0
0
In the summer of 1982, I arrived from Bloomington, Indiana, to commence research that would focus on Dr. Onobrakpeya and his studio practice for my dissertation. Up till that moment, my relationship with him had been essentialized by an exhilarating admiration that dates to the first time that I attended one of his numerous solo exhibitions and fell under the mesmerizing influence of his dazzling prints. This particular exhibition was at the Goethe place then on Broad Street; it was opened by the late Professor J.F, Ade Ajayi. Buoyed by such spectacular productivity as evinced by the “immediate masters” group, there then was no question what my dissertation would be about.
At Indiana University where I was studying with Dr. Roy Sieber who pioneered African art history in the United States, I knew that the nascent field was yet to come to grips with the conception of African art that deviated from ancient visual expressions in three-dimensional forms, or was associated with African material culture involving consecrated artifacts, propitiation, veneration, adornment or such items as catch the fancy of anthropologist, linguists, or historians. Although the literature on contemporary African art during this period was miserably paltry, the imperative of narrating and historicizing contemporary manifestations overrode the obligation to stick with “traditional” topics for my dissertation.
II
“Dó Sah.”
“Ma Ghare,” he would reply.
It was still the summer of 1982 and the first time I had embedded myself in his studio at the famous 39 (now 41) Oloje Street in Papa Ajao which required, at that time, a serious consideration of what outfit you wore during the rainy months as the roads were always in a combative mode.
Dr. Onobrakpeya welcomed me to his residence and invited me to follow him to his third-floor studio. Before I could satisfy my visual curiosity trying to admire all the prints and 3-D pieces that dotted the winding stairwell, he had vanished. What just happened? Where did he go? He was 50 and I, a mere 37. Yet, he just turned a simple introductory welcome into something akin to the race between the hare and the tortoise with me as the tortoise of course. At 37!
If you recall Ebenezer Obey’s schemata on life, that was precisely the age at which Dr. Onobrakpeya was supposed to start feeling the gnawing vibrations of oldness while I had supposedly just started chopping life. I beg to differ. The third floor of his studio was an expansive space where piles of paper assumed an assortment of positions—hanging on the line, lying prostrate, flat out on their back, or simply waiting on the queue to be wrung through the press.
III
With 20/20 hindsight, my embedment with him revealed certain critical lessons about the person whom we are gathered here celebrating. The first is his work ethics. You have probably heard a popular witticism, ascribed to Albert Einstein, which defines insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” With apologies, I believe that this aphorism was targeted at Dr. Onobrakpeya as it beautifully encapsulates his approach to work. Oh no, I am not implying that he is mad. Please, don’t hear me wrong o! Èmi Kẹ̀!
He most certainly has been doing the same thing all his life, which is that he has been rigorously consistent in applying himself to the seemingly simple task of artmaking. The reason that he has attained different results lies in the ontology of art; he has unquestionably re-defined what art entails, and what making it is comprised of. Indefatigably, he has cultivated a fervid approach to this business, with unforgiving commitment.
The other time I heard the Vice-President, Osinbajo, on tv saying again and again, “calm down,” I thought that he was addressing Dr. Onobrakpeya. Boy! Was I relieved to learn that the VP was at a political rally, which is something that this artist has learned to distance himself from, at least from the view of outsiders. Besides, it is far too late in the day for any latter-day sexagenarian to demand that his elder, a nonagenarian, should calm down although both are, well, Nigerians. On this score, here’s my direct message to our celebrant: please do not calm down; do not slow down. You are simply too set in your ways to start listening to politicians!
In addition to his work ethics, the second insight that I could intuit looking back now at Dr. Onobrakpeya’s enriched world concerns a proclivity towards suspicious inquisitiveness. This, indeed, is one of the firmest pedestals that have sustained his colossus status as an artist. He has never stood in the way of art. Instead, he has, all his life, offered himself as a tool—a vessel—through which art thrives. Soon after he left Zaria, he mixed and mingled with the art-producing crowd on the streets of Ibadan, those plebians whose lack of exposure to book knowledge tickled Ulli Beier’s imagination no end. Surprisingly, this suspicious inquisitiveness has been a crucial factor in the incredible density and diversity that we now see in his work. For one who majored in painting, he has continued to expose himself to new creative paradigms, which in recent years led to assemblage, bricolage, and installation.
To these two critical lessons, let me add a third, which is his capacity for creative intellection. For sure one can make the argument that Dr. Onobrakpeya’s dispositive approach to artmaking—mixing and mingling with people, things, and places—is unashamedly sophomoric or even pedestrian, especially given his status as one of the new class of elite Nigerians in post-independent Nigeria, it did take someone of his cerebral capacity to correctly calibrate the end-result, one that would take years in coming to fruition. His foray into printmaking, with all the attendant mistakes, gave birth to new etching methods and lingo. His relentless pursuit of spaces to exhibit his work led to exhibitions at local, national, and global platforms just as it earned him residencies and catapulted his work to an international audience and into major museum collections.
Undoubtedly, the most enduring quality, which has resulted in the positively influential status of Dr. Onobrakpeya is his enchanting personality. Arguably, he is not only Africa’s treasured persona whose presence at international art circles creates waves, but he is also the one who most consistently has been accorded, on account of the totality of his work and achievements globally and locally, the status of Nigeria’s foremost living art persona. That is what more than six decades of creative exploration, with innumerable accolades and the Nigerian National Order of Merit Award to boot, does.
Devoid of the superciliousness that tends to characterize the personality of many internationally acknowledged artists, Dr. Onobrakpeya’s humility is at once instructive and endearing. His residence, which also doubles as his studio, beacons to all who aspire to learn and thrive under his mastership. All of this was not mere happenstance. Right from the beginning, the innate penchant in him as a story-teller—the same predilection that resulted in the illustration of several books—instructed his penchant for documenting his own work, often in a mélange of poetry, prints, and explanatory narratives. Here, then, in our midst, is a cultural ambassador of the highest order, one who has consistently stood as apostle of all things Nigerian in general, and Urhobo in particular. As I have said in another forum, Dr. Onobrakpeya is one of Africa’s leading culture producers. But deconstructing him cannot be profitably engaged outside of his Urhoboness. His body of work, which is an admixture of poetry, folklore, orature, myths and mythology all expressed in his paintings, prints, plastocasts, and installations: all of this constitutes a compendium of Urhobo culture and, by extension, modern Africa itself.
The artist as an inveterate self-narrator brings up the fifth column of Dr. Onobrakpeya’s structure. Those of us in this field know that an important contributory element to an artist’s profile is the narrative that heralds such an artist. The narrative is as important as, or at times even more important than, the artist’s work. All art is local. There is a correlation between an artist’s success and the artist’s patronage base. Oftentimes, we neglect locality at our own expense. But the global art community also plays a significant part in shaping local taste and patronage. Dr. Onobrakpeya’s creative longevity cannot be dissociated from his locale.
The irrefutable fact is that the values that we place on art, the determinants of aesthetics, and the willingness to invest in a particular artist is governed as much by the quality of the artist’s work as by the values ascribed to, or associated with, the artist. In Dr. Onobrakpeya’s situation, longevity and consistency are critical factors. At this point, there is, theoretically, a body of patrons who will buy whatever he produces. This is because he has earned his stripes, to a point where the appendment of his name on any item instantly transforms such an item into art. If he were to doodle something on a napkin at a restaurant, it is theoretically possible to monetize it.
A sixth pedestal in the Onobrakpeya chronicles concerns insightfulness. The results of the man’s visionary deftness are apparent everywhere today. Perhaps it is in the establishment of the Bruce Onobrakpeya Foundation that we see his determination to entrench and perpetuate his vision. In this vein, the creation of the Harmattan Workshop in 1998, together with the erection of an edifice—the Conference Center—to actuate the ideals of the workshop, remain an unassailable testament to his immortality.
IV
By now, only a harebrained dolt would contest the evidence that Dr. Onobrakpeya remains his own best chronicler, promoter, and publicist. All you need do is look at the body of literature that he has produced about himself. If an exhibition mattered, there was a catalog. And he never had any exhibition that did not matter. The urge to document himself appears to be a healthy obsessive compulsion. Which brings to mind this short anecdote that reveals my private nemesis on this score.
Dr. Onobrakeya’s exhibition catalog for 1992, The Spirit in Ascent, was edited by my colleague, G.G. Dara. While the catalog must have been confined to the archives now because of the 445-page 2014 magnum opus, Masks of the Flaming Arrows, which I had the privilege to edit, a very visceral development concerning my contribution to the 1992 catalog remains indelible because of a careless error contained in my essay’s heading.
In those days when every department had a pool of typists, I turned in my piece to one of the ladies in the office. Once I made what I thought were all the corrections to the typed piece, I turned it in to G.G. Dara. Behold, to my eternal mortification, the title of my essay came out in print as “The Humane of Onobrakpeya.” Confounded, I rushed to check the original copy that I sent to the editor. Behold, our elite typist had edited my original title, which was “The Humaneness of Onobrakpeya.” This blemish on my academic integrity felt so visceral that I shared my anguish with a colleague, Nigel Barley of the British Museum, when we met at a conference in Tokyo two years later. Ah, that’s not such a big deal, he consoled me. He then shared with me a similar faux pas that he had seen at his place of work, where a publication came out titled “Kind Red Spirits” instead of “Kindred Spirits.”
I continually marvel at the generosity and wonderment of the prescient Lord in designing a human being who is as rugged, clairvoyant, blessed, and unperturbed as Dr. Onobrakpeya. At my age, I have finally embraced the idea that I may never…let me change that…that I will never be the same person that I was when, for example, we organized his 60thbirthday three decades ago. I have been forced to reconcile myself with the idea that my wife has peddled for so long, an idea which I treated at first as a rumor but which, as recent events have revealed, is probably now a fact. The idea is that I have slowed down, physically at least.
It started during the waning years of my tenure at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. I observed that during a casual walk from one campus building to the other, my students suddenly appeared as if they were ever in a hurry even when they seemed quite relaxed as they sped past me. However, I have managed to resolve that conundrum. I discovered that it was I who had slowed down. It didn’t matter how fast I thought I was moving; I was always left behind by my students. When Dr. Onobrakpeya was at my 70thbirthday at Unilag, I was stunned at how trim and fit he not only looked, but also felt.
On that occasion, I came to the realization that something was probably wrong with him. It was not right for a respectable 83-year-old to be that sharp and walk at that fast speed. I knew that he used to extend to me the privilege of sharing his bottle of beer in the comfort of his living space anytime I visited. I know certainly that he does not smoke. Not even cigarettes. Now, don’t go misinterpreting me again. I am not inferring that he smoked anything else! Nobody is implying something sinister. Dr. Onobrakpeya does not smoke, period. So, where does he derive his incredible feistiness from? If he drinks only moderately, and smokes absolutely nothing, where does he derive his vim and vigor from? That’s a question I cannot answer.
Ah! I just had an epiphany now. I learned that my heart throbs with glee whenever discussions center around the professional indefatigability of Dr. Onobrakpeya, who all of us should see as our hero. As regards the other elements that are constitutive of his greatness, I am secure in my conviction that his love for the arts, his full, unalloyed commitment to professing art, and the unparalleled success that has attended his efforts in this regard are incontestable facts.
But when it comes to comparing my physicality with his, I tend not to do too well. Of course, I’m not sick. Other than a back problem here and a carpal tunnel there, or whatever else my legs may cook up tomorrow, I am healthy. Which is why I struggle to define Dr. Onobrakpeya’s physical irrepressibility. Of course, I’m not a medical doctor. But I am old enough to have a healthy presumption about how nonagenarians are supposed to look, Obey’s age paradigm notwithstanding. I suspect you can imagine where, in conclusion, I’m headed with this.
So then, I end with just a question, one simple question: Would it be, em…would it be too impolite to ask INEC (the Independent National Electoral Commission) for a recount on this score? Can we ask to INEC to help us take another look at Dr. Onobrakpeya’s certificate? I mean, his birth certificate.
Oghene Phiyo Ke We (May God Bless You)
Abridged form of the Keynote Address delivered at Bruce Onobrakpeya @ 90 Conference in Agbarha-Otor, Delta State, August 5, 2022. délé jẹ́gẹ́dẹ́, Ph.D, is Professor Emeritus. Miami University, Oxford. Ohio
