Mor Faye, the African Sphinx. Pr Samba Diop
Mor Faye the African Sphinx, the Eternal Artist Painter
By Pr Samba Diop
Mor Faye, a late Senegalese artist, and painter who died in Dakar in 1984 is being remembered and celebrated thanks to the current exhibition at the SKOTO Gallery in New York City (January 2017) organized by the well-known Art collector Me Bara Diokhane. Even though a very talented artist, Faye was—and still is—not well known in his own country of Senegal. To summarize his biography, Faye was born in Dakar in 1947 and died at an early age in the same city in 1984. He attended the famous National School of Arts of Dakar founded by President Leopold Senghor and under the direction of another equally well-known Senegalese artist, namely Iba Ndiaye. Mor Faye also taught painting in high schools. Thus, Faye was at once a painter and an educator.
Thus, it is fair to say that Faye is among the first cohort of Senegalese painters and sculptors attending some sort of formal institution in order to study modern art and get some formal training in the artistic field. At 19, in 1966, Faye was selected at the Exhibition of contemporary African art ‘Tendances et confrontations’ which was organized during the Festival Mondial des Arts Nègres in 1966. From 1966 to 1976, his work was internationally exhibited along with other Senegalese artists of the "School of Dakar”, in government-sponsored traveling shows in Paris, Washington, Montreal, Mexico etc. I will come back to l’Ecole de Dakar (the Dakar School), an important institution or trend in the history of art in Senegal, particularly during the first two formative decades of the post-colonial period (1960-1980).
From 1976 to his death in 1984, Faye stopped exhibiting and became rebellious, which fact led to some sort of internal exile, the latter being interrupted and/or enhanced by frequent stays at the psychiatric hospital of Fann (Hopital Fann) in Dakar. It is said that Faye collaborated with the world-renown French psychiatrist, namely Pr Colomb in sessions of art therapy experiments. Even though Faye stopped exhibiting publicly, he was nonetheless secretly making art, in particular hundreds of precious artworks on paper left behind which were neglected and thus became endangered. The last time Mor Faye’s art was publicly exhibited was in 2006, in a collective exhibit titled “Lumière Senghor” sponsored by Fougerolles during the Biennale de Dakar. Finally, Faye’s work was salvaged by Bara Diokhane who bought the whole collection in order to safeguard it. If today, contemporary art lovers can enjoy the fine works and Faye—and even have the chance to buy a few pieces—it is thanks to the selfless dedication of Bara Diokhne.
It is against this background that we can try to shed light on Faye’s work. Who was he really? What is the meaning of his art? How did he envision life? How did he perceive Senegal and Africa? To what extent was he influenced by French and Western painting and art as a whole? What role did the French colonial heritage play in the artist’s consciousness and sub-consciousness? How did he apprehend the cultural reality around him? Last but not least, what is the universal component in Faye’s work? These questions are legitimate and, not only need to be asked but, moreover, throughout this paper, I will attempt to bring an answer to them.
Beforehand, however, I must bring forth another dimension, another aspect bearing on art history and on some peculiar realities that are unique to the Senegalese art ecosystem. In the final analysis, these remarks will help to have a better comprehension of Faye and his work, in addition to highlighting the interplay of cultural and religious values, on the one hand, and modern art, on the other. Needless to say, the two cannot be separated. Senegal is a Muslim country, the majority of the population believes in Islam; however, it is an Islam heavily influenced by traditional religion, a sort of syncretism. French authors have written on that, namely Vincent Monteil (L’islam noir) and Paul Marty (L’islam au Sénégal), just to name two of the most prominent French writers on Islam in Senegal. Many observers have pointed out to the historical fact that Islam has almost annihilated plastic art in Africa because of the prohibition of configuration and icons in Islam. Of course, artists like Faye were not concerned with those restrictions for Faye was not only rebellious but also knew no boundaries in his quest of innovating, always guided by the power of his imagination. In short, Faye was a non-conformist.
It obvious, at present, that Faye was a very complex human being. In this paper, I will attempt to untie the knots that surround the artistic and human personality, in addition to seeing how we can highlight that complexity as it is woven around his paintings and creative expression. However, beforehand, I am going to put a stress on the French concept of ‘poète maudit’ (outcast poet); this expression can be related to Faye’s life but the comparison can stretch only so far. In 1884, the French writer Paul Verlaine published a book titled Les Poètes maudits. In it, the poet pays homage to the decadent French poetic movement that appeared in the second half of the 19th century. The name comes from a collection of poems titled Le parnasse contemporain published between 1866 and 1876 by the French publisher Alphonse Lemerre. This movement was born as a reaction to lyricism and romanticism which were the overarching movements in France at that epoch. In his book, Verlaine discusses the lives and works of Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé, just to name two. Is it a case of the ‘peintre maudit’ (outcast painter) in the case of Faye? Perhaps but, again, Faye was more complex than that.
The very concept of a cursed poet was mentioned in Alfred Vigny’s Stello (1832) in which he explains the relation between the poet and the society; Vigny wrote that ‘the Poet has always belonged to the race cursed by the powerful people of the world.’ Thus, the outcast poet is a tragic character who has been pushed against the wall, so hard that he may become mad. Faye can be aptly described as belonging to the group of cursed artists for he was poorly understood at a young age, he rejected the norms of the society and behaved in a very provocative, self-destructive, and dangerous manner. Often, this kind of situation—downfall—is accompanied by the usage of drugs and alcohol and the cursed poet/artis dies before his genius is acclaimed and duly recognized. Just like the ‘poète maudit’ who writes texts that are hard to decipher, Faye also produces very intricate paintings. Thus, the parallel between the ‘poète’ and the painter is very striking.
After the concept of ‘poète maudit’, another idea that had had a certain influence on Faye’s work is Cubism. Cubism was an avant-garde movement that was born in early 1900 which deeply changed European painting and sculpture, in addition to having had an influence on music, literature, and architecture. In Paris, Cubism was very influential among artists in Montmartre and Montparnasse where most artists were of the Bohemian type. Some famous artists pioneered the Cubist movement: Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Matisse, Fernand Léger, André Lhote, etc. It is also said that the primary influence that led to the birth of Cubism is intimately linked to the works of Paul Cézanne.
Just like in Mor Faye’s work, the main characteristics of Cubist artwork is abstraction whereby objects are analyzed, broken up, and reassembled. Better yet, instead of having a uni-dimensional view of the object being depicted, single, unique view of the artwork, instead we have a multitude of viewpoints which, in turn, places the object in a greater context. Thus, when looking at Faye’s work, we have a multiple perspectives also called multiplicity. In a nutshell, Cubism brought diversity as well as the simplification of geometric forms, the concepts of disparateness and dissimilarity.
It is also widely considered that Cubism was born in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the European cultural elites were discovering African, Native American, and Micronesian art. The French anthropologists and ethnologists were importing from Africa masks and other artifacts (primarily from Cote d’Ivoire, Dahomey, Cameroon, and Congo) placed into Parisian museums; this happened during the heyday of the French colonial Empire. At the same time, the Parisian press was full of tales of exoticism, barbarous fetishism, and cannibalism (topics embedded in the well-known novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad). These events had had an impact on the technique of a painter like Picasso. Cubism also represented and attempted to translate modern life and the advent of mechanization, the birth of the Machine (the Industrial Revolution). Still, within the Cubist movement, there is Constructivism which was brought to life by Picasso in his sculpture; in that technique, Picasso constructed a type of sculpture by assembling separate and seemingly irreconcilable elements. We find a similar technique in Faye’s work for the latter was keen of creating a harmony of relationships. It is also worth noting constructivist tendencies in African masks.
At present, we can turn to the Senegalese environment and see how Faye and his work fit in there. It is befitting to give a brief background history of painting in Senegal. It is widely accepted that the first paintings are glass painting (peinture sous verre) imported into Senegal toward the end of the 19th century by Lebanese and Arab Muslim merchants who made available the needed materials: paintbrush, colors, paint, etc. I alluded above to the presence of Islam in Senegal; Islamic local iconic figures such as the marabouts and Heads of the Islamic Brotherhoods are heavily represented in these glass paintings.
In his article titled ‘La question de la figuration dans l’Islam et la peinture sous verre sénégalaise ‘ (Ethiopiques numéros 66-67 , Revue négro-africaine de littérature et de philosophie, 2001), Abdou Sylla gives a detailed account of the history of glass painting. At first, the artists were interested mostly in portraits which were often referred to as naïve art. The first generation of glass painters did not attend any art school; they just improvised and reproduced many daily sceneries, in particular, wild animals, as well as famous people such as the marabouts as mentioned above.
What also characterizes glass painting is the adoption of collage in which painters use cut-out shapes of color. When Faye was coming of age, the Dakar Ecole des Beaux-Arts was in existence. As observed by the above-mentioned author Sylla, the young artists such as Germaine Anta Gaye, Serigne Ndiaye, and Mamadou Gaye were initiated into diverse artistic techniques (but not to glass painting). Even the few artists who were interested in glass painting abandoned portrait and were, henceforth, more interested in innovating. Glass painting became more accepted thanks to these new approaches. At its inception, that art form was adopted by the popular masses but, more and more, the elites and the European tourist market were getting to like glass painting and, consequently, buying it. Glass paintings were exhibited at art galleries in Senegal and around the world. It is less the case nowadays.
In order to better grasp the contours of Faye’s personality which, in turn, sheds light on his work, I turn at present to the Ecole de Dakar (the Dakar School); to that end, I make use of the article ‘L’école de Dakar: Réalité historique ou escroquerie intellectuelle?’ by Sidy Seck (in Ethiopiques n°70, 2003). Leopold Senghor, one of the fathers of the Negritude philosophy is the precursor of the Ecole de Dakar; according to Seck, what characterized that School is ‘the incisiveness of the line, the colored and naive panache of glass-painting, the beautiful slender forms of tapestries, the innocence of historical paintings, the gay and warm range of canvas, all of the above constitute the label of artists who have shown themselves great in this style at that epoch.’ Still, according to Seck, there was the prevailing idea—which also spouses the Negritude philosophy—that the Negro-African is naturally pre-disposed and talented in art and does not need the straightjacket of strict rules, restrictive academic techniques and structures as that obtain in Europe and the West.
All in all, the Dakar School is known for its own peculiar style as well as its penchant for modern art. The Senghorian idea of Negro emotion comes here to mind. Many artists were so dependent on Senghor’s support and encouragement that when he left the presidency in 1979-80, these dependent artists could not survive. It is obvious that the artists who subscribed to Senghor’s ideas of Negritude—and who translated and transposed those ideas into painting, sculpture or music—did not have the leverage to be innovative even though they had imagination and talent; the reason being that they wholly subscribed to a canon developed by a Master, namely Senghor.
A few artists did neither relate nor subscribe to the Dakar School ideal, artists such as Amadou Sow, Mouhamadou Mbaye dit Zulu, or Ibou Diouf, just to name a few. However, in my opinion, Mor Faye was the most rebellious of the lot; he was adamant in staying free and not subscribing to any School of thought, not bowing to any Master, even if it was Leopold Senghor with his shining aura, powerful intellect, and political acumen. Faye subscribed to an expression that was plural, free, and spontaneous and, thus, rejected the iteration of a Master’s style (be it Senghor or anybody else for that matter). Faye was a disciple of a universal School; he wanted to discover Picasso, Matisse and others but without having to blindly copy them.
Faye’s work is characterized by fluidity, it looks like water and the blueness of the sea permeates his canvas. This fluidity is a metaphor which is akin to a flexible and agile mind, in addition to reflecting the difficulty in classifying Faye; it is not easy to pigeon-hole him, to place him in any sort of School. In the final analysis, yes, Faye was a rebel in his lifetime, an ‘unfit’ artist living in a conservative, traditional Senegalese African society, a society in which consensus and homogeneity are the norms; a society where originality is shunned upon; where imagination and dreaming are discouraged and nipped in the bud. In short, a society that has its own cultural, religious, and social norms which run counter clock-wise to modernity.
Therefore, it is not surprising that an original artist like Faye, an experimental dreamer, a cutting-edge painter who loved to try different things, explore new territories, push outwards the boundaries of creativity, that kind of artist could not thrive and flower in such a restrictive environment. Who is at fault? Is it Mor Faye or Senegalese society? In my opinion, the society is at fault for in any conservative and restrictive society, a person who has originality, who sees things differently, is often labeled as being mad or crazy. There is another marker which characterizes conservative societies for, because of the competing norms that exist in Senegalese society, a form of schizophrenia prevails. Let me explain: As I mentioned above, there is the French colonial legacy in which all the institutions and instruments of governance are copied from France, including schooling and education. Then, one must add the religious dimensions represented by Islam and Christianity and more specifically Catholicism (which, like Islam, has its own dregs) and their syncretic nature; one must still add to the mix African traditional religions which are heavily influenced by nature and the worship of natural elements: trees, rocks, rivers, etc; finally, on top of the architecture described above, we have disparate elements coming from various world cultures and influences thus crowning the whole thing.
One can see the difficulty for an atypical artist like Faye to live in a society where there is no running thread, no memory; a new society full of hope and potential in which order could be created out of disorder, where there is room to innovate but that is difficult because of the reasons mentioned above, the most notable one being a very pronounced conservatism.
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