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THE RECREATION OF MODERN AND AFRICAN ART AT ACHIMOTA SCHOOL IN THE GOLD COAST (1927–52)*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2014

Rhoda Woets
Rhoda Woets*
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
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Abstract

The formative influence of colonial art education on modern art movements in Africa has not attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. Yet, European art teachers in the Gold Coast challenged colonial prejudice that Africans were incapable of mastering European aesthetic forms. This article analyses the art education provided at the Teacher Training College at Achimota School where pupils learned both to revalue African art forms and to draw and paint in European, representational art styles. Modern artists built on and reshaped what they had learned at Achimota in order to respond to changing social and political conditions. The last section of this article explores the impact of colonial art education on the work of two of the earliest modern artists in Ghana: Kofi Antubam and Vincent Kofi.

Keywords

Ghanaartseducationcolonialism
Type
Education, Culture, and Social Change
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , November 2014 , pp. 445 - 465
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

Author's email: [email protected]

References

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61 Probst makes a similar argument in relation to the reconstruction of the Osun grove by Susanne Wenger. See Probst, P., The Art of Heritage in a Yoruba City, unpublished version (2011), 83Google Scholar. Later published under the title Osogbo and the Art of Heritage: Monuments, Deities, and Money (Bloomington, IN, 2011).

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88 In 1961, the College became the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). See Kwami, Kumasi, 73.

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92 k. seid'ou[sic], ‘Theoretical foundations of the KNUST painting program: a philosophical inquiry and its contextual relevance in Ghanaian culture’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, 2006), 134.

93 Ibid. 133.

94 See the webpage of the Integrated Rural Art and Industry Department, (http://archive.knust.edu.gh/pages/sections.php?siteid=irai&mid=511&sid=1552), accessed Sept. 2013.

95 Woets, ‘What’, 132.

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107 The physician and well-known sculptor Oku Ampofo discovered African sculptures in Western European museums when he studied medicine in Edinburgh. In 1949, Ampofo wrote in the journal for the West African Society: ‘I found in these ancient masterpieces the emotional appeal and satisfaction which western education had failed to cultivate in me. It was as though an African had to go all the way to Europe to discover himself!’ See Mount, African, 173.

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