oloidi describes as “a supreme<br>attribute that comes naturally through great effervescent experimentation and<br>professionalization.”4<br>In the discourse on modern Nigerian art, artists like Aina Onabolu, Akinola<br>Lasekan, Ben Enwonwu, Uche Okeke, Demas Nwoko, Yusuf Grillo, Bruce<br>Onorbrakpeya and El Anatsui have attained this status. The artist, Obiora Udechukwu,<br>also belongs to this category. A competent painter, draughtsman, writer and poet,<br>Udechukwu’s art career has impacted significantly on the growth and development of<br>Nigeria’s art modernism. The artist has attained a well deserved recognition, both<br>xv<br>nationally and internationally and he stands on the pedestal of the artist-genius. As<br>Simon Ottenberg observes:<br>Udechukwu is a highly regarded Nigerian artist who creates in a<br>range of two-dimensional media, with a rich background of<br>experience in drawing. Highly productive, he frequently exhibits in<br>solo and group exhibitions, writes critique and commentaries on<br>contemporary Nigerian art, has substantial gift as a poet, and is a<br>person of wide scholarly interest.5<br>Krydz Ikwuemesi also remarks that each time he contemplates Obiora Udechukwu’s<br>works, his mind recalls the humble words of Heinrich Heine, the German Romantic<br>poet, who declared; “Aus meinem grossen Schmerzen mach’ ich die kleinen Lieder”<br>(Through my great labour, I create little songs).6 Ikwuemesi explains that Heine was<br>only exhibiting extreme humility as his songs were actually not little, but provided the<br>platform through which he was able to criticized the social problems of his time.7<br>Applying this analogy to Udechukwu, Ikwuemesi further remarks:<br>In the same manner, a cursory look may mislead the viewer to<br>dismiss Udechukwu’s works, especially his drawings, as<br>simplistic. There is also a seeming simplicity that equally marks<br>the fire behind his exemplary personality. Like Heine, Udechukwu<br>knows the problems of his time the way he knows the back of his<br>hand. At 58, he certainly understands the contradictions and<br>conflicts in the Nigerian question, especially in its post-war<br>characteristics. It is these conflicts and contradictions that are at<br>the centre of Udechukwu’s imagination, as he concerns himself<br>with the pursuit of truth and excellence, which are the gem of great<br>art.8<br>Obiora Udechukwu’s art, to a marked degree, is shaped by certain<br>circumstances that were instrumental to his formative years. The trauma of the<br>Nigerian civil war and his encounter with uli art, the traditional art of body and wall<br>painting practised by Igbo women of south-eastern Nigeria, were of immense<br>importance to his development as an artist, both thematically and stylistically. These<br>factors proved to be vital catalysts that ignited his creative sensibility. As reported by<br>xvi<br>Simon Ottenberg, Udechukwu’s comment on the trauma of the Nigerian civil war,<br>serves as a pointer to the artist’s thematic preoccupation:<br>I as a person had to move from one town to other with virtually no<br>property, just a coat and a bag, occasionally sleeping in the open.<br>So I know firsthand what it is to suffer. I have known hunger. I<br>have also seen people suffering. I have seen air raids where human<br>beings are dismembered in under two seconds. So this has left a<br>big mark on my psyche and over the years, I find that images of<br>pathos that one associates with Biafra, keeps surfacing from time<br>to time.9<br>In acknowledging the influence of indigenous art forms on his art, Udechukwu also<br>states:<br>At one level, my work has benefitted immensely from, and owes a<br>lot to, the forms and aesthetic strategies of Igbo uli drawing and<br>painting, and to a lesser extent nsibidi writing. What these two<br>systems have done is to provide me with a reliable vocabulary for<br>articulating and presenting my responses to life-various<br>environments, events and phenomena. In the same way that my<br>grounding in Igbo and English informs my creative writing, my<br>encountering the arts of various parts of the world has broadened<br>my outlook and practice.10<br>Through the years, the creative pathways which Udechukwu’s art has taken<br>reflect a culture of experimentation. These experiences are continually reinvented and<br>consolidated by the artist into a personal creative language. It is of vital importance to<br>the visual artist, to be consciously and critically aware of his environment,<br>understanding its dynamism and potentiality for creative revival and sustenance. This<br>exhortation is also not lost on Udechukwu, who says:<br>The Igbo saying that “If you do not know where the rain started to<br>beat you, you will not know where it ceased to beat you” posits a<br>historical imperative for the understanding of the present and for<br>the survival of a person or a society at a given time. This idea is<br>elaborated in the memorable speech by the old man in Chinua<br>Achebe’s Novel, Anthills of the Savannah (1987), and resonates<br>with the project, spearheaded by Uche Okeke in the 1970s at<br>Nsukka, to deeply research traditional Nigerian art as a foundation<br>for the realization of a vital contemporary art.11<br>xvii<br>For a career that has been sustained for over five decades, Obiora Udechukwu’s art<br>has consistently drawn from indigenous sources as a potent creative resource for the<br>realization of contemporary artistic demands. The artistic proceeds of Udechukwu’s<br>resolution of this creative dialogue, between tradition and modern, have gained him<br>respect and recognition. This finds endorsement in Ola Oloidi’s assertion that “Obiora<br>Udechukwu, more than all the new artists in Nigeria, has won international<br>attention.”12 As of 1992, the artist has had sixteen solo exhibitions, four joint<br>exhibitions and over sixty-four group exhibitions.13 Udechukwu has also received<br>numerous awards and grants. His creative and scholarly writings equally factor in<br>projecting the wholesomeness of his artistic personality.<br>For twenty-two years, Obiora Udechukwu taught art in the Department of Fine<br>and Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. In 1995, as a result of irreconcilable<br>differences between the artist and the administration of the University of Nigeria,<br>Nsukka, he relocated to the United States of America and is presently Charles A.<br>Dana Professor of Fine Arts at St Lawrence University. Numerous scholarly works<br>have been written on Obiora Udechukwu. The most outstanding literary work on the<br>artist is, perhaps, the book, New Traditions from Nigeria: Seven Artists of the Nsukka<br>School, written by the eminent anthropologist, Simon Ottenberg. The book, published<br>in 1997, provides insightful information on the artist. Udechukwu’s biography, artistic<br>development and professional art career are critically appraised within the framework<br>of the Nsukka Art School, of which the artist strongly represents. Obiora Udechukwu<br>is the quintessential artist whose love for art and commitment to professionalism,<br>continue to sustain a prolific and vibrant art career. The artist’s creative antecedents<br>remain integral to the discourse on the Nsukka Art School in particular, and Nigeria’s<br>art modernism in general.<br>xviii<br>Art professionalism, shifting identities and creative correspondences, the three<br>key frameworks which form the basis of this study, provide effective handles for the<br>understanding and appreciation of Udechukwu’s art. The first examines Udechukwu’s<br>commitment to professionalism in art. This involves assessing how his love for, and<br>interest in, achieving standard, has translated to issues of professionalization and<br>professionality. Shifting identities, the second framework, examines the artist’s art<br>career in Nigeria, and the creative implication of his migration to the United States of<br>America. The third framework, creative correspondences, considers the multifarious<br>layering of Udechukwu’s art, especially, as it relates to his dynamic responses to life<br>experiences, within the rubrics of style, media and subject matter.<br>Statement of the Problem<br>Given Udechukwu’s creative pedigree, there is compelling need to carry out a<br>periodic appraisal of the dynamics at work in his professional art career; more so, now<br>that his art practice bestrides two continents. Simon Ottenberg’s book represents the<br>most in-depth documentation on the artist. However, it is time constrained as it<br>examines the artist’s career up to 1995. Udechukwu’s art practice in the Diaspora<br>from 1995 upwards, and how this factor in the panoramic appraisal of his oeuvres, are<br>yet to receive in-depth scholarly attention. Specifically, certain factors which are<br>likely to have impacted on Obiora Udechukwu’s art career in the diaspora are also yet<br>to be addressed. For example, in mapping the current creative trajectory of his art<br>practice, to what extent has the past shaped his present artistic experiences? Has the<br>artist’s relocation to a different continent induced any noticeable changes in his work<br>as an artist? If so, at what levels have these changes occurred in terms of style,<br>technique, media preference and subject matter? Also, given the artist’s track record<br>xix<br>of adapting and appropriating indigenous art forms to contemporary use, are there<br>evidences of assimilation of new indigenous art vocabularies, and consequently,<br>development of new aesthetic strategies? Furthermore, bearing in mind the artist’s<br>strong attachment to his traditional roots, to what extent has his host environment<br>benefitted from the expected cultural dialogue? These questions constitute gaps that<br>need to be filled. Updating Udechukwu’s professional art career becomes imperative.<br>Research Objectives<br>The objectives of this study were to:<br>i. provide an updated and comprehensive information on the artist’s creative<br>journey so far<br>ii. show the various influences that shaped his creative disposition<br>iii. bring to limelight, changes that may have occurred in his work as a visual<br>artist as a result of his relocation to a different creative clime.<br>iv. highlight the artistic contributions made by Obiora Udechukwu to both his<br>host community and modern Nigerian art.<br>Research Methodology<br>To actualize its set objectives, the study utilized primary and secondary<br>sources of data collection. Primary data were generated from electronic<br>correspondences between the artist and the researcher through platforms like skype<br>and e-mail exchanges. The visual, oral and textual information sourced through these<br>channels were collected with the aid of a tape recorder and the computer. Secondary<br>data were collected from published materials such as books, journals, exhibition<br>catalogues, magazines, newspapers, online materials, as well as unpublished materials<br>like students’ dissertations and theses.<br>xx<br>Scope of the Study<br>The study focuses primarily on the biography and art of Obiora Udechukwu. It<br>examines the artist’s art career from two geographical stand points. This comprises<br>his art career in Nigeria, covering the period, 1964-1995, and his art practice in the<br>Diaspora, from 1997-2013.<br>Limitation of the Study<br>The geographical distance between the researcher and Obiora Udechukwu made it<br>difficult to physically examine the works produced by Udechukwu in the Diaspora.<br>Obiora Udechukwu’s work schedule, which is unknown to the researcher, as well as<br>the barrier posed by distance, delayed data collection. Also, unreliable internet service<br>and power supply in Nigeria brought frustration in data gathering.<br>Significance of the Study<br>The study will have an enriching influence on art historical culture in Nigeria<br>by providing knowledge on a distinguished and vibrant Nigerian visual artist. It is<br>bound to stimulate interest in scholars to embark on parallel researches that will help<br>update and document works of artists in Nigeria especially those with a well sustained<br>track record of professional practice.<br>Organization<br>xxi<br>In discussing Udechukwu’s professional art career, this study has been<br>structured in such a manner as to satisfy the research objectives. Chapter One<br>introduces the background to the study. The Statement to the problem, Objectives of<br>the Research, Methodology, Scope of Study, Limitations of the Study and<br>Significance of the Study, are also incorporated in this chapter. The review of related<br>literature is carried out in Chapter Two. This provides a general understanding of<br>literary and visual documentation by various scholars and writers, which directly or<br>indirectly relate to the personality and professionality of Obiora Udechukwu. Chapter<br>Three provides biographical information on the artist and also discusses the artist’s<br>professional achievements while Chapter four analyzes the artist’s art career from<br>1964 to 1995, the period when he was still domiciled in Nigeria. Chapter Five features<br>an in-depth analysis of Udechukwu’s art career in the Diaspora from 1997 to 2013<br>and Chapter Six summarizes the study.<br>References<br>xxii<br>1. Ola Oloidi; his postgraduate lecture in Art History, University of Nigeria,<br>Nsukka, 2011.<br>2. Fred S. Kleiner, Gardner’s Art through the Ages, thirteenth edition (Boston:<br>Thompson Wadsworth, 2009), p.579.<br>3. Ola Oloidi, “Modern Nigerian Art: A celebration of Selected Masters,” in<br>Living Masters (Lagos: Guaranty Trust Bank, 2007), p.7.<br>4. Ibid, p.8.<br>5. Simon Ottenberg, New traditions from Nigeria: Seven Artists of the Nsukka<br>Group, (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), p.111.<br>6. Krydz Ikwuemesi, “Introductory Essay,” in Spaces and Silences (Lagos:<br>Pendulum Art gallery, 2004), p.5.<br>7. Ibid.<br>8. Ibid<br>9. Simon Ottenberg, p.116.<br>10. Obiora Udechukwu, “Artist’s statement”. In Spaces and Silences (Lagos:<br>Pendulum Art gallery, 2004), p.12.<br>11. Ibid.<br>12. Ola Oloidi, “Who is the New African Artist: Spirituality and Conscience in<br>Contemporary African Art,” in Chrysalis, Vol. 3, Issue 1 (1988): p.12.<br>13. See Obiora Udechukwu’s curriculum vitae in So Far (Bayreuth: Boomerang<br>Press, 1993), pp.71-88.<br>xxiii <br></p>